Meet the world's 10 worst mothers

Remember when mom made you pose for those family pictures? Told you to get a haircut? Denied you a pony? This Mother's Day, Radar offers a gentle reminder to suck it up and give thanks. Even if mom did occasionally overmedicate, undermine, or adopt the decorous phone manner of Alec Baldwin, it was probably out of love. More importantly, it could have been much worse. Below, some mommies who really didn't know best:

Mrs. Andreas M.
Divorce is difficult for anyone. But for one Austrian woman, identified only as the wife of one "Andreas M.," divorce transformed her from an accomplished attorney into an outright nutcase. Shortly after the split, the then 46-year-old locked her three daughters, ages 7, 11, and 13 in her house, shut the blinds, and allowed only one lightbulb. They'd remain prisoners there for seven years, bereft of sunlight and fresh air.

When investigators came to the house in Linz, they were shocked. The three girls were living in filth, with "excrement a metre high." Locked away, the sisters had even developed their own language, which included ending sentences with the word but. Once freed, one daughter would only stand on one foot.

The mother now faces charges of criminal neglect, and it's still unclear why she did it. Needless to say, psychologists believe the children, now close to adulthood, will never recover. The governor of lower Austria, Josef Pühringer, has "ordered an inquiry."

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Kathy Bush
Bush had the role of "long-suffering mother" down to a science. After all, her seven-year-old daughter, Jennifer, had been hospitalized nearly 200 times for a rare gastrointestinal illness. At the urging of her mother, doctors had removed most of Jennifer's intestines, her gall bladder, put her on a feeding tube, and treated her for both an immune system deficiency and a seizure disorder.

Then, in 1994, Kathy Bush propped her daughter up next to Hillary Clinton and had her testify as a poster-child for health care reform. With all the treatment Jennifer had received over the years, the Bush family had run up nearly 2 million dollars in health care expenses.

But something didn't add up. Despite the Bush family's alleged bankruptcy, there was, apparently, money available for trips to Disney World and a $25,000 motorcycle. Then an anonymous tip came in: Why did Jennifer's health always seem to decline whenever her mother was around? Turns out, Bush had been making Jennifer sick by speeding up her feeding tube, giving her excessive and potentially lethal doses of anti-seizure medication, and even contaminating her blood with feces.

Authorities suspected Münchausen syndrome by proxy (MSBP), a condition in which mothers deliberately keep their children sick, or make them sicker, feeding off the sympathy and attention afforded to parents of the chronically ill. In 1999, Bush was convicted of child abuse and fraud and sentenced to five years in prison. When she was 18, Jennifer asked for the terms of her mother's probation to allow a reunion, proving that blood is thicker than water—even blood deliberately contaminated by your own mother.