Absence of Affection Seen in “I Stand Here Ironing” Babies need love and affection and when they get older they need a proper support system and a stable foundation to help them in becoming a suitable adult. In the text “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen tones of sympathy, honesty, and guilt are shown through the narrator as she recollects the events in raising her daughter Emily. This text shows how neglect in a child’s raising can alter the personality and how they express themselves over time.
Tillie Olsen does a respectable job of presenting an unhealthy relationship between mother and daughter. In “I Stand Here Ironing” daughter Emily has a rough life full of mental issues due to her mother’s neglect and lack of affection given. The narrator living in a time of depression, is enable to contribute into the life that Emily would need, and being a single mother she sent her daughter away to be cared for by others avoiding the nurture that is needed by a child. “I used to try to hold and love her after she came back…. after a while she’d push away,” indicates discomfort between the two. After having so much distance between the two there was not a love and connection that a mother would usually obtain with their child, which doesn’t allow a family relationship.
The narrator remarries and has another child, at the time Emily is sick and they send her away once more to protect the newborn. At the convalescent center Emily tries to reach out about the mistreatment that occurs but her happiness isn’t worth the risk of the narrator’s new daughter. “Only twice, when I had to get up for Susan anyhow, I went in to sit with her,” is an example in the text how Emily’s mother didn’t care for her even as she was sick. Only as a convenience would her mother go to check on her and because of that it silenced Emily even more. She wouldn’t even call to her mother because