Jill Ker Conway grew up with more pressure to succeed than most. In her memoir, The Road From Coorain, she details not only her own journey from Coorain to the United States, but also tells how her mother's struggle to succeed related directly to her own development. Conway's mother had been full of ambition, and she expected her children to be as well. However misplaced her guidance might have been, she clearly wanted her children, and especially Jill, to have a better life, which directly correlated to a better education, in her eyes. Nearly every generation wants more for the next, but the way in which Conway's mother drove her children to success was harsher than most, and often driven by jealousy.
Conway had a very happy childhood. It was filled with love, and could not be touched by the outside world. If one defines a good childhood by a loving family, then Conway had the best. She had yet to realize the strain that Coorain's stoicism would have on her life, and also had yet to realize her mother's imposing need to have her children succeed. Conway describes her early relations with her mother, "The tweed coat my mother was wearing as she cradled me scratched and pricked so that mixed in with the security was a sense of being ill at ease. The memory is symbolic of the way our relationship was to unfold."(Conway, The Road From Coorain, p. 30) .
Conway's mother had real standards for her children to live up to: equality, endurance, and education. Conway was not to make excuses for herself around her brothers or anyone for that matter. She was to hit her brother back if she were hit and not whine about it. She was to forget about the standard roles for women and succeed in her own right. The hard world of Coorain would have conquered any spirit otherwise. Knowing this from her own turmoil met at Coorain, Conway's mother forced her children to know a life of little expression of emotion, and much emotional endurance.
