Alice Hoffman The Perfect Family

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For children, growing up in a healthy environment is a very important factor in determining how they function as adults in society. Children who are blessed with both a loving mother and a caring father are indeed very lucky. These children grow up with twice the amount of love and support as children who grow up in single-parent homes. Although growing up with both parents present is a wonderful thing. It is the mothers that have the biggest impact on their children 's lives.

In the article "The Perfect Family" by Alice Hoffman she goes on to explain what the idea of the perfect family was in the 1950 's. In the 50 's the perfect family consisted of a mother a father and two or three perfectly behaved children. The mother was a stay at home wife and the father was the provider. Alice Hoffman explains that when she was 10 years old her parents got divorced and her family no longer fit that mold. Divorce was so uncommon back then that some of the neighborhood children were not allowed to come to her house because of her mother 's …show more content…

Sophie is the product of a rape her mother endured as a teenager, so she has never had a father present in her life. Martine moved to the U.S shortly after Sophie was born and Sophie arrived twelve years later. Even after Sophie learned that she was a product of rape, she was more concerned with how her mother was coping with it than how Sophie felt about it. Sophie was there to help wake her mother from her nightmares and console her. Although Sophie had never had any relationships with men it seems that her mother 's rape influenced the way she felt about being intimate with men. Sophie still fell in love and got married but sex was not something she was interested in. Watching her mother struggle with her rape had such a strong effect on her she could not be

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