Helen Garner clearly draws on personal experience and thoughts in the writing of The Children's Bach. The story has many themes, and one of the most prominent revolves around sexist jokes, the lack of mothers and disrupted family life, but particularly on the `ideal' family that Garner has moulded.

Dexter believes he has the perfect family. He has to children, one of them the same hopeless traditionalist as him, and a devoted wife who exists to give him attention and to be his audience. However, later in the novel, the reader comes to notice that there are every few examples of happy family life in The Children's Bach. One example is Vicki and Elizabeth's awkward sibling relationship because their mother died, leaving Elizabeth in a situation of responsibility she had never expected; `Is the elder one to be sister, or mother"' The next is the absence of...