Only Orphans Can Have Adventures; Or, Where Are All the Parents?

Once you notice it, it’s everywhere.

It was a struggle to make my Best Moms and Dads lists, and that highlighted a phenomenon I’ve been peripherally aware of for a while: parents, much less good parents, are not the stuff of stories. Why is that? All these fictional characters were born at some point—well, maybe not Winnie-the-Pooh—so why are their parents often dead, the villain, or relegated to obscurity?

Let’s first take a stroll down Orphan Lane (these are only characters who originate in books).

Characters famous for being orphans: Harry Potter, Anne Shirley, Oliver Twist, Batman and Cinderella.

Characters who happen to be orphans: Jane Eyre and Rochester, Heathcliff, Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, Aragorn, Mr. Darcy, Mowgli, Heidi, Spider-Man, the Boxcar Children, the kids in the Ranger’s Apprentice series, Prince Caspian, Christine and the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera, Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, Uhtred in The Last Kingdom series, most characters in fantasy series, and the narrators of Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, to name but a few.  

And the characters who become orphans in the story or may as well be orphans because their parents are only briefly mentioned: Alice from Alice in Wonderland, the Pevensie children, a lot of Charles Dickens’ characters, most of the kids in the Harry Potter series, Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, a lot of Tolkien’s characters, Margaret in North and South, Cathy in Wuthering Heights, Cosette (biologically speaking) in Les Miserables, the kids in Lord of the Flies, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, Robin Hood, King Arthur and his knights, Westley and Buttercup, Scarlett O’Hara, the kid in The Road, Sebastian in The Day of Atonement, the narrator in a book I just read, Geralt in the Witcher series, still more characters in fantasy books, superheroes, fairytale princes/princesses, and most—and I do mean almost all—of the protagonists in the middle grade and young adult books I read.

Finally, the characters I assume are orphans because they seem like that kind of character: Dracula, Jekyll/Hyde, James Bond, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, Long John Silver, another portion of Charles Dickens’ characters, and Moby Dick (don’t laugh; whales have parents too).  

So what’s going on here? Why are authors so unlikely to write parents in their stories? And if I expand the parental specifications a bit more, why do authors so frequently have parents that are not on good terms with their kid(s), or are not decent people themselves? What is it about affectionate, alive parents that makes authors veer in another direction?

Theory #1: Parents Get in the Way

This is 100% the case with middle grade and young adult books, especially in fantasy. No good parent is going to let their twelve-year-old go gallivanting through some freakish land to fight monsters and witches and other horrors. If the parent did tag along, that kid would be bundled up and taken to the nearest inter-dimensional portal ASAP. So no story is happening as long as the parent is there to watch over the kid.

The solution? The kid goes off while the parent is at work; the kid uses school as an excuse; the story happens during a holiday so of course the parent isn’t paying attention; the parent is naturally inattentive/dumb; or the kid is a tried-and-true orphan. Now the adventure can happen.

On the surface, I see why that is the well-trodden path for these types of stories. However, it’s got a lot of problematic implications attached to it, such as:

1.       it’s planting the idea that kids don’t need their parents’ help and can’t ask for their help

2.       parents aren’t allowed to participate in a kids’ story

3.       parents and kids can’t work together to solve a problem

4.       parents are out of touch with what’s hip and can’t learn new things

5.       parents just…like…wouldn’t understand, okay?

6.       parents can’t be trusted to participate because they’ll add order and reason

7.       parents are adults and would solve problems too quickly, so of course they can’t be there

8.       parents aren’t fun

9.       parents aren’t important

I hope you can see that that isn’t a very flattering portrait for such a large group. I don’t know what these types of books are like nowadays, but I imagine the wedge between kid and parent is only being made wider and driven deeper. Looking back at the youth-focused books I read, they really had a problem with parents; “dead,” “absent,” or “villain” sums up pretty much any parent in any kids’ series I read. It’s disturbing, really. Can these kids never have familial guidance and help?

Theory #2 Relationships with Parents Aren’t Important

I see this most in detective/contemporary stories (the ones that don’t revolve around a dead parent). The detectives will have their own life, maybe swept up in the grind of city life, focused on the dead and their killers. Parents don’t have a place in the protagonist’s work, and as they go around investigating crime scenes, or running on some corporate hamster wheel, why would the parent ever make an appearance? That’s not the point of the story and if the list of coworkers or perpetrators is long, why muddle the cast with a superfluous parent?

