Fantasy-Forbidding Father

"No son of mine’s going to waste his time making these silly drawings!"

Father: I got a call from your math teacher yesterday. She says that you were...drawing horses in your math book.
Bastian: Unicorns. They were unicorns.
Father: Stop daydreaming. Start facing your problems.

— The Neverending Story

A father, mother, or guardian (these last two are less common) disapproves of their child or ward reading "fairy stories", playing fantasy or sci-fi games, sports, and even such "useless" hobbies as astronomy, boxing, and being literate. In extreme cases, anything the child likes that isn't directly and concretely tied to whatever it is their parent does for a living (or that they want them to do for a living) is seen as an utter waste. The parent may even confiscate and dispose of anything of this nature their child owns. The child may then be grounded and/or deprived of money in a bid to prevent any clandestine attempts to continue the offending hobby. If the setting is one where Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off! is likely to come into play, expect the parent to tell the child that they will have "that nonsense" beaten out of them.

"Fantasy" in this trope isn't about the genre, but "fantasy" from the parent's perspective. To the Helicopter Parents, any and all of these "distractions" are a Tragic Dream waiting to happen that will ruin their child's chances at life. For narrative purposes, this is basically anything that the kid likes that'll move the plot forward via alienating them from their parent (possible later reconciliation optional but heartwarming), which puts the Fantasy-Forbidding Parent into an antagonist role, though with rare exceptions they are not a true villain.

In many cases, the parent probably sees their actions as being Cruel to Be Kind by steering their child away from an "unsuitable" interest but is too close-minded or too terrified to consider that there are many valid careers and hobbies for their child and that the child should (within reason) be allowed to make their own decisions. In these cases, the parent does come around to accepting their child's interests and vocation with a little coaxing. If the kid later really hits the big time in those fields, the parent will probably shake their head wondering in astonishment how that is possible. However, with some more consideration as the parent sees their child's success with their talent, some apologies for their stubborn doubts and statements of pride are usually in order.

A more sinister possibility is the dad/mom is trying to somehow make their child co-dependent or at least clip their wings so they never leave or get out from under their thumb, either forcing them to follow a family legacy or just out of sheer malice.

Unfortunately, this is Truth in Television.

See also "Well Done, Son" Guy and Tough Love. Compare Education Mama and The Killjoy. The Wet Blanket Wife is the spousal equivalent of this trope, who forces you to give up adventuring and settle into a normal boring domestic life. A close-minded Caretaker usually takes this attitude. Keep an ear out for "You Watch Too Much X." Contrast Obsessively Normal, wherein not only does the "fantasy" usually has a more direct effect on the people and the setting, but the parent trying to forbid it occasionally may escalate a bit too much in their quest. May result in Strict Parents Make Sneaky Kids. Don't confuse with the Supernatural-Proof Father (in that trope, the father resists supernatural elements that genuinely exist in the world of the story.)

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: Played with by Rin's father. He noticed Rin's love of violence back when she was just an infant and tried to nip it in the bud by sheltering her from anything violent, no small feat since little Rin could associate almost anything with violence. However, while watching an older, much sweeter Rin he thinks to himself that this wasn't due to any objection to her interest in and of itself, but because he knew society would not look kindly on a girl who loves violence and he wanted to protect her from that potential heartbreak. His hope for Rin is to find someone who can accept her for who she is, which she eventually does with the Rentarou Family.
• AKB0048: Nagisa Motomiya's father is initially dead set against his daughter becoming an Idol Singer, but it's hard to blame him when the Motomiyas live in a Crapsack World where music is outlawed and the Culture Police tend to shoot first and ask questions later, and his concerns are more about poor Nagisa's safety than anything else.
• AKB49 – Renai Kinshi Jourei: Hiroko's father strongly disapproves of her aspiration to become an Idol Singer, which led to a heated confrontation between him and her when he found out that she had joined an idol group.
• Bakuman。: A few parents dislike their children getting involved in manga for various reasons, such as Mashiro's mother (out of the belief that she doesn't think he could succeed, and the death of her brother-in-law mangaka doesn't help either), and Shiratori's mother (who dislikes manga and thinks it would bring harm to the Shiratori family reputation).
• BanG Dream!: The father of Ran Mitake, the lead vocalist, lyricist, and guitarist of Afterglow, was initially opposed to his daughter being in a band. He wasn't trying to be cruel, but he wanted her to focus on learning flower arranging so that she would be qualified to inherit the family's century-old flower-arranging school, and thought his daughter was just playing around with her childhood friends. Ran resolves to show him otherwise, and has him attend Afterglow's first live performance. Convinced that Ran is serious about her music, her father relents, and even supports the band (going so far as to buy ten copies of the band's first CD release), and Ran meets him halfway by resuming her flower arranging lessons while still performing with Afterglow.
• Case Closed: The "Luxury Liner Serial Murder Case" has a fantasy-forbidding grandfather as the first victim. Gozo Hatamoto, the leader of an immensely rich Big, Screwed-Up Family, is an all-around jerk but especially belittles his grandson Ichiro, a promising painter and artist. Heck, he's even shown smashing one of Ichiro's works in a flashback, and openly badmouths the guy in front of Conan and the Mouris. Naturally, Ichiro is the killer: when he couldn't take the man's abuse anymore, he ended up grabbing a nearby knife and stabbing him to death. He has two reasons for it, actually: not only Gozo disapproved of his desires, but he wouldn't allow Ichiro to marry his cousin Natsue, Gozo's favorite relative and only heir. In fact, immediately after this refusal, Gozo had granted Natsue's boyfriend Takashi his permission to marry her; the wedding had occurred just days before Gozo's murder.
• Comic Girls: Tsubasa's mother would prefer Tsubasa to live like her class and work in the family business eventually. Tsubasa is a tomboyish Sequential Artist, something her mother is not very fond of.
• Digimon Adventure 02: It's revealed that as children, Iori's father Hiroki and Oikawa were best friends who bonded over their ability to contact the Digital World through Hiroki's game console. Iori's grandfather, unaware that the Digital World was real, thought this was an unrealistic obsession and ordered the boys to stop discussing it in his home, essentially putting an end to their connection to the Digital World. It did not deter the boys, who dreamed of going there one day even in adulthood.
• Fairy Tail: The two main reasons why Lucy Heartfilia runs away from home to join the titular guild are because her Well-Intentioned Extremist father Jude won't spend time with her after her mother Layla's death and he wants to rein in Lucy's impulses to become a wizard by having her bear a son through an Arranged Marriage. To do this, he recruits rival guild Phantom Lord to retrieve her, but it inadvertently leads to a guild war between it and Fairy Tail one year later. Lucy, however, has other ideas when the guild war is over.
• Food Wars!: Azami Nakiri submitted his daughter Erina to Training from Hell in order to cultivate her God's Tongue, to the point of isolating her from everything and everyone, so as to instill his perfectionist mindset into her. He even goes as far as shredding the letters sent by Erina's cousin Alice while she was abroad (as Erina made Alice promise that she would write to her) and also firing Erina's secretary Hisako, who was the closest thing she had to a real friend, just to keep Erina under his thumb and use her for his "perfect gourmet" plans.
• Ganbare Genki!: Genki wants to become a professional boxer, something his maternal grandparents, that have raised him since his father's death, are completely opposed to. They have their good reasons: Genki's father, "Shark" Horiguchi, had been a professional boxer himself but not a good one, and both them and Horiguchi himself blame his inability to make good money out of it and thus properly feed their daughter Minako (who had always suffered from a fail health) for her death in childbirth, causing them to start loathe the sport and Horiguchi to retire; adding to that, Horiguchi eventually made a comeback but died due injuries from his fight with the rising star (and future champion) Seki Kenji, making them extremely worried that Genki could get injured if he became a pro — especially as he's the only heir to their wealth and they'd want him to take over the family fortune. Unlike most examples they try to find a compromise, and are willing to let Genki box as an amateur (much less dangerous than fighting as a pro) as long as he keeps up his grades and goes to college.
• Girls und Panzer: Hana's mother is horrified by her pursuing tankery because she, head of the Isuzu school of flower arrangement, considers tanks barbaric, and disowns Hana when she makes it clear that she will not abandon it. She later undergoes Character Development, reconciles with Hana after admitting that participating in tankery has helped her flower arranging, and actually seems to enjoy the match between Oarai and Black Forest.
• Idol Densetsu Eriko: Kosuke and Minako don't want Eriko to be an idol - Minako was one herself and learned that the Idol Singer industry is NOT pretty. Though, when Minako finds out she became one anyway, she's accepting of it and supports her daughter's career.
• Kaze no Shōjo Emily:
  • Emily's aunt Elizabeth says that Emily can never be a writer, despite the fact that her work is praised by newspapers and her school.
  • Teddy's mother won't let him become an artist and implores him to stay at home instead. It takes a lot of convincing from Emily and Ilse to let him go, and Teddy eventually becomes a world famous artist after studying in Paris.
  • Perry's aunt says that he is to become a workhand, and forget his dreams of going to school and getting an education. She eventually relents.
  • An odd case with Ilse as all she wants is to know more about her mother, but her father won't tell her anything.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Used in a very dark manner in Shigaraki's backstory. When he was a boy, going by the name Tenko, he was fascinated by heroes and wanted to be one. Unfortunately, his father, Kotaro, had become jaded and bitter about heroes due to believing his mother, a hero, abandoned him as a child for no good reason, unaware she did it for his own safety. As such, Kotaro would harshly punish Tenko for anything hero-related. This caused Tenko to develop a deep hatred for his father, and when Decay Quirk manifested, he used it to deliberately murder him and destroy his house.
  • While Izuku's mother has always tried to be supportive (and considers her greatest failure to be when she didn't properly encourage him when he had a moment of despair), when the school asks permission to move Izuku into dorms, she refuses. She says that she wants to pull him out of U.A. so that he can go to a normal school, even if that means he can never be a hero. Unlike most examples, she is portrayed as being completely justified. The school has been attacked multiple times since Izuku started going there, he was involved in a kidnapping attempt and a fight that leveled several city blocks, and every time he uses his power he shatters at least one bone. All Might is only able to convince her to allow it by getting on his hands and knees and promising to be a better teacher while letting her know how much faith he has in Izuku and how he is willing to lay down his own life to protect him.
• New Game!: Tsubame "Naru" Narumi is the daughter of the proprietor of an inn in Hokkaido, but wants to work for the gaming industry as a programmer alongside her best friend Momiji "Momo" Mochizuki. Tsubame's parents don't approve, and make a deal with her — she has to pay her way through vocational school, and if she doesn't get hired at her first choice company (Eagle Jump, where the main characters work), she has to come home and inherit the inn. Her parents gradually ease up over time, as Tsubame's mother attends her graduation, and they later reimburse her for her tuition.
• One Piece: Sanji's father, Vinsmoke Judge, detests Sanji's desire to be a chef, as the old man is obsessed with status and considers cooking a form of servitude. This seems to have only fueled Sanji's passion even further. He gets so fed up with his son feeding other people and random animals that he locks Sanji up in a dungeon so Judge can forget Sanji even exists.
• Otomen: The main character Asuka secretly loves knitting, embroidery, cute things, cooking, and girls' manga. It's a secret because Asuka's a guy, and his mother constantly warns him he must be manly, lest he ends up like his father who decided he wanted to be a woman and consequently left the family.
• Ouran High School Host Club: In the anime, Kyouya's father actually slaps him when he finds out exactly what his son's after-school club is about. In the manga, Tamaki's father forces the club to shut down briefly near the end, but it's subverted later when it's revealed that he likes the Host Club, and was only shutting them down as part of a plan to get his mother to step down as head of the company.
• The Pet Girl of Sakurasou: Nanami's parents do not support Nanami's aspirations to be a voice actress, which forced her to work for her own expenses in Tokyo. Sorata wonders if her Plucky Girl personality arises from this.
• Saki: Nodoka's father doesn't think much of Mahjong, saying that it's purely a game of luck, that training camps are a waste of time, and that the friends Nodoka makes through it won't be of any use in a "hick town" like where she lives. He seems to tolerate her playing mahjong as long as it doesn't interfere with anything more important, and reluctantly decides to "consider" letting her stay where she is if she wins the nationals, though.
  • The prequel, Saki Shinohayu -dawn of age- has Shino's uncle, who tells her to get over Mahjong. He even tries to sell the Mahjong set which they used to play Mahjong together with (failing because it's missing a tile) — and by 'they', this includes Shino's disappeared mom, as he believes that Mahjong will only serve to remind Shiho of her mother's absence and cause her pain. Ultimately, after seeing her participating in a tournament and enjoying herself despite not winning, he apologizes and returns the set.
• Samurai Harem: Asu no Yoichi: While they're not related, Tsubasa and Angie fit this trope fairly well. Angie, The Caretaker for Tsubasa, tries to keep anything that doesn't advance the latter's learning of martial arts away (such as manga), to the point where Tsubasa has a breakdown in one fight and basically cries I Just Want to Be Normal after she experiences what it's like to be a normal schoolgirl for one day.
• In Voltes V, when Prince Gohl tells his father that slavery is draconian and the Hornless Boazanians deserve to be free like their Horned Counterparts, his father reacts by punching him. Gohl never brings it up ever again. Until his secret as a Hornless Boazanian is outed, and he leads a slave revolt while Made a Slave.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: A flashback reveals that Gozaburo asked his adopted son Seto what he would do if he was in charge of Kaiba Corp. Kaiba says that he wants to make Kaibaland (which is very much like Disneyland) for kids to enjoy. However, Gozaburo is an Arms Dealer, so he is completely unable to comprehend such a thing. So he decided to take away Kaiba's toys. Considering that Gozaburo was very abusive towards Seto at least, this would indicate that he simply wanted to keep Kaiba under his thumb. That Kaiba eventually overthrows him is Laser-Guided Karma, that he would eventually build Kaibaland and it was successful is desecrating the grave of somebody who deserved it

