Absolutely, I still made it clear in my post that she is a shit parent.
But I don't know anything about her story about how she got pregnant, or what happened to the dad, or if she had any parents of her own. She seems to be raising him entirely alone with zero support system. And is probably massively overworked and depressed and has no one to talk to or help out.
Also, when she's talking down to him, she includes herself every single time. She always says things like "people like us". She obviously hates herself, and sees herself as a failure of a parent, and is just desperately trying to make sure that her son focused on living a stable life so that if he has children they aren't raised in a manner like she was forced to raise him in. Again, she's a terrible parent, and doing everything wrong, but we don't know where her heart is, or her history.
TBH this whole chapter feels like some kind of AITAH style trauma dump by the author, and as is often the case in those types of things, you only get a single limited perspective and then people tend to overreach and overreact to an extreme because they struggle with seeing any perspective except their own or that of the person talking to them directly in that moment.
I was just trying to bring some balance to the conversation and hopefully get some people to understand that sometimes the person you're shitting on and saying is terrible, has things going on in their life that if you had gone through as well you wouldn't have been any better of a person coming out the end than they were. That doesn't make them less terrible, and it doesn't mean the MC has any less right to protect himself from the situation. But it hopefully should tamper some of the bigger overreactions and give people at least a little perspective and sympathy.
Why fixate on the unknown rather than focus on what is known? It's almost as if you are trying to create some sort of out or justification for the individual's actions. And maybe by extension your own if you were, or have, acted in a similar manner. The fact of the matter is, you will, nor anyone else for that matter, ever know everything behind why someone does what they do. For fucks sakes, even the person in question doing the acts may not know. That doesn't excuse their actions and at best it may temper the responses people are having to the action but that's kinda it.
Beyond this, you are also ignoring one key element "some people just suck". Regardless of their upbringing, their history, their lives, some people can just be assholes. They don't need some sort of freudian excuse, some sort of tragic backstory, or anything of the sort. In the same manner people can be good for goodness sake, people can also be bad.
Another point, you are fixating to much on intent. Maybe your right, maybe in her own way, she is looking out for her son. And as you acknowledge doing it in a pretty shit way. But that becomes a "so what"? Sure her intent may not be to be an asshole but the end result is she is being an asshole.
And finally, no one said anything about being better than her. You can pass judgement, being better, being worse, or being the same. That doesn't matter. That last part almost reads as "you wouldn't be any better so don't pass judgement". Again, so what? Should I not, if I were ever to act in such a manner, be called out for it? What, should I be bared from judgement simply because I didn't judge someone else? Should the person I am affecting with my actions simply forgive me for they themselves are flawed too? Of course not. We all suck to some extent. We acknowledge our flaws, we work to be better, and hope to be the best we can be. We don't do that by safeguarding ourselves from being accountable for our actions.
