Delusions of Parental Love

Nishikawa: But that girl... She sure is sticking up for her mom even though she killed her [...] Is this called love?
Shimuro: No. That's just brainwashing.

— Shiyakusho

The sad fact is, not all parents love their children. Maybe the child is born "defective" in some way (e.g. being ugly, sickly, having the wrong gender, etc.). Maybe the child's achievements don't measure up to the parents' standards. Or maybe the parents never wanted to have a child to begin with. Either way, the parents don't want to have anything to do with their child, and go out of their way to harm them, if they don't just abandon them outright. Don't tell that to the child, though, who would insist that their parents are the kindest, most loving people around, despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

Since children are almost completely dependent on their parents' care to survive, they are practically hardwired to love their parents, especially their mothers. As such, they might not be able to comprehend that the only caregiver they know would actually despise, abandon, or intentionally abuse them. Often, they would make excuses for why their supposedly loving parents might do things that hurt them: they'd believe that their neglectful parents are simply too busy and/or tired after working hard to take care of them, physical abuse are attributed to justified discipline and Tough Love, and absent parents must have a good reason for being away for so long.

Sometimes, the abuse/neglect is bad enough that other people have to intervene, but the child might continue to cling to the delusion that their parents do love them, even after being removed from their care. Although, if the child gets to experience genuine love from other people, or if the parent goes too far with the abuse, they might finally come to terms that their parents are not the saintly paragons they used to see them as.

Subtrope to Horrible Judge of Character and frequently overlaps with Abusive Parents, Parental Neglect, and/or Parental Abandonment. Compare Honor Thy Abuser and Loving a Shadow. Compare/contrast Abuse Mistake, where an innocuous interaction is mistaken as an abusive one, or vice versa.

See also Denying the Dead Parent's Sins.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Inverted in The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. Hahari is firmly convinced that her daughter Hakari sees her as a caring mother and has the same affection for her as she does for her. In reality, Hakari sees her mother as a perverted nuisance (an opinion shared by several other girls) ever since Hahari fell in love with Rentarou.
• Jinrui-Shoku: Blight of Man: Hayato lives with an alcoholic mother whose moods constantly switches between kind and affectionate to angry and violent at the drop of a hat. However, she would always apologize and tell Hayato that she loves him after violently lashing out at him, and this convinces him that she really does care about him. Later, when a police officer directly asks him if his mother had abused him, Hayato angrily denies it and insists that people just misunderstand the relationship between him and his mother. Complicating the matter is the fact that Hayato's mother has been possessed by a mummy, and as her body dies, her departing spirit tearfully asks Hayato's friend Seita to take care of her son while hugging the latter. The police has discovered that those possessed with the mummy tends to have a co-dependent relationship with someone they live with, but it is unclear whether this dysfunctional relationship is caused by the mummy's possession, or if the mummy are drawn to such dynamics when looking for a new victim to possess.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Fate Testarossa seems completely incapable of comprehending that her mother Precia does not see her as anything but a tool to achieve her goals, despite Precia's repeated verbal, emotional, and eventually physical abuse, which Fate dutifully blames on her own failures. This is because a) Fate is 9 years old, b) she has no other parental figure in her life, and c) she is actually a clone of Alicia Testarossa, Precia's late biological daughter, whom she had actually loved and whose memories she had implanted in Fate's head in an attempt to create a Replacement Goldfish. At the climax of the original series, shortly after being confronted with the spoilered information, Fate tries to appeal to her mother, but to no avail. Even in adulthood, her view of Precia comes off as rather rose-tinted compared to reality implying she never did get completely over this, as she considers Precia to be her mother as much as her adoptive mother ,Lindy Harlaown.
• Helmeppo from One Piece was introduced as an arrogant jackass who hid behind the wealth and power of his father, Captain "Axe-Hand" Morgan of the Marines, and believes that Morgan cares about him on account that his father never hit him. However, when Helmeppo goes to his father for aid after being attacked by Luffy, Morgan gives him a "Reason You Suck" Speech that sets him straight.
  Morgan: Do you know why I've never hit you?
  Helmeppo: It's because I'm your beloved s—
  Morgan: I'll tell you why. (hits Helmeppo) IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE AN IDIOT SON WHO'S NOT EVEN WORTH HITTING! Why should I fight your battles? You're big enough to wipe your own bottom. I don't mind if you use my status, but I only lay my hands on people who defy me! Don't fool yourself... you are not the great one! I am great! I am the great one.
• Oshi no Ko: Sarina Tendouji is a 12-year-old girl with cancer whose family had pretty much abandoned her, never bothering to visit her at the hospital even during her final moments. Despite this, Sarina still believes that her mother loves her, and was simply too busy to come. This deep denial causes her severe problems when she is reincarnated as Ruby Hoshino — especially she was asked to play the role of Ai, who was similarly unloved by her mother, for a film. It is eventually revealed that her mother did care about her and was devastated by her daughter's terminal disease...but handled it very selfishly by abandoning her so that she didn't have to watch her daughter slowly die.
• Princess Tutu: Rue/Princess Kraehe has been raised to believe her abusive father, the Raven, and the Prince are the only ones who can ever truly love her, as she is a raven in an "ugly" human girl's body. The Raven is actually only using her so he can eat the Prince's heart and isn't even her birth father — Rue discovers she is a fully-human girl stolen in infancy and given the Raven's blood so she would have some of his powers.
• Shiyakusho: "Tomorrow's Me" features a kindergarten girl named Rin who shows signs of being abused: her hair and clothes are always dirty, she has strange bruises on her neck, and one of the teachers had seen the mother visit the school while clearly hungover. However, when the teachers try to ask Rin about this, she claims that her mom is kind to her. Even when her mother beats her, throws things at her, and eventually locks her outside of the house during winter and leaves her to freeze to death, Rin continues to believe that her mother is a nice woman who gave her pats on the head, held her hand, cooked her favourite meals, and bought her lovely picture books.
• YuYu Hakusho has an especially dark example toward the end of the manga(which was toned down in the anime). While Mukuro's "father"/owner Chikou used her as a personal sex slave until she disfigured herself with acid and he discarded her, she can't bring herself to kill him because of a memory of him being kind to her. The problem is that this memory is fake, with Chikou implanting it so that Mukuro doesn't come after him. Hiei confronts Mukuro about this and nearly gets himself killed in the process, then abducts Chikou and has him attached to a demon plant that heals him so that Mukuro can torture him all she wants.

