The principal theme explored by "I Stand Here Ironing" involves the powerful and mysterious bond between mothers and daughters. The drama of the story derives from the narrator's struggle with guilt at allowing her first daughter to endure pain and privation in her youth. Furthermore, the mother seems to suffer from a kind of anxiety at the realization that her child has developed into a person fully independent of her.

The story opens with what seems like a direct address: "I Stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron." Throughout the rest of the story the narrator does vacillate between feeling guilt and recalling the extenuating circumstances that absolve her.

What provokes this evaluation of her child's upbringing is a note from a teacher, counselor, or social worker. It reads, in part, "I wish you would manage the...