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“We Remember Your Childhood Well” Introduction
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"We Remember Your Childhood Well" is a poem by British poet Carol Ann Duffy, published in her 1990 collection "The Other Country." Told from the perspective of parents responding to the accusations of their presumably grown child, it deals with the vastly different ways in which parents and children may remember the same events. The parents' authoritative tone suggests the harm parents may inflict on their children by refusing to acknowledge their children's point of view, while the poem's ambiguity allows readers to focus less on whose interpretation of events is right and more on the family's inability to communicate successfully.
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“We Remember Your Childhood Well” Summary
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A set of parents tell their (now presumably adult) daughter—who has apparently just leveled some sort of accusation at them—that no one harmed her when she was younger. The parents insist that no one switched the light off then had an argument that lasted throughout the night. Whatever "bad man" she remembers being out in the uncultivated fields was just something from a movie, the parents say, adding that no one locked the door.
The parents insist that they've answered their child's questions completely, before adding that whatever she has just accused them of never actually happened. She was never much a singer anyway, the parents say, and then insist that this wasn't something she cared about. Whatever moment she has apparently brought up is fuzzy, a comic book dying of laughter in the fire over the coals. No one really knows what happened.
The parents go on to insist that no one ever made the child do anything against her will. She had wanted to go, having in fact pleaded with her parents to do so. She picked out the dress for the day herself. The parents then pull out pictures from that day as proof. "Look at you," the parents say, before pointing out how the whole family is smiling in the photographs and waving at the camera, everyone younger than they are now. The parents say that she is simply imagining this whole thing.
Her memories are just vague feelings, the parents insist, whereas they themselves recall the objective truth of things. They were the ones in control. What she called the "secret police" of her youth was older, smarter, and larger than her. Remember the sound of their booming voices.
The parents insist that no one ever sent her to live with someone else, declaring that this event was simply an extra vacation with people she seemed to enjoy being around. These people were strict, sure, but there was nothing scary about them. If something made her upset, the parents add, it was her own fault.
The parents ask why any of this even matters at this point, going on to deny that anyone stained her soul with immorality, leaving her ready for Hell. The parents insist that they always loved her, and that they did whatever was best for her. They have a clear memory of her childhood.
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“We Remember Your Childhood Well” Themes
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Unquestioned Parental Authority
In “We Remember Your Childhood Well,” parents deny a series of accusations leveled against them by their (presumably now-adult) child. Rather than asking questions, expressing remorse, or acknowledging their child’s point of view, the parents instead choose to flat-out deny their child’s experience, insisting only their own memories are incorrect. In this way, the poem implicitly critiques the parents’ insistence on their authority over their child’s, suggesting that their dismissive and domineering tone does more harm than good by cutting off communication and the possibility of reconciling.
The poem opens with the parents denying accusations made against them by their adult child. The parents begin by saying, “Nobody hurt you.” This implies that they have been accused of either hurting their child or of allowing someone else to do so (the degree of hurt isn’t indicated; the poem is purposefully vague).
Likewise, when the parents insist that “the secret police of [their child’s] childhood was older and wiser” than the child was, the reader is able to infer that the now-adult child has accused the parents of being authoritarian and covert, controlling and secretive. And, indeed, the parents' present tone supports this accusation of control and secrecy. By insisting on the accuracy of their own memories and the inaccuracy of the child’s, the parents leave no room for nuance or the possibility of mutual understanding. By presenting themselves as authorities, they deny their child’s right to their own version of what happened, and more importantly, their refusal to engage does real damage by disallowing anyone to move forward and heal from real or perceived past harms.
The parents move back and forth between flat-out denial of events (“That didn’t occur”) and dismissive explanations for why the child remembered things differently (“The bad man on the moors / was only a movie you saw”). They also claim that the child couldn’t have “cared less” about something the parents did. In other words, the parents see themselves as authorities not just in terms of what did or didn’t happen, but also in terms of their child’s feelings regarding those events.
The parents claim to have the “facts” as opposed to the “impressions” remembered by the child. This juxtaposition of childhood memory with adult authority is meant to convince the adult child that the parents had good reasons for everything that they did—reasons that weren’t divulged to the child because they were not as “old,” “wise,” or “big” as their parents.
