Answer: The mother is embarrassed that she has to work
Step-by-step explanation:
In the book, The White Umbrella, the narrator is a Chinese child in America who wants to be acknowledged as American and she was embarrassed that her mother had to work instead of taking care of them.
Wives were not supposed to work in traditional Chinese culture. They were to stay home and take care of their children so when the narrator's mother had to go back to work to make ends meet, she hid this from her daughters out of embarrassment.