Kirsty Ketley
Published June 2, 2026 4:25pm
Updated June 2, 2026 4:25pm
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I don’t know many people who would go down the Oedipus route quite like she did (Picture: Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images)
Jenny Mollen knows exactly what she’s doing.
That was my first thought when she wrote on Instagram, ‘Your eldest will be the most toxic bf you will ever have’, as a caption – since deleted – alongside a photo of her cuddling her son, 12, on a bed.
Mollen, an actress, author and wife of American Pie actor Jason Biggs, from whom she is separating, is clearly looking to build her profile by saying things most parents are half-thinking but would never publish, or indeed, say out loud.
And I don’t know many people who would go down the Oedipus route quite like she did.
Mollen is an actress, author and the wife of American Pie actor Jason Biggs, from whom she is separating (Picture: Stefano Guidi/Getty Images)
That controversial caption led people to rediscover a recent essay on Substack, in which Mollen wrote about how she wanted her sons to marry women with dead mothers, and shared her thoughts on going from being her children’s hero to being less present as they grow up.
‘It’s my only shot at staying relevant, of seeming useful, and of winning by comparison. Having boys is a mind fuck. It builds you up, only to tear you apart,’ she reflected.
In the article, which had the rather intense title ‘Please. Stay. I want you. I need you. Oh, God;’ Mollen also referred to her 12-year-old son texting with a girl of the same age, who she felt was bossing him around.
She described talking to her husband about wanting to intervene before her son got hurt, with the confounding caveat: ‘she wasn’t even hotter than me’. She ends the piece with her hopes that at least one of her sons is gay.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DYxyGV9D86i/?hl=en&img_index=1
It’s sparked quite the backlash – and while I don’t want to endorse some of the language in particular, I actually do understand where she’s coming from. Strip away the hysteria and there is a familiar fear that all parents have: that one day your children won’t need you anymore, or at least not in the same way, but yet you have to let it happen.
Most of us have fleeting, irrational, slightly embarrassing thoughts flash through our minds and disappear again. The only difference is that Mollen treats those thoughts as material.
Because Mollen’s Substack and social media are not really diaries in the traditional sense. They are musings of motherhood at its most amplified: funny, chaotic, confessional and occasionally designed to make people slightly uncomfortable.
And the actress doesn’t just describe motherhood; she heightens it. She leans into the mess, the humour, the guilt, the obsession that in various forms will be recognisable to many of us.
Naturally, her recent overshares have set off another familiar cycle of outrage, eye-rolling and debate. For me, the language she used veers towards the problematic and the way she was embracing her son was inappropriate.
It’s sparked quite the backlash – and while I don’t want to endorse some of the language in particular, I actually do understand where she’s coming from (Picture: Phil Adams)
But take all of that away and what you’re left with is actually something far more ordinary.
A mother talking about her son.
I have two children, a 13-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old son. I love them both with a ferocity that still surprises me. I’d do anything for either of them without hesitation.
So if I’m being completely honest, Mollen isn’t entirely wrong about the ‘toxic’ part. Not because children are miniature boyfriends or girlfriends, obviously, but because they routinely behave in ways that would have you ending an adult relationship within weeks.
They demand your attention when you’re trying to do something else. They ignore your perfectly reasonable requests. They leave chaos in their wake, and they can reduce you to tears and wander off unconcerned, only to return two minutes later as if nothing had happened and ask what’s for tea.
If a partner behaved like that, your friends would be staging an intervention.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DYKOfXcDYHm/?hl=en
That is childhood, though, and these are your children; you forgive them instantly and remain totally devoted to them. It isn’t rational, but you can’t compare them to adulthood and adult relationships.
Her choice of words demonstrates poor judgment. Her metaphors make you wince.
But underneath it all, there is something recognisable: a parent trying to articulate the strange intensity of loving a child who can bring you joy, frustration, pride and despair, all before breakfast.
It is an all-consuming love.
Children have a slightly destabilising effect on you as a parent. Nobody really prepares you for the extent to which they take over your internal world. You think about them constantly. You worry about them in ways that are often disproportionate to reality.
You become emotionally invested in things you would once have barely noticed – like poo. Its colour, its frequency, whether it signals impending doom. And whether it is, in fact, your partner’s turn to change the next nappy.
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You spend 20 minutes negotiating over the right socks. You become irrationally obsessed with nutrients in food. You feel your stomach drop when they’re quiet for too long.
I once laminated my son’s autumn leaves because he was so upset at the idea of them crisping up and dying. At the time, it felt like a completely reasonable thing to do, and the happiness it gave him was irreplaceable. Looking back, it is completely absurd, and also completely understandable.
Parenting makes you lose your mind in so many small, entirely familiar ways. It’s immersive, consuming and often irrational, and it stretches your emotional logic until it occasionally snaps into shapes you wouldn’t recognise in any other context.
And that, I suspect, is closer to what Mollen is reaching for than anything literal.
Mollen’s choice of words demonstrates poor judgment. Her metaphors make you wince (Picture: Lexie Moreland/WWD via Getty Images)
The reason her recent comments sent out such dramatic shockwaves is not because they necessarily revealed anything shocking.
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It is because the language feels off. It suggests romantic dynamics are put into a relationship where they don’t belong. She said something clumsy enough to expose a feeling most parents recognise instantly, even if they would have chosen very different words.
Children make you do and think ridiculous things. They turn you into a person who might, quite sincerely, laminate leaves because the idea of them dying feels disproportionately upsetting.
And if that sounds silly, it is. But it is also true.
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