They also tell their child that “There was none but yourself to blame if it ended in tears.” This statement not only puts the blame on the child for any hurt endured, but it also cuts off any attempt at communication. Their child is then left with not only the hurt of the event itself, but also a sense of responsibility for it having happened.
The parents tell their child that “The whole thing is inside your head.” In other words: the child’s memories and feelings aren’t valid. This is meant to undermine the child’s authority over her own experience, rendering her suspicious of her own memories and perceptions, and preventing any potential reconciliation or healing. Unyielding parental authority in the poem is thus presented as both cruel and dangerous.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-18
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Denial and Self-Delusion
In addition to critiquing absolute parental authority, the poem also explores the mechanisms of self-delusion and denial. The speaker's parents wish to convince their child that her youth was happy and that her recollections of unhappiness are simply untrue. The parents' unwillingness to compromise or consider the child’s point of view casts the parents in a suspicious light, however; it seems that their perception of themselves as good and loving parents is more important to them than their child’s need for clarity and accountability. In this way, the poem implies that the parents’ denial is not so much an attempt to convince the child that she had a happy childhood, but rather self-delusion driven by guilt and fear: they don’t want to have to see themselves through their child’s eyes.
Throughout the poem, the parents try to convince their adult child that her painful recollections are false and that she in fact had a happy childhood. The parents refuse to genuinely reflect on or engage with their child's accusations, instead claiming that the child’s “questions were answered fully” and going on to point out a photograph of the family “smiling and waving” as evidence of how happy the child once was.
They also tell their child that they never sent her away, and that the event in question was simply “an extra holiday.” The parents clearly want their child to believe that this decision was made in the interest of her happiness and not for the parents’ own benefit—something that seems more than a bit suspicious in light of the child’s earlier mention of someone “turn[ing] off the light and argu[ing] with someone else all night.” The child wants answers for why she was sent away; instead the parents are insisting she wasn't sent away at all, but treated to an extra vacation with people she “seemed to like.”
It's clear from the parents’ lack of questions or concessions that they are not interested in the child’s perspective, and readers might read the parents' rigid insistence on their own recollections as evidence of guilt—of them not wanting to face the past in its entirety. Their declaration of love at the end of the poem thus feels less reassuring than defensive, as ultimately their perception of themselves as good and loving parents seems more important to them than their child’s need for acknowledgement of what she experienced.
Tellingly, the only question the parents ask throughout the entirety of the poem is a rhetorical one: “What does it matter now?” The parents want to believe that despite their child’s anger and hurt, the child is in fact unharmed. Their question isn’t meant to be answered but is rather meant to imply that in fact none of it matters now; all this dredging up of the past is unnecessary.
To that end, the parents’ repetitiveness is almost desperate. They say “no, no, nobody left the skidmarks of sin / on your soul.” This repeated denial feels less like certainty and more like a plea not to see what they’re being asked to acknowledge, which is something that is potentially quite dark (the child presumably having claimed to have been “left wide open for Hell”) and would be painful for them to recognize.
Ultimately, the poem implies that the parents wish to control the way their child thinks and feels about her own childhood because they don’t want to take responsibility for having hurt her. They would rather their child believe she misremembered and misunderstood everything than admit to any nuance or possibility of failure on their own part. And only by misleading their child are they able to continue their own self-delusion.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-18
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Perception and Memory
"We Remember Your Childhood Well" illustrates the way people can have vastly different recollections of the same event. This is especially true for parents and children, as parents often have access to more information and a broader understanding of what's going on beneath the surface of things. Children are highly perceptive, however; despite their lack of understanding, they often see and experience more of what's going on in a given situation than parents realize. The poem never lands on any objective "truth" of what actually occurred in this particular family's past, but rather focuses on the contrasting experiences of the parents and child, suggesting the importance of simply recognizing these differences in perception and memory.
Early in the poem, the parents respond to their child's memory of somebody "turn[ing] off the light and argu[ing] / with someone else all night" by saying that it never happened. While the reader can't be certain of whose memory is correct, the parents' following claim that "The bad man on the moors / was only a movie [the child] saw" throws their own memory into question, as the events implied by the child could very conceivably be in reference to the real and widely televised Moors Murders.
