The American poet Linda Pastan published "To a Daughter Leaving Home" in her 1998 collection Carnival Evening. The poem is addressed to the speaker's daughter and recounts a memory in which the speaker teaches the daughter how to ride a bike. At first, the daughter tries to find her balance while the speaker remains by her side. Soon enough, though, the daughter zooms away, terrifying the speaker in the process. The speaker quickly sees how happy and thrilled the daughter is to be riding a bike on her own, however, and in this way the poem spotlights both the anxieties and joys of parenthood.
The poem opens with the speaker talking directly to the daughter, recounting what it was like to teach the daughter how to ride a bike. The speaker recalls what it was like to awkwardly walk next to the daughter as she tried to find her balance on two wheels. The speaker's mouth opened in an expression of surprise, growing round like the wheels of the bike, when the daughter finally rode forward and left the speaker behind by rolling around the gentle curve of the park pathway. Unable to keep up, the speaker nervously worried something bad might happen, fearing that the daughter might slam to the ground while the speaker was still running to reach her. While thinking this, the speaker watched the daughter get farther and farther away, and the farther she went, the more the speaker worried that she might get hurt. The daughter, however, started pedaling hard and fast, triumphantly yelling out and laughing in exhilaration while her hair blew in the wind as if she were using a handkerchief to wave goodbye to her parent.
“To a Daughter Leaving Home” spotlights how hard it can be for parents to step back and let their children experience the world on their own. The speaker recalls teaching the daughter how to ride a bike, a memory that illustrates the mixture of support and worry that often defines parenting. To that end, the speaker wants to help the daughter learn to ride on her own, but as soon as the daughter actually rides away, the speaker starts to worry about her. In turn, the poem invites readers to consider the irony inherent to parenting, which is that many parents who want to give their children independence find it difficult to let go when the children actually strike out on their own.
It’s clear that the speaker wants to help the daughter become self-sufficient. While the daughter “wobble[s]” on the bicycle, the speaker remains by her side, following her but letting her balance on her own. The fact that the speaker doesn’t actually hold the daughter up further suggests that the speaker genuinely wants the daughter to learn how to do this by herself.
However, this doesn’t mean it’s easy for the speaker to actually let go of the daughter. In fact, the speaker is startled and scared when the young girl finally rides ahead. In this moment, the daughter ventures beyond the safety of the speaker’s presence, causing the speaker to run after her, worrying all the while that she might crash.
Of course, watching the daughter ride away distresses the speaker, but it’s worth keeping in mind that this is a dilemma of the speaker’s own making. After all, the reason the speaker taught the daughter how to balance and pedal in the first place was so the daughter could eventually ride on her own. In this way, the speaker’s effort to give the daughter independence ends up making the speaker very anxious.
With this in mind, it’s worth considering that the poem is called “To a Daughter Leaving Home.” Indeed, the poem is addressed to the daughter, who is now older and about to move away from home. Because the daughter is setting off on her own once and for all, the speaker remembers what it was like to watch her wobble away on the bike, since that experience required the speaker to step back and let the daughter be independent. And though the speaker vividly remembers the fear of watching the daughter ride away, the memory isn’t completely negative. Rather, the speaker also remembers the daughter’s exhilarated laughter and the image of her hair blowing in the wind, memories that are positive and full of happiness. In turn, readers see that, although teaching children to be independent is difficult and scary, it’s also deeply rewarding for parents to see their children flourish on their own—even if this means letting them go.
When I taught ...
... you wobbled away
Readers can assume from the poem's title that the "you" being addressed in this opening line (an example of apostrophe) is the speaker's daughter, and that she is about to move out of the speaker's home for the first time.
The fact that the daughter is about to strike out on her own prompts the speaker to remember another time, years earlier, when the daughter similarly demonstrated her independence, albeit on a smaller scale: when she first learned to ride a bike at age eight.
Pay close attention to what actually happens in this memory. The speaker doesn't physically help the daughter balance on the bike even though the young girl is "wobbl[ing]" as she rides. Instead, the speaker simply stays nearby, "loping along" without steadying the daughter.
This is important because it suggests that the speaker wants to give the daughter space to learn how to do this by herself. After all, if the speaker physically helped the daughter balance, then the daughter would never figure out how to balance on her own. In turn, these opening lines demonstrate the fact that granting children a certain amount of independence is an important part of childhood.
The speaker's tone is contemplative and somewhat emotional. This is made evident by the caesura in line 3, as the speaker pauses briefly before thinking more specifically about what it was like to stand by the daughter while she learned to ride a bike on her own:
a bicycle, || loping along
beside you
The pause between the words "bicycle" and "loping" draws attention to the speaker's nostalgic tone, giving the poem a slow, thoughtful sound that suggests the speaker is melancholy because the daughter is about to leave home.
The poem doesn't have a set meter or rhyme scheme, instead relying on enjambment to create its rhythm. The speaker stretches single phrases over multiple lines, creating a sensation of forward momentum that evokes the feeling of the speaker's daughter moving further and further away. The reader is pulled down the page, just as the daughter is pulled forward on her bicycle.
on two round ...
... of the park,
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Get LitCharts A+I kept waiting ...
... to catch up,
while you grew ...
... for your life,
screaming ...
... goodbye.
The entire poem is a direct address to the speaker's daughter and uses apostrophe throughout. If the title itself weren't enough to establish that the poem is addressed to a specific person, the first three lines make it abundantly clear:
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle [...]
