Mother's Precious Character Analysis

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Recommended: Child development chapter 6

The way a child is raised serves as a precedent in determining who the child will become once he or she is an adult. There are many children who have overcome unfortunate situations in their childhood and have become successful individuals despite the negative factors they have faced. Then again, there have also been many situations where a child is raised in an upscale community surrounded by successful people and have grown to make negative decisions leading to ineffectiveness in life.
Many factors play a significant role in forming a teen’s identity. A relationship between mother and daughter can be very powerful. Precious’ mother, Mary is an extremely negative influence on her. Mary mistreats Precious and treats her as if she is worthless. …show more content…

The abuse she faces from her mother is both sexual and unusual. She forces Precious to eat when she is not hungry. Mary does not move much around her house since she demands Precious to cook, clean, and wait on her hand and foot because of this she is overweight. She chooses to stay home and block off the world. Forcing her depression onto Precious is the way she copes with everything going on around her. Mary has no friends or family who she can speak to. Precious only sees her grandmother when she brings Little Mongo around so the social worker can think that Little Mongo is being taken care of by Mary. Family unity is not something that Precious has in her life. Mary has not left her home since Mongo was born due to her depression. Precious expresses her feelings about her mother throughout Push. As she gets ready for her first day at the alternative school she says, “I don’t smell like my muver. I don’t”. Precious does not want to be like her mother in any way. On page 35, she contemplates being …show more content…

Her father also abuses her sexually. As she becomes older, her point of view on men is altered. A father is a man in a girl’s life who is supposed to protect her from danger and yet her father is the source of continual sexual abuse. Mary is aware of the sexual abuse that Precious has been going through but does nothing to stop it. In chapter 1, Precious says “This time I know Mama know. Umm hmmm, she know. She bring him to me”. Her mother’s low self-esteem is so low that in order to have Precious’ father around she chooses to not acknowledge the sexual abuse Precious has been experiencing almost all of her life. Love is an affection that Precious’ has never felt. This is why Precious is overcome with emotion when she has her first baby, Mongo, and the nurse at the hospital is comforting her and letting her know that she will get through this situation that she been forced to be in. At this moment she is experiencing something that her mother and father have never made her feel,

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