We never see the unconditional love of a mother with child in Moll Flanders that many authors have shown in their novels. Instead, we see a conditional love, which is reliant on wealth and security. Throughout the course of the novel the readers never see a solid motherly figure in both Moll, and her own mother. Defoe shows a motherly figures in Moll's very first nurse, who genuinely takes care of Moll until she dies at an old age, and the other motherly character is Moll's governess who bails her out of jail. Moll herself never completely shows a solid maternal feeling for her numerous children. What seem to be maternal feelings are really covered by either remorse or a hidden purpose. Moll is a selfish person who cares primarily about herself, her belongings, and her money. Her attitude towards motherhood is negative and she leaves her responsibilities of her children behind very easily in each of her marriages. .
In her first marriage, she describes her relationship and her children very briefly. After 5 years and the death of her husband, Moll says, "My two children were taken happily off my hands, by my husbands father and mother, and that by the way was all they got from Ms. Betty." (P: 59) This ends her discussion of her children, and she does not show any guilt, or repeat any opinion of them later on in the novel.
Her later marriage to her unknown brother gets a lot of account, but the majority of the passage is not about her children, but her lack of wanting to sleep with her husband for the fear of creating more children than the 3 she already had with him. She calls these children "not legal children" and is disgusted by the sight of them to the point where she leaves them behind to go to England. .
Moll's next relationship was for six years to the married man from Bath, and Moll bore three children, but only the first one lived. Moll does not discuss her feelings toward her two lost children, and the reader is just briefly noted on the fact.
