Jenny Mollen, the soon-to-be ex-wife of Orange Is the New Black actor Jason Biggs, has addressed the photos she posted on May 25 with their 12-year-old son, Sid, that sparked online discomfort.
She was seen lying on top of the boy in the pictures, while he used his hands to put distance between their faces.
Netizens’ reactions to the images ranged from calling them “cringe” and “super weird” to urging Child Protective Services to be involved.
Mollen offered a deeply personal explanation of the moment in a Monday, June 8 Substack post titled The Love That Breaks Us.
Jenny Mollen has defended the much-scrutinized intimate photos with her son
Image credits: Getty/Dimitrios Kambouris
“Last week, the internet called me a child m*lester for posting a photo of myself holding my son. The picture was taken on a Monday night after he returned from a weekend away,” Mollen wrote.
“When I look at that picture, I see a boy who still wants his mother and a woman trying desperately to hold on to closeness and connection at a time in her life when everything is changing,” she added.
She appeared to reference her impending divorce from Biggs in the latter half of the sentence. The pair announced their separation via a representative on May 14.
Image credits: jennymollen
Mollen went on to address the caption she used for her pictures with her son — “Your eldest son will be the most toxic boyfriend you ever have” — which especially weirded out social media users.
Calling it a “joke,” she explained why she used the words she did.
Image credits: jennymollen
“Parenthood has demanded a lot 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,” she said.
Mollen claimed that she has been “making some version of this joke for a decade,” before acknowledging that her humor is “not for everyone.”
Mollen also shared on her Substack that she was attempting to give her son the love that she was robbed of by her mother
Image credits: jennymollen
Mollen shared that when she was 12, her mother told her she “didn’t know how to be a mom anymore” and remained absent from her life ever since.
“Children can feel like our one opportunity at redemption in this lifetime,” Mollen explained. “They offer us the chance to become the very thing we need to save ourselves, instead of spending our lives waiting to be saved.”
Image credits: Substack
She, however, said that “redemption is not the same as relief,” something she had craved for a decade.
“When my kids were young, I was so overwhelmed. There was so much they needed that it felt almost impossible to catch my breath. I spent the last decade begging for five minutes alone,” she said.
When the space she wanted eventually arrived, Mollen, per her account, realized she did not want it.
Image credits: jennymollen
Mollen confessed that any distance between herself and her son breaks her heart.
“It will break your heart too,” Mollen warned, before taking direct aim at her detractors, writing, “Don’t let anyone shame you for holding on while you still can.”
This is not the first time Jenny Mollen has made headlines for her views on her sons
Image credits: Getty/Dia Dipasupil
Mollen shares eight-year-old Lazlo with Biggs, too.
On May 10, she posted a Substack titled Please Stay, I Want You, I Need You Oh God, in which she expressed a desire for her sons to marry “women with d**d mothers.”
“It’s my only sh*t at staying relevant, of seeming useful, and of winning by comparison. Having boys is a mindf***. It builds you up only to tear you apart,” she argued.
Mollen drew parallels between her feelings and the feelings of her mother-in-law after she began dating Biggs.
“I used to find it insane that my mother-in-law fell apart when Jason told her we were getting married. Now I understand it had nothing to do with my cat allergy or whether I touched her lasagna.
“I was eating her son, straight out of the fridge, without even asking for a plate,” she said.
Image credits: jennymollen
Mollen recounted a story from several months ago about catching Sid texting a girl on the same Substack.
“She was twelve, but I could already tell my brand of toxic,” she wrote.
The mother of two claimed her son was “utterly spun” as the girl bossed him around and used “big words.”
“I complained to Jason that I wanted to intervene before he got hurt and that she wasn’t even hotter than me,” she said.
Mollen eventually said that motherhood was filled with “anticipatory grief,” but the “abandonment” that boy moms experience is “uniquely cruel.”
“I pray that at least one of them is gay,” Mollen said before ending her post, suggesting that is the only way she sees her sons keeping her closer to them in the future.
“What is wrong with this woman?” several social media users asked at the time.
Some went on to call her behavior “sick.”
“This isn’t cuddling. It’s just not,” a viewer said about Mollen’s pictures with Sid
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