Comic Books

• Ant-Man: Hank Pym, the first Ant-Man, had a father who was a scientist that stifled Hank's fanciful imagination as a child to work on "something practical" in direct conflict with his grandmother who was a fantasy author and encouraged him to follow his dreams. This only got worse when her influence was removed by her death, leading him to be lead by his father to take a dull job in science that would continue to stifle his whims.
• Batgirl: Year One: James Gordon makes clear he will not allow his daughter Barbara to become a cop like him.
  Batgirl: You don't have to be Cassandra to see that Dad's on the short track to Police Commissioner. He could make it easier for me. Instead, he makes it impossible.
• ClanDestine: Walter disapproves of Rory and Pandora's superhero aspirations, going so far as to threaten to have them raised separately in order to negate their Wonder Twin Powers until they're adults. However, while he does think that "superhero" is an impractical job choice, he's also worried that they could get hurt — they're twelve years old at this point. There's also the risk that someone could find out about the family through the twins' activities — the last time that happened, two of the Clan died. In this case, the eventual solution is a compromise: the kids get to continue their superhero careers, but only when an adult relative can chaperone them.
• Dazzler: The titular character's father wanted her to be a lawyer like him because he didn't want her to go into music like her mother who walked out on them for it.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Magica always wanted to become a witch, but her uncles, who raised her, tried to stop her... Because they saw her parents blowing themselves up trying to obtain the Midas' Touch and are scared magic will claim her too. The fact Magica reacted to finding out her parents' fate by guessing how to fix the spell that killed them only scared them more, to the point her uncle threw her out in the erroneous belief she'd give up soon and come back to live without magic.
• The Eagles of Rome: Marcus' father wants him to be a cold-blooded soldier and none of that poetry business.
• Robin: Tim's father forbids him from continuing to act as Robin or having any contact with anyone he knew from his time as a hero, even threatening Bruce with a gun when he finds out. He only figured it out when he tore Tim's room to shreds after learning the football coach didn't remember Tim trying out for football and finding the hidden compartment in Tim's closet. Though in this particular case, one can perhaps forgive a father disapproving of his son's decision to secretly become a costumed vigilante crime-fighter and battling a series of lurid psychopathic supervillains, the fact that he wouldn't let Tim get any sci-fi or fantasy-themed toys as a child is considerably less forgivable.
• Runaways: Klara Prast's parents disowned her and married her off to a much older man because she talked to plants. Granted, the plants happened to talk back, but still...
• Secret Weapons: In the reboot, Nikki wanted to be an Olympic gymnast, but her parents forced her to quit training because they were afraid it would distract her from her schoolwork. Her anger at this is part of what drives her to join the Harada Foundation.
• Supergirl: In the story "Mission: Mind", Lar-On's father believed that his son, who dreamed of becoming an astronaut, was setting himself up for failure, so he did his best to disabuse Lar of the idea that he would ever be good enough.
• The Technopriests: Averted. Panepha agrees to pull strings so that Albino can become a Technopriest and create video games, if only because doing so allows her to cut him off from the family.
• Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan's father could be seen as an example, or technically a Fantasy-Fostering Father. His son is at first eager to follow in his footsteps as a watchmaker, but he forces him to abandon this (by throwing his tools out the window of their apartment) and pursue a career as a nuclear scientist after the Atom bomb is dropped at the end of WWII. His father's reasoning was based on Einstein: what use is a watchmaker if time is an illusion? Interestingly enough, the chapter ends with Einstein's quote about how he should have become a watchmaker if he had known what his research would lead to.
  • In the prequel miniseries Before Watchmen: Nite Owl, young Dan Dreiberg's father burns all of his Nite Owl stuff because he doesn't like the boy's obsession with the superhero. (Incidentally, mini-series writer J. Michael Straczynski had the same thing happen to him as a kid.)
• White Sand: Praxton outright tells his son Kenton that he has no chance of ever becoming a Sand Master, as he has no talent and no power, and that he should give up pursuing a stupid dream he has no way of ever achieving. Hurts more thanks to the fact that Praxton himself is the most powerful of all Sand Masters.
• Wonder Girl: Cassie's mother is a brilliant archaeologist who puts a lot of pressure on her daughter to excel. She's overall a supporting parent but is very hesitant and strict when her daughter becomes a superhero, making sure she doesn't neglect her schoolwork. At one point, she even gains the ability to take away Cassie's powers if she needs to, making her a literal example of this trope. The two are estranged for a while when Wonder Girl is older, but eventually reconcile.
• Wonder Woman (Rebirth): Barbara Ann's dad told her not to study mythology because he felt such things were harmful to her development. Then he threw her stuff into the nearest fire.

Fan Works

• 3 Slytherin Marauders: It's mentioned that Lucius' father Abraxas insisted that being an Ancient Runes Master was no fit pursuit for a Malfoy. Some years after his father's death he decides to obtain a mastery anyway.
• Anthropology: Upon realizing just how obsessed Lyra is with proving that humans existed, both of her parents tell her to stop fantasizing, throwing out all of her collection of "artifacts".
• A Brief History of Histories: Despite how he rarely interacts with his daughter personally, Chairman Tsukino dictates a great deal about Usagi's life, and wants her to focus solely upon her studies. He's also forbidden her from seeing her adoring grandfather.
• Absolute Trust: It turns out that before her Start of Darkness, Azula had spent much of her off-time reading up on Dragon care and behavior, playing in the gardens as she pretended to be riding on a Dragon of her own. Then when Iroh claimed to have killed the last Dragon; Ozai approached a then six-year old Azula and immediately berated her for wanting to have a childish dream.
• Child of the Storm: In the sequel, Carol's father is revealed to be a downplayed version of this; he doesn't stop her playing sports, and generally being a tomboy, despite his desire for her to be a Proper Lady who'll Stay in the Kitchen (which in turn causes his daughter to hide her girly streak because she won't give an inch). However, this isn't so much due to grudging tolerance as the fact that he's terrified of his mother-in-law and brother-in-law, who wholeheartedly support her. He's more successful with his second child, Stevie, who's quite quiet and a budding artist, when his father wants him to be a rambunctious All American Boy like his youngest child, Joe Junior, dismissing his artistic talents as "girl's stuff" and encouraging his youngest son to do the same. It is described icily by his mother-in-law as "a psychological death of a thousand cuts."
• DOOM: Repercussions of Evil: John Stalvern has a flashback to when he was a child, where he tells his father about wanting to "be on the spaceship" and fight monsters. His father tells him not to, as he "will BE KILL BY DEMONS". Though this is somewhat justified, as his forbidding was more out of concern for his son's well-being. He grows up to fight monsters anyway. It doesn't end well for him.
• Girls und Panzer, to the sky (a Girls und Panzer fanfic): Chris Walsh's father doesn't like him getting involved in dogfighting, saying "You are a Walsh, you do not partake in such violent activities," and has him transferred to Oarai, which has no dogfighting program. Fortunately for Chris, Oarai decided to restart its dogfighting program the year he came, not unlike how it restarted tankery the year Miho came in canon.
• His History Revealed: A Dr. Robotnik Biography: Ivo's neglectful father looked down upon his dreams of creating an amusement park. He only showed his son approval when it came to his scientific endeavors. He also warns his son not to get into the "useless science" of geology, like Ivo's grandfather Gerald.
• Karma in Retrograde: Touya always wanted to join U.A.'s hero course. But his father Endeavor barred Touya from the exam and forced him into general studies to preserve his own ego. He also wouldn't let Touya use the Todoroki name, making Touya use his mother's maiden name instead. Because of this, Touya wasn't able to get the supervision he needed to develop his Quirk safely, leading to the "Quirk-related incident" that made him drop out of U.A. This began Touya's downward spiral that turned him into Dabi.
• In leading by example, Hux's parents want him to enter military school. He observes that they'll probably disown him outright if he applies to SCAD instead.
• Minimum Height Requirement centers around the concept of Bruce Wayne being determined to keep any of his adopted kids from following in his footsteps and becoming superheroes themselves.
• Moments in Love:
  Tonks: Er... well... to tell you the truth, before Mad Eye convinced me to become an Auror, I always wanted to be a musician or draw comics - I'm not 'alf-bad on guitar and keys, and you know me, I love cartoons. But Mum and Dad were both pretty opposed - said they weren't "'realistic options,''" and that they wouldn't pay to support me unless I was trainin' for a "real" job.
• More Than You Know: Bowser thinks that composing music is just a useless hobby and takes away anything he catches Ludwig working on.
• Scarlet Lady: Parodied in the series' take on "The Pharaoh". Jalil sees his father as a stuffed-shirt who denies the massive breakthroughs he's made in Egyptology. In reality, Jalil's a Know-Nothing Know-It-All who takes significant liberties with the material, and his interpretation of the region's history and gods is derided by his sister Alix as "bad fanfic". Then there's the matter of what, precisely, his forbidden fantasies entail...
  Mr. Kubdul: Jalil, you're not using museum artifacts to perform a sacrificial ritual! For several reasons!
  Jalil: (flipping him off) Gawd, you just don't understand me, dad!
• Seven Days in Sunny June: Treasure reveals that Pinkie's grandfather disapproved of what both of his daughters wanted to do with their lives, feeling their goals were nothing more than wastes of time. While Cloudy Quartz ultimately gave in and gave up her dreams of becoming an Olympic ice skater, Cup refused to surrender her desire to become a professional-level baker.
• Tales of the Otherverse: In "A New Generation", Cora Zir-El's father tells his daughter he does not want her to move out of the United Planets Enclave and attend Metropolis University. He is surprised when Cora cheerfully informs him her mind is made up, and that she doesn't need his money or approval to take control of her life.

