Parental Detachment in I Stand Here Ironing

The short story “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen is an example of a mother daughter struggle. From what I took from the story, the young mom herself had an extremely rough life. She had her daughter Emily at a young age and it did not end up picture perfect like she might have thought it would. Her mother had to work to support them, so she always sent Emily off to be cared by others. Sometimes she was sent far away and for a long period of time.

She talked about the great things they would bond over and all the things the mother would do for their children. However, 62.4% of children will never see this. Not because their vision is impaired, but their mothers decided a different life for themselves that did not include them. The mothers selfish act lead to lifelong effects on their child that surpass just not knowing who their mother is. Sandra Maria Esteves opened up the world of how great a mother is, but the world of those 62.4% of children is a dark and deep one with negative psychological effects.

She gives her children everything she has, but is eventually sucked dry with nothing left to give. This struggle is similar to the struggle of modern women who must leave their children while they work then try to make up for the lost time when they are home. From the time they are girls women are led to believe that more important than their happiness, is their respo... ... middle of paper ... ...children for a short time, but as Sethe discovers, they cannot continue doing this forever or it will leave them with nothing to give and no energy to care for themselves. Modern mothers must heed the warning issued in Beloved and accept that sometimes it is necessary for a mother and child to be separated and that a mother should not try to compensate for this separation and risk losing herself in the search for her children’s happiness. The relationship between mother and child is unbreakable, no matter how much time has passed, but it must be treated with caution as it has the power to ostracize the two from the rest of the world and allow them to destroy each other.

Sometimes children complain about their mothers, each wishing they could have different type of mom. The lives and situations of each mother were different, but in my opinion, both mothers were a bad model for parenting. "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen shows us a mother who is struggling through her own life and does not pay any attention to her daughter. The mother in this story happens to be the narrator, and we get the indication that she isn't a very good mother. To start, she was very young when she first had Emily.

Social pressure to raise pleasant, good mannered children who become grounded and productive adults has been a driving influence for many generations. If our children do not fit into this mold then we’re considered failures are parents. Emily’s mother is tormented by the phone call which sets off a wave of maternal guilt. Emily’s mother was young and abandoned by her husband while Emily was still an infant so she had to rely on only herself and the advice of others while she raised her daughter. After Emily was born her mother, “with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, (I) did like the books said.

The narrator felt as if she disappointed her mother many times with the way she choose to live her life. To the narrator, a good life was not being talented or following what her mother asked her to do. The narrator believed that a good life was doing what she independently wanted to do without having to follow the expectations of her mother. Both the narrator of “Two Kinds” and Laura had to strongly go against the beliefs and ideas of their mothers, although because they were so young and had little power in their family, both Laura and the narrator had to follow what they were told. Although both Laura and the narrator shared an alternating belief system, they didn’t share a similar social status with each

Mother Daughter Relationship in I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen If Only.... Almost every parent dreams of giving their children what they never had growing up. However, unavoidable situations cannot be changed and we are forced to make do with what life gives us. Life’s twists and turns are not always predicted, we get caught up with other things and lose sight of the important ones. In the story, “I Stand Here Ironing,” Tillie Olsen portrays the life and regret of a young single mother struggling to raise her daughter Emily.

She comes to the realization that her younges... ... middle of paper ... ...other due to her young age and lack of exposure to the world. Harriet Lovatt had experience in the world but unleashed it when she became a mother in hopes of dedicating all her efforts to being a good mother, until eventually this very drive to be a good mother caused her world to crumble. She realized that in order to save herself, she would have to liberate the relentless drive to attain her goal of being a good mother. She had to let go just as Kate Brown did. For “ the woman with grown- up children and not enough to do, whose energies must be switched from the said children to less vulnerable targets, for everybody’s sake, her own as well as theirs” (www.galileo.usg.edu) The last part of this quote is pivotal.

Emily is taught that women stay in the house and iron; she is not encouraged enough by her mother early on. The mother regrets her failure to teach her daughter that she can make her own path through life, claiming her “wisdom came too late” and that she can only hope that Emily “ know[s]- that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron” (Olsen 298). The narrator failed to guide her daughter through life and to help her avoid some of the mistakes she made. Emily will likely fall down the same path the narrator has taken, because of the perpetual nature of

Most parents want the best for their children: financially, emotionally, and physically. However, sometimes there are external barriers that prevent full growth in these areas. These are the limitations that no parent feels comfortable speaking about because all they do is bring back memories of attempted success, yet never quite reached. In Tillie Olsen’s narration, I Stand Here Ironing there is a mother who is concerned for her daughter, Emily after a full nineteen years have passed. She begins to remember what her socioeconomic standings represented through the eyes of Emily, who is only now like a blossomed flower.