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“My Parents” Introduction
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"My Parents," by 20th-century British poet Stephen Spender, appears in Spender's 1933 volume Poems. The poem's speaker reflects on his unhappy boyhood. He was born to middle- or upper-class parents who tried to keep him away from "rough boys" (working-class kids), fearing they'd treat him badly. But he couldn't avoid these boys altogether, and their bullying left him with lasting trauma. The poem explores tribalism and the class divide, implicitly questioning whether the speaker's parents took the right approach—or whether, in trying to shelter him, they left him more vulnerable.
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“My Parents” Summary
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The speaker recalls how his parents tried to separate him from working-class kids. Those kids used to insult him, and they wore ragged clothes that revealed their upper legs. They ran loose in the streets, shinnied up cliffs, and skinny-dipped in countryside creeks.
The speaker was more scared of them than he was of vicious jungle cats; they seemed as strong as iron. They would pull at the speaker and pin down his arms with their hands and knees. He dreaded the way they'd point him out harshly and mockingly, and mimic his lisp as they followed him down the street.
Those kids were skinny and agile, ambushing the speaker from behind bushes, seeming to attack his whole identity like yapping dogs. They used to hurl mud at him while he turned away, faking a grin as if he felt fine. He wanted to reconcile with them, but they never opened up that possibility by smiling back at him.
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“My Parents” Themes
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Childhood and Class Divisions
Stephen Spender's "My Parents" is an autobiographical poem that examines the poet's difficult upbringing. Born to middle- or upper-class parents, the speaker, like any child, just wants to be happy and have friends. But this is 20th-century England, a society deeply divided along class lines that separate the speaker from the working-class kids his age. These other kids continually taunt and attack him, and while he'd like to bridge the divide between them, he can't: it's as if both sides are following a set social script. In recounting these tough times, the poem illustrates not only the pain of being bullied but the wider trauma of class tribalism.
The speaker's parents keep him away from the "rough" children where he lives. He grows up affluent, but sheltered in many ways. Meanwhile, the working-class boys, though poor, seem strong, free, and happy. The parents separate the speaker from his working-class peers, as though someone of his class couldn't possibly mix with them. Their approach seems to isolate him in general, however. The other boys, meanwhile, have a whale of a time: they run around in "torn" clothing, "climb[ing] cliffs and stripp[ing] by the country streams." They grow as strong as "iron," making them more fearsome than "tigers" to the speaker.
These class divisions don't originate with the parents, even if the parents perpetuate them; they're the cruel result of how society is structured. The other boys pick on the speaker as though to make their group stronger, preying on weakness to build their own power. These boys throw "words like stones"; they point at the speaker and "cop[y] my lisp behind me on the road." They may be mocking his "lisp" as a mark of his pampered life (i.e., as a posh style of speaking), or just as a mark of difference or perceived weakness. The other boys also ambush him, jumping out from "behind hedges / Like dogs to bark at my world." Again, it's the speaker's "world," his more affluent lifestyle, that attracts their hostility and scorn. Both the parents' decision and the children's behavior, then, reinforce the class divide.
The young speaker desperately wants his life to be different, but this seems impossible; all he can do is grin and bear the humiliation. Class divisions enact a harsh punishment and leave lasting trauma. The speaker has to "look[] the other way, pretending to smile," while the boys "thr[ow] mud" at him. He "long[s] to forgive them"—perhaps even be one of them—but "they never smile[]" back. The speaker's inability or unwillingness to smile directly at them may represent some missed opportunity for direct engagement or connection. The poem implicitly wonders whether there could be a better way, some path to mutual respect and friendship, but leaves the reader with no sense of false hope. The speaker has "my world," and the other kids have theirs. In short, some people live on one side of the class divide, and some on the other—and that remains true today in many respects.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-12
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Bullying and Parenting
In "My Parents," the speaker recalls being bullied when he was young. His parents, understandably, wished to protect him, keeping him away from "children who were rough." Without offering any easy answers, the poem considers whether theirs was the right approach, given that the "rough" kids ended up tormenting him anyway. The speaker hints that, in trying to shelter him, his parents may have ironically left him more vulnerable to pain and hardship.