Film — Animation

• The Book of Life: Manolo's father steers him away from the guitar to continue the family tradition of bullfighting.
• Coco: This trope provides most of the conflict in the movie. A kid named Miguel Rivera dreams of a career as a musician, but the rest of his family (who make shoes for a living) forbid him from it, due to a "ban on music" rule passed down by his great-great-grandmother, who was pissed off by her musician husband (apparently) abandoning their family.
• Epic (2013) has an inversion. The father is looking for proof of tiny folk, while the daughter would rather he focus on the here and now of the real world since his obsession ruined his career and marriage.
• Kronk's New Groove: Kronk's father was shown to be this, disapproving of his dreams of being a chef. In the end, though, he comes to accept his son's lifestyle since he has a lot of friends (and a girlfriend).
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Dunk for Future: Tiger Wing always wanted to be a basketball player like his father. Thing is, he started to skip school in order to pursue this interest, and his father starts to criticize him for doing that, yelling at him to study instead and putting an emotional strain on his son. By the end of the film, Tiger Wing's dad has decided to encourage this passion instead of trying to stifle it, by the suggestion of Wolffy.
• The Little Mermaid has King Triton who doesn't want Ariel going to the surface or interacting with humans, when he discovers her collection of scavenged human objects he destroys it. This is revealed in the prequel movie to be due to the fact that he actually used to like visiting the surface with his family himself, but a pirate boat crushed his wife (Ariel's mother) Athena to death when she was trying to retrieve a music box he'd given her causing him to hate humans (and for some time prior to the first film, music).
  • The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea shows that after a villain threatens Ariel's baby daughter Melody's life then by the time Melody grows to a 12 year old it's Ariel who has grown to pick up some of her father's traits, forbidding Melody from swimming in the sea and having a sea wall built around the castle to try and stop her.
• Ratatouille: Remy's father, Django, discourages Remy from wanting to become a chef, thinking that it's a preposterous dream for a rat to have, speaking that he doesn't approve of how Remy seems more human than rat at times. Granted, the only reason for this is because he's afraid that if the humans find out, it'll most likely get disgusted and have Remy killed for going near them in the first place. But in the end, he supports Remy's dream, bringing the entire family to help him cook and soon they have their own restaurant business. The film does prove him partially right when a major factor of the film's Bittersweet Ending is people discovering that there's rats in the kitchen of Gusteau's and ordering the restaurant to shut down as an assumed health hazard.
• Rock Dog: Khampa, who bans music from Snow Mountain, in the hopes of preparing his son as the next village protector. However, Khampa is a Reasonable Authority Figure enough to be persuaded to allow Bodi to pursue his dream and find his passion as long as he comes back if it doesn't work out. In the end, Bodi finds that he has a Power of Rock offensive magic all his own through his music, which allows father and son to compromise.
• The Secret of Kells has the Abbot and uncle to Brendan, who is (reasonably) worried about a Viking invasion and wants the entire abbey to focus all of its energy into building a wall. He looks down on every creative endeavor Brendan has, and finally locks him in after he goes into the woods too many times and works on illuminated manuscripts. Interestingly for this trope, he comes to regret his decision immensely since the wall does little to stop the Vikings and he believes Brendan to have been killed. He spends years living in misery over the regret. Early character designs even had him as the main antagonist.
• The Mario Brothers' dad in The Super Mario Bros. Movie is skeptical enough of his sons' plans to enter the plumbing business that he ends up telling Mario that he's dragging Luigi down with him and calls him a disappointment, after they had just botched a plumbing job. Even Uncles Tony and Arthur, who had just been making fun of the Mario Brothers themselves earlier, give their dad a Disapproving Look afterwards.
• Tangled: Mother Gothel kept Rapunzel's desire to leave the tower she was living/prisoner in in check for most of her life by a combination of belittling her and telling terrifying tales of the outside. In this variation, however, Gothel has no interest in protecting Rapunzel's feelings or well-being, and keeping her in the tower is directly related to Gothel's own gain. This is reinforced by Gothel by attempting to limit her imagination; the only books in the tower are Botany, Geology, and Cooking, which Rapunzel has read hundreds of times before, two of which are fairly useless to her as she never goes outside and one can directly benefit Gothel.
• Tinker Bell & the Great Fairy Rescue: The antagonist of the film is Lizzy's father, an overly skeptical scientist who gives her grief for her 'flights of fancy'. When he learns she's filled her journal with everything she's learned about fairies, he starts ripping down all her pictures and throwing everything away, claiming it's 'high time she grows up'. Because being nine years old clearly equals adulthood.
• In Turning Red, Priya's parents are implied to be why she doesn't dress as a Goth despite acting like one. They apparently also won't let her go to concerts until she's 30.

Film — Live Action

• In 2:37, Melody's father stops her from undertaking any creative activity once she starts to get good at it. He even forbids her from listening to music.
• The Abduction of Saint Anne: Anne's mob boss father pulls her out of school and bans her from talking to her friends after she expresses interest in becoming a nun.
• The Air Up There: Saleh would like to go to college in America on a basketball scholarship and someday join the NBA, but his father Urudu, the chief, insists that Saleh stay at home to run the village after Urudu dies. This conflict is resolved after Saleh's older brother is returned to the fold.
• Behind the Waterfall: Aunt Sam is completely opposed to any sort of fantasy or imagination, going so far as to declare a perfect date ruined because the man she was with said they should make a wish after seeing a shooting star. Afterwards, she claims said man was a fool with his head in the clouds.
• Billy Elliot: Played straight then inverted. Young Billy's dad thinks his son needs to "toughen up" and sends him to boxing lessons. At first, he's enraged when he discovers the boy has been using the money to pay for dancing lessons, but his attitude undergoes a complete 180-degree turnaround once Billy proves to him that not only is the boy passionate about his chosen career, but he's also darned good at it. Also contains a moment when Billy's dad becomes what he hates most of all — a strike-breaker — just so his son will have the chance to do what he loves.
• Blinded by the Light: Javed's father Malik is initially like that, even though he means well. Both had dreams of leaving home and making something of themselves elsewhere, with Malik clashing with his own father as well. Like Javed, Malik listens to Bruce Springsteen and ends up with an appreciation for him too.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005): Willy Wonka's dad was like this. He opposed candy-making since he was a dentist. In the end, however, it's revealed that he has kept newspaper clippings regarding the growing success of Wonka's factory.
• Color Me You: Kat's overbearing mother Vanessa doesn't want to hear about Kat's talent for painting. Kat is to go to law school and focus exclusively on becoming a lawyer in order to please Vanessa's father Richard, a well-known lawyer. Apparently, Vanessa was supposed to become a lawyer, but ended up having too much fun in college and got pregnant with Kat, forcing her to drop out and become a housewife. Richard never let her forget how disappointed he was with her, so Vanessa is obsessed with placating him by making sure Kat follows in her grandfather's footsteps. She repeatedly insists that Kat isn't in college to have fun. Kat's roommate convinces her to participate in a painting competition, where she earns first place and a free art class. Afraid of her mother finding out, she makes up a new identity and starts living a double life. Naturally, eventually her mother learns of this and takes her home while screaming at her and generally only caring about how this affects her (Vanessa) personally. Eventually, Kat's father (a lawyer at Richard's firm) has had enough and tells Vanessa that Kat will no longer be studying law and that he will be quitting the firm to do pro bono work. When Vanessa threatens to divorce him, he tells her to go ahead and tries to remind her of the fun-loving girl she used to be, the one he fell in love with.
• Dangerous Minds: One student's mother pulls him out of high school because he's being taught poetry when she needs him to get a job to support the family.
• Dead Poets Society: Neil's father thinks anything that could detract from his son's future as a doctor is an utter waste. He goes ballistic when he finds out Neil is playing Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. When he punishes him by sending him to military school, Neil is pushed over the edge and takes his own life. What's worse? Neil's father doesn't even believe he was the cause of Neil's death, and he isn't even punished for it.
• The secondary protagonist of Dog Bite Dog is a cop whose father - a veteran police officer himself who hates his life - forbids his decision. There's a flashback to his childhood where he won first prize in an essay-writing contest titled "My Ambition", which he proudly shows to his dad, but when the dad sees his ambition to be a policeman, cue the dad angrily ripping the essay into shreds.
• Enchanted: Robert, the little girl's father, discourages his daughter's interest in fairy tales by playing up the heroic achievements of real women such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Harriet Tubman. Even with his disillusionment about "happily ever after", Robert's ideas actually make sense for raising a girl in these days.
• Aunt Lil from Ferry Cross the Mersey promised Gerry's mother that he would become a great artist like Rembrandt, and disapproves of the "heathen music" his band plays. By the end, she's become more supportive.
