Mum in Strong Female Character: Guilt, Missed Signs, and the Road to Reconciliation

Overview of Mum in Strong Female Character

Fern Brady's mother is a quiet but constant presence in Strong Female Character, rarely taking centre stage until the memoir's final chapter, where she becomes the emotional focus of the book's climax. The memoir presents her as a parent who loved Fern deeply but lacked the vocabulary or diagnostic framework to understand her daughter's autistic traits, reading them instead as difficult behaviour, defiance, or unhappiness. Her arc moves from guilt-ridden confusion to a tearful apology and a fragile, hard-won closeness. Fern's own framing of the relationship is ambivalent: she describes avoiding her mother's house for years, air-kissing in cafes instead of hugging, and feeling frightened by physical closeness. Yet the book also shows Mum as the person who, at Fern's diagnosis interview, produced a detailed list of autistic traits going back to infancy — evidence that she had been observing and worrying about Fern all along.

Plot Role

Mum functions as both obstacle and mirror in the memoir. In the early chapters, she is the authority figure who punishes, questions, and misreads Fern's behaviour. She discovers Fern's diary and contraceptive cards and cries for days. She kicks Fern out repeatedly. She participates in the fake police arrest over marijuana. But she is also the person who supports Fern's language studies when the school tries to force maths, who attends a comedy final and cries throughout, and who, in the final chapter, apologises for missing the signs of Fern's autism.

The restaurant scene in Glasgow in summer 2020 is the book's emotional turning point. Mum explains that a neighbour who worked with autistic women recognised Fern's traits, and she apologises for not having Fern diagnosed at school. Fern attempts to thank her but cannot get the words out; both women cry, and Fern hides behind her COVID mask. This scene is the culmination of the memoir's family misunderstanding and reconciliation theme.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Mum's primary motivation, as the book presents it, is a desire to help Fern that repeatedly misfires. When Fern was young, Mum let her choose her own clothes because forcing her to wear certain fabrics triggered meltdowns — she said simply, 'I had no choice.' This is one of the clearest early examples of Mum intuitively accommodating Fern's sensory needs without understanding them as autism.

Her attempts to help took the form of extracurricular activities: bookshops, piano lessons, youth theatre, and art workshops. In the restaurant scene, she explains this directly: 'You were always so unhappy, Fern! And I just wanted to try and help somehow.' The piano lessons, in particular, proved valuable — Fern still plays piano as an adult because it is one of the only things that latches onto both sides of her brain and distracts her from overwhelm and meltdowns.

But Mum's methods could also be harsh. The memoir describes her hair-washing routine involving hitting Fern with a hairdryer, and a moment where she slapped Fern's arms before Fern stormed out and broke her wrist skateboarding. These incidents are presented as the actions of a frustrated parent who had no framework for understanding sensory sensitivities or autistic distress.

Mum also struggled to communicate directly. When Fern got contraceptives at fifteen, Mum cried for days and said 'I warned you about getting in trouble' — using 'trouble' as a code word for sex that Fern, who took language literally, failed to decode. This pattern of indirect communication recurs throughout the memoir and is a source of deep frustration for Fern, who wished people would just say what they meant.

Chronological Arc

Mum's character arc can be traced in phases across the memoir:

Early childhood: Mum accommodates Fern's clothing sensitivities but also punishes her physically. She has 'weird views on periods' and struggles to have direct conversations about bodies, as shown in the awkward bathroom conversation about her friend Jane's period.

Adolescence: The conflict escalates. Mum discovers Fern's diary and contraceptive cards and cries for days. She discovers Fern's self-harm and is visibly upset. She kicks Fern out repeatedly, leading Fern to sofa surf and depend on strangers. The fake police arrest over marijuana is a low point — Mum shrieks that she may as well drive off a bridge and kill herself.

Young adulthood: Mum learns about Fern's stripping years later from a newspaper review. She attends a comedy final and cries throughout. She and Fern's brother visit during Fern's breakdown after the Liquorice Club incident, when Fern announces she wants to become a stand-up comedian.

Diagnosis and reconciliation: When Fern is diagnosed, the doctor interviews Mum, who produces a list of autistic traits going back to Fern's infancy. In summer 2020, they meet at a Mexican restaurant in Glasgow, where Mum apologises and Fern attempts to thank her.

