A perfect childhood may consist of many different components. Some may be involved in every sport, play every instrument, or have everything they ask for. However, almost all have a perfect in-love pair of parents, getting a good education in a stable home. Although not all people get to experience this perfect childhood such as Jeannette Walls. According to Merriam- Webster dictionary neglect is defined as giving little attention or respect to: disregard. Jeannette shares her story in her memoir, The Glass Castle, of herself and her siblings in which physical, emotional, medical, and educational neglect is clearly evident.
Rose Mary seemed to find Rex the only one guilty of ruining the Walls children's lives. Rose Mary was just as guilty as her husband considering she would allow Rex to act this way without any form of confrontation. She would rather stay out of Rex’s way than take action for the best interest of the kids. “The rest of [them] had to get used to stepping over broken furniture and shattered glass (Walls 113),” is a clear example that Rose Mary will be careless about the children's emotional health. No child should have to learn to live with him in the aftermath of their parent's rampages and emotional issues.
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The Walls children felt like they were a hardship to their parents, no child should feel such a way to their family. When Jeannette fell out of her parents moving car she felt “they might decide that it wasn’t worth the drive back to retrieve me; that like Quixote the cat, I was a bother and a burden they could do without (Walls 30).” The emotional trauma that is so clear at a young age is appalling, considering a young child would compare herself to a family pet they got rid of.
Every child needs the proper care of a pediatrician and doctor their whole life throughout adulthood. When parents choose to refuse medical care for their children it is almost always seen as complete carelessness. Rex Walls seemed to have his own opinion on “heads-up-their-asses med-school quacks(Walls 13).” Both of Wall’s parents actively chose to refuse medical care or chose to ignore the needs of their children, putting them in danger. Rex and Rose Mary both have fairly similar attitudes involving their parenting style. Jeannette at the age of three was severely burnt while cooking herself hotdogs. When the nurse asked her why she clearly says “Mom says I’m mature and lets me cook for myself a lot. (Walls 18)” It is clear that Rose Mary does not care for the general safety of her children considering she was letting her three-year-old cook with boiling water.
Jeannette and her siblings all thrived off neglect. While Jeanette was young, Rex taught Jeanette how to swim by simply letting her struggle until she nearly drowned then stated, “If you don’t want to sink you better figure out how to swim (Walls 66).” Although this may seem normal to some, Jeannette described the situation to be so traumatizing.
All the children endured physical neglect on a daily basis, especially when they were deprived of food and their basic needs. The children knew that if they wanted to eat, they must figure it out on their own. Considering their own mother told them “It’s not my fault if you’re hungry! (Walls 69).”
The Walls children spent their life moving cities following their father who believed he was being chased. This left no time for any of the children to be enrolled in school if they were only going to move within the next month. Rex was actually smarter than one would think, he cared about the kid's education and attempted to teach the children what he could. He would teach things such as geometry, physics, astronomy, and how to convert math homework into binary numbers. Rose was a teacher herself and taught the children the importance of literature. In third grade, Jeanette and her siblings were recognized for their love of literature and were all placed in a gifted reading class.
Rex and Rose Mary both fail to care for themselves and their children, repeatedly failing to provide life’s necessities, like basic hygiene, food, clothes, and medical care. Rex continuously focused on his abuse of alcohol and Rose Mary just ignored the children as a whole. Leaving the Walls children isolated without receiving the proper and necessary love, care, and nurture. Throughout their childhood, they endured neglect in more ways than one can simply think of or imagine. Each of the Walls children transformed their stumbling blocks, created by their parent’s dysfunctionality into stepping stones, which allowed them to strive and succeed in their own ways.
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