Bullies pick on the weak, and though the speaker was from a more affluent background than his "rough[er]" peers, they sensed his vulnerability. The speaker had a lisp, which the other boys used to mimic. They were also much stronger than him, both individually and collectively. He was helpless against "their knees tight on [his] arms," pinning him down, "their muscles like iron." The parents tried to separate the speaker from the others, but clearly, that wasn't fully possible. It's implied that this separation may have further entrenched the conflict between the speaker and the bullies. The speaker only mentions his parents once, but it's their decision that hangs over the whole poem. Indeed, the poem is titled after them, suggesting that their parenting approach had a huge impact on the speaker's life.
The parents may have meant well, but it's hard to make the case that their approach worked well. In fact, the poem ironically undermines the claim that "My parents kept me from children who were rough": they kept the speaker from socializing with these children but did not shield him from their abuse. Whether or not the refusal to socialize worsened the problem, it clearly didn't help. The bullies treated the speaker inhumanely, but he seems to have been encouraged to dehumanize them, too, at least in his mind. He compares them to animals ("tigers," "dogs") and regards them as part of a separate "world."
The poem thus dramatizes the difficulty of coping with bullying. Even the best intentions can further isolate the person being bullied, rather than establishing common ground between bullies and victim (or helping the victim stand up for themselves). That's why the boys seem like an intrusion on the speaker's "world," as opposed to a part of his world he must learn to confront. There's no solution on offer here, just an acknowledgment of the trauma, including its after-effects years later.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-12
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “My Parents”
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Lines 1-4
My parents kept ...
... the country streams.In "My Parents," the speaker recalls the difficulties of his upbringing. He was a middle- or upper-class child, though life frequently put him into contact with "children who were rough"—that is, working-class kids who lived in the same area. His parents, mentioned only in this first line, tried to keep him away from these other kids.
Already, this opening detail tells the reader a lot about the speaker's childhood. His parents believed he was vulnerable and needed their protection. They were also suspicious of, and likely condescending toward, people of lower economic classes. Placing "My parents" right at the start of the poem—even though the speaker never mentions them again—suggests how central their attitudes were to the speaker's childhood. Their distaste for "rough" children had a lasting impact on him; hence the need for this retrospective (and introspective) poem.
"Rough" is a euphemism here. It's a seemingly harmless word, but it does a lot of work. It's a way of saying "violent" or "brutish," while also suggesting a perceived lack of refinement (in accent, mannerisms, clothing, etc.). It's a typically middle- or upper-class way to describe someone of lower social status, particularly in the early 20th century.
The parents' attempts to shield the speaker from the "rough" kids didn't work. The rest of the poem focuses entirely on the speaker's interactions with these kids. As a way of capturing their "rough[ness]," the poem rejects conventional punctuation and sentence structure. Notice, for example, how the first line leads into the second:
My parents kept me from children who were rough
Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothesBecause the speaker omits the expected comma after "rough," the repetition of "Who" in line 2 is abrupt and surprising. The asyndeton between "rough" and "Who" (i.e., the lack of a conjunction such as "and") makes this shift from line to line especially startling. The language here sounds jerky and jagged, as "rough" as the kids it's describing.
The "rough" kids, according to the speaker, "threw words like stones." This simile alludes to an old nursery rhyme: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may never hurt me." The speaker flips this idea on its head—the bullies' words did hurt, and they hurt so much that they felt like stones. They might not have broken his bones, but they did break his spirit.
The bullies' "torn clothes" and "rags" signal their poverty. In line 3, the speaker recalls how "their thighs showed through" their garments. The speaker often notes the physicality of these other children, conveying an appreciation of their strength and vigor. While he avoided them, they had a grand old time running around the street, "climb[ing] cliffs," and stripping "by the country streams." Though poor, they led active, exciting lives with a degree of freedom (though they probably had to work, too). The speaker's life, by contrast, was far more restrained. On some level, then, the speaker may have longed to be one of the "rough" children, even while internalizing his parents' message to keep away from them.
