'Two Kinds And I Stand Here Ironing' By Tillie Olsen

Chapter 5 of Freakonomics, What Makes a Perfect Parent, raises the question, “how much do parents really matter?” This is a very interesting question with a number of different answers. Steven Levitt, the author, goes into great detail to answer this question. Right of the start, Levitt mentions, “Clearly bad parenting matters a great deal” (Levitt, Dubner p.154). He uses the correlation between abortion and crime, making the argument that unwanted children will be worse off in life versus other children who are accepted into their parents’ lives and loved. Levitt raises yet another question asking how influential are those loving and accepting parents on the outcome of their child. Interesting enough, genes are responsible for about fifty percent of a child’s characteristics and personality but what is responsible for the other fifty percent? Judith Harris, author of The Nature Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, argued that peers are more influential on a child than parents are. Levitt challenges her position and mentions that parents are usually the ones responsible for deciding a children’s peers. For instance, parents are the ones who choose what neighborhood to live, where to send their child to school and strive to find their child the right friend group.

The narrator seems unable to establish direct contact with Emily, either in the recovery center or their home life. The narrator notes how Emily grew slowly more distant and emotionally unresponsive. Emily returned home frail, distant, and rigid, with little appetite. Each time Emily returned, she was forced to reintegrate into the changing fabric of the household. Clearly, Emily and the narrator have been absent from each other’s lives during significant portions of Emily’s development. After so much absence, the narrator intensifies her attempts to show Emily affection, but these attempts are rebuffed, coming too late to prevent Emily’s withdrawal from her family and the world. Although Emily is now at home with the narrator, the sense of absence continues even in the present moment of the story. Emily, the narrator’s central

Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal

It is difficult to understand, even surprising, how she neither shows nor expresses being upset even though she experiences plenty of justifiable situations. She acts calm when she is left alone at night, when under normal circumstances it would be upsetting to any other kid. She is collected while confronting unfair situations and Olsen makes it extraordinary easy to visualize when Emily’s mother recalls, “Susan telling jokes and riddles to company for applause while Emily sat silent (to say to me later: that was my riddle, Mother, I told it to Susan)” (Olsen 294). She has the right to get angry and to express it

This was the only way she felt she could do both. Harder still was that Emily would cry and beg her mother not to that nursery school. As these separations press on Emily and her mother, the mother feels guilt and her child is torn by a separation made even worse as she's placed in several undesirable locations.

Emily comes from a family with high expectations of her a sort of “hereditary obligation” (30). Emily has been mentally manipulated by her as so indicated in the line of the story “we did not say she was crazy then we believed she had to do that we remember all the young men her father had driven away” (32). There is already proof of mental illness in the family “remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great aunt, had gone completely crazy last” (32).

These two styles of parenting are both ineffective in fostering the talent and passions of their children at early ages. One unable to maintain a stable, healthy relationship during early childhood years and the other being too overbearing over the child's decisions in life caused the children to both undergo an avoidable difficult childhood. The result of each mother’s parenting is the opposite of what the mother’s had hoped their parental

Emily's father suppressed all of her inner desires. He kept her down to the point that she was not allowed to grow and change with the things around her. When “garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated…only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps” (Rose 217). Even when he died, she was still unable to get accustom to the changes around her. The traditions that her and her father continued to participate in even when others stopped, were also a way that her father kept her under his thumb. The people of the town helped in

The mother was an invisible parent for Emily. Her reason for not being there for Emily was because she was a “young and distracted mother” (Olsen 262). The real reason she was inattentive was because she was inexperienced. She lacks the understanding of how essential it is to be there physically for Emily. Emily needed her mother for

Emily is a character surrounded by mystery, leaving a mark on the influence of others, causing them to create their own scenarios about her life. It happened when she met Homer, when everyone hoped she will marry him, or when she bought poison and everyone thought she would poison herself. Her high wealthy status and respect were emphasized when she kicked out the people who

Emily is a very dependant woman who can’t take care of herself. She is so used to having her father around and to tend to her. At age thirty Emily is

The mother-daughter relationship is often scrutinized, publicized, and capitalized on. Whether from tell-all biographies, to humorous sit-coms, or private therapy sessions, this particular relationship dynamic gives some of the most emotion-activating memories. When female authors reflect and write about their relationships with their mothers, they have a tendency to taint their reflections with the opinions they have as an adult, reviewing the actions of their mother when they were young. These opinions set the tone of the story independently and in conjunction with the relationship itself and manifest in creative literary styles that weave an even more intricate story. Case in point, when reviewing the two literary works “I Stand Here

The narrator also made some clear mistakes in the raising of Emily. Due to circumstances that were somewhat beyond her control, the narrator was not able to be particularly maternal with Emily. The narrator had to leave Emily with Emily's father's family until she could raise enough money. However this ended up taking a long time. The narrator states that "when she finally came, I hardly knew her, walking quick and nervous like her father, looking like her father, thin, and dressed in a shoddy red that yellowed her skin and glared at the pockmarks. All the baby loveliness gone" (199). This statement shows that the narrator missed the crucial early years of her daughter's life. She no longer felt that strong, ready connection that a mother feels with a child. She hardly knew her daughter.

Diane Baumrind’s typology has two major dimensions. The first dimension is responsiveness. In the text it mentions that responsiveness “refers to the extent in which parents respond to and meet the needs of their children.” (Knox 364). This is when parents support, encourage, and foster their children’s needs. The second dimension is demandingness which is “the matter in which parents place demands on children in regard to expectations and discipline.” (Knox 364). This is about how strict a parent is and how much control these use on their children.

Mr. and Mrs. Harsh­Heart believe in the importance of stern discipline and impose strict rules