• Godzilla vs. Kong: Mark Russell shows hints of this towards Madison when he's dismissing her efforts to talk some sense into him about Godzilla's rampage, telling her she should be in school rather than getting involved with any Titan business, although it should be noted he's also motivated by fatherly protective instinct due to the mortal occupational hazard that getting involved with Titans entails (having already sort-of led to the deaths of the rest of their family). The novelization's Adaptation Expansion is more explicit about this before Godzilla attacks, showing Mark as become this to Madison since gaining custody of her; projecting his own expectations of a normal, Titan-free life being ideal onto Madison, and making little effort to see his Jumped at the Call daughter's side of it.
• Halloweentown: Gwen was raised as a witch by her mother Aggie, but left it behind in order to marry a human man. As such, she tried to keep her children from learning magic and following in her and Aggie's footsteps, to the point where they weren't even allowed to celebrate Halloween. She softens her approach in the sequels and accepts that her kids have become witches, though she still disapproves of Marnie going off to Witch University in Return to Halloweentown, albeit more because she's afraid of having an Empty Nest.
• High School Musical: Troy's dad is a downplayed variant. He somewhat disapproves of Troy getting into singing, but his reaction is more toward confusion given how his son never shown any interest in it beforehand and that it is distracting him from basketball. (heck, Troy getting into it was the result of an accident). However, he doesn't do anything against Troy; ironically, it's Troy's friends (along with Gabrielle's new friends) who work to sabotage the relationship to get them back into what they perceived as what they should do.
• The House That Dripped Blood: In "Sweets for the Sweet", John forbids his daughter from any contact with other children, or even to have any toys. As it turns out, he does have some solid reasons for his incredibly strict parenting but, by the time these come out, it is far too late for all involved.
• Killer Diller (2004): Autistic piano savant Vernon's overprotective father bans him from playing with other people. Vernon has to forge his father's signature on the permission form and sneak out to the band's performances.
• A Little Princess (1995): As in the book, the power of storytelling is a major theme, but Miss Minchin's opposition to it is all the more pronounced in the film. In the book, she flatters all of Sara's tendencies, including her imagination, until the girl falls from grace. In the film, she is outraged from the start at Sara's flights of fancy and just gets all the more enraged when she finds that Sara's imagination has survived the reversal of fortune. Minchin believes in the girls learning to be 'productive and useful' where the story shows how Sara's imagination is her last and best weapon against degradation and despair.
  Miss Minchin: I suppose that now you think you are a princess again.
  Sara: I tried not to be anything else.
• Marathon (2005): After Kyeong-sook realizes that she's been pushing Cho-won to run to make herself feel better, she develops the opposite problem and declares that from now on he will not be running at all. Cho-won has to sneak off to the Chuncheon Marathon. When Kyeong-sook realizes what he did, she follows him to try to stop him.
• Mazes and Monsters: Daniel's parents, especially his mother, take a dim view of his role-playing hobby, insisting that he focus all his attention on his computer science degree.
• Miracle on 34th Street: A milder example; Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara) didn't expose her daughter to fairy tales, believing that she should be truthful with her child. While her decision in this regard was informed by her backstory, she was never cruel to her daughter, just pragmatic.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail: The lord of Swamp Castle, who won't let his son sing (or do anything else except marry the girl with great tracts of land that he's picked out).
• The Neverending Story: Played straight in the film adaptation — Bastian's father in the opening scene tells his son to get his head out of the clouds because he's failing in school as a result. In the end, if not for Bastian's vivid imagination Fantasia would have been destroyed forever.
• October Sky: Homer "John" Hickam Sr. discourages his son's interest in building rockets and tries to get him to accept his destiny as a coal miner like almost every other man in town. He gets better at the end, though.
• Pan's Labyrinth: Ofelia is chided for reading too many fairy stories when she's supposed to have outgrown them.
• Paulie: Marie's dad thinks that she already spends too much time fantasizing, blames her fantasies for her stutter, and thus takes it as a personal affront when she begins insisting that Paulie is helping her learn how to speak and thus convinces her mother to get rid of Paulie.
• RAD: The mom disapproves of her son's BMX biking, and doesn't want him to participate in a local competition. The reason? It might interfere with him taking his SAT test months down the line. It wasn't even a question of the son having to balance school and biking, just random opposition to pad the movie.
• Run Wild, Run Free: Philip's mother briefly has this problem. She locks him in his room because she thinks his exploration of the moors is dangerous and his attachment to the white horse is unhealthy, but she lets him out once she sees how miserable he is.
• School of Rock: Zach's dad forbids him from playing rock music and insists on him only playing assigned classical guitar pieces, which doesn't exactly make sense as part of learning classical guitar is all the possible styles and genres you can play in.
• Sister Act II: Rita's mother is determined to squash her dreams of becoming a singer, on the ground that her husband pursued a career in music and was an utter failure. She won't even allow her to join the school choir as an extracurricular because she thinks she should be spending all her time studying to get into a good college. (Which is a little misguided when you consider that college admissions aren't just about your GPA and SAT numbers, and participating in extra-curricular activities can help.)
• Space Jam: A New Legacy: Lebron James started out as this to his son Dom, trying to rope him into liking basketball while being unsupportive of his computer skills. He even gave the same treatment to the Looney Tunes, forcing them to play basketball the traditional way without being 'loony'. After they got crushed halfway during the game of Calvinball and hearing Lola and Bugs say they were trying to be like him, he has a Heel Realization, becomes open to new ideas and apologizes to Dom for having been so hard on him.
• St. Louis Blues: In this biopic, W.C. Handy, "father of the blues," is shown to have this kind of father. Handy's father really was a pastor and deeply opposed to secular music of any kind.
• Star Wars: Uncle Owen Lars to Luke Skywalker. Owen knew that Anakin fell to the Dark Side and forbade Obi-Wan from interacting with Luke, not wanting Luke to follow his father's footsteps. However, Luke wanted to leave the moisture farm and make something of himself, but Owen would constantly shoot down any attempt and the two frequently got into disagreements.
• Stepbrothers: Robert mentions that his dad made him give up being a dinosaur at age seventeen so he could get a job. ("But you're a human. You could never be a dinosaur.")
• Super 8: Deputy Jackson Lamb felt his son helping with the costuming and makeup of friend's film hobby was something to be outgrown and was intending on sending his son to a baseball camp for maladjusted kids. Eventually, after a lot of outside pressure piled up on him (and his son befriended the daughter of the man he blamed for his wife's death) he forbade him from associating with them again. Most of this was due to him being emotionally disconnected from his son after his wife's death.
• Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny: Jables' father spanks his son for his reverence of Ronnie James Dio and Rock. Ironically enough, his father happens to be played by Meat Loaf.
• Tyson's Run: Bobby never straight out tries to prevent his autistic son Tyson from running, but he initially disapproves of his goal of running a marathon because he thinks he won't be able to do it and Ellie is giving him false hope. He comes around fairly quickly, though.
• At the start of The Waltons Homecoming, family patriarch John Sr. forbids his son John-Boy from becoming a writer, as he feels John-Boy's time would be better spent finding a paying job to help provide for the family. He relents towards the end, when he finds out that John-Boy made a promise to God that he would give up writing if his father came home safe from a terrible storm; he decides that John-Boy is responsible enough that his dreams won't distract him from his family.
• The Waterboy: Mama Boucher ("You playin' the foosball behind my back, Bobby Boucher?!!"). She does it because her husband, Bobby's father, ran off to New Orleans for another woman and never returned. As such, she's become incredibly overprotective of Bobby and hates even letting him out of her sight.
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story: Both of Al's parents, but particularly his father, try to dissuade Al from becoming a musician and making song parodies. His dad even goes as far as to destroy Al's accordion when he learns he has one. All this does is alienate Al and push him further into pursuing music.
• Charlie from Where's Willie? is a football fan who doesn't understand Willie's interest in electronics. After Willie hacks the clock at school so the kids can leave early, he announces that he will remove all the computers and machinery from Willie's room, so he will have to fill it with balls and bats instead. Charlie relents after Willie becomes The Runaway.
• In Wild America, the Stouffer brothers' father wants them to work for his carburetor company and disapproves of their desire to become naturalists. He only agrees to lend them the money for their new camera when his wife offers to give them the Hawaiian vacation money she's been saving for several years instead. When the brothers return home from filming wildlife on their road trip, he tells them, "You'll work the debt off, now that you got that out of your system." Marshall eventually persuades him to let Mark and Marty follow their dream.
• Yellowbeard: Parodied. Betty disapproves of her son Dan reading books because the last time she read a book she was raped.
• In Youngblood (1986), Dean's father wants him to stay on the farm and work instead of becoming a professional hockey player. Dean's older brother Kelly, who had previously tried to join a hockey team but couldn't make the cut, persuades their father to let Dean go by saying he'll do Dean's work for him.

