Parents As People / Literature

Parents as People in Literature

By writer:

• Diana Wynne Jones, as noted below, wrote her nearest thing to an autobiographical novel and called it The Time of the Ghost; it is about this sort of family. The father is a towering professor known to his children as Himself, who runs a boys' school, where the lead and her three sisters live. The mother spends all her time keeping the school in order, and all four girls are really shockingly neglected. Getting food regularly involves raiding the school kitchens and doing their best to get away with it. Both parents, however, despite fairly limited page time due to their disinterest in their children, are highly realized characters with internal lives of whose shape we get a sense.
• Jacqueline Wilson is diligent in depicting her Parents As People. Often likable, these characters don't fall into stereotypes... but the reader still wouldn't want to be related to them. In The Illustrated Mum, Marigold, a manic-depressive single mother, adores her two children, but feeds them cake rather than cooking them a proper dinner. In The Suitcase Kid, Andy's divorced parents marry new partners who already have families of their own. Her parents are so involved with their new lives that they don't realize they're using Andy as a pawn to "get back" at each other. In The Diamond Girls, the heroine and her sisters have lived in continual disorder all their lives, with their mother frequently changing boyfriends and moving her family to new homes. Amber, an early novel, was about a girl who rebels against her traveller mother and struggles to live a normal life.
• Jodi Picoult's parents are often good parents to one child with exceptional needs, but pretty terrible parents to all of their other children. The story will detail the parent's private and legal struggles on the behalf of their child, while the rest of the family falls apart due to neglect. A classic case is in Handle with Care, where the mother sacrifices her best friend, her husband, and her oldest daughter supposedly on behalf of her youngest daughter, only to realize that the real issue was not her invalid daughter, but herself.

By work:

