[10][11][12] While attending a course taught by Arthur Foff at San Francisco State University in 1954, Olsen submitted an early draft of "I Stand Here Ironing."
Foff was so impressed by the story that he encouraged Olsen—who was often preoccupied with providing for her young children—to cease attending his class and begin writing independently.
The word "tormented" suggests her sense of guilt for her lack of attention and care devoted toward Emily, thus causing the various problems her daughter faces.
Meanwhile, while recounting the past, she falls back on the act of ironing and other endless chores for her defense, suggesting that, though guilty for her shortcomings as a mother, she can do nothing about it due to her never-ending cycle of domestic duties.
"[22] The story was informed by Olsen's inability to write fiction while a teen-age single mother during the Great Depression through the post war years.
Olsen enumerated the factors influencing the composition of the story, while she was still raising her younger daughters: "T]he writing time available to me; what is happening in my work and family life, and in the larger environment, in society.
"[23][24] According to literary critic Joanne S. Frye, the composition of "I Stand Here Ironing" was in part prompted by the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and the subsequent Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation, from which Olsen grasped "the contrast between nurturing care and incomprehensible destruction," a dilemma which Frye terms "the anguish of parental responsibility in an unsupportive society.