Again, I see the reason to take this path. But so often with these types of stories, if the parent isn’t the lynchpin of the drama because of their death or terribleness, it can often feel like the protagonist sprang from the ground; like they’re a rootless, solitary figure suffused with booze and bad choices instead of being someone’s kid. Does this really make for the most compelling and well-rounded character?

Theory #3 Parents Aren’t Needed

Fantasy novels are rife with orphans, buoyed by the prevalence of The Chosen One trope and a need for epic quests comprised of ragtag ensembles. These characters need to go out and find themselves, form bonds, experience betrayal and overthrow a kingdom or two. Aged parents, concerned parents, loving or living parents don’t play a role in these situations. Unless they turn out to be the parent of The Chosen One, thus launching an avalanche of drama. And they might possibly be the villain to boot. But generally, the fantasy hero doesn’t have an urgent need for parents as they go in search of charming pickpockets or lovable barbarians; they need a plan and the able-bodied to risk everything for a chance at winning the day.

I know of two series that have a parent as one of the main characters, but otherwise fantasy is a young one’s game as they journey to fight against an ancient evil or just a really old king. Of course, if you have small children you shouldn’t be rushing off into battle or inveigling courtiers; these types of parents have a more important role to play than being one more meat sack for someone’s idea of glory. But what about the parents who have kids that are grown? Could it not work to have an older hero (perhaps the farm boy’s master?) take up the mantle of knight errant and traverse the wilds, a lifetime of hardship allowing him to view trials in a different light with a different set of skills as his disposal? Do age and wisdom truly have no place on the road to valor and victory?

Theory #4 Relationships with Parents are Often…Complicated

In my attempt to find book parents, two of my stipulations were that they be good people and have a good relationship with their offspring. Once I found the living and present parents (which was really hard to do), that list shriveled to almost nothing when I went looking for the kind and caring ones. More often than not, if one or both parents are part of the story, it’s because they’re a sucky person and the protagonist has nothing but bad memories of their childhood. It’s really quite shocking to see how twisted and dark most fictional parents are. They don’t even have to be in the story to cast a shadow over everything.

I’m not really sure what to make of this because on the one hand, I know of bad parents and grandparents in real life (I’m related to some), but to have such a disproportionate amount of fictional parents be bad or below average, is astounding. Like, every parent is bad (or dead)? How? And more importantly, why? Authors have the power to create whatever and whomever they want. Why are they repeatedly choosing to kill, vilify, or omit parents?

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It seems like society has, by and large, been programmed to think that life can be lived solo and that is the preferable choice. It’s cheaper, it’s quieter, it’s free-er and hey, look at all these lone wolves having adventures and kicking butt. Don’t you want to be like them?

Everyone wants a happy ending. But have you noticed that that’s where the story always ends? We never get to see the couple finally living in bliss, or the king being benevolent, or the detective actually having an uneventful holiday. It’s up to us to imagine what happiness looks like, but if we only ever see the strife and the loss, what does happiness mean for these characters? What about harmony, contentment, safety, and symbiosis? Do those have no place in our stories? Because that’s what is lost when good parents are carved out of the story’s fabric. Of course it’s not all sunshine and lollipops, but the chance to see the mixture of daily life is repeatedly ripped from us.

Everyone wants a happy ending. But aside from a slim epilogue, that bright light, that thing we watched these characters fight so hard for, is beyond reach; it’s a dream. A hope. So often we leave characters alone, broken, miserable, uncertain, unable to trust, or forever wishing for the good ol’ days when they had a purpose. A family.

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The demonization and erasure of parents is not a modern issue; this is something that has been plaguing literature for hundreds of years.

So what can be done? Is there even a solution to what is a perpetual, almost default inclination? (I automatically omitted/murdered the parents in my first book until I realized what I was doing and backtracked on that decision.)

Unfortunately, nothing can be done about bad parents. They will always exist and if the author only wants to write about their personal experience when it comes to parents, that’s their choice.

What I can do is bring awareness to this situation. I doubt most story-consumers realize or have thought about the parent issue, so here you go. This is a problem and it needs to be put in the spotlight.

To authors I can say we need to step up and fill this parental void. Create adventures where the parent is there to protect and support the strangely competent twelve-year-old. Have the detective duo be a parent and their kid. Craft that quest for the retired farmer. And maybe, instead of adding to the ever-expanding mountain of traumatized pasts, make a softer one, something others would find comforting.

Our fictional fathers and mothers do not have to suffer. We have the option to make great things, so why not create a new life? A parent’s life.

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