Ma's Decision

During Ma's interview, the reporter asked a question that I hadn't considered before. She asked Ma whether Ma had ever considered sending Jack to an orphanage or somehow getting him out of Room. This would mean that he wouldn't have to grow up in Room, even if it meant being away from Ma. The reporter did not realize that Ma was actually the one who wanted to have Jack, and Ma viewed Jack as her "savior" because Jack gave her a reason to live. However, I realized that Ma's choice of having a child and raising it in Room could be almost seen as a form of child abuse. Even though Jack improved Ma's life drastically by giving her a reason to live, I don't think Ma really considered the child's life, and in many ways she got lucky in how well Jack turned out.

First of all, Ma was relatively young and inexperienced to have a child, and she had very little experience taking care of children. She also had no other help in raising Jack besides Old Nick, and Old Nick knew even less about child raising than Ma did. Ma seems to have raised Jack by trial and error, and she got lucky that she was able to raise such an intelligent child. Ma also didn't know that Old Nick wouldn't hurt or abuse Jack, and if Old Nick had wanted to, Ma could not have done anything to stop him. It surprised me how little Old Nick seemed to know about the child, and I was also surprised by the fact that in 5 years, Old Nick had never once seen Jack. Another risk that Ma took was that she had to hope that Jack would stay healthy, and although she did a good job of making sure he washed his hands to keep germs away, she could not guarantee that he wouldn't get an illness, and she would not have been able to treat him, especially given how reluctant Old Nick was to get medicine during the "great escape." Ma could not have known that all of these bad things would not happen to Jack, so she was risking a lot when she decided that she wanted a child.

Although many of the things that could have gone wrong with Ma's raising of Jack did not happen, we do not know if or how severe the problems with Jack are. First of all, Jack was obviously not getting enough nutrition, as seen by his small size. This is not surprising given how little food we see Jack and Ma eating in Room, and also the low quality of the food. Jack also has many problems with spacial perception, and although the doctors seemed to think he would get better at judging long distances, there is no way to know for sure. Finally, Ma was obviously not planning for the distant future when she had Jack, because it would have been extremally hard, if not impossible, for Ma to keep Jack satisfied in the room for more than a couple years after he had turned 5, and after that some sort of confrontation between Old Nick and Jack would have occurred. Overall, although I understand that Jack saved Ma by giving her a purpose in life, I also think that she perhaps should have thought through the consequences of having a child, even though in the novel she got lucky and nothing terrible happened to Jack.