It's easy to imagine that if the parents had been aware of the events surrounding these murders at the time, then they really would have locked the door and perhaps tried to conceal the events from their child to keep her from being frightened. The poem is purposefully ambiguous regarding whose memory is actually correct; what is important is the difference in their recollections.
Later, the child seems to recall being "forced" to go somewhere she didn't want to go. The parents claim that "the whole thing is inside [the child's] head." They have proof, or so they think: they point to photographs from that day when everyone, including the child, is "smiling and waving."
While this doesn't necessarily prove that the child wanted to go, it does throw the child's memory of the day into question. Yet perhaps something happened later in the day that spoiled her memory of the event, or perhaps the parents are confusing two different days. Ultimately it doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong; it matters that they are unable to talk about the fact that they remember it differently.
When the parents claim that the child only has impressions while they themselves "have the facts," they're arguing that they have a broader understanding of what was going on due to cognitive differences between adults and children, and due to the fact that they were in charge—they "called the tune." The child's memories may not be as clear due to her age at the time of the events in question and limited awareness of the context of any given situation.
But what the parents fail to acknowledge is that facts aren't the only form of truth; the child's "impressions"—how she felt and what she believed—are also worthy of consideration. The poem implies the importance of acknowledging these differing perceptions and memories, suggesting that there is no one authority when it comes to the past, but rather the ability to reconcile different points of view.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-18
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “We Remember Your Childhood Well”
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Lines 1-2
Nobody hurt you. ...
... else all night.The poem begins with two negative statements: "Nobody hurt you" and "Nobody turned off the light and argued / with somebody else all night." Because these statements are phrased in the negative, it's safe to assume that the person being addressed by the speaker has accused or at least suggested what the statements are negating: that someone hurt them, and that someone turned off the light and argued with somebody else all night.
This opening, combined with the title—"We Remember Your Childhood Well"—pretty quickly establishes this poem as a conversation between a parent or parents and a child, the latter's childhood being the object of discussion.
The poem also quickly establishes its tone (i.e., its attitude or character) as being rather vague and defensive. The use of anaphora is effective: the word "nobody" is oddly nonspecific. One can imagine that the child either accused the parents of hurting her or of allowing her to be hurt by a specific other person, yet the speaker doesn't respond by saying "I didn't hurt you" or "we didn't hurt you" or "so-and-so didn't hurt you." Instead, there is this vague, repetitive rebuttal: nobody did this.
This allows the speaker to repeat the things the child is remembering so that the poem reveals the child's perspective without actually giving her a voice. The perspective of the poem is the "We" from the title. By saying "Nobody hurt you" instead of "We didn't hurt you," the speaker also seems to assert a kind of omniscient authority—not only are they certain that they didn't hurt the child, but they are confident (or at least professing confidence) that no one else did.
The internal rhyme between "light" in the first line and "night" in the second is a subtle way of juxtaposing (or highlighting the contrast between) the parents' point of view and the child's. It is reminiscent of the phrase "like night and day"—in other words, their perspectives couldn't be more different.
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Lines 2-3
The bad man ...
... locked the door.
Unlock all 343 words of this analysis of Lines 2-3 of “We Remember Your Childhood Well,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
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Lines 4-6
Your questions were ...
... fire. Anyone's guess. -
Lines 7-9
Nobody forced you. ...
... inside your head. -
Line 10
What you recall ... have the facts.
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Lines 10-12
We called the ...
... Boom. Boom. Boom. -
Lines 13-15
Nobody sent you ...
... ended in tears. -
Line 16
What does it matter now?
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Lines 16-17
No, no, nobody ...
... open for Hell. -
Lines 17-18
You were loved. ...
... your childhood well.
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“We Remember Your Childhood Well” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Anaphora
The poem's use of anaphora adds authority and a sense of exacerbated insistence to the speaker's tone. That anaphora itself is subtle, however; the most commonly repeated word ("Nobody") is only used a total of six times (so once per stanza, on average), and after the first two times, which happen successively, the anaphora is interrupted by sentences and even entire stanzas in which anaphora doesn't appear. (In fact, one might argue that after the first stanza, the recurrence of the word "Nobody" is just regular repetition and not anaphora at all.)
