Kennedy Wives: Triumph and Tragedy in America's Most Public Family Read Online Free
Author: David Batcher Amber Hunt, David Batcher
11. By this time, Rose’s household staff could take over most of the basic feeding and care of the children. Underlining her approach to parenting as the management of an enterprise, she would later write of her firm belief that mothers should spend at least one day a week with their children,
to see what methods the nurse is using, what her routine is with them, whether the meals are adequate, or is she giving them the same kind of soup each day so she does not have to think of meal planning, is she putting them to bed too early just [to] be rid of them, etc. If a mother never takes care of her children, she really has no first-hand knowledge of what the nurse is doing.
A mother inculcated values, beliefs, and habits in a child, but much of the daily care could be outsourced, as it were, given the proper amount of quality assurance.
4
Leaving Boston
As a parent, Rose had the unenviable job of being the taskmaster , the disciplinarian, the one who most often said no .
Their mother “was the disciplinarian of all our headstrong impulses, and was sometimes strict,” Teddy would later write. “Spankings and whacks with a coat hanger were in her arsenal, as were banishments to the closet.”
Their father, on the other hand, got to return to a house that was always ecstatic to see him. “He would sweep them into his arms and hug them, and grin at them, and talk to them, and perhaps carry them around,” Rose later wrote. “Also, as each one became old enough to talk . . . he would want that child in bed with him for a little while each morning. And the two of them would be there propped up on pillows, with perhaps the child’s head cuddling on his shoulder, and he would talk or read a story or they would have conversations.” At least at home, Joe had the easier job: He was a cheerleader to the children, a booster, the parent whose job it was to say yes .
It was a contrast Rose only sharpened by withholding physical affection. “Rose touched her children when she spanked them,” wrote Laurence Leamer. “She touched them when she adjusted their collars or rubbed a spot of dirt off their cheek before they headed to school. But she did not touch them when she loved them. She did not grasp Joe or Jack, Rosemary or Kathleen or Eunice to her bosom, holding them and telling the child ‘I love you.’ ” In behaving this way toward her children, she was very much in line with Irish American mothers of that time. “These children were Rose’s masterwork, and to her mind it was too serious abusiness to indulge in the excesses of affection.” The sole exception was Rosemary, who, because of her disability, got the majority of Rose’s physical affection.
Though not outlandish for its time, Rose’s parenting style did lead to a strangeness and distance in her relationships with most of her children that lasted throughout their lifetimes. Jack’s attitude toward her, generally one of irritation, would never change. Interviewed in 1972, Jack’s lifelong best friend, Lem Billings, said that Joe Kennedy’s “great warmth and outgoing affection” toward his children “led kids naturally to love as well as honor” their father. “They loved their mother too but in a rather detached way, as she did them.” In later life, Jack came to have a “good working relationship” with his mother, characterized by “filial love, but never devotion, and continued feelings of irritation. He really didn’t want her around much.” From an early age, Jack’s personality prickled at formality, reveled in the sloppy yes-ness of life, bridled at no . Often, his disposition naturally placed him at odds with Rose, who preached the virtue of restraint.
But despite her strictness—or, more accurately, through her strictness—she showed the children what they were capable of. “She was a great believer in opening up many opportunities for all of us,” Eunice would write. “And though some of those things were
to see what methods the nurse is using, what her routine is with them, whether the meals are adequate, or is she giving them the same kind of soup each day so she does not have to think of meal planning, is she putting them to bed too early just [to] be rid of them, etc. If a mother never takes care of her children, she really has no first-hand knowledge of what the nurse is doing.
A mother inculcated values, beliefs, and habits in a child, but much of the daily care could be outsourced, as it were, given the proper amount of quality assurance.
4
Leaving Boston
As a parent, Rose had the unenviable job of being the taskmaster , the disciplinarian, the one who most often said no .
Their mother “was the disciplinarian of all our headstrong impulses, and was sometimes strict,” Teddy would later write. “Spankings and whacks with a coat hanger were in her arsenal, as were banishments to the closet.”
Their father, on the other hand, got to return to a house that was always ecstatic to see him. “He would sweep them into his arms and hug them, and grin at them, and talk to them, and perhaps carry them around,” Rose later wrote. “Also, as each one became old enough to talk . . . he would want that child in bed with him for a little while each morning. And the two of them would be there propped up on pillows, with perhaps the child’s head cuddling on his shoulder, and he would talk or read a story or they would have conversations.” At least at home, Joe had the easier job: He was a cheerleader to the children, a booster, the parent whose job it was to say yes .
It was a contrast Rose only sharpened by withholding physical affection. “Rose touched her children when she spanked them,” wrote Laurence Leamer. “She touched them when she adjusted their collars or rubbed a spot of dirt off their cheek before they headed to school. But she did not touch them when she loved them. She did not grasp Joe or Jack, Rosemary or Kathleen or Eunice to her bosom, holding them and telling the child ‘I love you.’ ” In behaving this way toward her children, she was very much in line with Irish American mothers of that time. “These children were Rose’s masterwork, and to her mind it was too serious abusiness to indulge in the excesses of affection.” The sole exception was Rosemary, who, because of her disability, got the majority of Rose’s physical affection.
Though not outlandish for its time, Rose’s parenting style did lead to a strangeness and distance in her relationships with most of her children that lasted throughout their lifetimes. Jack’s attitude toward her, generally one of irritation, would never change. Interviewed in 1972, Jack’s lifelong best friend, Lem Billings, said that Joe Kennedy’s “great warmth and outgoing affection” toward his children “led kids naturally to love as well as honor” their father. “They loved their mother too but in a rather detached way, as she did them.” In later life, Jack came to have a “good working relationship” with his mother, characterized by “filial love, but never devotion, and continued feelings of irritation. He really didn’t want her around much.” From an early age, Jack’s personality prickled at formality, reveled in the sloppy yes-ness of life, bridled at no . Often, his disposition naturally placed him at odds with Rose, who preached the virtue of restraint.
But despite her strictness—or, more accurately, through her strictness—she showed the children what they were capable of. “She was a great believer in opening up many opportunities for all of us,” Eunice would write. “And though some of those things were
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