‘… maybe she wouldn’t have had kids at all’: Shari Franke’s memoir highlights the dangers of thrusting motherhood on women
In her new memoir, The House of My Mother, Shari Franke questions how things might have been different if her mother, convicted child abuser Ruby Franke, hadn’t grown up in a home where she was told having children was the only path to fulfillment.
Franke’s searing memoir tells the whole story of her and her siblings’ lives leading up to the day in August 2023 when Ruby, a famous family vlogger, was arrested on charges of aggravated child abuse. The internet had spent over a decade watching Ruby post daily vlogs of her children on the 8 Passengers YouTube channel, which attained over 1 million subscribers at its peak. However, Franke has now come forward to fix the narrative, confirming that the happy Mormon family viewers saw on YouTube was not the reality. Ruby’s abuse started long before the most extreme physical abuse of the youngest Franke children that led to her arrest. From the onset, Ruby had ruled her house with an iron fist, emotionally abusing her children, denying them mental health care, and treating them coldly and cruelly as “guests” in her home.
Wise beyond her years, Franke doesn’t just tell her story but also dives into the “whys” and “what ifs” of Ruby’s story. She finds a delicate balance between holding Ruby accountable for her abuse and acknowledging there were contributing factors to why she turned out the way she did. In addition to a suspected personality disorder and childhood trauma, Franke also identifies the pressure of motherhood Ruby faced as a potential cause of her abusive ways.
Shari Franke acknowledges her mother was pressured into motherhood
Franke begins her memoir by briefly recounting her mother’s childhood. She grew up in a strict, conservative home where she was raised to hold motherhood as the “pinnacle of her aspirations.” It wasn’t just a family sentiment, though. Franke acknowledges that in the LDS faith, “Becoming a mother … is a spiritual calling of the highest order.” From childhood, Ruby believed there was only one path for her: finding a husband and being a mother.
Ruby went on to have six children. Her family positively reinforced her reproduction, as Ruby told Franke that she only became her mother’s “friend” after she had her first child. Despite having six children in rapid succession, Franke’s book recalls countless instances in which it was fairly obvious Ruby didn’t want children and didn’t have motherly instincts. Ruby wasn’t excited to love and nurture her children. No, she was excited because she thought having children meant having people who would love her. Franke suspects Ruby had a “void” within that her upbringing led her to believe could be filled with little extensions of herself who loved her unconditionally.
However, what happens when children don’t fill the void a mother thought they would? Ruby’s lack of fulfillment was evident as Franke recalls her constantly crying, yelling, enraged, and levying out cruel punishments, like shaving her children’s heads, forcing them to quit sports, and denying them therapy. Eventually, Ruby sought fulfillment in other things, including YouTube and Jodi Hildebrandt, leading her down the slippery slope to child exploitation and aggravated child abuse.
What if Ruby Franke wasn’t pushed into motherhood?
Franke hypothesizes that Ruby’s behavior was likely partially due to suffering from narcissism. However, she also questions what might have happened if Ruby wasn’t pushed into motherhood. She writes:
What if Ruby hadn’t felt like motherhood was the only path to fulfillment? What if she’d been encouraged to explore all facets of herself beyond what her family told her was ‘right’ for someone born a woman? Maybe if she’d had the chance to pour herself into a high-powered career in banking or physics — fields where empathy isn’t exactly a priority — she wouldn’t have seen her kids as employees and extensions of herself. Or maybe she wouldn’t have had kids at all.
Franke’s what-ifs are quite daring questions considering the culture in which she was raised. However, these are questions and scenarios that must be broached if society is ever to find out how to prevent the horrific child abuse that children like the Frankes endured. Franke’s what-ifs are especially significant as society is increasingly pushing to go backward and erase progress it has made to give women the freedom to choose. Men like Elon Musk and J. D. Vance, whose power just increased substantially with Donald Trump’s re-election, have pushed extreme views advocating for shaming and pressuring every woman to have children as they declare it’s the only way to fix the declining birth rate and motherhood the only suitable role for women.
Motherhood is becoming increasingly politicized, and the choice to be a parent is now becoming a “right vs. left” issue. It’s always about the birth rate, women’s roles, and tradition, but never about children’s rights. Much of society doesn’t seem to believe that every child should have the right to be born and raised in a loving home that’s equipped to care for them adequately. Increasingly, right-wing politicians are advocating for children to become numbers and symbols of status or living the “right” way while caring absolutely nothing for their quality of life. However, if more and more people are pressured or shamed into having children, we’ll have a lot more Rubys in the world.
It’s not just that some women simply don’t want motherhood and should have the right to choose. Franke’s book reminds us there are people who aren’t suitable to be parents. She suggests there are still places in the world for people who are wired differently and don’t experience empathy, but that place is not in motherhood. Her book leads us to ask how many more cases of abuse have occurred for no other reason than that people who weren’t meant for motherhood had children anyway because motherhood was placed on a pedestal.
I feel particularly strongly about this issue because I was born to two people who had no parental instincts and did not want children but had six. Seven years after moving out of my home and going on three years of no contact with my one living parent, I still find myself dealing with the profound effects of growing up in a house where I was a number. I find myself recalling all the signs of unwanted parenthood, like my late mother’s daily threats to “run away” or the time she said she only had six children so that she could use “Mom of Half a Dozen” as her username on her mommy forums. I now know my parents had children because religion and society told them it would give them status. One thing I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to grasp, though, is why I had to pay the price for the letdown of parenthood my family’s religion’s negligent glorification of motherhood set them up for.
Motherhood is a beautiful thing for those who genuinely yearn for it. However, it’s time for religious leaders and politicians to acknowledge there’s nothing beautiful in thrusting motherhood on women and treating the children born of this pressure and misguided thinking as mere collateral damage.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
