In "Daughter of Winter," Hale described her function within her native family. Hale believed herself to be "the scapegoat of [her] troubled, troubled family." Hale's own family members often treated her as an outsider. She wrote about various instances that exhibited the disdain her mother and sisters felt towards her. One of the most illustrative accounts Hale described regarded a family picnic. Janet's mother "didn't want [her] along spoiling things" and ensured that she would not attend by lying to her sisters and threatening her. Most of her childhood, Hale's sisters were also very cruel to her. Repeatedly, Hale described her sisters ridiculing and tormenting her. One of Hale's sisters would not "allow [her] in her house. Not ever. Never. Not even to use her toilet." The incessant anguish Hale's mother and sisters inflicted on her shaped her entire life. Hale's status, as an outsider did not cease when she became an adult. When her mother passed away, she was the last person in her family to know. Hale's description of such an unbearable childhood contradicts Kim Barnes" experience as a child.
Contrary to Hale's experience with family, Kim Barnes had a very different connection with her family. Through out her early years, a large, happy extended family surrounded Barnes in logging camps. She described her first years of childhood, surround by family and the wilderness as "somehow magical." Barnes" writing included numerous tales of playing with her brother and cousins and the community her family created in the forest. While her life was entertaining and filled with love and caring adults, her father and their church placed expectations upon Kim: "These were my horizons: to remain virtuous, to marry a modest man, to provide him with a clean house and an attractive body, to bear his children and raise them accordingly." The contrast in Barnes and Hales" childhoods illustrate the difference in their familial relationships.
