Assignment 2 “Heroes of the Frontier”

Right off the bat Josie seems very disappointed with the standards of the American society and how she is expected to raise her children. She’s used to a more simpler time where she was expected to go to four mandatory events at the school that were the fall and spring parent teacher conferences, and the two different concerts that the children were singing in. This was similar to the way my elementary school was set up except for maybe one extra event that was the fall festival. Josie is upset that she is now expected to be a single mother, work forty hours a week, and make time for what she sees as unnecessary events at her children’s school such as the “mid fall solstice sing along, or the late winter sledding song craft fair and potluck. (Eggers 51)” Josie compares these events to weeds choking out flowers in a garden, rust on flora, and even communism. She thinks that these are well intentioned but ultimately harm society and relates this to a decrease in human productivity and the national GDP, which seems very drastic unless she means that the events for children are taking away from the parents’ productivity at work. I share her beliefs that the excessive amounts of events in schools can take away from the parents productivity at work and make them more stressed but it doesn’t seem like it will have that big of an impact on the GDP. The stress will be added on by other parents who have time to attend the events and say that “Its fine if you don’t attend some of the art shows but if you don’t come your children will be failures.” This is very frustrating to me and hopefully many other readers, since there are actually parents out there that shame perfectly acceptable ways of raising children, simply because one way may be different than their own way. I also share her disappointment in the amount of events there are, since it can create helicopter parents in mass quantities, therefore raising a generation of children who don’t know how to take care of themselves as well as their parents do.