Identity

The first time Precious gave birth she was far too young to be a mother.  She really didn't understand what it meant to have a child, and did not know anything about being a mother.  Precious did not even help raise her fist child because she was not ready to have her own kids when she was still a kid herself.  At this time period in her life she was completely unaware of who she was and did not really have her own identity.  Precious was basically another product of the environment around her.  When she was sixteen years old she had another baby only this time she was slightly older.  Even though she was only sixteen, her view of having a child had been altered.  She came to realize that she needed to raise her children better than she was raised by her parents.  Throughout the novel, Precious grows to realize all of the things that are wrong in her life and wants to start changing the outcome of her future.  She begins to want to learn how to read and write in order to be able to read to her baby and allow her child to become more intelligent than her in the future.  Her main goal is to raise her child in a better environment than the one she grew up in.  Becoming a parent basically made her motivated to learn and caused her to mature a lot because now she realizes that her children need a better mother than the one that raised her.  Even though her mother beat her and treated her like a slave for her whole life, and her father raped her since she was seven, Precious almost seemed to have forgiven them.  After Precious began doing well for herself at the new alternative school she enrolled in, she said, "I don't hate mama. I don't hate Karl neither." She specifically says that she does not hate her parents even after all of the years of abuse.  I believe the reason Precious does not hate her parents is due to the fact that she has now matured more than they ever will.  She realizes that they are a product of the way they grew up, and even though what they did was wrong, that is how they were raised as well.  By experiencing severe abuse as a child she now knows exactly what not to do when raising her children.  Precious can use her knowledge of abuse to allow her children to have better lives than anyone else in her family.