Jenny Mollen recently made headlines for a problematic post she made on Facebook and Instagram involving her older son. Jenny and her estranged husband, Jason Biggs, have two children, Sid, 12, and Lazlo, eight. The post in question included two pictures of her cuddling Sid on a bed and was captioned, “Your eldest son will be the most toxic guy you ever date.”
People immediately began calling out Jenny’s inappropriate post. She deleted it from Facebook and removed the caption from Instagram, where it’s still up with a community note. The incident also brought attention to a Substack post Jenny made in early May in which she admitted she wanted her sons to marry women with dead mothers, commented that she was “hotter” than a 12-year-old girl that Sid was texting with, and called her sons “the most emotionally high-maintenance men I’ve ever dated.” Well, Jenny decided to double down. She wrote another Substack post explaining the context behind the post as well as her issues with her own mother. Here are excerpts from Jenny’s Substack post:
Last week, the internet called me a child molester for posting a photo of myself holding my son.
The picture was taken on a Monday night after he returned from a weekend away.
There’s something devastating about realizing your children can survive without you, that they can be content somewhere else. Happy, even. And that the security you once felt in being their entire world was never meant to last.
My son is twelve years old, the same age I was when my mother told me she didn’t know how to be a mom anymore. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision. But children don’t experience decisions. They experience absence.
I’d see her every month or two, flying from Phoenix back to San Diego as an unaccompanied minor with a luggage tag hanging from my neck and a bag of honey-roasted peanuts in my pocket. There were no emails back then. No FaceTimes. No texts. We spoke occasionally, but not about anything that mattered. Or maybe everything mattered at that age, and I was just still too naive to see it. I was learning how to talk to boys, how to shave my legs, how to become a woman in a world that despises women, without my mother there to guide me.
I never understood how she could tolerate it. How she could sleep through the night knowing I was in another state, in another house, with another woman who wasn’t her. I don’t think I’ve ever fully healed that wound. And I don’t know that I ever will.
I wish I could have saved my mother. I wish I could have given her the love she craved so that she could have given it to me.
Children can feel like our one opportunity at redemption in this lifetime. They offer us the chance to become the very thing we need to save ourselves, instead of spending our lives waiting to be saved. But redemption is not the same as relief.
The joke that offended people was: ‘Your eldest son will be the most toxic boyfriend you ever have.’ And he is.
Parenthood has demanded a level of commitment and self-sacrifice from me that, in any other context, would be considered pathological. I’d never accept this kind of relationship under any other circumstances. And yet here I am, jumping through fire, constantly striving for affection and approval, waiting by the phone for a guy who can’t even drive.
I’ve been making some version of this joke for over a decade. My sense of humor hasn’t changed, nor has the tone and style of my Instagram. This is who I have always been. Maybe it’s not for everyone. But it is me. When I look at that picture, I see a twelve-year-old boy who still wants his mother, and a woman trying to hold on to closeness and connection at a time in her life when everything else is changing.
Oh man, where to even begin here? The context doesn’t change the fact that it was a terrible post. I can’t believe no one in Jenny’s life has ever sat her down and explained why comparing her sons to bad boyfriends is wrong. Not only is it gross, it could also be harmful and confusing to them. She seems incapable of understanding this. I feel terrible for Sid and Lazlo. I’m sure their classmates have heard about their mom’s posts. I still can’t believe Jenny openly measured her appearance against a middle schooler. I bet that girl’s parents want to have a word with her.
I think Jenny needs to take a long Internet break and find a good therapist. She clearly has a lot of unprocessed trauma from what happened with her mother. Wanting to always be number one in your kids’ lives is not healthy. A parent’s job is to give their children the tool set to become happy, well-adjusted adults. Jenny is projecting her own issues on her sons, and she could end up driving them away in the process.
Photos via Instagram and credit: Getty
i mean this statement: I wish I could have saved my mother. I wish I could have given her the love she craved so that she could have given it to me. i don’t know. i’m not a therapist but i have been to therapy. and this just reads as so much unprocessed trauma. not even wishing she could ‘save’ her mother for her mother’s sake, but for her own. i don’t know, this whole post is a mess.