Literature

• The All-Seeing: Author Anais Nin recounts a Real Life example of a fantasy-forbidding mom. Writing about a friend, possibly the occultist Jean Carteret, Anais talks about his collections of exotic objects, then says:
  A violin hung on his wall. His violin nailed to the wall and never touched since the day his mother had said to him: "So you failed to get the prize you struggled for? You're hurt, you're humiliated, but I'm happy. Now you will stop playing the violin and wasting your life. You will be a man like your father, not a fiddler. I'm very glad you did not win the prize. You would have gone to Paris to study and become a good-for-nothing. We never had musicians in our family." With one phrase she had destroyed his first passion. He hung his violin on the wall. The strings snapped gradually and hung dead... He is condemned to wander outside of his violin, yet in every object around him I could place my ear and hear the music his mother was unable to silence."
• The Amy Virus: Cyan's father wants all three of his daughters to become doctors. When Cyan brings home a bad report card, he confiscates all her music and instruments. In addition, her older sister Tamarlyn is a talented artist who wants to apply to RISD, but her parents don't want her to go anywhere but Caltech.
• And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street: Marco's father regularly discourages him from making up tall tales. The book itself serves as criticism of this.
• Animal Dreams (by Barbara Kingsolver): The protagonist's (single) father never read her and her sister any stories, but just taught them facts. (Though, in the present, when the kids are grown up, he seems pretty mild-mannered.) The girls managed to use their imaginations, anyway, to the extent of "We are from Zanzibar, we are from Ireland, our mother is the Queen of Potatoes."
• Bloodlines: Sydney's father sees many subjects as "nonessential" and wants all three of his daughters to become Alchemists. When Carly chooses not to become one, he increases the pressure on Sydney and Zoe.
• The Boundless: Will's father doesn't approve of his son's desire to be an artist, thinking it won't be a very profitable future for him. Rather, Will's father wants him to join the railway company when he's old enough. The two even have a fight about it on board the Boundless.
• A Boy Named Queen, Evelyn's mother is always telling her to stifle her imagination.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: In Prince Caspian, the title character's evil uncle Miraz is this to Caspian, regarding the tales of old Narnia:
  "That's all nonsense, for babies... Only fit for babies, do you hear? You're getting too old for that sort of stuff. At your age, you should be thinking about battles and adventures, not fairy tales."
  • Justified (from the story's perspective, anyway) by the fact that Miraz, along with most of the rest of the Telmarine leadership, wants to stamp out the memory of the fact that they stole the land from the talking beasts who had lived there before — and he certainly does not want Caspian to know the truth.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Frank strongly disapproves of Rodrick's desire to become a heavy metal musician. He also hates the fact that Greg spends so much time playing video games.
• Dragonriders of Pern: Yanus, Menolly's father in the Harper Hall Trilogy, is this way. Because centuries-old cultural tradition holds that women could not become Harpers, Menolly's musical talent inconveniences and embarrasses him. She disgraces him and his Hold simply by existing. He once beats her with a belt across her back for playing one measure of her own creation when she's supposed to be playing a traditional ballad. (Fridge Brilliance as he must have had a superb ear himself to be able to recognize that. His own upbringing must have been similar.) When she runs away and becomes the personal apprentice of the MasterHarper, her parents continue to ignore her existence; even after the rules are changed and she is elevated to the position of MasterComposer, her brother notes that their only comments are thinly-veiled references to ungrateful children.
  • Her mother was no better; after Menolly slices the palm of her hand while gutting a fish with a particularly toxic flesh she deliberately allows the hand to heal back wrong so she'd give up her efforts to play instruments and even silences her when she tries to sing along with their newly assigned harper.
• The Enchanted Files: Teacher, rather, in Diary of a Mad Brownie / Cursed. Destiny Carhart's teacher, Ms. Lorna Kincaid, is initially a mild case, thinking children claiming to have Imaginary Friends is mostly harmless, but also considers it unhealthy at Destiny's age (she's a first-grader) and disruptive, due to Destiny insisting that Herbert have his own seat next to her, asking the Carharts to suggest that Herbert stay home from now on (when they do though, she tells them he already went back to his own home). Later though, Ms. Kincaid tries to convince Destiny that Herbert was never real, which makes Destiny cry and infuriates Angus when he overhears it. She later learns they're real, and admits that she'd reacted this way because her mother was always talking about the "fair folk" and the Enchanted Realm for years as if they were real (having heard the stories from her own mother and grandmother), but never presented any evidence beyond the stories. Lorna herself was so confused by them as a child that she thought it was bad for Destiny to believe in the same kinds of things.
• The Eyes of The Dragon: Averted. King Roland's Evil Chancellor Flagg warns him that allowing his son Peter to play with his late mother's dollhouse could turn him into a sissy. Roland, despite usually being an Extreme Doormat when it comes to Flagg, observes Peter's play and decides that it is harmless, as the fantasies he acts out tend to involve bloody battles rather than romance or other "girly" topics.
• Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen!: Vivy's mom is convinced Vivy won't be able to handle being on a baseball team, since she's both autistic and a girl, and tries to get her to sign up for softball instead. When Vivy is hit by a ball and gets a concussion, her mom bans her from playing in games for over a month.
• Goosebumps book Attack of the Mutant has main character Skipper, whose dad views his comic book hobby as a waste of time and frequently makes empty threats to throw out his collection.
• The Grey King: Own Davies wants his son Bran to concentrate only on practical, realistic things. This is because Bran is adopted and actually the legitimate son of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, brought through time and left in Owen's care, and Owen is terrified of losing him to his greater destiny.
• Hard Times (by Charles Dickens): Thomas Gradgrind, who has a utilitarian's love of Fact, and regards poetry and fiction as "destructive nonsense". His views have bad consequences for his daughter Louisa, who represses her emotions and enters a loveless marriage with her father's business associate.
• Harry Potter: The Dursley family, especially Uncle Vernon. He very specifically tries to crush the potential for magic out of Harry with all sorts of means. Harry notes that his uncle disapproves of even innocuous things like cartoons and dreams. This borders on horrifying when it's remembered that Vernon did all these magic-quashing things before Harry ever found out he was a wizard, meaning he had no idea why he was being treated this way. Another horrifying fact is that kids who have something bad happen to them associated with their magic suppress it and suffer from Power Incontinence so bad that they’re capable of killing their mothers on accident or almost blowing up Manhattan. This didn’t happen to Harry because he didn’t know he was a wizard and therefore didn’t suppress his magic whereas the other two people (Dumbledore’s sister Ariana ^note  Implied to have been raped by some Muggle boys who caught her playing outside and attacked her when she couldn’t do the trick again and Creedence ^note  Was adopted by a woman who hated magic and tried to, quite literally, beat it out of him from Fantastic Beasts, respectively) did know they were wizards. Uncle Vernon was playing with some serious fire without knowing it.
• Henry Huggins: Murph, introduced in Henry and the Paper Route, is a Teen Genius who is working on building his own robot. His father thinks his pursuits are a waste of time, and won't give Murph the money he needs to buy parts for the robot. Murph eventually puts his robot project on hiatus when he can't keep up his work as a paperboy in Klickitat Street.
• I Am J: J's father Manny had parents like this. Manny loved horses and wanted to be a jockey growing up, but his parents disagreed because they didn't think it was becoming for a Nice Jewish Boy.
• It: Richie's mother loathes rock music, forbids her son to listen to it, and is aghast that he wants to play it. One can only imagine her reaction to Richie growing up to become the most popular rock DJ in the country.
• Jimbo (by Algernon Blackwood): In this story, which met with the approval of H. P. Lovecraft, there's a well-meaning one of these. Little Jimbo is wrapped up in innocent fantasy. His dad, who has decided Jimbo's future is in the army, is aghast at having "an imaginative boy" who might become "an ass" — "Just fancy, if he grew up into a poet or one of these -- these --!" His efforts to Scare 'Em Straight almost get the boy killed.
• Juniper Sawfeather: June wants to get away from her parents by going to college in San Diego, where she'll study marine biology and go on to work with animals. But her parents are adamant that she go to Washington State, major in environmental studies, and become a lawyer like her mom.
• Katt vs. Dogg: Molly's mother and father don't approve of Molly's dreams of being an actor. They tell her that she should focus her attention on more traditional cat activities, like napping.
• Knight and Rogue Series: Michael's father does not approve of his youngest son going off and playing Knight Errant. His first major attempt to force Michael to quit is to legally require him to become a steward, and when Michael still refuses, he has his son branded as a criminal and stripped of legal rights to try and eliminate all options other than being steward.
• Legacy of the Dragokin: Daniar doesn't want Benji to follow in her footsteps so she does everything she can to keep him away from battle and danger.
• Like a Fish Understands a Tree: George, who has Down syndrome, wants to move into his own apartment with his girlfriend Tracy. However, his mum sees him as an eternal child, thinks the idea of two mentally disabled adults getting married and living together is an impossible fantasy, and blames the recreational center for planting the idea in his head.
• In The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family, Noah's mother nags him to apply to the University of Washington, but he keeps putting it off. His sister Lara discovers that he actually wants to go to community college and become a car mechanic. She knows their mother would be furious if she found out.
• Matilda: Matilda's parents not only don't understand her love of reading over watching brainless game shows and soap operas all day, but her father even goes as far as to rip to pieces a library book she'd borrowed in front of her. Then there is the scene where her mother explains to her teacher Miss Honey why she thinks being pretty is more important than education. They much prefer her brother, who is being trained to take over his father's used car place.
• Lena from The Mermaid's Mirror has always wanted to surf, but her father won't let her because it's too dangerous. She takes lessons in secret, and discovers that she has a gift for it. It turns out that she's half mermaid, and her father is trying to put off telling her.
• More Than Human (by Theodore Sturgeon): Child Prodigy Hip (Hippocrates) Barrows is a gifted engineer. However, his father the doctor is determined to shoehorn him into the same profession, burning his electronics magazines and tearing up his homemade radio set. It does absolutely no good, his father disowns him and he dedicates his life to his chosen field, later becoming the conscience of the gestalt group.
• The Mouse Watch: Bernie Skampersky is a daring 12-year-old rodent who has wanted to join the titular Heroes "R" Us team ever since she witnessed the murder of her beloved big brother Brody. Bernie's parents, Clarence and Beatrice, are mild-mannered mice who refuse to let her join the Mouse Watch at first, but finally realize how important it is to her and change their minds. Their initial reluctance is understandable, since they've already lost one child and Bernie is pretty reckless.
• Jeb from Peta Lyre's Rating Normal has a creative personality and wants to work in film, but his father wants him to work as a car mechanic in the family business, especially since his older brother Damon, whom their father prefers, failed to get an apprenticeship.
• Rangers At Roadsend: Chip was even named "Piety" because her mother had her career planned; she was to become a priestess. Naturally, Chip did not agree.
• SERR Ated Edge (by Mercedes Lackey): In Book 1 (Born to Run), Tania ran away from home because her parents strictly forbade her from having any form of entertainment — no media or activities that weren't purely educational, no foods that weren't chosen based on nutritional fads. When they discovered and burned her tiny stash of fantasy novels, lecturing her about her "betrayal" and how reading such things would ruin her mind and prevent her from being accepted into college, it was the last straw. (The end of the book suggests that they realized their mistake after she ran away, and presents Tania's upcoming reunion with them in a hopeful light.)
• The Shepherd's Crown: Lord Swivel hires a tutor who gets his elder sons functionally literate. When the youngest son Geoffrey shows a passion for reading and an interest in languages and mythology, Lord Swivel has the tutor dismissed. (Geoffrey never even thinks of letting his father know that he wants to be a witch.)
• Small Persons with Wings: Chief Wright wants his son Timmo to be a cop, but Timmo wants to be an astronaut. Chief Wright more or less comes around after Noctua enchants him to have a dream about Timmo as a heroic astronaut.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Randyll Tarly is a particularly vicious example, who attempts to jolt his soft, overweight, book-loving son Samwell away from reading and into manlier pursuits by any means necessary. He even goes as far as chaining him to a wall for three days for the horrible crime of wanting to be a maester. When his efforts don't pay off, he gives Sam the choice of forsaking his birthright and being packed off to the Wall or be involved in a "hunting accident".
  • While Ned Stark loves his daughter, Arya, and even appoints a tutor to teach her basic swordsmanship, Ned never sees it as more than a hobby and doesn't quite understand why Arya takes it as seriously as she does. He still expects that when she grows up she would become a Proper Lady and have an Arranged Marriage. Arya bluntly tells him, "That's not me!" and it's the only point on which she disagrees with him.
  • Tywin Lannister. When the young Tyrion would do somersaults and earn applause and laughter (even from Cersei), Tywin mocked him for acting a dwarf. When Tyrion asked his father for permission to visit the Free Cities, his father told him that he won't let his embarrassing son humiliate the family abroad. Tywin also won't stop grooming Jaime as his heir despite him only wanting to be a Kingsguard.
• The Sorceress's Orc: Vervain grew up in a village where everyone hated magic. She had to run away from home to study the Magical Sciences. Her family disowned her after that.
• "Sredni Vashtar" (short story by Saki): Conrad is raised by a cousin who likes to "thwart him For His Own Good", including selling his pet chicken. (Saki never says this outright, but the cousin's behavior suggests there's an inheritance involved.) The child has preserved his health and sanity through his imagination, and in the end, it frees him — when the title character, a possible Animalistic Abomination, dispatches her for him.
• Stalking Jack The Ripper: Edmund Wadsworth does not approve of his daughter, Audrey Rose's, passion for forensics.
• Stranger Than Fanfiction: Moriko "Mo" Ishikawa wishes to attend a writing course at Columbia University, while minoring in economics. Her father, however, feels that being a writer isn't a profitable future, and is adamant that she go to study business at Stanford. When she brings it up to him, the two have a fight over it.
• The Terrible Two Go Wild has Bertrand Barkin, the father of Barry Barkin and who is reputable for this trope. In this book, he is said to have gotten frustrated with Barry for reading fantasy books and subsequently donated all of the books to a rival school, apparently seeing this as an attack against the rival school.
• Thus I Refute Beelzy (by John Collier): The father is angry over his son having a supposed imaginary friend and sends him to his room, following after to beat him. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for the kid) the son's Imaginary Friend turns out to be not so imaginary.
• "'Twilight of the Dawn'' (short story by Dean Koontz): There's a rather tragic variation, wherein a staunch atheist man is determined to raise his son with the same views, rejecting anything fantastical, supernatural or "irrational". The man's wife dies and the young son begins trying to pray as a way to cope, much to his father's angry frustration. When the little boy gets cancer and then dies the father still refuses to accept the boy's hope and faith until far later.
• When Women Were Dragons: Alex's parents, in different ways. Her father doesn't want her to go to college to study math He would much rather she find a good husband or appropriately "feminine" job to do. Alex's mother is more encouraging of Alex's education, but she is very strict about her daughters conforming to social expectations. She strictly discourages any talk of "inappropriate" subjects, and so forbids Beatrice from expressing her inherent dragon-ness.
• When You Reach Me: Julia's parents pick out her bedroom decor and will not let her decorate her room in her preferred space posters.
• A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged's father, a blacksmith, is always telling him his fantasies will do him no good, and that learning to make a living as a blacksmith is the only realistic way for Ged to get by in the world. He's proven wrong when Ged saves the whole damn village (and, unintentionally, several others) with magic.

