Well, I'll start off with the good. I found that this Marylee's voice was a compelling one. I kept reading and wanted to keep on reading to find out what happens/happened. I found the images she gave and the pictures of her life she painted were strong and well defined, I wanted to keep reading to find out more about her and her family. To see what happened, and how events unfolded.
However, there were two things that did get to me though, one was this idea that a "good wife" needs to submit completely to her husbands wishes in order to be a "good wife" a " kind of person—who could just go with the flow."(PG.14). This is not something I agree with. I can understand that this is how Marylee felt, but I just wish better for her. I feel that her ideal of a "good wife" is causing her pain. Though it does seem that she may have stood her ground as the book starts out by saying that she lives in California while her husband lives in Arizona. On a side note, I wonder if he regrets his decision to put his career over his wife or if that is not something he thinks about. I wonder if that will be explored in this book. Also a honeymoon to a sewage treatment plant (PG. 30) really?! Personally staying home and doing nothing would be a better honeymoon than that.
The second thing that bothered me is more personal to me, but this book makes it sound like adoptive parents can never be as good as birth parents. See PG. 17 and the quote starting with "The [adopted] child actually experiences being left alone by the biological mother and being handed over to strangers" to see what I mean. As someone who biologically cannot have children with my partner, being an adoptive parent would be the only means I would have to have children. The implication that I could never be as good of a parent because I didn't pop them out of my "who-ha" personally seems misguided. I feel non-biological parents are just as capable of unconditional love as biological parents (but admittedly I have a biases).
So overall I feel mixed. I'm interested to see where things go and how Marylee's relationship with her family and her son John progress. But I also feel like there are some things in here that just don't gel with me personally.
However, there were two things that did get to me though, one was this idea that a "good wife" needs to submit completely to her husbands wishes in order to be a "good wife" a " kind of person—who could just go with the flow."(PG.14). This is not something I agree with. I can understand that this is how Marylee felt, but I just wish better for her. I feel that her ideal of a "good wife" is causing her pain. Though it does seem that she may have stood her ground as the book starts out by saying that she lives in California while her husband lives in Arizona. On a side note, I wonder if he regrets his decision to put his career over his wife or if that is not something he thinks about. I wonder if that will be explored in this book. Also a honeymoon to a sewage treatment plant (PG. 30) really?! Personally staying home and doing nothing would be a better honeymoon than that.
The second thing that bothered me is more personal to me, but this book makes it sound like adoptive parents can never be as good as birth parents. See PG. 17 and the quote starting with "The [adopted] child actually experiences being left alone by the biological mother and being handed over to strangers" to see what I mean. As someone who biologically cannot have children with my partner, being an adoptive parent would be the only means I would have to have children. The implication that I could never be as good of a parent because I didn't pop them out of my "who-ha" personally seems misguided. I feel non-biological parents are just as capable of unconditional love as biological parents (but admittedly I have a biases).
So overall I feel mixed. I'm interested to see where things go and how Marylee's relationship with her family and her son John progress. But I also feel like there are some things in here that just don't gel with me personally.