Despite the anaphora only being used heavily in the first stanza of the poem, the effect of it is huge. By front-loading the poem with the repetition of the word "nobody," the poet sets up an expectation for this kind of insistent denial that the reader feels echoing throughout the rest of the poem, even though sentences vary more often than not.
The repetition of the word "Nobody" has somewhat of a haunting effect as well. The parents deny the accuracy of their child's memories, but rather than saying "we didn't do that" or "so-and-so didn't do that," they use the word "Nobody." Somehow this phrasing is more ambiguous, more evasive than if they were to say "I didn't do that" or "that's not how I remember it."
There are also smaller moments of anaphora with the repetition of "we," as in:
[...] we have the facts. We called the tune.
And:
We did what was best. We remember your childhood well.
This anaphora places repeated emphasis on the parents' point of view and authority.
Where anaphora appears in the poem:- Line 1: “Nobody,” “Nobody”
- Line 3: “Nobody”
- Line 7: “Nobody”
- Line 10: “we,” “We”
- Line 13: “Nobody”
- Line 16: “No, no, nobody”
- Line 18: “We,” “We”
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Juxtaposition
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Allusion
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Parallelism
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Epizeuxis
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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Metaphor
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Imagery
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Enjambment
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Rhetorical Question
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“We Remember Your Childhood Well” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- The bad man on the moors
- Film Fun
- Secret police
- Skidmarks
The bad man on the moors-
(Location in poem: Lines 2-3: “The bad man on the moors / was only a movie you saw.”)
A reference to a famous set of murders that occurred in England between 1963-1965. The murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, were known as the "Moors Murderers," and their trial and arrest took place in 1965-1966. The trial was widely televised.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “We Remember Your Childhood Well”
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Form
"We Remember Your Childhood Well" is written in the form of a dramatic monologue, meaning that it is delivered by the speaker and intended for an audience other than the reader—in this case, the parents' child. It has 18 lines broken up into six tercets (three-line stanzas).
These tercets provide a sense of structure and rigidity even while the lines themselves are rather long. The length of the lines is in tension with the length of the poem's sentences themselves, most of which are quite short; the shortness of the sentences lends itself to the terse tone of the speaker, a tone meant to discourage communication rather than foster it.
Each stanza is related to the next and yet there is also a sense that each stanza is making its own self-contained argument; while the poem could be referencing a single set of events, it's equally possible that each stanza refers to a different contested memory from the childhood in question. In this way, the discrete stanzas help to create some of the poem's ambiguity.
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Meter
The poem is written in free verse and doesn't utilize meter of any kind. The poem's lines themselves are quite long, and any sense of rhythm in the poem comes from the presence of anaphora and rhyme rather than meter. This poem resists the steady flow that regular meter would provide, instead keeping things feeling like regular speech. This makes sense, given that the poem is meant to feel like an actual (if entirely one-sided) conversation.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem is written in free verse and does not follow a set rhyme scheme. It does have plenty of internal and end rhymes, but these don't follow a steady pattern. The lack of a set rhyme scheme adds to the poem's conversational tone, while the presence of various standalone rhymes creates a mocking, dismissive feel, reflective of the fact that the parents' don't take their child's accusations seriously.
Take the first stanza:
[...] Nobody turned off the light and argued
with somebody else all night. The bad man on the moors
[...] Nobody locked the door.The internal rhyme between "light" and "night" draws attention to these specific words, and is suggestive of the extreme contrast between the parents' recollection and the child's. Similarly, the end rhyme between "moors" and "door" seem to point in two different directions: the child's real or perceived sense of danger, and the safety insisted upon by the parents.
Moreover, the placement of the rhymes within the sentences (as opposed to the placement within the poem's lines) has a kind of closing-in effect—the rhyme seems to tie the sentence into a neat knot, making it feel rather impenetrable. This points to the way the parents use their authority to end the conversation at hand rather than continue it.
Other internal rhymes include "occur" and "blur" and "less" and "guess" in stanza 2; "away" and "holiday" in stanza 5; and "Hell" and "well" in stanza 6. The only other end rhyme is "fear" and "tears" in stanza 5. Stanzas 3 and 4 don't contain any real rhymes, though stanza four does contain assonance (the repetition of /oo/ sounds in "tune," "you," and "Boom").
