Like Carol Freeman feels like she's a failure as a mother because of Mariner's behavior and reputation in Starfleet, so she centers her self concept and self esteem on being a good captain, but then she feels like a bad captain because she's stuck on a California class ship and she can't control her daughter who keeps causing problems, so she tries to mother Mariner more, but that just makes everything worse because her adult daughter doesn't want to be treated like a child, so Freeman focuses on trying to be a good captain again to feel better etc, etc, etc
And anyway the reason the Cerritos doesn't have a better ships councilor is that all the other ones ran away after the cycle repeated too many times