• Accel World: This describes the parents of nearly everyone in the Accelerated World. One of the requirements is that the player has had a Neurolinker since shortly after birth; the most common reason for that is as an advanced baby monitor, so that the parents don't have to spend much actual time with the baby - Kuroyukihime hypothesizes this is pretty much the core trauma for almost all Burst Linkers. In fact, it's one of the reasons that Burst Linkers are so passionate about the game; they're usually closer to the True Companions and Found Family they have in the game to the people they live with in real life. To be more specific: Takumi's parents ignored his being bullied, and put so much pressure on him to succeed that he's now a Stepford Smiler with a major inferiority complex teamed with a Martyr compulsion. Kuroyukihime is living by herself while in middle school not to mention the Trauma Conga Line with her elder sister and Burst Link Parent, who it's implied is a Mad Scientist sociopath during the Chrome Disaster arc - and their parents haven't noticed, and has been for roughly a year when the story opens. Haruyuki himself never mentions his father; he doesn't seem to have even been in contact with him since his parent's divorce, and has some kind of trauma from that time frame that he seems to have repressed the memory of (it's hinted in one of the 'extra' episodes of the anime that this is at least partially responsible for his weight issues). Because his mother works for an international bank, he only sees her for about five minutes every morning when she's half-asleep (one of the reasons his apartment seems to be the main Team Gathering point for their Guild). The only reason he hasn't gone completely off the rails by the time the story starts is Chiyuri's parents, who "raised them like twins" until fairly recently (Chiyu's mother caters for pretty much every Guild meeting because she's so glad Haru has so many friends now, and Chiyu's always urging Haru to come by and visit with her parents). This trope is averted in the case of Chiyu herself, who is the only confirmed exception to this hands-off parenting rule - she was given a neurolinker shortly after birth because her father had damaged vocal chords from cancer, and the Neurolinker was the only way she could hear her father's voice.
• Animorphs
  • The series begins about two years after Marco's mom died, and his dad has been a depressed mess ever since, quitting his former job and staring blankly at the TV, leaving Marco to do much of the work around the house. For this reason, initially Marco is reluctant to answer the Call to Adventure - it's not that he's indifferent to the fate of humanity, but he knows his dad won't be able to handle losing another family member. A few books in Marco's dad manages to pull himself together and gets better at providing for his son, moving them from a low-tier apartment back into a house, but as relieved as Marco is about that he's not happy when his dad starts dating another woman. All this is complicated by Marco learning that his mom is still alive, just possessed by an evil alien warlord.
  • Rachel's books occasionally deal with her divorced parents. She's her father's favorite daughter. However, it's clear it's because she's low maintenance compared to her younger sisters, and she's willing to assuage her dad's loneliness. If she tries opening up to him, he redirects her to her mother. Speaking of her mother, Naomi has to deal with being the strict, unfun parent compared to Dan's ability to do the following: appear for a few days, lavish gifts on his daughters, and put the job of actually raising them and giving them bad news (like announcing the divorce) on her. As a lawyer she's also often busy with her career and sometimes has Rachel babysit.
  • For the most part Jake's parents are portrayed as good, or at least well meaning, but naturally they don't know about the alien invasion or that their older son Tom has been taken over by a Puppeteer Parasite who colludes with infested school faculty and The Sharing, a host-recruiting Scouts-like group with very good publicity. Tom is a miserable ghost in his own head, unable to move his body, but according to school and The Sharing he's the picture of achievement and responsibility. Meanwhile Jake, fighting the aliens after school and on weekends, gets more furtive and withdrawn and is often missing or out all night, has stopped participating in extracurriculars, and his grades plummet. Their parents wish Jake could take after Tom more. The boys used to be so close!
  • Late in the series the secrecy breaks and the Animorphs are forced to try to take their families into hiding with them. Marco's mother is rescued and an asset with a keen understanding of what's happening. Tobias's Missing Mom is found and scrambles to try to protect him. Jake prioritized his parents under those of the others and was not able to save them from infestation. Otherwise... All of the parents, including Cassie's outright good ones, struggle to accept the situation and that their children have spent three years keeping secrets and risking their lives. They can still sometimes be of use, but they're also often in the way and don't understand the stakes.
• In Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., the religious issues affecting Margaret affect her parents too — her mother was raised Christian, her dad raised Jewish. They're good parents for most of the book until Margaret's maternal grandparents show up... whereupon they cancel Margaret's holiday in order to allow her to meet them, only to spend the entire visit using her to placate or annoy her grandparents.
  • The film, which has more focus on Margaret's mother Barbara as the Deuteragonist, also features her crying while relating the story of being disowned by her parents, and telling her distressed daughter that it's fine, it was a long time ago. Barbara sent them a very terse "hope you are well" card and got back a letter where they told her they wanted to have her in their life again and to get to know their granddaughter. Discussing this with her husband, Barbara was torn on whether to allow it or not but despite his even stronger reservations he ultimately said they should come. It's clear that being rejected by her own parents still hurt and she hoped they had changed.
• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe: Ari loves and hates his parents. While he acknowledges they're providing and loving, they're also distant in certain ways, his father in particular has a hard time communicating with him, due to PTSD from Vietnam, despite Ari wanting to learn more about him. His mother is also the main emotional support Ari has in his life, but he hates that she acts like his brother doesn't exists. He eventually gets to mutually open up with them after learning how damaging Bernardo's sentencing hit the family. His father talks about Vietnam, his mother accepts to bring his brother up again and put some pictures of him around the house. In exchange, Ari also opens up a bit more to them.