Live-Action TV

• 7 Yüz: This is a crucial part of the backstory in the episode "Refakatçiler", highlighting the protagonist's Pride. Serhat's son Okan wanted to become a painter, even winning a scholarship to study in Italy. When Serhat refused to support his dream, insisting that he become a trader, he ran away to find work in Russia and had been estranged from his father ever since.
• Arrested Development: Season Five inverts this when Tobias Funke discovers he has a long lost teenage son he is eager to raise into a crazy dreamer like himself. It gets to the point where he becomes clearly angry with his son when he tries to ask him what he wants to be when he grows up and gets practical answers (a computer scientist because he likes computers or a vet because animals make him happy) and keeps prodding until ultimately he decides his son is going to be a world-famous clown. He's a Reality Forbidding Father.
• Austin & Ally: Lester Dawson, Ally's father, is owner of the music store Sonic Boom, and is cheerfully disdainful of Ally's musical talents. However, by the beginning of Season 4, he leaves the store in her hands, allowing Ally and her friends to mentor a new generation of future performers.
• The Big Bang Theory: Briefly referenced when Sheldon hires an actor to portray an Invented Individual:
  Sheldon: This is Toby Loobenfeld, he’s a research assistant in the particle physics lab, but he also minored in theatre at MIT.
  Toby: It was more of a double major, actually: theatre and physics. You can guess which one my bourgeois parents pushed me towards.
  • Later, after Sheldon has experienced Toby's acting:
  Sheldon: Your parents made the right decision.
• Corner Gas:
  • In one episode, Lacey takes on a job shadow from the local high school who turns out to be an extremely talented cook and expresses interest in getting into cooking as a career. His parents pay her a visit and she is expecting praise for helping their son discover his true calling in life, only for them to angrily berate her and call her a bad person because they wanted him to be a hockey player instead.
  • In the series finale, Emma disapproves of Brent going into the city to perform stand-up comedy every week, believing that at his age he should be "stuck in a rut with a wife and kids, living the Hell we all lived". Bizarrely, Oscar is actually supportive for once, key word being "for once".
    Oscar: Unbelievable, Emma! The boy has a chance to do something with his life and you wanna squash it! This is just like the time you burnt his letter of acceptance from college.
    Emma: You burned that!
    Oscar: Well... someone had to take over the family business!
• CSI: NY: The Monster of the Week in one episode turned out to be one of these. After losing his childhood friend in an accident involving a toy submarine that they bought, believing the advertisement a bit too much (the friend drowned), the man grew up and had a child of his own, whom he utterly prevented from having distractions of any kind. He was allowed no comics or toys, and even forbidden from leaving home except to go to school. His wife eventually divorced him because of this, and acknowledging the trauma had made him a monstrous parent, he decided to get payback on the man who (allegedly) made him this way by gifting the toymaker an Exploding Cigar capable of tearing his head to shreds (and which got taken by another man... the father calmly accepted going to jail in the knowledge that the accidental death and the reason it happened would probably haunt the toy man for the rest of his days).
• Dickinson: Emily's father is opposed to female writers, forbidding Emily's pursuit of being a poet as a result.
• Euphoria: The only thing Maddy was ever passionate about was the child pageantry circuit, and her mother pulled her out of it after hearing about a pageant director being arrested for child molestation. Maddy has never forgiven her mom for it, and thus when her mother presses charges against Nate, she thinks her mom's just trying to ruin her life again.
• Freaks and Geeks: All Nick wants to do is play drums, but his father sells his drum set "for his own good," causing Nick to move out of the house.
• Game of Thrones: Ned Stark, the same as in the books. In Season 6, Tyrion Lannister recounts that he once asked for a dragon for his nameday, and the entire family laughed at this, and then his father drilled it into his head that dragons were long extinct.
• Gentefied: Chris's unseen father and Ana's mother, Beatriz, strongly disapprove of their respective children's chosen careers. Chris's father refused to pay for Chris' culinary school fees and later looks down on him for working in Mama Fina's restaurant; while Beatriz makes no secret that she thinks of Ana's low-paying but budding art career as nothing more than a hobby that doesn't pay their bills.
• Glee:
  • Mike Chang's father. They temporarily disown each other when Mike refuses to quit the school musical.
  • Sue Sylvester's eternal opposition to the club ultimately boils down to this; art and music programs can't prepare students for the harsh realities of adulthood and only gives them false hopes of showbiz success.
• Gunsmoke: One episode dealt with a farmer who disapproved of his son reading fantasy books like The Odyssey. He goes as far as burning one of the books despite the fact that it belonged to the school, he also disapproved of him going to school because he felt it interfered with his farming, the boy wanted to be a teacher instead of a farmer; the boy's teacher takes the father to court because he pulled his son from the school and also because he assaulted him. Eventually the teacher is able to convince the father to allow the boy to go back to school and let him be what he wants when he grows up.
• Midsomer Murders: Downplayed in "The Ballad of Midsomer County. Danny Carver isn't that keen on his daughter Melody becoming a professional folk singer as he fears it will change her irrevocably. He comes around at the end of the episode. Ironically, Melody's real'' father probably wouldn't have minded.
• Political Animals: Inverted — Bud genuinely wishes his son TJ would find a career path that involves the piano, as it's clear that he enjoys playing, and it's far healthier than his other hobbies (like drugs and affairs with married men.) Unfortunately, TJ finds the notion of a stable, happy life boring.
• Once Upon a Time: As revealed in "In the Name of the Brother", Alphonse Frankenstein didn't approve of his son's aspirations to bring the dead back to life and even went as far as to purchase an army commission to stop Victor from conducting further experiments. It didn't work, because Victor did indeed succeed in reviving his younger brother as the famous monster... who then choked Alphonse to death.
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Dino Charge: An early episode of the second season introduces us to Shelby's father, a successful, clever businessman who owns a famous chain of ice cream parlors. Throughout the episode, Shelby and her dad constantly butt heads because he disapproves of his daughter's interest in dinosaurs and paleontology and would rather want her to focus on the family's ice cream business, much to her annoyance. By the end of the episode, he comes to terms with his daughter's own aspirations, however, and even gives her a dinosaur-shaped ice cream cake to share with her team.
  • Power Rangers Beast Morphers: Two of the Rangers have these.
    • Mayor Adam Daniels of Coral Harbor isn't too happy about his son Devon's interest in video games and karate, feeling there's no future in it and wanting Devon to get a normal job. Devon's obsession with his two hobbies leads to his sneaking into the Grid Battleforce headquarters to use their Battle Simulator and putting him into position to witness Evox's arrival (and giving the Commander and her top scientist some warning to be on the lookout); he subsequently becomes the new Red Ranger after the original candidate is corrupted by Evox, and his skills at both interests prove vital to fighting Evox and his minions. Ultimately, Mayor Daniels leans of his son's exploits and comes to accept his son's choice.
    • Ravi's mother, Commander Shaw of Grid Battleforce, doesn't approve of Ravi's painting hobby, feeling it's a distraction from his Ranger duties. She eventually does find out about her son's hobby, and while understandably mad that he lied to her, she admits that her anti-art stance was limiting his passion.
• Psych gives us an interesting example with Henry Spencer, Shawn's dad. As a child, he wasn't fond of Shawn reading comic books, as they usually depict cops as useless in order to justify vigilante justice meted out by superheroes. More overall, Henry was a good and attentive dad to Shawn, but a lot of their experiences and bonding was shaped as exercises to train Shawn to be a cop (apparently, the Spencers have been one since at least Henry's own dad). Interestingly enough, Shawn did still want to be a cop despite his dad's Control Freak issues, but after the divorce between Mr. and Mrs. Spencer, all that resentment bubbled up and Shawn purposely committed a felony to disqualify himself from being a cop. He does put all of his training into being a private detective and uses the guise of being psychic for it. Henry is not a fan of private detectives nor psychic ones, but he is proud of the good that Shawn does, even if he'd never admit it. It's implied that things would've gone differently had Henry not been so pushy on Shawn (though the divorce was actually the decision of Shawn's mother, Henry took the blame so Shawn would not resent her, something Shawn would learn at the end of her introductory episode when she finally tells him.)
• Sense8: Sun's father did not approve of girls training in martial arts and even when she won a prestigious tournament he still refused to acknowledge her efforts. Her sensei notes that his disapproval was so strong she had to compete using a different surname to hide their familial connection.
• Shtisel: Shulem almost never supports Akiva's artistic ambitions, and Nuchem actually forbids Akiva from painting ever again if he wants to marry Libbi. Both of them see religion as more important than art, and push Akiva to "grow up and get serious".
• Smallville: The end of the Pilot Movie sets up the Monster of the Week for the next episode, a teenager who's really into bugs — collecting, classifying, etc. — a budding entomologist. His mother dislikes his hobby, partially on the grounds that he can't make a living at it. And how he spends the rest of his time stalking and peeping on Lana, complete with videotapes.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. While Quark greatly disapproves of Nog wanting to join Starfleet instead of going into business like a good Ferengi, he's only Nog’s uncle. Nog’s father Rom puts his foot down and makes Quark accept Nog’s career choice.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • The episode "Tattoo" has Chakotay's father be against him leaving his tribe and abandoning their ways to join Starfleet.
    • Tom Paris's father is a Starfleet admiral who wanted him to go into space when Tom wanted to join the Naval Patrol. Lampshaded when Tom is dictating a letter to his father in "Thirty Days" explaining How We Got Here.
      Tom: It all started on a morning I was doing something you would find a complete waste of time...
      [Cut to Tom in his Captain Proton holoprogram, flying through Outer Space in a Jet Pack and Adventurer Outfit]
  • Star Trek: Enterprise: Inverted with Malcolm Reed, whose father wanted him to join the Royal Navy, like every man in the Reed family for generations. Malcolm chose Starfleet instead (mainly because he had aquaphobia), distancing him from his parents.
• Supernatural: Patriarch John Winchester is an inverted example. He and his youngest son, Sam, bump heads because Sam enjoys mundane activities like reading, homework, and playing soccer when John would rather he train to become a hunter like John and Sam's older brother, Dean. The family had a big blowout that led to years of estrangement when Sam chooses to go to college and study to be a lawyer rather than remain in the family of the business of hunting ghosts, werewolves, and other things that go bump in the night.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Fugitive", Mrs. Gann shows hints of this during this exchange with Jenny:
  Mrs. Gann: Who were you talking to?
  Jenny: Myself.
  Mrs. Gann: Cut it out. You can go crazy that way.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Her Pilgrim Soul", Nola Granville's father actively discouraged her from reading literature and discussing or even thinking about politics. Whenever she tried to discuss these topics with him, he merely looked at her and told her that she was beautiful, implying that she should not bother with such things as she is a woman. He disowned and disinherited her when she decided to pursue poetry as a career and married a Jewish lawyer named Robert Goldstone.
• Victorious: Jade's father disapproves of her seeking a career in the creative arts. This motivates her to try to prove to him that this a viable career path for her.

Music

• Peter and the Wolf: Grandpapa, who tries to keep Peter inside at all times (on the grounds that there's a wolf out there that would eat him) when he just wants to go outside and have fun.
• Red Vox's "Job in the City" is a sarcastic account of a parent who is urging their child to get a "real job" in the city. The parent openly mocks how their child's aspirations didn't turn out to be what they expected, how they're going to abandon fun with their friends to slave their days away for pennies, and even try to guilt their child by bringing up everything they've done for them.
• Salvatore Ganacci: At the end of the music video for "Fight Dirty", Salvatore's father angrily reprimands him for drawing manga and demands he instead focus on becoming a famous musician.

Podcasts

• Solar: Jamal's mother was a deeply paranoid woman who resorted to outright emotional abuse to prevent him from becoming an astronaut, forcing him to listen to the recording of a Russian cosmonaut slowly dying in space and stare at a picture of the cosmonaut's corpse for hours on end every night in an attempt to get him to abandon his dream. When Jamal still joined NASC in spite of her protests, she disowned him for disobeying her wishes and declared that he was dead to her.

Roleplay

• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
  • Harriet's parents forbade her from pursuing her dream of becoming a stage performer. This caused a rift between them that only ended when her parents died in an accident, traumatising Harriet so deeply that she gave up her dream of acting.
  • Jae's parents won't let her become a florist like she wants to, instead encouraging her to focus on her studies so she can have the life that they never had. This has led to her becoming rebellious and surly as a result.

Tabletop Games

• Blood Bowl: In the background of the game, the Dragon Princes were a team made up of bored young High Elf princes. Horrified that their children wished to participate in such an uncouth game, the players’ parents threatened to disinherit them if they played against any team that wasn’t their social equal, resulting in the Dragon Princes disbanding without playing a single game.
• Changeling: The Dreaming: A typical villain is a muggle who might mean well but his attitude makes him a Walking Wasteland to fey creatures.
• Warhammer 40,000: When he was a child, Belial, Grand Master of the Deathwing, wanted to participate in the tournament held to find recruits for the Dark Angels Chapter of Adeptus Astartes. Belial’s father, however, forbade him from entering as he wanted his son to follow in his footsteps as the leader of their tribe. In defiance, Belial disguised himself and entered the contest and managed to duel a Space Marine Chaplain for 7 minutes before being knocked out.
• Malus Sceleris, a minor darklord from the Ravenloft setting, was brought up by his strict and demanding druid father to do nothing but tend the forest. Furious at being repeatedly denied any aspirations toward a more civilized or independent life, Malus eventually murdered his father with disease-contaminated blankets.

