Parent-Child Relationships Essay

1393 Words6 Pages
Parent-Child Relationships 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. Parents have an incredible impacts on the lives their children lead. Whether for better or worse, children look to their parents for guidance, and try to determine the right way to lead their own lives. This typically leads to a child deciding to emulate their parent, or rebel against them. This is a common theme in both I stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen, and Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor. Both texts repeatedly show us what the hazards can be for not taking responsibility for children, or by failing to provide a suitable role model. But while this issue does seem fairly black and white, both authors show us that it is not that simple. They show the complexity behind the parent child relationship, and how it is not simply the parents inability to raise their children. It can be a combination of society's pressure on us all, and the child's own freewill potentially leading them astray. Therefore, both I Stand Here Ironing and Everything That Rises Must Converge show its readers the intricacy of the parent child relationship. In I Stand here Ironing, the most obvious example of a failed parent child relationship is between Emily and her mother. Due to the wages of loss, poverty and dislocation, a wall has grown up between mother and daughter; she has always wanted to love the sickly, awkward, stiff, and isolated girl, but has not been able to penetrate the wall. And then, she recalls, out of nowhere Emily won first prize in her school amateur show "now suddenly she was somebody, and as imprisoned in her
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