This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Intergenerational Relationship: From YKTTW
Kilyle: Grrble. Y'know, it's like, only this whole "peer group" mentality that make people consider this trope "rare"... or, well, I suppose, that make writers rarely use this trope. I know it's a bit of a Take That! against government schooling, but one of the things kids get from age-segregated classrooms is this idea that hanging out with anyone more than a year older or younger than you is socially unacceptable unless you're related (and probably not even then). But c'mon. People who are older than you are people who can teach you. People who are younger than you are people you can teach. A good group will have people on both sides. And in many cultures, the elders are not shunned, but honored and respected.
I mean, growing up homeschooled, I didn't get pushed into the peer-group mold, and I enjoyed friendships with younger kids, older kids, and even a few adults. And it was very odd and annoying to me to get told by our neighbor that it just wasn't natural for me to want to play with a toddler when I was (what, 9? 11? I forget). (On that evidence alone, the neighbor told my mom I was a perv, and forbade my playing with her son anymore.)
Then there's this article I read in a major magazine about homeschooled kids. It pointed out all the positives of homeschooling, and then, in what seemed like a desperate move to find some negative, it pointed to the fact that homeschooled children: get in fewer fights, are more apt to solve problems using words, are more apt to exchange contact information with new friends, are more apt to get along well with adults... in fact, in general, they act less like the negative stereotype of "kids" and more like the positive aspects of "young adults." It then called this a bad thing, reasoning along the lines that if kids get along with everyone from an early age and fail to get into serious trouble as a teenager, then they haven't really experienced life. (What happened to learning from others' mistakes?)
So I think this trope's rarity is largely based on this odd idea that people should mostly hang out with people their own age. I'm going to be working against this trope pretty strongly in a comic book I've been working on, where it's almost unheard-of to have three kids in the same three-year age bracket, and yet they still have many friendships among the various children, and between children and adults.
Count Choculitis: I can't help but be fascinated by the fact that none of the examples (as far as I can tell) feature a woman as the older party. I wonder why that is? Is it the old Hollywood idea that women over a certain age are inherently boring and unappealing and unfit to relate to anyone as anything but a mother or a wife? (Or as a Christmas Cake?) Or is it, um... some other reason, which eludes me at the moment? Huh. Either way, it's depressing.
Unknown Troper: you might like The Reader, which has just come out (I'm writing this at spring 2009). I haven't seen it, but I think it is the very rare example of a woman being the older party.
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Maybe this is just my interpretation, but it seems to me that half the contributors to the examples don't get it. A parent figure shouldn't fit this trope, in my opinion. An adult discovering that a kid has no parents and taking them under their wing isn't what this is about. Harry Potter's parent figures don't fit this trope to me.
Also, the ones where some character is Really 700 Years Old and lives in a world of regular human beings doesn't count, either. Maybe you could make an argument for it if they really explored what a Really 700 Years Old would be like and how they would relate to regular humans. But in every work I've seen, they act pretty much like whatever age they look like, unless they're a Creepy Child.
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"An adult discovering that a kid has no parents and taking them under their wing isn't what this is about." - strongly agreed!! They may be friendly, but it's more of a parent/child relationship there.
"But in every work I've seen, they act pretty much like whatever age they look like, unless they're a Creepy Child." - I don't have enough experience to comment on that, but if they do act like their apparent age, then it makes sense to see them as just immortal children.
So, cleanup time? And if so, maybe notations in the article description of what the trope specifically is NOT would help.