Theatre

• Disney's Believe on the Disney Cruise Line has a milder version in Dr. Greenaway, who at least tries to accept his daughter's belief in magic. He's just a little too scientific to believe in magic, and it takes Genie showing up to help him learn.

Toys

• Nexo Knights:
  • King Halberd disapproves of his daughter, Macy, wanting to become a knight, on the grounds that it's dangerous (and also because he still sees her as a little girl). The first episode has him go as far as not giving her a shield at the knighting ceremony, the certification of her being a knight, which is broadcast live to the entire kingdom.
  • In the opposite direction, Lance hates his parents because they made him train to be a knight, as is the family tradition, rather than be a celebrity like he wanted. The fallout is so bad Lance refuses to lift a finger to save them when they're abducted by Jestro.

Video Games

• Dragon Age: Origins: Unusually averted in the Human Noble Origin. Teyrn Bryce Cousland is actually quite open to the possibility of his younger child becoming a Grey Warden; the unusual aspect is that he's okay with it even if his younger child is female, whereas most noble fathers in the setting don't allow their daughters to pursue such things. His only objection is the current timing — he and his older child are about to be gone from the castle for a considerable length of time and he needs his younger child to oversee things in their absence. If they're still interested when he comes back, he says, they can talk about it then. Then the plot happens.
• Dragon Quest VII: King Burns regards his son Kiefer as an irresponsible Upper-Class Twit chasing foolish dreams of adventure without any concept of the inherent risks. Even after Kiefer and his friends stumble across a way to restore the lands lost long ago in the war with the Demonlord, he forbids him from continuing (and attempts to stop the others as well).
• Ensemble Stars!: Both Souma and Kaoru's parents disapproved of them going to Yumenosaki and training as an idol, wanting them to Follow In Their Footsteps. In Souma's case, he came out of sincere passion, and it's only after Kuro, Keito, and even Anzu visit with them multiple times that they seem to accept it. (And the broader family still very much looks down on him for it.) For Kaoru, these three years were meant to be his last of freedom before he's expected to join the family business, so he intended on just lazing around and enjoying himself before then, but eventually comes to realise he does actually like being an idol. Though they deal with a similar issue, they clash due to their totally different ways of dealing with it: Souma tries to be absolutely perfect, and a model kid in every way other than being an idol, while Kaoru leans into his image as a slacker as a way of owning and controlling it.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, Shinto believes that Sekka lacks something she needs to be a proper swordsmith and tells her to give up on her dreams. He goes so far as to bar her from every forge in Kugane to prevent her from honing her skills. This motivates her to run away to Limsa Lominsa in hopes of learning from the famed Blacksmiths' Guild. When he visit Limsa Lominsa to appraise her progress, he continues to be disappointed in her and threatens to disown her if she doesn't give up the trade.
• Galaxy Angel: Mint's father Darno Blancmanche seems to be a downplayed example. While he does love his daughter, he pushed her too much into becoming his successor in running their company, to the point of denying her of any childish pleasures. It says something that for her date with Tact she ends up picking a fast food restaurant because she had only gone to one of those once in her entire life.
• Growing Up:
  • Bobbie's father doesn't want her to take up acting because it's "girly" and people might make fun of her for being fat. He becomes accepting of her dream after her final act becomes a success with your support.
  • Wendy's parents try discouraging her from her dream to become a horror movie makeup and VFX artist in favor of pushing engineering like them. Depending on your choices, they'll either succeed in this, making Wendy work for the space agency, or wholeheartedly support her ambition after she successfully convinces them that she'd enjoy it more.
• Inazuma Eleven surprisingly has Gouenji's father disapprove of his playing soccer. The sport can't save lives, so apparently it doesn't mean anything compared to becoming a doctor.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: In one of the retrievable memories, Zelda is excitedly telling Link about all the progress Hyrule has made in controlling the Guardians. Things turn tense when her father King Rhoam shows up to scold her and forbid her from spending her time learning about the machines rather than figuring out how to unlock the Sealing Power that will let her defeat Calamity Ganon. What makes Zelda especially resentful is that she has been praying at the requisite fountains and doing all manner of other things to unlock this ability, all for naught. It's implied that as she carries the Triforce of Wisdom, her father stifling her education and curiosity also stifled her power.
• Manafinder: Sir Gobit refuses to let his daughter, Gobithia, practice combat or become a Manafinder. He's overprotective because his wife was killed by a Mudrock before the family could make it to the Settlement.
• MapleStory: Evan's father tells him that farmers like them need to stay in their station and not run off to be adventurers. Ironically enough, his continued belief that Evan is off playing make-believe is what renders him oblivious to Evan's globetrotting adventures as the newest Dragon Master.
• Mari and the Black Tower: Jondar forbids his daughter Sera from practicing magic, so she goes off into the Black Tower in order to find research material. When she comes back, the two reconcile and Jondar allows Sera to study magic, but under his supervision.
• Mary le Chef: Cooking Passion: Mary Vanderworth's parents want her to become a lawyer like them instead of a chef. This results in her juggling a job as a part-time cook and an entry-level position at a law firm in an attempt to not disappoint them while still chasing her dream.
• Mass Effect: Garrus' father is mentioned as hating Spectres for having nearly unlimited power but very little government oversight. He apparently pulled some strings to prevent Garrus from pursuing this career after his mandatory military service was up, so he could join C-Sec like he did.
  • In a comic focused on Garrus, he remembers his childhood, with his father teaching him to shoot. As he's defending his HQ from three gangs on Omega, he calls his father to say good-bye and tell him he was right. When asked why the rush, Garrus replies that there are too many targets. His father immediately brushes off any attempts at father-son reconciliation and goes all business on him: how many targets? what are their tactics? Then Garrus sees an N7 uniform in his scope and tell his father he'll call him back.
  • By the third game, it becomes an aversion. Garrus mentions that they never saw eye-to-eye on things, so when Garrus sees him in person and says it's serious, his father listens. Garrus explained everything that's happened; Saren, Virmire, the Collectors, the Reapers, everything. His father doesn't believe at the start, but then he started connecting the dots and accepts it as the truth since Garrus wouldn't be making this stuff up for a joke. He even took it to the Primarch, who also listened.
• Mishap: An Accidental Haunting: The parents of Judith Kaufman wanted her to take over the family investment business instead of being a painter. Sadly, like all of the other boss ghosts in the game, she died with her dream unfulfilled.
• Octopath Traveler II: Agnea's father, Garud, forbids Agnea from leaving the village and becoming a famous dancer, like her mother was. Eventually, he (reluctantly) allows her to leave after she makes enough money to show that she's serious about it, and he turns out to have a reason for not wanting Agnea to leave — while her mother did indeed make it big as a dancer, she also ended up getting sick as a result of overexerting herself and died as a result. Garud couldn't bear to see the same thing happen to his daughter.
• Pokémon Black and White: Bianca's dad doesn't want her to become a Pokemon trainer and travel the region due to the danger and tries to bring her back home many times until Elesa sets him straight.
• Potion Permit: After being cured of her long-term illness, Rue wishes to visit the capital, but her father Myer forbids it out of fear of losing his only daughter.
• Psychonauts: Raz's father Augustus Aquato, who is opposed to him learning to use his psychic powers. He's only trying to protect Raz from his family's enemies by keeping him out of the world of psychics, and is actually a psychic himself. While Raz sees his father's constant acrobatic training as oppressive, those skills turn out to be massively useful in psychonaut work. It is heavily implied that this was actually Raz's father's reasoning behind the training and Raz was misinterpreting things. When Raz's father meets Raz's mental image of him, he's visibly hurt.
• The Spellcasting Series: Spellcasting 101 has a harsh down-to-earth stepfather as one of the things that makes you eligible to enroll into the Sorcerer University. If you don't hurry in the first scene, he makes you a dragon farmer and the game is over.
• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter: In the final cutscene, Ethan is told to stop being Mr. Imagination by his brother and uncle. The father doesn't comment negatively about his vivid fantasies, which grants him a Heroic Suicide in Ethan's Dying Dream.
• World of Warcraft:
  • King Varian Wrynn is this regarding his son's class choice, wanting him to be a warrior like he is rather than the priest Anduin wants to be. At one point in the novel Wolfheart we literally see him thinking about how he needs to start discouraging his son from spending so much time with their religion, which is "obviously a bad influence".
  • In another child to parent example similar to the Epic one above, Lyalia doesn't think much about her father, Lorekeeper Vaeldrin, searching Pandaria for a means of restoring the Night Elves' immortality. Vaeldrin eventually learns that the waters he had searched for only transfer life rather than prolonging it, and he ultimately uses it to revive his daughter at the cost of his own life, after lamenting that his search for immortality had caused him to lose sight of the things that made life worth living, including her.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Mrs. Reid verbally abuses Shania for being an artist when she thinks she should be focusing entirely on being a soldier. She is also compared unfavourably to her dead sister, who was more inclined towards fighting.

Visual Novels

• Hatoful Boyfriend: Sakuya Le Bel Shirogane is forbidden from plebian pursuits like the arts by his birdy bigot father, who convinces him that the Le Bel family must prove their status by remaining Idle Rich. Sakuya has a passion (and a talent) for music, which he represses unless the heroine pursues him and hones her Charisma to persuade him to chase his dreams, which gets him disowned.
• Queen of Thieves: The heroine's parents are noted to have disapproved of her choice to attend art school and do not support her artistic aspirations; she starts off the story desperate to make some kind of big break before she has to move back to her home town since that means she'll have to give up and get a "real job."
• Scandal in the Spotlight: Iori Enjo's father is a wealthy and high-powered corporate executive who expects his son to succeed him in running their family's company and strongly disapproves of Iori's career as a (phenomenally successful) pop star. When Iori first joined Revance, his father declared that he would allow Iori's participation in the band only until Iori turned thirty. Since Iori was nineteen at the time and didn't expect his run as a pop star to last more than a few years, his father's edict hardly seemed important... but with Revance still going strong ten years later and the deadline looming increasingly close, Mr. Enjo has become more and more willing to resort to underhanded methods to force Iori to quit.
• Shining Song Starnova: Nemu Akimoto’s stepmother Haruna disapproves of Nemu’s desire to become an Idol Singer, as she considers it degrading work that will tarnish their wealthy family’s reputation. In most routes, Nemu and Haruna come to an undisclosed arrangement which allows Nemu to continue being part of the Starnova idol group, but in Nemu’s route, Haruna starts conspiring with Corrupt Corporate Executive Kamijou to destroy Starnova… Or so Nemu thinks. In reality, Haruna doesn’t want Nemu to become an idol because she’s scared that Nemu has inherited her real mother’s mental illness, and doesn’t want the stress of being an idol to destroy her the way it did her mother. When Haruna sees that Mr. Producer looks after his talents and won’t exploit Nemu the way her mother was, Haruna gives Nemu her blessing and support.

Webcomics

• Precocious: Ursula's parents, who basically raised her in an opaque, home-schooled bubble, and are still obsessive Helicopter Parents.
• Royal Blue: Bel's dad doesn't want her to get weapons training or join the army, so she has to do so in secret.
• Sleipnir: Equine Invader from Jupiter: David, Jessica and Clint's father, sternly disapproves of the former's career as a scientist and has always demeaned him for his lack of interest in helping run the ranch. After Clint finally has enough and blows up at his dad, it's revealed that Clint's recollection of events was over-exaggerated... though the incident leads David to re-evaluate his parenting and their relationship improves post timeskip.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: Up to the beginning of the story, Tuuri had the lifelong dream of visiting a Plague Zombie ridden Forbidden Zone, while not being The Immune. While the story itself is about her finally getting the opportunity to do just that, her older brother, who had a Promotion to Parent, is shown to understandably have a few issues with the idea, both in Chapter 1 and in a flash-back pre-dating the death of their parents.
• Tower of God has a rare, positive example. Anne's decision to become a Princess of Jahad was vehemently opposed by her mother Eurasia, who saw it as nothing but an evil ploy of King Jahad. Anne disobeyed her, became a princess, and went insane when she learnt of Jahad's true designs. After the whole incident, Eurasia forbade her family from joining the Princesses of Jahad.