This first stanza captures the "rough[ness]" of those children not only through asyndeton but through sound patterning. Dense assonance ("Who threw," "stones and wore torn clothes," "cliffs"/"stripped") and alliteration ("words"/"wore," "thighs"/"through," "climbed cliffs [...] stripped by country streams") make the language sound robust and a little tough to say. The poem thus creates its own "rough" music to evoke the speaker's childhood fears.
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Lines 5-8
I feared more ...
... on the road.
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Lines 9-12
They were lithe, ...
... they never smiled.
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“My Parents” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Asyndeton
Asyndeton adds dramatic intensity to the poem's language, abruptly mashing together phrases that would otherwise use an intervening conjunction (like "and"). Here it is at work in lines 1-2:
My parents kept me from children who were rough
Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothesAsyndeton adds a kind of grammatical "rough[ness]" to these lines, as a new clause begins without any warning (either a comma or an "and"). It propels the language powerfully forward and helps capture the strength and energy of the "rough" kids.
Lines 5-6 use asyndeton to similar effect, again combining it with a line break:
I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron
Their jerking hands and their knees tight on my armsThat quick shift from "iron" to "Their" is jerky and erratic, evoking the physical movements the speaker is describing.
Line 9 features asyndeton too, though this time without the added line break:
They were lithe, they sprang out behind hedges
Like dogs to bark at my world.Notice how placing an "and" between "lithe" and "they" would ruin the effect. The compression of asyndeton makes the language more abrupt and dynamic; the second clause seems to leap out at the reader, much as the bullies would pounce on the speaker.
Where asyndeton appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2: “who were rough / Who threw words like stones”
- Lines 5-6: “their muscles like iron / Their jerking hands”
- Line 9: “They were lithe, they sprang out behind hedges”
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Enjambment
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Repetition
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Simile
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“My Parents” 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.
- Rough
- Rags
- Salt coarse
- Lisp
- Lithe
Rough-
(Location in poem: Line 1: “My parents kept me from children who were rough”)
A euphemism for "working-class" or "unrefined."
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “My Parents”
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Form
"My Parents" has three quatrains (four-line stanzas), each one concluding with an end stop. This gives the poem a subtly boxed-in, claustrophobic atmosphere that helps capture the speaker's sheltered childhood. At the same time, the poem uses free verse, which helps reflect the unpredictable elements of that childhood: the way the speaker's bullies could "spr[ing] out behind hedges" at any time. The shifting rhythm of the language, combined with frequent enjambment and omission of standard punctuation at the ends of lines, gives the poem an unsettled, fast-paced, nervous quality.
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Meter
"My Parents" doesn't have a strict meter, though its lines tend to be of a similar length (9 to 11 syllables). Instead, the rhythms are unpredictable and muscular, evoking the physical strength of the "rough" working-class children who bullied the speaker.
Take line 2, for example. It practically pelts the reader with tough monosyllabic words, much as the boys pelted the speaker with stones:
Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothes
The poem's densely packed lines thus reflect some of the threat and danger of those childhood days. If the poem flowed smoothly and beautifully, it wouldn't as effectively capture the speaker's fear at the time.
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Rhyme Scheme
"My Parents" doesn't use rhyme (though Spender's poems often do). The lack of rhyme keeps the poem unpredictable and rough around the edges, much like the "rough" children it describes. Part of what scared the speaker about these other kids was how they would ambush him seemingly out of nowhere. Together with muscular rhythms, abrupt caesuras, and other effects, the poem's unrhymed language has a similar way of keeping the reader guessing.
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“My Parents” Speaker
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"My Parents" is an autobiographical poem that reflects on the poet's own childhood. Spender grew up in London, where working-class and middle-/upper-class neighborhoods often exist in close proximity. The speaker's parents tried to keep him away from the "rough" (working-class) kids, a decision that, ironically, may have hurt him rather than protected him. That is, his aloof separation may have made him a target for bullying—and he, in turn, grew more scared of his bullies.
The speaker talks in the past tense, suggesting that the poem looks back on childhood from the vantage point of adulthood. Though the speaker evidently suffered greatly at the hands of the "rough" children, he also admired their physicality: their "muscles like iron" (line 5) and their "lithe" physiques (line 9). He "longed to forgive them," suggesting, too, perhaps, that he secretly wanted to be one of them.
