What is the comparative central idea with Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing" and "A Conversation with my Father" by Grace Paley?The only thing I have...

In accord with your assessment, in an interview with the
Shenadoah Review, Grace Paley, author of "A Conversation with my
Father," declares that the story 

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...is about generational attitudes about life,
and it's about history...[The narrator] was really speaking for people who had more open
chances. And so she brought that into literature, because we don't just hop out of our
time so easily.

Likewise, "I
Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen is concerned with the open-endedness of life.  In a
conversation with a school official, Emily's mother is unable to account for "all that
life that has happened outside me, beyond me."  She says that she will never "total it
all."  There is too much that Emily has kept to herself and too much that the mother has
learned too late.  But, the mother is resigned:

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She is a child of her age, of depression, of
war, of fear. 

Let her be.  So all that is in her will not
bloom--but in how many does it?  There is still enough left to live by.  Only help her
to know--help make it so there is cause for her to
know-- 

In the case of
Paley's story, the father, an immigrant from Russia has a different perspective on life
from that of his daughter; he is similar to the school official who has a preordained
idea of the structure of life.  That is, he feels that the woman's action of becoming an
addict foretells her ultimate tragedy because in his life in Russia there were "no
choices," as Paley relates.

Similar to the mother of "I
Stand Here Ironing" is the author daughter of "A Conversation with My Father." 
Declaring that her daughter is "a child of her age," she is "more than this dres on the
ironing board, helpless before the iron."  Emily can change the direction of her life,
she can make choices.  The daughter who writes the story for her father contends that
people can change careers; things are "of small consequence."  But, the father, like the
school official, believes everything in life is "of great
consequence."

Clearly, one's perspective is determined by
one's time and generation: "We just don't just hop out of our time so easily."  While
the Russian father does not understand, Emily's mother whose metaphoric ironing takes
her back and forth, back and forth through time, does comprehend that her daughter must
be perceived through the open-ended lens of her time, as she is still "becoming" just as
the boy's mother, who is only forty, still has time to improve her
life.