Web Animation

• Crumpled Talent is an animated short about a kid, whose parents grounded them for immersing in their drawing so much, that they didn't pay much attention in class.

Web Original

• Active Shooter: In this short film, the main character, Carl, believes that his son is the one shooting up his school due to his harsh treatment of him. In a flashback to the past, it is revealed that Carl heard his son had quit his baseball team for unknown reasons, and furiously demanded that he go back and beg to rejoin it, not even considering that baseball just probably isn't his thing any more and that he may look for another club that he actually enjoys. He just jumps to the conclusion that he did so because of video games, even muttering disapproval when he logs into his computer for clues and finds a video game there. However, it turns out he was not the shooter.
• Parodied in one Joel Haver sketch, "Toilet Paper Bears", where the father forbids his son from pursuing a liberal arts degree... because they're the Charmin bear family, and have absolutely no ambitions or interests in life beyond toilet paper and wiping themselves.
  Dad: Son, I don't like where this is headed. We've had this conversation many times before, and it always leads to the same place: our butts. Son, that's what we do. We wipe our butts. We don't do theater, we don't do music, we don't do acting — we wipe our butts.
  Son: I just feel like I have so much more to offer...
  Dad: Wipin' your butt is one of the best things you can do as a bear!
  Son: But, Mom —
  Mom: [in agreement] We wipe ass, honey.
• The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air): Julian's Wicked Stepfather boxes Julian's ear so hard it bleeds on catching him hiding in the basement, pretending to put on a radio show with a tape machine instead of cleaning house. Julian grows up to be a janitor at the Eiffel Tower, secretly desperate to take part in the eponymous radio Variety Show that records there.
• Pokémon Rusty: Rusty's parents want him to work at their deli before he could "go to college and get a real job" as they consider Pokemon trainers little more than "pet owners". Adding to that, Rusty's father doesn't seem to like Pokemon in general, he refers to them as "monsters", and dislikes Rusty's disinterest in their unmarked home of Beige Town. Rusty's Pokemon actually agree he should stay at the deli, but for different reasons.

Western Animation

• Arcane: Neither of Caitlyn's parents support her decision to become an Enforcer, as it is below her standing as a noble. They're ready to pull strings to have her posted in eyeshot on Progress Day as well as get her removed from the force entirely after she nearly gets killed by Jinx's explosion.
• Batman: The Animated Series: Major Hamilton Hill disapproves of his ten-year-old son Jordan practicing magic tricks. The problem is that Jordan decides to be The Runaway and hides in The Joker's van...
• Bob's Burgers: According to "Father of the Bob", this caused a lot of problems between Bob Jr. and Bob Sr. They're both cooks, but Bob Sr. hates how creative Bob Jr. is and thinks that there's never more than one way to do anything. When Bob Jr. surprised a customer with a special burger, Bob Sr. threw it in the garbage before the customer could try it.
• BoJack Horseman: BoJack's mother mocked BoJack whenever he wanted to try something new ("Football? You don't have the haunches for it!"). She only wanted him to perform "The Lollipop Song" for her dinner party friends so she'd look good, even when he didn't want to. When he became a comic actor on Horsin' Around, she belittled him constantly, believing that she wasted her life raising him only for him to become a "clown." However, in season four, she does enjoy his sitcom once she develops dementia, suggesting that her insults were a deliberate way to keep emotional distance from her son.
• Caleb and Sophia: In Episode 2, Become Jehovah's Friend, the mother (who looks like Mel from Coraline) successfully guilts her son Caleb into throwing away a plastic Sparlock the Warrior Wizard toy on the grounds that God hates magic. And she's portrayed as the hero!
• ChalkZone:
  • Mr. Wilter has this opinion regarding cartoons. Though at least one episode shows that he does have a point (he gives Rudy lunch detention so that he can finish the assignment that they were given before summer vacation, which Rudy spent drawing a comic book of an adventure he had in Chalk Zone that no one in class would think actually happened.)
  • This was the case with Mr. Wilter himself also. In one episode, when Rudy and Snap stumble upon some old drawings, we end up discovering they were created by Mr. Wilter who happily recognized him and ended up confessing that the reason he stopped drawing was because of his own father.
  • One episode featured an art teacher named Miss Tweezer, who only liked art of "real" things and despised anything unrealistic or cartoony.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: In the Season 4 episode "A Beaver's Tale", a beaver wanted to be a musician, but his father wanted him to be a construction worker like him and so destroyed his bongos and enrolled him in construction school. While this trope is portrayed as harsh in many cases, this one was downright lethal as the dam the beaver would build caused the farm to flood and nearly drowned Eustace and Muriel.
• Family Guy: Carter Pewdershmidt was this to Lois, as he forbid her from being a model when she was a teenager. Lois eventually became a model in her 40s.
• Invader Zim: Professor Membrane strongly disapproves of Dib's fascination with the paranormal, and keeps urging him to study "real science." An unproduced episode, "Mopiness of Doom", does have Dib relent and study in "real science." He initially seems better off since he is being respected for once, but it becomes clear that he's not satisfied and finds "real science" boring.
• Invincible (2021): Eve's parents, her father especially, aren't very supportive of her superhero career. Her father in particular, though genuinely concerned for his daughter's life, has no respect for her career choices or her responsibility, and he has a highly dated and traditional mindset in terms of gender roles and what he thinks Eve should be aspiring towards. Eve's mother is less dogmatic but doesn't exactly disagree with what her husband says.
• Jem: Riot's father wouldn't allow his son to be a "sissy" who played music. He spanked him for even playing the piano and broke his guitar. Riot tried to appeal to his dad by joining the army like him; however, after he left to join a band and was given a dishonorable discharge, his dad disowned him. They have something of a reconciliation after Jem talks Mr. Llewelyn into attending a Stingers concert and seeing Riot's work for himself. He's brought around less by his son's talent (which he acknowledged but dismissed), than by the crowd: They're not the bunch of dope-smoking hippie losers he assumed they were, and they LOVED his son's music.
• King of the Hill: This is a recurring trend, where Hank's reaction to whatever Bobby's current interest is varies somewhere between annoyance, shame, and outrage. How extreme of a Fantasy-Forbidding Father Hank is varies from episode to episode; sometimes it's just a quick sigh for the audience's amusement and sometimes it's trying to urge Bobby to stop. But when Hank is being particularly close-minded and shaming of whatever Bobby's into that week, he'll usually learn to appreciate his son and the two of them will share a tender moment (with Bobby often learning that his father wasn't so much trying to bust his chops as he was trying to protect him from becoming a target for bullies). One episode took this literally when Bobby began to get absorbed by a Fantasy book series in the B-Plot and Hank repeatedly told him to stop reading it in favor of a typical Boy's Adventure book.
• Looney Tunes's companion series Merry Melodies gave us an interesting example with the short film I Love To Singa. An owl family that prided itself on having their members be masters of classical music eventually produced a son who was a natural prodigy in jazz. They attempt to teach him classical music, but he is off-key and frequently sneaks in a few bars of his favorite song, "I Love To Singa." Finally, the father kicks him out of the house, and the young boy finds a jazz competition hosted by a local amateur radio. Feeling regret at kicking him out, his parents rush to the radio station hearing his song. They get to see that he is finally happy, but thanks to Pavlovian methods, their son sees them and goes into classical instead. Rather than let his son lose, his father relents and lets his son perform as a jazz singer and dancer. So in hindsight, I Love To Singa is a deconstruction that has a happy ending: What mattered more than the family honor was the simple fact that family supports one another.
• Over the Garden Wall: When Mr. Langtree discovers his daughter attempting to teach her animal students to play musical instruments, he promptly and angrily confiscates them and threatens to revoke her funding. Subverted when it's shown he was going to pawn them as a last-ditch effort to keep the school afloat, having already spent his life savings on it.
• The Owl House:
  • Downplayed with Luz's mother Camila. While she loves Luz's creativity, she thinks Luz's obsession with fantasy is responsible for her being unable to make friends with other kids and that it makes Luz behave disruptively at school. All she wanted was for Luz to be able to temper her behavior when the situation demands it so that she can have a future.
  • Amity's father Alador is against her competing in the Bonesborough Brawl as he did when he was younger, because he now looks back on that part of his life as a waste of his talents and doesn't want her squandering her potential (though the small smile he gives when she tells him that she wants to bring home the champion's belt like he did shows that he's touched by her looking up to his past acomplishments).
• The Simpsons: Parodied at the end of the episode "The President Wore Pearls," where Homer shoots down all of Lisa's dreams out of laziness (since otherwise he'd have to do things like driving 45 minutes to take her to a fancy new school and getting up at 6:30 am).
• Sofia the First: In the episode "Gizmo Gwen," Chef Andre discourages his daughter from inventing because he doesn't want her to be embarrassed when her inventions fail, as his did.
• South Park: Parodied in the "High School Musical"-based episode; musical star/Zac Efron Expy Brydon's dad is a Camp Straight musical enthusiast who is outraged that his son wants to play basketball.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: One episode showed that Neptune was like this to his son Triton, who didn't want to be a chaos bringer. Eventually, Neptune trapped him in a cage and left him on an island. When Triton was finally freed by SpongeBob, he was so consumed by revenge that he devastated Bikini Bottom, which surprisingly, caused Neptune to be proud of him and for them to make up.
• In the Static Shock Very Special Episode "Sons of the Fathers", it's revealed that Richie spends all his time at Virgil's place because his father is not only one of these, but also an Angry White Man who disapproved of his son having black friends. When Virgil offers to share a rap CD with Richie his father refuses to allow the music in his home, insisting that it encourages kids to rebel against their parents despite Virgil's reassurance that some carries a positive message. After Virgil's Reasonable Authority Figure father gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for allowing his negativity to cause Richie to run away from home, he lightens up and even takes the day off work to take the boys to Comic-Con.
• Tangled: The Series: Cassandra's father, who's Captain of the Royal Guard, doesn't let Cassandra join the Guard, which is her life dream. He claims that Cassandra "is not ready" for it, though it more probably is because he's afraid of the (very real) chance she might get hurt or even killed since it is a relatively dangerous job. Subverted at the end of Season 1 when the Captain is wounded and can't fight himself and he finally realizes Cassandra is the person most capable of leading the guards now.
• Teen Titans Go!: Played for laughs in one episode, where Raven mentions that her demonic father Trigon forbids her from becoming a dancer like she's always wanted.
• ThunderCats (2011): Claudus feels this way towards Lion-O's fascination with mythical technology in Thundera's world of Medieval Stasis. Of course, it comes in very handy once it's revealed that there are pockets of Lost Technology in the outside, and the Big Bad is invading with it. He then proceeds to realize the "trinkets" he's been repairing on and off for years are time bombs and uses them to tear through enemy tanks and allow his and his allies' escape. Of course, had Claudus known his son was tinkering with bombs without first knowing what they were, he'd have been very justified in his opinion but for entirely different reasons.
• Time Squad: In "Forget the Alamo", Tuddrussel disapproves of Otto sewing, and while Larry defends that he's simply teaching Otto to be creative, Tuddrussel believes that Larry is teaching him "how to be a girl", claiming that "Next thing he'll be curtseying and such." This skill later proves useful on a mission, where Otto sews a straight-jacket and tricks Davy Crockett into wearing it, saving him and the guys from getting attacked by Santa Ana's army.

---