In the authorized biography of Spender, the poet's sister confirms that "[w]e were never allowed to play with poor children because my mother regarded them as not only rough, but also as perpetual carriers of diseases."
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“My Parents” Setting
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"My Parents" is a retrospective poem that delves into the speaker's traumatic childhood. It's firmly set in the past, specifically in early 20th-century London. As the poem suggests, this society was sharply divided along class lines: the working class rarely mixed with the middle-/upper-classes, other than to perform labor for them. Though the "rough" children who tormented the speaker were poor, they seemed to have more freedom than he did; they "ran in the street," "climbed cliffs," and "stripped by the country streams" (lines 3-4).
The atmosphere of potential danger—perhaps worsened by his parents' attempt to shield him—made the speaker's daily environment frightening. Bullies stalked him down the street or hid "behind hedges," waiting like hungry "dogs to bark at my world" (lines 9-10). This last phrase suggests that the speaker's social class seemed to place him in a separate "world" from his bullies—but that the two worlds weren't as separate as he and his parents might have liked.
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Literary and Historical Context of “My Parents”
Literary Context
Stephen Spender was a 20th-century poet, novelist, and critic who was born in London in 1909. His mother and father worked as a painter and journalist respectively, carving out a relatively comfortable upper-middle-class existence for Spender and his siblings.
Spender was part of a circle of poets, known as the "Oxford Poets" or the "Auden Group," who found fame in the 1930s. W. H. Auden was by far the most prominent member, but the group also included Louis MacNeice, Christopher Isherwood, and Cecil Day-Lewis. Spender and Auden became known as "pylon poets," because they weren't afraid to write about the grittier, more industrial side of early 20th-century England (e.g., pylons and factories). Spender was also, broadly speaking, part of the modernist literary movement, during which writers like T. S. Eliot attempted to wrench literature into the 20th century through formal experimentation and innovative subject matter. However, Spender and Auden also frequently used traditional poetic techniques (meter, rhyme, regular stanza shapes, and so on).
"My Parents" appears in Spender's first collection, Poems, which was published by Faber & Faber in 1933. Spender's sister, Christine, confirms that their mother really did try to keep them apart from "rough" working-class children: "[w]e were never allowed to play with poor children because my mother regarded them as not only rough, but also as perpetual carriers of diseases." Many of Spender's other poems also deal with autobiographical subjects; examples include "My parents quarrel in the neighbour room," "At the end of two months' holiday," "Farewell to My Student, and "Auden's Funeral."
Historical Context
The early 20th century was a time of immense change. Inventions such as the airplane and telephone altered daily life tremendously in a short space of time, while cities grew denser as people flocked in large numbers from the countryside to urban centers. New technologies and industries improved the quality of life for many people, while also contributing to widespread pollution, poverty, and unsafe working conditions.
English society at the time was deeply divided along class lines. Class mobility was minimal, and people tended to associate only with their own socioeconomic group, be it upper, middle, or working class. In "My Parents," the parents' attitude toward the "children who were rough" hints at a wider view (among the upper classes) that the working class was inferior, unrefined, and untrustworthy. In reality, severe income inequality left many working-class people without adequate access to food, clothing, housing, and education (hence the "rags" worn by the "rough" children). Rich and poor seemed to occupy separate "world[s]," even when they lived in close proximity in cities like London.
The rise of collective action, as in the national coal miners' strike of 1912, gradually gave the working class a stronger voice. Indeed, Spender himself became a member of the Communist Party of Britain not long after the publication of this poem—though he later renounced left-wing politics.
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More “My Parents” Resources
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External Resources
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More on Stephen Spender — Dive into a valuable resource on Spender's life and work.
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The Poem Out Loud — Listen to Stephen Spender read "My Parents" and other poems.
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Spender Remembered — Listen to Spender's son Matthew reflect on his father's life.
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Spender and the "Auden Group" — Background on the group of poets with whom Spender was closely associated.
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Spender's Desert Island Discs — Check out the poet's selection of his favorite pieces of music, and explanations of what they meant to him.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Stephen Spender
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