I Stand Here Ironing

In "I Stand Here Ironing", the mother is young, nineteen, and left to raise her child alone. I think that is far more common in today's world. Granted, we are not in a depression (yet), but there are a large number of young mothers left to care for their children by themselves. The narrator loved Emily very much, but knew what she had to do in order to care for them both. When she talks about the harshness of the nursery schools, she says, "[A]nd I did not know then what I know now [...] [e]xcept that it would have made no difference if I had known” (284). She had to make a living for them, even though the circumstances were far from satisfactory. Being a mother means making sacrifices, and sacrifices she made.

The narrator was also stressed with the demands of raising a family and trying to work. Emily received the raw end of the deal. The narrator remembers a man telling her she needed to smile more at Emily. “It was only with the others […] and it was the face of joy, and not of care or tightness or worry I turned to them-too late for Emily” (285). She was constantly troubled with how she was going to get by she forgot to be loving and carefree around Emily. She says, “She was a child of anxious, not proud, love” (288).

Emily was forced to grow up too early. This is a trend that is becoming more and more common in children these days. She was left alone at nights. When she became ill, she did not look to her mother for comfort. In the story the narrator recalls, “I used to try and hold and love her after she came back, but her body would stay stiff, and after a while she’d push away” (286). Emily was only reacting to what she knew, or more so, what she didn’t know. She was moved around quite a bit as a child and then put in a convalescent home later. Her relationship with her mother was not the same as with the other children. The narrator admits in the story, “I was a young mother, a distracted mother. There were other children pushing up, demanding” (288).

Like many parents today, Emily’s mother feels she was not quite an adequate parent and wishes she could have done more for Emily.