'Don't think you don't matter': Rachel Griffiths on parenthood and abandonment

In her latest film, 'Mammal', Rachel Griffiths plays a character who left her husband and baby son 15 years ago. For the mother of three, it relates intimately to her own feelings about parenthood and the abandonment she suffered as a child.

I look like the crack mum at school drop-off.

There's women with more children there who are far more together and coping and know what day the sports carnival is on, or whether it's a special assembly day.

I'm definitely harder on my boy in regards to core values and how I expect him to behave.

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This may be sexist, but I think society judges men harshly on their choices and in those leadership moments, and I want him to be on the right side of that judgment.

I don't want him to be in the news for standing in a video with Year 11s slut-shaming their prom dates.

He knows how I would feel.

I expect him to not behave like that, and I instil in him conversations about how he should treat women and how he should treat the world.

I fear losing him, so I'm very overprotective.

My father chose to leave us, and he did so in a catastrophic, careless way and never really engaged with the consequences of that action.

To be absolutely honest, the question of 'how can you leave one's own' is quite core to my moral questioning.

I would say to parents who leave their children at any age: your children will always wrestle with that.

So don't do it lightly. Don't think that you don't matter.

This is an edited excerpt from Rachel Griffiths' conversation with Patricia Karvelas on The Drawing Room.