The Parent Problem in Young Adult Lit (NYT)

[Bostonian]

Hello, I'm new to the board. I've read the WTM book, and my wife and I "afterschool" my children. Classical education according to the WTM emphasizes literature that has stood the test of time, and I think the article below explains why parents should be wary of modern "young adult literature".

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/books/review/Just-t.html

Julie Just

April 1, 2010

 

...

 

Judging from The New York Times children’s best-seller list and librarian-approved selections like the annual “Best Books for Young Adults,†the bad parent is now enjoying something of a heyday. It would be hard to come up with an exact figure from the thousands of Y.A. novels published every year, but what’s striking is that some of the most sharply written and critically praised works reliably feature a mopey, inept, distracted or ready-for-rehab parent, suggesting that this has become a particularly resonant figure.

[Jen in PA]

Interesting article -- thanks for sharing!

[Liza Q]

Interesting article -- thanks for sharing!

 

:iagree:

 

Well, I do know one encouraging thing. My older daughters have read Twilight and they despise Bella for despising her father. They think that her father is wonderful! Sure, her Mom is horrible but her father is not clueless - Bella just lies to him constantly. Sigh...

[H.S. Burrow]

Hello, I'm new to the board. I've read the WTM book, and my wife and I "afterschool" my children. Classical education according to the WTM emphasizes literature that has stood the test of time, and I think the article below explains why parents should be wary of modern "young adult literature".

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/books/review/Just-t.html

Julie Just

April 1, 2010

 

...

 

Judging from The New York Times children’s best-seller list and librarian-approved selections like the annual “Best Books for Young Adults,†the bad parent is now enjoying something of a heyday. It would be hard to come up with an exact figure from the thousands of Y.A. novels published every year, but what’s striking is that some of the most sharply written and critically praised works reliably feature a mopey, inept, distracted or ready-for-rehab parent, suggesting that this has become a particularly resonant figure.

 

From the article

 

 

 

In “Twilight,†the only reason Bella meets the supernaturally good-looking Edward in the first place is that she has moved to her father’s place in gloomy Forks, Wash.; that way, her mother can follow around after her new husband, a minor-league ballplayer. “I stared at her wild, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic hare-brained mother to fend for herself?â€

 

and a few lines down...

 

 

 

When young adult fiction was a brand-new genre, in the 1960s, it fit in neatly with the classic narratives: its strongest stories were about orphans and lost boys of one kind or another. The hero’s “triumphant rise†often looked like a struggle for survival. “The Outsiders†(1967) and “Rumble Fish†(1975), by S. E. Hinton, and Robert Lipsyte’s “Contender†(1967) are all novels in which the protagonists are orphans or might as well be. “It was like she was dead,†Rusty-James says of his mother in “Rumble Fish.†“I’d always thought of her as being dead.†(In fact she’s in California, about to move into a treehouse with her boyfriend, an artist.)

 

I fail to see how these are different depictions of parents? :001_huh: While I agree that a lot of modern young adult fiction leaves a lot to be desired, I believe that it also reflects our culture and that most literature reflects the culture of the time in which it was written.

 

As a parent I have been GUILTY of saying "let me finish this email and then I'll answer your question". I have tried to teach my children that interrupting while someone is typing is a bit like interrupting while they are on the phone in that it is a distraction that can cause one to lose their train of thought (because the older I get, the harder it is the keep that train on the track! :lol:). I don't think that makes me a bad parent as some young adult fiction would have the reader believe, but it does make me guilty of the behavior. Most young adult fiction is written from the perspective of the child/teen. Adult behaviors (both good and bad) are exaggerated to create the environment needed for the story.

 

I believe that we have always had the "mopey, inept, distracted or ready-for-rehab parent" (I know a few!), but it may be that authors of older novels felt it was easier to have the child be an orphan than to explain the dysfunction of the parent. I would say that authors today reflect the current culture in which a lot of parents really are "checked out" of their kids lives.

[EmilyK]

As far as I can tell, children's lit has always had "absent" parents (as just pointed out, used to be one or both were dead; now to inject a more common situation, they're out of it). The dead parent prerequisite has always bugged me but I have read good descriptions of why it is necessary. I'm not very eloquent today, but as I remember a few:

-- unless the book is going to be about the parent-child relationship, it needs to be sloughed off for adventures to happen (and maybe that describes the psychological process of separation) and

-- we need to have an explanation of why no one's looking when the hero's gone through the wardrobe or whatever happens (that one often bugs me as an adult reader).

[Just Robyn]

Interesting article -- thanks for sharing!

 

:iagree:

 

I especially like these sentences:

 

In the metaphoric language of fantasy, Gaiman’s ultimate message is that parental perfection is an illusion. Real parents may ignore you and serve bad food, but at least they won’t rip out your eyes and leave you to rot behind a wall.

 

Anyway, my husband and I often complain about all the clueless parents in stories, movies etc. However, I have also always complained about the parents always dying in Disney movies. I get the reasoning and I wouldn't mind if that were sometimes the case, but almost every movie? A child can't mature and come of age unless his parents die? Do I hope my children never mature then, or start planning my own funeral?