Relationships

The mother-daughter relationship is the emotional core of the memoir's final chapter. Fern describes avoiding going to her mother's house for years, air-kissing in cafes instead. She felt frightened by physical closeness with her mother, contrasting it with watching a boyfriend's mother stroke her adult sister's hair — a scene that made Fern feel 'physically uncomfortable' because she couldn't imagine such ease.

The relationship is marked by mutual misunderstanding. Fern believed she was adopted well into adulthood because she couldn't relate to her parents. Mum, for her part, read Fern's withdrawn behaviour as drug use rather than autistic shutdown. The fake arrest scene is the clearest example of this: Fern was sleeping a lot, stimming in her rocking chair, and not speaking — all autistic responses to change and masking — and her parents concluded she was stoned. This misreading connects directly to the memoir's treatment of masking and autistic burnout.

The relationship with Fern's father is also relevant. He left Mum at one point, and Fern notes that her parents' overprotectiveness was undermined by a marked naivety that meant they often looked for answers to problems in all the wrong places.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Several of Mum's decisions have lasting consequences in the memoir:

Letting Fern choose her own clothes: This accommodated Fern's sensory needs but also marked her as different, contributing to her social isolation at school discos.

Supporting Fern's language studies: When Fern wanted to drop maths and study only languages, Mum sat beside her as a 'steadfast negotiator' and suggested music as a fifth subject. This support helped Fern pursue the academic path that led to university.

Kicking Fern out: This decision, repeated several times, left Fern sofa surfing and dependent on strangers. Fern notes the irony that her parents' overprotectiveness was undermined by their naivety — they kicked her out with zero coping skills.

The fake arrest: This was a catastrophic misreading of Fern's behaviour. Fern vowed to cut her parents out of her life as soon as she left home.

The apology in Glasgow: This is the turning point. Mum's apology — 'I'm sorry! I always got you to do extracurricular stuff' — opens the door to reconciliation. Fern reflects that her parents supported her interests, sending her to youth theatre, piano lessons, bookshops, and art workshops, even when money was tight.

Theme Connections

Mum connects to several of the book's central themes.

The late autism diagnosis and male-centric diagnostic criteria theme is central to Mum's story. Her inability to recognise Fern's autism reflects the broader failure of diagnostic frameworks that miss autistic girls. The neighbour, Mary, who worked with autistic women, recognised Fern's traits before any professional did.

The family misunderstanding and reconciliation theme reaches its peak in the restaurant scene. Fern's reflection that it is painful to start loving someone when holding on to the idea of hating them keeps you safe captures the emotional complexity of the relationship.

The masking and autistic burnout theme is also relevant. Mum's misreading of Fern's withdrawn behaviour as drug use is a direct consequence of Fern's masking. The memoir makes clear that Fern's parents read her autistic shutdown as bad behaviour.

Mum also connects to the misdiagnosis and medical gaslighting theme, since her inability to get Fern properly assessed reflects the broader failures of the medical system that misdiagnosed Fern with OCD and depression.

Five Book-Specific Questions

1. What did Mum say when Fern asked why she wasn't diagnosed at school?

Mum apologised and explained that she had tried to help through extracurricular activities — bookshops, piano lessons, and similar pursuits — because Fern was always so unhappy. She said she was sorry and that she had just wanted to help somehow.

2. What did Mum tell the doctor during Fern's diagnosis interview?

She produced a list of Fern's autistic traits going back to infancy, including punching the bars of her cot repeatedly when she woke up and crying when people touched her. Fern hadn't known about most of these details.

3. How did Mum react when she discovered Fern's diary and contraceptive cards?

She cried for days. She told Fern, 'I warned you about getting in trouble,' using 'trouble' as a code word for sex that Fern didn't understand at the time.

4. What did Mum say to the patronising woman at Tesco?

When a posh woman expressed surprise that Mum's daughter was studying Arabic at Edinburgh University, Mum replied, 'You must be very patronizing.'

5. How did Fern react after telling Conor she had a nice time with her mum?

She started to sob unexpectedly, saying that now when her mother dies she'll be sad — whereas before, she didn't think she would have minded too much.

For more on the memoir's broader themes and questions, see the ending explained page and the questions and answers section.