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“We Remember Your Childhood Well” Speaker
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The speaker of "We Remember Your Childhood Well" is either one or both parents of the person whose childhood is in question. The pronoun "we" indicates more than one parent, but it's possible that this is one parent who is speaking on account of both parents, as parents sometimes do in order to present a united front. This would echo the other ways the speaker of the poem attempts to position themselves as an authority. Regardless of whether it is both parents or one parent speaking for both, the use of the plural has the effect of outnumbering the child, rendering her even less of an authority. (Note that the child herself is likely a daughter, given the reference to wearing a "dress" in line 8; this is why we've used female pronouns for the child throughout the poem).
The parents—regardless of whether they are lying or telling the truth (or think they are telling the truth) about events that occurred while their child was young—maintain a tone of secrecy throughout the poem, cutting off their child's attempts at communication rather than encouraging them. Despite claiming to have "the facts," they never actually fully explain anything—their answers are mostly defensive rather than expansive.
For example, they say in lines 16-17 that "nobody left the skidmarks of sin / on [the child's] soul and laid [her] wide open for Hell," but they also don't unpack this accusation. They don't ask what prompted the child to feel this way, or if perhaps something happened once they left, something of which they weren't made aware at the time. Instead, they just insist that if anything did happen to make the child cry, it was her own fault. This closes off any further attempt at communication, which is precisely the point. The parents, for whatever reason, don't want to get into the specifics of their child's accusations.
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“We Remember Your Childhood Well” Setting
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The poem doesn't have an explicit setting. It's clear that a set of parents and their child are having an unpleasant exchange, but it's not clear where the exchange is taking place.
The setting(s) for the events in question are also rather vague. In the first stanza, the family is presumably recalling their home. This seems to have been located on or near "the moors" (tracts of uncultivated land), as the child evidently thought she was in danger of being kidnapped and killed by "the bad man on the moors."
Later, the parents claim the child "wanted to go that day," but the destination in question is left unnamed. Similarly, the reader is aware that the child feels like she was "sent away," while the parents insist this was only "an extra holiday." However, because no specifics are offered, the reader can only guess at whose recollection is correct. The lack of specifics regarding setting echo the overall ambiguity and sense of secrecy in the poem.
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Literary and Historical Context of “We Remember Your Childhood Well”
Literary Context
This poem was published in Carol Ann Duffy's 1990 collection The Other Country. Duffy's work is often characterized by a working-class, queer, feminist perspective as well as a penchant for simple and colloquial language. She is known in particular for her love poems. Her work is praised for being accessible to people who don't necessarily read poetry while also exhibiting complexity and nuance. Duffy was named poet laureate of the United Kingdom in 2009, a position she held until 2019.
"We Remember Your Childhood Well" is a dramatic monologue, a form famously used by Victorian poets including Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning ("My Last Duchess"), and Christina Rossetti. More recent examples of dramatic monologues in poetry include "Eurydice" by Hilda Doolittle and T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Many of Duffy's other poems are also written as dramatic monologues, including her poem "Medusa."
Dramatic monologue falls under the umbrella of persona poetry—poetry that is written from the point of view of a persona created by the poet, and who is distinct from the poet. In this way, persona poetry is related to fiction; a persona poem is as revealing of the character narrating the poem as it is of the events or observations detailed by said character.
Historical Context
Although this poem was published in Duffy 1990, the historical event it references—the Moors Murders—occurred in 1965-1966. Duffy herself was around ten years old when Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were arrested for raping and murdering several children and burying them in the moors around Manchester, England.
Though the poet's family lived in Stafford, which is more than an hour away from the scene of Brady and Hindley's crimes, young Duffy was undoubtedly impacted by the news. This is especially evident when one considers the fact that Brady and Hindley are referenced in another of Duffy's poems, "In Mrs. Tilcher's Class."
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More “We Remember Your Childhood Well” Resources
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External Resources
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Carol Ann Duffy's Biography — Learn more about Carol Ann Duffy's life and work courtesy of the Poetry Foundation.
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A Profile of the Poet — Take a look at Carol Ann Duffy and her work in this profile by The Guardian.
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The Dramatic Monologue — A collection of other poems that, like "We Remember Your Childhood Well," utilize the form of the dramatic monologue.
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The Bad Man on the Moors — A biography of Ian Brady, the "bad man on the moors."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
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