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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Half way through and I'm loving the new Martha documentary.  Most surprising so far: her childhood thru stock broker years.

Her dad was physically (belts + stick whippings) and verbally abusive, and her mother was not motherly at all.  With six kids at home, the dad loses his sales job and the family had to grown their own food and barter with neighbors for other basic needs.

Martha somehow earned a scholarship to Barnard and also sent most of her modeling paychecks home to help support her younger siblings. Someone above mentioned that Martha had the "privilege" to pursue her passions.  I would argue that she forged her own path that enabled her to do that.   She was already a very successful woman when she was introduced to her first husband by a fellow Barnard classmate (the guy's sister). He was in law school at the time but didn't even go into law.

Until now, my opinion of Martha Stewart has oscillated between IDGAF to pure dislike.  Now, I kinda dig the woman. No wonder Snoop is a big fan. [/quote]

Her life was profiled in a well rated book called "Just Desserts". Just a note that she has only now at 80 something acknowledged the more sad and painful parts of her upbringing. She always presented her father with rose colored glasses, And it is noted that even in childhood and her teens she was an embellisher and her daughter and others have said she "believes these things happened" in regard to certain memories of childhood but that whether they actually did was not always corroborated with people there. Obviously, this was part of social climbing then. She was a housecleaner and helper to two wealthy women in college to earn money. We heard nothing about that but a whole lot about her modeling. It's all very selective. See the ny times especially today...she hates certain aspects of the doc. [/quote]

I think it’s understandable to have mixed feelings about that upbringing at that time.  For most baby boomers or older, it was very common for the father to be the disciplinarian and to use corporal punishment.  And it was not uncommon to use a switch, belt or stick for spankings.  My own father, who is actually a great guy, did that during the 50s and 60s because that’s what parents were told you were supposed to do for kids who were disobedient in any significant way.  He always hated it and stopped doing it in the late 60s, 70s when the norms changed.  So I can see her both being really complimentary about a dad that worked hard to provide and stuck with them even when times were tough, but at the same time later recognizing that this wasn’t the best modeling of parenting and that there were some effects on her of that.  
I don’t think most people realize how much parenting norms have changed in 80 years.  [/quote]

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