By beginning the poem this way, the speaker strikes a nostalgic tone. This tone is emphasized by the fact that the speaker is addressing the daughter directly, wanting to fondly remember the time the speaker taught her how to ride a bike. In this way, the speaker allows readers to observe what otherwise feels like a private conversation about a cherished and important memory. Knowing that the poem has been written to mark the daughter's departure from home makes it seem even more personal and special, as if readers have been given the opportunity to witness a momentous occasion in the speaker's relationship with the daughter.
From a technical standpoint, the speaker's use of apostrophe is also made clear by the simple fact that the words "you" and "your" appear frequently. This, in turn, serves as a constant reminder of the speaker's desire to communicate directly with this young woman.
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Get LitCharts A+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.
Running or moving quickly in long strides.
"To a Daughter Leaving Home" does not adhere to any particular poetic form. Instead, it develops over the course of 24 unstructured lines, all of which are quite short. Many of these lines are enjambed and run easily into each other, creating a fairly smooth flow that pulls readers down the page. This creates a sensation of forward momentum that reflects the daughter moving away from her parent. That the poem has no formal constraints is also notable because the easy, unbothered organization of the lines reflects the unchecked independence and freedom the daughter achieves by learning how to ride a bike.
The poem is written in free verse, meaning that it lacks a consistent metrical pattern. However, the lines are all roughly the same length, though the number of syllables varies from line to line, ranging from a line with just two syllables to a line with eight syllables. This use of free verse aligns with the free-flowing feel that ultimately mirrors the young daughter's newfound sense of freedom and independence.
"To a Daughter Leaving Home" does not have a set rhyme scheme. There are a few rhymes in the poem, but most of these are slant rhymes. For example, take the slant rhyme that occurs between "crash" and "catch" in lines 13 and 14 ("of your ... catch up"). As a result, the various qualities that define the poem have very little to do with rhyming, as the speaker is more interested in recounting the memory of teaching the daughter to ride a bike than creating lines that sound particularly musical. The poem is loose and unstructured, reflecting the freedom the daughter finds as she learns to ride a bike.
The speaker of "To a Daughter Leaving Home" is a parent who remembers teaching a daughter how to ride a bike. The speaker's gender is never made clear, but many readers will perhaps assume that the speaker is a woman, attributing the voice to Linda Pastan herself, since Pastan does indeed have a daughter. However, there isn't quite enough identifying information in the poem to conclude that the speaker is actually Pastan. In any case, what's most important to grasp is that the speaker is a parent who nostalgically rehashes this memory of the daughter as a child. In doing so, the speaker reveals a mixture of sadness, worry, and pride, emotions that arise when parents let go of their children once and for all by sending them off into the adult world.
The memory that the speaker recounts in the poem takes place on the pathway of a public park, as the speaker teaches the daughter how to ride a bike. Beyond this, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the surrounding context, since the speaker doesn't include any details that illuminate the time or specific location in which this scene plays out. After all, the poem's focus on the joys and anxieties of parenthood is universal, and the story the speaker recounts could take place almost anywhere.
"To a Daughter Leaving Home" belongs to a category of poetry devoted to exploring the ins and outs of parenthood. This topic has interested poets for quite some time, as made apparent by poems like Ben Jonson's 1616 poem "On My First Son," William Butler Yeats's 1919 poem "A Prayer for My Daughter," or Langston Hughes's 1922 poem "Mother to Son."
However, "To a Daughter Leaving Home" has a much more contemporary sensibility than these older poems, since it was published in 1998. To that end, the poem uses the kind of unencumbered free verse that became especially popular during Postmodernism and became even more widespread at the beginning of the 21st century.
In keeping with this, the poem's focus on memory, familial relationships, and everyday life aligns it with contemporary poetry's interest in exploring that which is ordinary but nonetheless full of emotion and beauty. In this way, her work is comparable to the work of poets like Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, or Ross Gay, since all of these poets pay close attention to the small, seemingly mundane moments that make life feel poignant—moments that are often recreated or recalled using free verse and a lyrical tone of voice.
As previously mentioned, "To a Daughter Leaving Home" was originally published in 1998. On the whole, the 1990s was a relatively stable, calm decade in the United States, at least considering that the country wasn't actively at war for the majority of the decade and that the economy was healthy—two measures that, however noteworthy, don't ultimately make up for the countless socioeconomic and racial injustices that were very much alive during the time. Still, many people view the 1990s as a time of stability, which is why it's unsurprising that contemporary poetry began to look more and more at the nuances of everyday life.
It is in this context that "To a Daughter Leaving Home" was published. Though the poem doesn't include any details to suggest when, exactly, it takes place, the fact that it was written in the 1990s makes sense, since the poem's interests align with contemporary poetry's renewed focus on family and home life—a focus that has remained intact throughout the 2000s and 2010s (though in the last decade contemporary poetry has once more begun to address social justice issues that in some ways recalls the kind of poetry that emerged from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s). "To a Daughter Leaving Home," then, is a strong representation of the calm, introspective poetry that was often typical of the late 1990s.
The Poet Reads Her Work — Listen to Linda Pastan herself read several of her most popular poems.
In Conversation — To hear more about Pastan's approach to poetry, check out to this conversation between her and the poet Lucille Clifton.
The Poem Out Loud — Check out this reading of the poem.
More About Pastan — To learn more about Linda Pastan, take a look at this concise overview of her life and work.
The Poet at Home — A window into Pastan's enviable home, where she lived and wrote until 2018.