Mothers always tend to want the best for their children so that their kids do not struggle in life and become dependent on their parents. Rose Mary Walls from “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls acts like the complete opposite from mothers who want the best for their kids. Rose Mary goes through her own struggles throughout the book but she decides to create wrong choices by not working when her children need her the most. Each of her four children are brilliant in their own ways especially Jeannette and Lori who find their way out of Welches and head to New York followed then by Brian. The three of them became successful on their own but their mom did help them in a different way when compared to other mothers.
The youngest daughter, Maureen, was the one who struggled the most from the four, having made her own wrongful decisions. Maureen was the only one out of the four that was dependent on others while Jeannette, Lori, and Brian relied on themselves. Rose Mary is lazy, egotistical, self-fish, chaotic, and arrogant she is also a bad mother who could not give proper care to her children when they were starving. Instead of using her teaching degree to provide for her kids she was stuck on the idea that her career as an artist would get her somewhere. Rose Mary’s selfish characteristics had her spent almost all of her money that she had inherited from her mother on art supplies and on false hopeful careers that she created in her head. While other families around the Walls did not believe in letting their children dream and have an adventure Rose Mary did, she taught her children that it was fine to dream and make an adventure out of their lives.
However, all the qualities that made Rose Mary a horrible mother and a psychotic in. .out relying on their parents. Rose Mary did not seem to care that her children were running away to a faraway place however, she envied them because they were leaving and not her. (Walls 237) The conditions in which Rose raised her children was uncanny and foolish. Rose Mary could have done her part as a parent by maintaining a job as a teacher and being a caring mother.
Even if her kids did find jobs Rose Mary drove them away in a negative way and gave them a horrible childhood despite the positive outcome of her children’s careers. Maureen is the child that really shows the outcomes of having a mother that is present but is not really there for their child. Rose Mary could have handled things differently in a sense that her kids could have relied on her rather than Rose Mary herself having to rely on her children to do her job for her as a mother and as a teacher.
