Gender Roles In I Stand Here Ironing

Since the 1950’s America has been obsessed with the perfect family. Television shows like Leave it to Beaver, and Father Knows Best shaped the idea of an ideal American family in the 1950’s, while today it is through the worship of celebrity mothers and families that the familial ideal is set. In Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” the unnamed mother contemplates her early choices as a mother as she goes back and forth ironing. While it is possible to be a “good mother”, there is no mold for it and there is truly no such thing as a “perfect family”, yet it is through television and other media that the perfect family is portrayed, creating unrealistic standards and pressures for mothers everywhere; forcing them to constantly wonder if they …show more content…
She is unsure if whether she loved her daughter enough and if she chose the best ways to show that love and support. Just like the iron, she goes back and forth struggling between what she knew then versus what she knows “now”. The mother debates with herself whether the choices she made were the right ones and how it could have potentially changed her daughter’s life had she been a “better mother”. This is a timeless scenario that Olsen sets up for this character. It was not just a worry of that decade over whether or not a mother’s choice of parenting was the best option, it is something mothers of every generation struggle with. Furthermore, the mother is simply that, a mother. The mother in “I Stand Here Ironing” is never named throughout the story. This is a strong statement made by Olsen. The mother is not named because mothers do not focus on themselves. From “Leave It to Beaver” to “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”, it is never about the mothers. The unnamed mother is a symbol for mothers everywhere who put their children above themselves and all else. Whether it is putting up with a difficult relationship to allow a child to grow up with two parents, or working three jobs to provide Christmas presents; mothers often struggle in order to provide their children with love and happiness. While the mother in “I Stand Here Ironing” did not have much to give …show more content…
“How did my relationship affect my child” is a thought that subconsciously goes through the mother’s head. She wonders if maybe she had been able to make things work with the father or if even she had just had the money to care for her daughter, maybe her daughter’s life could have been better. Maybe then she would not have gotten sick and marked by the scars of her sickness, or maybe she would have felt more loved. This is similar to the struggles single mothers today feel. Yet today, instead of a child contracting smallpox, it would be more likely that a mother would blame her divorce as the cause for a child’s depression or eating disorder. The diseases have changed, the potential causes have not. What could they have done better to give their child a better life? It does not help their concerns that the familial ideal demands that of two parents love in order to raise a good person. It is through the standards and pressures set that single mothers are forced to question their own actions over whether or not they are good enough for their children, whether it is the 1950’s or today. Divorce rates have only gone up and that has left more and more children traveling back and forth between parents’ homes, just like Susan was forced to as a child. While that situation may have been rare during the time period that this piece was written in, it has only become more relevant as time has gone