Bad Parenting and Tough Kids in The Glass Castle


Kids are resilient. That’s evident in Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, where from the beginning when the author is boiling her own hot dogs at age three and is horribly burned, a series of nightmares begins that made up the author’s and her siblings’ lives.

Enter their parents: Rex and Rose Mary. Rex escaped his own troubled childhood in West Virginia to become an alcoholic, an often hired/often fired mining engineer and electrician, an affectionate yet manipulative father, and philandering husband. Rose Mary, an artist whose parenting style is extremely hands off, is neglectful or her children and enables her husband’s bad behavior.

The Glass Castle catalogs the children’s survival, taking them from one side of the United States to the other as the family avoids debt and homelessness by constantly moving. From San Francisco to West Virginia, we see them scrounge in dumpsters for food, outdo their peers at the latest school because their homeschooling apparently was pretty good, and shed blood because of their parents’ child rearing styles.

Walls’ retelling feels at times like a laundry list of bad behavior told well. As the parents’ questionable choices add up, it leaves the reader feeling desperate for a respite. It finally comes when Jeannette and most of her siblings escape their parents for life in New York City, where the author attends Barnard College. She never emotionally abandons her parents, instead accepts them for who they are, regardless of the heartbreak and scars they inflicted. It’s admirable, but also frustrating. There is never a big emotional payoff when she tells off her parents; rather, she accepts that her father steals all her money, that her mother tells her that the author’s uncle’s attempted molestation of her is a matter of perception, and that her dad tosses the family cat out the car window during one of their getaways.

When Walls finally has her own life in New York, she subtly credits her tough upbringing for getting her there. When mom and dad follow her to the city and end up homeless, she once again accepts that this is the life they choose, even as she chooses differently. The author spends little time musing on what all of it means, but instead just keeps moving forward. The nonjudgmental tone is interesting and infuriating.

Thank you to Tonya Grifkin (a.k.a. Dragon) for recommending The Glass Castle.

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