The Worst Moms: What is it With Our Fascination With The Underbelly of Motherhood?

Oh how the Internet loves its lists. It particularly loves lists of the awful, the bizarre, and the outrageous. And if those lists of the worst of the worst happen to feature celebrities and/or people who could be your next door neighbor behaving badly, well, all the better, it would seem.

So it's hardly surprising that lists (or video clips) of parents doing incredibly stupid things have become an online phenomenon.

The "worst moms" genre appears to be particularly popular, highlighting the dubious achievements of all kinds of moms: fictional, famous, and newly infamous. Time Magazine's list of the Best and Worst Moms Ever draws from the world of entertainment and features Mrs. Robinson and The Mother from Pink Floyd's The Wall. Meanwhile, Momlogic.com's list of the 10 Worst Moms in History includes the wolf spider (infamous for eating its young). And Bookfinder.com's list of the 10 Worst Mothers in Literature features scary fairy-tale moms and freaky horror-novel moms alike.

So what types of sins against motherhood have these moms, real and imaginary, committed in order to score a mention on one of these lists? Everything from maternal disinterest to being too sexy to not having the perfect family to behaving like a garden-variety sociopath (or worse).

And what is it that fuels the fascination with the worst of the worst? A little homegrown parenting anxiety, perhaps?

As MomLogic.com Teresa Strasser columnist noted in the introduction to her feature, The 10 Worst Moms in History, "At seven months pregnant, coming up with this kind of list makes me feel better about my own mom potential. Thank you for lowering the bar, worst moms in history."