[Snickerdoodle]

A child can't mature and come of age unless his parents die?

 

Maybe it's meant to be symbolic. It's probably easier to write about coming of age when the parents are absent than to write about the complicated changes to the relationship when the child matures.

 

Who knows?

 

ETA: sorry, I didn't read the linked article.

[dangermom]

Mulan's parents live!

 

But yeah, on the whole you have to get rid of the parents in order to have an adventure.

[KristenS]

I read an article by a VERY good writer (maybe I have it and could track it down to find out who) ... who wrote about the problem of dead parents in stories, particularly adventure ones.

 

Basically it boiled down to ... your hero can't possibly go off on a quest if he has a MOTHER ... mothers (or possibly fathers these days) care too much to let them do something so stupidly dangerous. It was a fun perspective. :)

 

In other words, the young protagonist needs to be free to make the choices to go off on the heroic quest, or face the bully, or whatever, and if there's a concerned parental figure involved, that kind of limits his options. So ... orphans it is!

 

Unfortunately, in contemporary literature (from whatever time period), that doesn't work so well, because it just ends up putting the family in a bad light ... the authors don't necessarily kill off the parents or transport the kids to a fantasy world, so they have to write dysfunctional or distant parents instead. Which sets up a bad role model. And it does represent what a lot of young people experience.

 

As an aspiring author myself, I realized I did the same stuff in my own (fantasy/sci-fi) writing. My first favorite main character had very absent, if loving parents. I wrote her to grow up and be a good parent ... but I really want to go back and fix those childhood years! It wasn't the impression I wanted to give at all. But it sure does make adventuring easier.

 

(I've got another one I'm working on, which is about the kids and their whole extended family, and the adults play a much more supportive role ... I like the feel so much better, but it's really hard to give the kids good exciting adventures while their parents are actually trying to keep them safe and the kids do actually try to follow the rules. An authorial dilemma, I guess. How do you write 'good' without it being dull?)

 

Ramble, ramble. But there's some writerly perspective.

[KristenS]

Mulan's parents live!

 

But yeah, on the whole you have to get rid of the parents in order to have an adventure.

 

Yeah, and she chose to return to them! That was the best part! Woo-hoo for good families! :party:

[Guest]

Anyone who found this interesting would probably gobble up Barbara Feinberg's book-length essay/memoir on the young adult book genre, titled Welcome to the Lizard Motel.

[Mrs Mungo]

I agree with the idea that kids with attentive, loving parents don't have as many "adventures." :)

[Mommyfaithe]

I read an article by a VERY good writer (maybe I have it and could track it down to find out who) ... who wrote about the problem of dead parents in stories, particularly adventure ones.

 

Basically it boiled down to ... your hero can't possibly go off on a quest if he has a MOTHER ... mothers (or possibly fathers these days) care too much to let them do something so stupidly dangerous. It was a fun perspective. :)

 

In other words, the young protagonist needs to be free to make the choices to go off on the heroic quest, or face the bully, or whatever, and if there's a concerned parental figure involved, that kind of limits his options. So ... orphans it is!

 

Unfortunately, in contemporary literature (from whatever time period), that doesn't work so well, because it just ends up putting the family in a bad light ... the authors don't necessarily kill off the parents or transport the kids to a fantasy world, so they have to write dysfunctional or distant parents instead. Which sets up a bad role model. And it does represent what a lot of young people experience.

 

As an aspiring author myself, I realized I did the same stuff in my own (fantasy/sci-fi) writing. My first favorite main character had very absent, if loving parents. I wrote her to grow up and be a good parent ... but I really want to go back and fix those childhood years! It wasn't the impression I wanted to give at all. But it sure does make adventuring easier.

 

(I've got another one I'm working on, which is about the kids and their whole extended family, and the adults play a much more supportive role ... I like the feel so much better, but it's really hard to give the kids good exciting adventures while their parents are actually trying to keep them safe and the kids do actually try to follow the rules. An authorial dilemma, I guess. How do you write 'good' without it being dull?)

 

Ramble, ramble. But there's some writerly perspective.

 

I think ths is why I loved the Lightenng Thief stories so very much. He had a MOTHER!! And a FATHER!! (who was a god!) and they both supported Percy, yet also allowed him his adventures ...both trials and triumphs. It was such a nice change from the dead/ distracted parent motif.

 

Fathe

[KristenS]

I hadn't thought of it like that ... but yeah, that was a definite positive in the book! His parents may not have been able to help him, but it's clear they loved him.

[Saille]

LOL, I'm tickled that for once, someone brought up Disney in a conversation like this before I got here. I think that Disney movies are much better examples of what the author is talking about. Coraline seems out of context, at least to me. Why not bring up The Graveyard Book, also by Neil Gaiman, which is more recent, and in which the MC has not two, but four devoted parents and a devoted extended community? (Not to mention that I don't consider Coraline YA lit. If that's the case, I'm going to wipe the floor with this editorialist on Newberys.)

 

Many, many lauded children's chapter books and YA novels have functional, even exceptional parents, though of course missing/incompetent parents are much more conducive to "Hero's Journey" plotlines. Not sure there's much fire behind this smoke.