preview

Motherhood In The Bean Trees

Decent Essays

How Does Motherhood Affect a Child? How does motherhood affect a child? There is a tremendous range of different ways to raise a child. Some say, having two parents is better than a single parent. Some say a single parent can do a fine job of raising their child. But, somehow a parent or both parents influence the way their child thinks, or accomplish in life. In The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, she writes about how Taylor is influenced by different people to carry out decisions about Turtle and the way she looks in life. Taylor’s mother is a single mom, who took care of Taylor all her life when Taylor’s father left her pregnant. Leading to Taylor having an ideology of women not needing men in their life. Taylor starts to become extremely …show more content…

This is important due to her want for a traditional family, it slowly leads Taylor into thinking a traditional family isn’t so atrocious. As Lou Ann and Taylor establish a friendship, working together when, Lou Ann’s husband leaves her pregnant and goes off joining the rodeo like the mothers of the “1960-2016 period, the percentage of children living with only their mother nearly tripled from 8 to 23 percent” (Bureau). This leading to her being insecure in her new role as provider and mother to her son Dwayne Ray. She no longer has someone in charge telling her what to do and nobody to follow. This leads her to be more confident in herself as she starts to slowly become independent in taking care of Dwayne Ray. This is important for the sake of Taylor as she starts to become insecure and no longer confident in being a parent to Turtle. Lou Ann can give her the best advice and Taylor can easily understand as she saw Lou Ann’s journey in aggrandizing her confidence and independence. Because Taylor saw Lou Ann’s journey she can then apply this to her own journey in officially adopting …show more content…

She starts to be a more realistic mother as she learns as she goes and starts to appreciate having Turtle as long as she can. She especially feels this when Esperanza tries to take her life. In the moment Taylor finds out Esperanza lost her daughter leading to Taylor taking further precautions with Turtle. She starts to relate to Esperanza when someone at the park tries to take Turtle away. This is important because it makes Taylor inaugurate being a mother seriously and aggrandizing a realistic view on motherhood. She starts to think better about the decisions she’s going to carry out and how it’s going to affect Turtle. Such as when she’s about to adopt Turtle she thinks earnestly about if Turtle is better off with her being the mother or going through the foster

Get Access