Tillie Olsen captures the overwhelming love a mother has for her child in I Stand Here Ironing. The story is an example of the struggle of unconditional love and guilt, which go hand-in-hand in motherhood. The narrator in this story is a middle aged mother who has an inner dialogue rehashing the events of her daughter's life while ironing.
             The dialogue is a response to an unnamed person, perhaps a teacher who requests "I wish you would manage the time to come in a talk with me about your daughter. I'm sure you can help me understand her. She's a youngster who needs help and whom I'm deeply interested in helping" (687). At first, the mother seems upset by the implication that she may be able to help someone understand her daughter, perhaps she takes offense to the person saying her daughter, Emily, needs help. She then lets herself slip into the memories of the past as she recalls Emily as a baby:
             I nursed her. They feel that's important nowadays. I nursed all the children, but with her, with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, I did it like the books then said. Though her cries battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with swollenness, I waited till the clock decreed. Why do I put that first? I do not know if it even matters, or if it explains anything. (688)
             This statement explains a great deal, however, because if it didn't matter, then she wouldn't have thought it. This statement shows the vulnerability of the mother who pushed aside her intuition and nursed her baby 'by the book'. She makes this statement because she now, in her later years feels guilt about the way she began her 'career' as a mother. The narrator further goes on to relive decisions she made as a young mother: She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at al...