Fan Works

• Dad Villain AU: In both the original reality and the new one created by Gabriel's selfish Wish, Adrien attributed his father's Parental Neglect and Control Freak tendencies to him simply having a harder time expressing his love compared to his mother. The truth is far worse: not only is Gabriel an unrepentant supervillain, Emelie is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who views her son as nothing more than an adorable accessory she crafted for herself, whom she's been raising to be completely dependent upon her as a way of bolstering her own ego. She's every inch as abusive and controlling as his father, and it hits Adrien HARD when he learns just how bad both of them are.
• Downplayed in Sing to Me: While Aiko does love her son L, she's also a traumatized drug addict who's been living in poverty after being kicked out by her parents for being raped, and takes out her frustrations on L since she can't vent against her assailent or family.
• What Goes Around Comes Around (Miraculous Ladybug): One of Adrien's biggest problems is that his concept of what "true love" entails is heavily influenced by his Abusive Parents. As a result, he sincerely believes that Ladybug is not only obligated to love him because HE wants her to, but that she has to bend over backwards to do whatever he asks, regardless of her own opinions/desires, in a purely All Take and No Give relationship... because that's the relationship he has with his parents.
  • He's also completely convinced that his parents love him. Especially Emilie, who brazenly manipulates her son, making it all the more devastating when she hits him with a Breaking Speech about how much she despises his naivete, berating him for thinking everything will magically work out the way he hopes and spelling out how she prefers his cousin Felix and intends to use the Wish to fuse them together into her "perfect son".

Films — Animation

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney): Quasimodo is unaware of how sadistic and racist his adoptive father Judge Claude Frollo is. When Esmeralda asks him how he could've been so nice under Frollo's care, Quasimodo defends Frollo, saying that he must not be that bad if he took care of him when nobody else would. Quasi does come to realize what Frollo's really like, however, when Frollo attempts genocide to get Esmeralda all to himself.
• Tangled: Mother Gothel is a textbook emotional abuser who keeps Rapunzel locked up in a tower for 18 years, all the while telling her that this is for the best because she's too immature and naïve to handle the outside world. Even though Rapunzel disagrees with Gothel's assessment of her supposed inability to take care of herself, she believes that her mother is genuinely concerned about her safety. And when Flynn convinces Rapunzel to sneak out of the tower, Rapunzel's joy at being able to finally see the outside world is constantly interspersed with her crying out of guilt for defying her mother and "breaking her heart".

Films — Live-Action

• SHAZAM! (2019): Billy Batson got separated from his mother as a child, and spends several years afterwards desperately searching for her, while constantly running away from his foster homes. Billy believes that his real mother is likewise looking for him and that she would be able to love and care for him better than any foster family could if they managed to reunite. He eventually finds her but discovers that his mother had deliberately abandoned him all those years ago and that she couldn't care less about him now. This finally convinces Billy to accept that the Vasquezes are his real family.

