Many kids complain about their parents. I hear it all the time from all kinds of kids who come from all sorts of different backgrounds. It seems in the world today parents get all the negative attention, and it seems like all the good they do go unnoticed by the public. Two different kinds of mothers were presented in the stories "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, and "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen. 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. "I was nineteen. It was the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression" (241). She was not ready to be a mother, and it certainly wasn't the best time for a young girl to have a child. This is not a good model for parenting. A mother should have a child at a time when she feels she is prepared to able to properly care for a child. Emily's mom was poor, and without a husband as a father figure for Emily. She could not even afford the expenses when Emily was really young and, "it came to where I had to bring her to his family and leave her" (242). She had to send Emily away a couple of times through her young childhood. Emily was sent away at a time where a mother would have been very important in shaping, influencing, and nurturing her to become a great adult. Emily never got that chance. Emily's mother was too lenient. A child should have rules, or some kind of structure to help them develop a good character. Emily didn't go to school when she didn't feel like it, and her mom let her. She even st...