She desperately needs a good therapist. And I don’t say that to be glib. It sounds like she has lots of issues from her childhood and those issues are impacting how she interacts with her children.
Look, parenting is hard. It’s complicated. and at times yes, its kind of heartbreaking. I look back at pictures of my boys when they were 18 months, 2 years old, 5 years old and I miss them. But I also love who they are now. My SIL’s daughter is 18 and getting ready to start college in the fall, and her brother (my SIL’s brother) is having a baby. SIL said she was surprisingly emotional over the new baby and jealous, but not in a “I want a baby” kind of way – she said she didn’t want a baby, she wanted her babies back. she wanted to go back 18 years and experience her babies again. And that makes sense to me as an emotional reaction or pull. (she’s not stunting her children and making her daughter dress up like a baby or anything people, don’t worry, lol, it was just one of those momentary thoughts she had.)
Parenting is emotional and there is that push and pull – I miss my boys as babies but I am also very proud of them, and I enjoy them now in a very different way than I did 10 years ago, since we have more mature conversations and can watch more of the same movies and my 14 year old sends me reels about chocolate labs etc.
I think every parent gets that (well most parents.)
What she is talking about in these posts and substacks is…..not that. Its emotional codependence to put it mildly.
My friends and I all said that – that we didn’t want another baby but wanted to relive those early years. Not to have a redo, but to experience that precious time again.
I agree with everything you have said about parenting. And I will admit that sometimes when I look back with fondness and experience that pull to go back to my kids’ childhoods, it is in part because things seemed more simple then and in part because I wish I could change things that I think I handled poorly. And I say that as someone who thinks that she mostly did a good job parenting and enjoy having solid relationships with my adult kids. But it’s a brutal business sometimes. We make mistakes, even when trying our best. And sometimes we don’t have the strength to try our best, and I do wish we could have more honest conversations about that.
I also agree that this situation with Jenny seems like more than mistakes, more than a bad day. I hope she gets the help she needs to be there in a more positive way for her kids.
This feels like emotional incest and it will impact their ability to have healthy relationships in the future.
She clearly has a lot of residual trauma from her own childhood but that doesn’t excuse crossing a line between parenting and romantic partner with your own children.
I actually dont think her explanation was authentic. She is trying to become “unimpeachable “ by sharing her trauma. I applaud the bravery but it didn’t go along with this issue.
I understood the toxic boyfriend line better.
You cant walk away from your kid. No matter how bad it gets.
I still agree with the poster up top that this sets her kids up for shame/bullying.
School kid : Your mom says you are toxic. Your mom doesnt like you either.
But she was not talking about walking away from her child, and she was not talking about a child who is severely mentally ill, or dangerous, or one who requires constant physical care. There are parents who are dedicated to children who will never be able to say I love you, never be able to survive on their own, who scare them.
She very clearly wants “affection and approval”- her words – from a child. Children do not owe us affection and approval. She is asking the child to essentially parent her. Her past trauma does not entitle her to that.
Her explanation isn’t better. She should have sought therapy before having children because this is incredibly damaging parenting.
I’m a boy mom but not a #boymom so no, her statement does not validate her or excuse her. It doesn’t even explain. It’s trauma dumping to avoid accountability.
My son is my only, so by default he is my oldest son. And I have been in very toxic relationships (including the one with his father) and they are NOT the same. And my son is dual diagnosed with mental illness and developmental disorder so there have been times I’ve been afraid of him, called the police on him, etc. Still NOTHING like my toxic boyfriends/ex husband.
This is emotional incest at best. I feel sorry for the son, he’s going to have issues with romantic relationships and possibly women in general if this keeps up.
Yikes. She seems like … a lot.
I hope she gets off the internet and finds a therapist.
I so agree with you that she is trama dumping to avoid accountability.
Grant, I like your response the best. People will always judge you, no matter what it is you say on the internet. I don’t like the term “emotional incest” because we all know what incest is and I see no reason to conflate it with the word “emotional.” She is not an incestuous mom. but yeah, get off the internet and go to a therapist. Your words on the internet are forever, so just stop, now, for your own sake and your kids. And I’m sorry you’re going through a divorce too. You need to stop posting right now. And best of luck.