Literature

• In The Diamond Girls, Mary tells Dixie that her mother is strict but is otherwise "the loveliest, kindest mummy in the whole world". However, Dixie begins to realise that Mary's mother is extremely abusive to Mary behind closed doors. When she tells Mary her mother's behavior is cruel, Mary defends her by insisting she's "the loveliest, kindest mummy in the whole world"; because she uses the exact same phrasing, Dixie realises Mary has been coached by her mother into saying it. Mary is frightened of her mother but is too young and inexperienced to realise how twisted her treatment of her is; her father - who works a lot - is apparently oblivious to his wife's actions. Meeting Dixie (whose own mother is far from perfect but still loving towards her children) helps Mary to begin defying her mother in small ways and confiding in someone about the abuse.
• Tashir in the Last Herald-Mage Trilogy, after becoming the Sole Survivor of a massacre of his family, is taken to sanctuary on the Ashkevron estate, where he does his best to convince new friends that he had an idyllic and loving family life. Vanyel, aware that this was in no way the case, sees these claims as malicious Blatant Lies and angrily confronts Tashir, using the Truth Spell to make him reveal otherwise.
• Tia's parents in The Ship Who... Searched are quite loving to her when they're present, but they've decided to have their child without changing their lifestyle - spending months at a time doing archaeology on airless planets with no one else around. They leave her alone in the habitat while they work - and whenever they find something exciting they don't interact with her at all for weeks on end, and punish her if she dares contact them. Characters who don't like Tia's situation are all strawmen from the Department of Child Disservices. It's fine, she's a Child Prodigy, happy alone and uninterested in other children. Tia even starts to refuse medical service from her Auto Doc because it wants her to talk to a counselor who might take her from her parents. This neglect leads to Tia being paralyzed from the chin down at the age of seven, at which point her parents make a doctor her guardian so they can return to work. Somehow, she regards this as something they were 'forced' to do and even as an adult she regards them as Good Parents.
• Ordeal by Innocence: Micky Argyle resents his adoptive mother because she took him away from his real mother, whom he remembers as a nice and caring, if somewhat ill-tempered, woman — even though, according to his adoptive parents, she was an abusive drunk. Micky later admits that he deliberately paints a rosy image of his real mother because he genuinely loved her and did not want to acknowledge that she doesn't love him back.

Live-Action TV

• In Doom Patrol (2019), poor Dorothy Spinner spent the first century of her life patiently waiting beneath Danny the Street for her father's infrequent visits, convinced that he was off on grand adventures that were simply too dangerous for her to join. In reality, Niles simply abandoned her for months at a time so that he could continue his various experiments without her getting in the way (in theory, these experiments were supposed to lead to some way of "curing" Dorothy of her dangerous psionic powers, but the only thing any of them accomplished was granting various forms of immortality with horrific downsides like radioactivity or mental instability.)
• Heroes: Elle Bishop believes her father loves her despite the fact that he just uses her as a weapon, and blames her when things don't go their way. This trope was made more explicit in the Season 2 deleted scenes where Noah figures out that Bob is using Elle as bait for Sylar. Elle refuses to believe it and screams at Noah, "My father loves me!"
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Mac has this towards both his parents. His father Luther is a gruff, cold dangerous career criminal, who ignored Mac throughout his entire childhood save to insult and belittle him. Whilst Luther has attempted to reconnect with his son several times in the present, all their attempts are doomed to failure (granted mostly due to Mac's own stupidity or the gang's antics). His mother meanwhile is even worse, with her quite openly admitting to not loving, caring for, or even liking Mac to his face, and has never lifted a finger for her son in her life. However, despite this Mac is deep in denial and deludes himself that his parents love him, constantly craving his father's approval and having trained himself to interpret his mother's dismissive grunts as signs of affection he desperately craves.
• Law & Order: The sixth season episode "Slave" has a particularly heartbreaking example. Lonnie, the son of Cassie, a crack addict, thinks his mother loves him even though she abuses him. It isn't until Lonnie sees Cassie dismiss him while she's being interrogated by the police that he agrees to testify against the drug dealer both he and his mother are working for, and even when he's sentenced in family court, he still looks towards the door in hopes his mother will come in.
• Moon Knight (2022): Steven Grant loves his mother Wendy very much, and tries calling her every day. What he doesn't know is that not only was she severely abusive towards him in his childhood (which caused him to develop his dissociative identity disorder in the first place), she's actually been dead for several months. Most of the kind actions he associates with her (e.g. writing letters to him) were actually done by Marc Spector, one of the other alters in his system.
• In Mr. Robot, one of the few things that allowed Elliot Alderson to cope with his traumatic upbringing and non-existent social life was his memories of his late father protecting him from his abusive mother, which allowed him to believe that it's only because of his father's untimely death that he ended up the way he did. In the final season, Vera takes this away from him, forcing him and his former therapist Krista into an impromptu "session" that pushes Elliot towards the terrible realization that his father sexually abused him and was just as responsible for his mental health issues as his mother. The revelation nearly breaks him completely.
• The Sopranos: Tony goes back and forth between insisting to his therapist that his parents were noble, upstanding people who did the best they could raising him and defending them against the (completely true and accurate) accusations that they were terrible people in reality, or begrudgingly admitting that they're a lot of the reason he's a psychological mess as an adult. At one point, his therapist points out how ridiculous it is that Tony is forgiving his mother for trying to murder him, just for putting her in a nursing home, instead blaming himself for making her do it by being a bad son. A lot of this has to do with his Italian Mafia career indoctrinating the importance and value of family above all, making it very hard for him to admit his family sucked, despite the fact he struggles to think of even one pleasant childhood memory when asked (the best he can come up with is one time his father slipped and hurt himself).
• Succession: The Roy kids, especially Kendall, are desperate to believe their father Logan loves and only wants the best for them, and that if they just do the "right" thing, he'll finally give them the affection and approval they want. While he does occasionally demonstrate the most basic level of concern a father should have for his children, Logan ultimately loves his company far more than he loves any of them, and treats the kids like little more than tools and props. All the kids, particularly Connor, the oldest, have moments where they outright acknowledge their dad doesn't care about them as people that much, but Kendall is the most in denial of the fact.
  Kendall: He loves me. He does. I think it's just the wrong kind of love expression.
  Naomi: Yeah, Daddy loves the broken you.

