Blog #3

After reading Erica Martinez's, "Dutiful Hijas: Dependency, Power and Guilt," I made a connection to another text. Martinez talks about how as a daughter she is like her mother's "social security" and will have to take care of her mother as if the roles of parent and child were switched. In another one of my classes I read, "Who's the Parent Now," by Julia T. Wood. Wood writes about a character, Kate who has to take care of her own family, marriage and now her mother. Although Martinez did not have family of her own, I found these two pieces of work relatable. Both Martinez and Kate felt guilty for not really wanted to help out their mothers. They did not want to come off as selfish, but they both just wanted to continue on with their own lives and not be held down by caring for their mothers. Also another similarty is that Martinez mentions how her friends brothers are not expected to take care of the mothers, which is considered to be a double standard. In "Who's the Parent Now," Kate is annoyed at the fact that her brother Sandy does not have to give up his own life to help aid his mother. It is seen in both situations that daughters take on the role of caretaker for their parents and not the sons. In the end for both situations both women get their independence back. I found it interesting to how Martinez's writing is relatable to so many other women, not just of her culture either. Martinez as well as many other women fictional or not, deal with the same struggles of having to parent their own parent as well as facing guilt.