movie: The Glass Castle

This is a movie about a family that live as homeless nomads. The parents both seem to be intelligent enough to hold down jobs but the dysfunction they suffered as kids likely prevent them from doing so. The father lived with his aunt and she was very controlling, mean and molested him. As expected, they breed like cockroaches and drag their kids to a different town every time the father gets drunk, fights someone and is fired. Despite their craziness the parents are cool to their kids in some ways and despite their craziness they seem to both have depth. The kids often are hungry and always live in deplorable conditions, mostly abandoned houses. The eldest daughter runs away and all the kids help her out because it wouldn't take much for her to have a better life. The rest plan to do the same once they are older.

One of the daughters grows up and is engaged to a seemingly responsible guy and they both seem to be healthy and well. After they go to her parents to announce their engagement her fiance says her family is crazy, which is true. Daughter becomes offended because fiance called her crazy family crazy. Also they arrive uninvited to her engagement party where the father admits he was sitting on land which is worth over a million dollars when the kids were young, which sends the daughter into a flying rage. Finally she kicks them out of her life.

They're not making a big deal out of it but it appears the author of the memoir (movie based on memoir) doesn't have kids. Haven't read it but a quick Wiki review and it sounds like there are some fairly substantial differences than the movie. It also sounds as if the author has a writer's imagination, which likely saved her.

Have you ever noticed how authors and artists tend to be more likely to not have kids? The author seems to be glowing now, likely because her life is so much better she doesn't even know how to handle adulthood.

This is one of 20 or more movies I have watched and thought, how could any sane person watch this and think abortion shouldn't be legal and encouraging others to do so if they have any doubts (or insane/sick family members)? Can't imagine being one of those people watching this and sitting there afterwards numbly stating something to myself, such as "but the kids all survived and are doing great." Kids who are subjected to this much misery and torment shouldn't have been born. And for every bright shiny exception that comes out of that situation relatively normal, there are likely hundreds from bad situations who will continue to suffer for the rest of their lives (and likely make others suffer in their presence) because their life experiences hard wired them to believe suffering is the only way of life. So they draw that into their lives and it curtails their chances at happiness.