Video Games

• Far Cry 6: General Jose Castillo is the nephew of Anton Castillo as well as his enforcer, and he's a sadistic Psychopathic Manchild who is obsessed with gaining Anton's approval (which often leads him into petty conflict with his cousin Diego, Anton's heir). To achieve this, Jose arranges the murder of rebel leader Carlos Montero and then visits Anton to report his success. Anton, however, is not pleased, because Carlos was Loved by All who live in Yara's farmlands (including 80% of Anton's soldiers), and Jose has now made a martyr out of him and ensured that most of his own soldiers won't want to work for him anymore. Anton then has Jose punished (non-lethally) by getting Diego to shoot him In the Back whilst he runs away. In spite of this, Jose still insists that Anton loves him when Dani and Camila are about to kill him, and swears that his uncle will send his soldiers to rape and murder the Monteros in revenge. After Camila shuts him up by stuffing a grenade in his mouth and blowing up his head, Anton and Diego do go to Jose's funeral — but they're the only ones who go, and Anton just uses the funeral as an excuse to give Diego a lecture about how a "True Yaran" should be a lion, not a lamb — and his nephew, because of his sadism and cowardice, was definitely a lamb. Just to spite Jose one last time, Anton then rounds off the funeral by having his soldiers set fire to the church in which Jose's body lies.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: Sonia never showed her daughter Nino any form of affection and coldly neglected her for all of her life. Despite this, Nino still believes that her mother loves her and tries her best to gain her approval, hoping that Sonia will display some kind of motherly affection. When she learns that Sonia ordered Jaffar to kill her to serve as a Fall Guy for the assassination of Prince Zephiel, she is horrified but still tries to talk to her mother, believing that there must be an explanation. When Sonia gleefully reveals she murdered Nino's real parents, only took her in and raised her on Nergal's orders because she had good magical potential and hated every second of it, Nino finally accepts what a monster Sonia truly is and turns against her for good.
• God of War Ragnarök: Both Thor and his daughter Thrud suffer from this towards Odin (his father and her grandfather). Despite Odin repeatedly making insulting, disparaging comments about Thor that he's nothing but an alcoholic Dumb Muscle only good for killing whoever Odin tells him to, Thor stays his father's loyal enforcer, to the point of openly accusing Atreus of turning Odin against him at one point, even though all evidence suggests Odin has never loved Thor anyway. Thrud, meanwhile, genuinely sees her grandfather as a caring benevolent ruler, and all who oppose him as liars or misled, and wants to serve as one of his Valkyries, against the wishes of her mother Sif, who knows how self-serving and uncaring Odin truly is. Whilst Thrud's naivety is purely down to not knowing any better thanks to Odin's propaganda, Thor's behaviour is tied down to more tragic conditions: he's a depressed, self-loathing man who deeply regrets all the lives he's taken in his father's name, but stays with Odin anyway because he doesn't know what else to do with his life. By the end of the game, at Kratos' urging, Thor and Thrud finally realize that Odin doesn't love them or deserve to be loved by them: in Thrud's case, by seeing her grandfather stabbing her father to death for refusing to follow his orders anymore and deciding to be better for Thrud's sake.
• Persona 5:
  • Yusuke was raised by his mentor, Madarame, who only did so in order to plagiarize his pupil's work and barely gave him basic necessities. However, despite the abuse and being presented with blatant evidence of Madarame's wrongdoing, Yusuke clings to the belief that his mentor is a good person, taking until Madarame's Shadow shamelessly flaunts his misdeeds for him to finally realize the truth. Though, even after accepting the reality of the situation, Yusuke admits he still struggles with the revelation.
  • Downplayed. Haru's father in the past was a kind and loving parent to her, but became so corrupt with greed and ambition that he began to neglect her, and planned to marry his daughter off to an abusive man to further his political career. Despite his actions, Haru refuses to oppose him and takes a long time to fully awaken her Persona until her father's Shadow finally pushes her over the edge.

