Many cultures have different opinions
about how people should parent and what makes a good parent. Because there are
so many opinions on how to parent it is often difficult to assess whether
someone is a good parent or not however, so many social workers are asked to
draw this conclusion frequently as it is a part of their everyday career. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
recalls her childhood growing up and uncovers her unique experiences and
childhood in growing up in the household of Rex and Rose Mary Walls. On one
occasion Jeannette is approached by a social worker that has come to assess her
living conditions. Jeannette asks him to come back at a later time but he never
returns. This mistake made by the social worker caused the children of Rex and
Rose Mary Walls to continue to live in unfit living conditions, as they were
incapable of caring for their children’s basic needs. Although the Walls were a
close-knit family due to Rex and Rose Mary’s positive support in affection and
independency, they lacked in a number of other factors that are essential to
parenting a healthy child both physically and mentally.
Rex
Walls is affectionate with his kids by making their lives adventurous. Because
kids like to be imaginative, they really enjoyed all the stories he made up
about being chased by the FBI and having to lead secretive lives. He is also
really creative with his gifts. The kids really liked it when he told them they
could each choose a star as a present for Christmas one year. Both he and Rose
Mary also taught their children how to be independent. They taught their kids
all kinds of survival skills and how to use the bare minimum and still survive
(pg. 21). They also didn’t believe in being very strict or overly worried about
their kids. Jeannette explained,
Lori,
Brian and I, and even Maureen could go pretty much anywhere and do just about anything we
wanted. Mom believed that children shouldn’t be burdened with a lot of rules
and restrictions. Dad whipped us with his belt, but never out of anger, and only if we back-talked or disobeyed a direct
order, which was rare. The only
rule was that we had to come home when the streetlights went on. “And use your common
sense,” Mom said. She felt it was good for kids to do what they wanted because they learned a lot from their mistakes.
Mom was not one of those fussy
mothers who got upset when you came home dirty or played in the mud or fell and cut
yourself. (pg. 59).
It would be fair to speculate that Mr.
Walls made those adventure stories to cover up his crimes of not paying his
dues and leaving town, and also that the kids learned how to be independent
because Mrs. Walls was too focused on her painting career to take care of her
own children.
There
are also several other reasons to believe the kids would be better off in a
different home. Rex and Rose Mary Walls weren’t very concerned about their
kids’ safety. At the beginning of the book, Jeannette recalls a time when she was
four and fell out of the car while her dad was driving. It took him a while to
figure out she had fallen out before he returned for her. As he returned he wasn’t
very apologetic, and he only pulled the pebbles out of her cheeks and dusted
her off. Also at the very beginning of the book Jeannette explains her first
memory as being on fire because her parents had let her cook hot dogs for
herself and her dress caught on fire as she leaned over the stove. A final
example was when Jeannette was being bullied by four Mexican girls from school.
As she came home with scraped knees and elbows and a bloody lip, her dad asked
what happened and after she said she beat up some girls he replied with “that’s
my girl!” and moved on (63). Brian knew
what was up and looked after his sister the next day and fought in her defense.
If a young child like Brian could understand what was really going on with
Jeannette, their parents should have really understood.
Secondly
the Walls didn’t provide their kids a healthy environment. Because neither of
them worked steady jobs, the kids had little to nothing to eat and would be
unclean from not showering. At one point in the story Jeannette tells of how
she and Lori ate margarine because they were hungry. Their mother got mad at
them for not saving it. When explaining to her mom why she ate the margarine,
she explains,
Mom
wasn’t making any sense to me. I wondered if she had been looking forward to eating the margarine
herself. And that made me wonder if she was the one who’d stolen the can of corn the night
before, which got me a little mad, “It was t he
only thing to eat in the whole house,” I said. Raising my voice, I added, “I
was hungry.”(69).
Throughout the book Jeannette talks about
all the times that she and her siblings were hungry and would try to steal food
from friends or dig it out of a trashcan, “ we kids usually kept our hunger to
ourselves but we were always thinking about food and how to get our hands on
it,” Jeannette explains (68). Not only were they hungry but they also lived
among bugs like ants and roaches. They also didn’t bathe very often. Rose Mary
taught them how to clean themselves using just one cup of water (21). This, as
mentioned earlier, was a result of the parents not providing for their children
by keeping a steady source of income. Although Rex was always looking for and
getting work, he would often loose his job and not pay bills and as a result,
do the “skedaddle”. Rose Mary was so uninterested in getting a job that her
children had to pull her out of bed in the morning and make her go to work.
They also did most of her work for her by grading all of her students’ papers
for her and organizing all of her things. She needed to stop being lazy and self-centered
and take care of her children.
Finally,
Rex and Rose Mary Walls weren’t very good models of a healthy relationship.
They would always make up after a fight and I believed they really loved each
other; however, Rex was very violent with Rose Mary. Rex once almost hit Rose
Mary with their car with the kids in the backseat. Rose Mary was pregnant at
the time. She was running away from the car as Rex was yelling profanities at
her. Jeannette recalls being frightened that her father was going to “smush”
her mother with the car. As usual, the next day Rose Mary and Rex had made up.
Whenever Rex Walls got drunk, he began to act very violently and Rose Mary was
sometimes an object of that violence. In “What Makes a Good Parent”, Robert
Epstein explains “children do not like conflict, especially when it involves
the two people in the world they love the most” (48). The relationship the
Walls children observed was not a good example as their relationships were
affected. Jeannette as an adult married and divorced her first husband and
later remarried. If she had a better example of what a marriage relationship
looked like, she might have made different decisions regarding her
relationships.
Overall
the Walls children were deprived both physically and psychologically. Therefore
they would have benefited by been removed from their home and placed in
another. Although there are pros and cons to foster care, the pros would
outweigh the cons because of the amount of suffering that the children went
through. The probability of them being placed in a home that better provides
for their needs more than this one is very likely. Thankfully the children had
each other and survived, although Maureen, psychologically suffered. It would
have been in her best interest to be put in a different home. Although they
might have been separated from each other, they might have less to cope with
now in their adult life.
Works Cited
Epstein, Robert. "What Makes a Good
Parent?" Scientific American Mind 21.5 (2010): 46-51. Print.
Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle: A
Memoir. New York: Scribner, 2005. Print.
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