If you’ve ever found the Mother’s Day section of your local stationery shop even slightly unrelatable, this one’s for you. Mom-related Hallmark sentiments are certainly lovely, but most fail to authentically capture the rich diversity of the mother/child relationship, as Mariska Hargitay’s wide-ranging discussion of her mother, Jayne Mansfield or the complicated bond between Queen Elizabeth II and her son, Charles both reveal.
Some of us grew up with mothers who did the best they could, which is how Carrie Fisher would sometimes describe her upbringing by Debbie Reynolds. Others, like Christina Crawford, might wish their moms had tried a little bit harder—or had directed their energy in a different, more nurturing direction.
While few of us are the children of international superstars or the Queen of England, there’s still something to be gleaned from all these Dedalian connections. Especially inspiring is the story of Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, who nursed mother Rita Hayworth through her frail final years, even as she devoted her life to raising funds to fight the disease that took her mother’s life. “If anything, my mother taught me how to sur-thrive,” Carrie Fisher once said. “There’s a part of me that gets surprised when people think I’m brave to talk about what I’ve gone through. I was brave to last through it.”
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Sure, mothers always get blamed for everything. But—as a look at the women behind Paris, Lindsay, and Britney reveals in the November 2007 issue—if your child is your meal ticket and career booster, it’s hard to be the parent she needs.
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Joan Crawford portrayed herself as a doting mother in her two books—but in her own infamous memoir, Mommie Dearest, Christina Crawford painted an entirely different picture: “I just wanted to scream at them that it was all a fake.”
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Her father, Eddie Fisher, left her mother, Debbie Reynolds, for Elizabeth Taylor—and that was only the beginning.
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Romantic and sensitive, young Charles had little in common with his straightforward, undemonstrative mother, but as decades passed, the duo developed a close, warm bond.
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Last year Hargitay opened up to VF about My Mom Jayne, a documentary that paints an unvarnished portrait of her Hollywood bombshell mother—and reveals the true identity of her biological father.
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“She looked at me and she said, ‘Who are you?’” Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, the daughter of Hayworth and Prince Aly Khan, tells VF.
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