Webcomics

• Housepets!: Sasha's owner is horribly abusive, but she defends him all the same. King's rightful attempts to point out how his alcoholism negatively affects her is responded to with anger, and she sobs when she's finally liberated from him.
• Muted: Avaline has thought since her childhood that her mother Athalie loves her and wants only the best for her, despite Athalie never shown her even a shred of anything remotely resembling love. She gets over this after she learns that Athalie never wanted her.
  Raum: A child wanting to be loved by their parent is not a crime... You shouldn't feel guilt for wanting her to care for you.
• Yellow Brick Ramble: This is a comic adaptation of The Marvelous Land of Oz, the second novel in L. Frank Baum's classic Oz series. One of the changes made by the adaptation is the relationship between the main character Tip and the witch Mombi. Rather than merely living together, they treat each other as mother and child (though it's not yet known for sure whether they are actually Related in the Adaptation). Unfortunately, Mombi is just as mean and abusive in the comic as she is in the original novel. Even more unfortunately, unlike in the original novel, Tip believes that Mombi means well and honestly cares, and does not recognize how abusive Mombi's behavior has been. For that matter, Mombi is just as in denial as Tip, insisting at the start of comic chapter 7 that she has been "the perfect mother".

Web Video

• Daisy Brown: Daisy remembers her father Curtis fondly, however, the subtitles show that Curtis abused Daisy multiple times and said by Alan, he resented Daisy for the death of his wife.
• Danny Gonzalez: Parodied in a skit about Jeff Bezos's son getting into legal trouble. He insists that his father can make the protagonist's Alexa turn evil, but then claims that the fact that they haven't talked in years doesn't matter and that his dad definitely loves him and will help him.
• SuperMarioLogan: In "Joseph's Mom", Joseph finds that his mother faked her death so she could have an excuse to leave him. Joseph goes into denial and returns to his house, waiting for her to come back even though it's clear that she doesn't give a damn about him. It's later shown in "Cody's Amiibo" that he's still waiting for her to return home to him.

Western Animation

• Bob's Burgers: Linda Belcher still cares about her mother Gloria despite the latter's nagging attitude and tendency to take advantage of her generosity. She tries to defend everything Gloria does and outright disallows Bob from doing anything about her actions. It's really no wonder Bob has all but outright said he hopes Gloria will die soon (given how poorly he can convincingly act like he'd be upset when that happens).
• Moral Orel: Orel cares about both of his parents, despite Bloberta's neglect and Clay's lies (as well as physical punishments). Orel genuinely thinks that Clay in particular is an upstanding, caring citizen, even though the latter never even tells him he loves him. Once Clay shoots Orel in the leg in the "Nature" two-parter and refuses to take responsibility for it, Orel comes to realize how awful his father truly is.
• The Owl House: Hunter/The Golden Guard genuinely sees his Parental Substitute, Emperor Belos, as a good man and a caring parent, despite the fact that Belos abuses him repeatedly, and he always tries to justify the Emperor's actions. As the show continues, it becomes clear that Hunter has just learned to live with his poor treatment at Belos' hands, and therefore justifies everything he does out of unconditional love for his "uncle". It takes a Journey to the Center of the Mind and seeing that he's the latest in a long line of expendable clones of Belos' long-dead older brother (whom Belos killed), and Belos deciding Hunter has outlived his usefulness, for Hunter to finally get wise to the fact that the Emperor doesn't love him at all.

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