• In The Babysitters Club, several of the girls have these, but most especially Stacey. Her father is a workaholic who doesn't have much time for her, and both of her parents are more than a little overzealous in their crusade to find a cure for her diabetes. It doesn't help that she's an only child. When her parents get divorced midway through the series, the split is acrimonious.
  • Mary Anne's father just wants the best for her, but this translates to him being extremely overprotective, especially in the first few books where he tries to dictate virtually every aspect of her life, including what she wears, how she does her hair, and what's on her bedroom walls. He gets a bit of a wake-up call in the fourth book and starts loosening up on the little things, but still has his moments on bigger things throughout the series.
  • Mallory's parents aren't as bad as Mary Anne's father, but they also seem to forget at times that Mallory is growing up, and they also sometimes over-rely on her to help manage her large family. However, they're usually receptive when she raises the issues with them.
  • On the opposite side of the coin, Dawn's mother is very scatterbrained and forgetful. Usually it only affects her, but there are times that it causes some minor inconvenience for Dawn and her brother (like not having milk for their cereal because she forgot to buy it), and in some cases, Dawn herself has to be the one who's responsible to make sure important things get done.
  • Some of the BSC's clients have this, or at least start out as this, as well: for instance, Mrs. Arnold doesn't recognize that her twins are tired of not being seen as individuals (though, like Mallory's parents, she does listen when they raise the issue directly), Danielle Roberts' parents don't take her questionable antics seriously until one actually crosses the line into dangerous (fortunately, no one is seriously hurt), and Rosie Wilder's parents don't realize that their attempts to "nurture" their daughter's talents are actually over-stressing her, just to name a few.
• Captains Courageous: Harvey's parents are loving, but his father is a mostly absent figure whose business interests consume most of his time, and his mother's love language is giving Harvey anything he points at, all adding up to a supremely arrogant Spoiled Brat.
• In The Chosen, David Malter starts out as a caring, loving father to Reuven. However, when the war ends and he finds out about the full extent of The Holocaust, David throws himself into the Zionist cause and hardly has time for Reuven, nearly working himself to death (he has a serious heart attack due to overwork). The theme gets picked up again in the sequel The Promise with the troubled teenager Michael Gordon, who is bullied severely at school because of his father's highly unorthodox religious scholarship and emotionally neglected by his parents (especially, it's implied, his mother) due to his father's academic work.
• Constance Verity Destroys the Universe: Tia's mother Zoey disapproves of her friendship with Connie, seeing her as a bad influence and the role of sidekick being no place for a grown woman. She even admits that she and her husband tried to keep the two of them apart for her own good, only for the caretaker destiny to involve Tia anyway. Though the trope can be Zig-Zagged by the Fantastic Indifference common with muggles in the series, Zoey treating the adventures the two going on as no more worrying than shenanigans any other child goes through.
• Nick's father Phillip in Crazy Rich Asians is more level-headed and open-minded than his wife and most of his family and is generally a Nice Guy but a flashback reveals that he and Eleanor had a massive argument once (alluding to possible infidelities) that scared a young Nick enough that he ran away to Colin's grandmother's house and stayed there until Shu Yi picked him up.
• This is key to the mystery of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime. It turns out that being an adult does not automatically make you able or willing to adapt to parenting a child with a highly stigmatized disability. Nor does it make you capable, nor enable you to face up to that in a mature and constructive way.
• Danny, the Champion of the World: Danny's father is a good man and very much a caring and attentive father, but he is also a poacher who risks getting killed and leaving his son an orphan for sport (not to mention that he is stealing someone else's precious game birds). Or as the narration puts it:
  You will learn as you get older, that no father is perfect. Grown-ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets.
• In A Day of Fallen Night, Glorian only receives open affection from her mother, Sabran VI, after an assassin tries to kill Glorian. At all other times, Sabran behaves like a Stern Teacher towards her. This is one of the only points of contention between Sabran and her husband Bardholt, who is a doting father (in a rough-and-tumble Viking sort of way). In an argument Glorian eavesdrops on, Sabran defends herself by saying that she can't allow Glorian to become weak (like her own mother) or spoiled and thus tyrannical (like her grandmother and great-grandmother) and undo the work she's put into repairing the country.
• Dresden Files: Maggie LeFay, having the best intentions, skirted the bounds between white and black magic, falling in with what one might call "the wrong crowd", one of whom murders her in childbirth. Her son inherits one hell of a legacy.
  • Harry's father was a different story; Malcolm Dresden was a decent, kind, hard-working, and loving man, all traits which drew Maggie to him. Then he died under mysterious circumstances...
  • And now Harry is a father... which just kind of says it all, really.
• Earth's Children: Because Broud was her only child and the future leader of their clan, Ebra tended to coddle and over-praise him. It's implied this didn't help Broud in the long run, as he becomes extremely egotistical and entitled. Although Ebra wasn't fully responsible for how Broud turned out, her early indulgence of him sowed the seeds, with her mate Brun even calling her out on this.
• With the introduction of child viewpoint characters in Edenborn, several of the characters from the first book get this characterization.
  • Vashti and Champagne see maintaining humanity as their highest goal. Thus they raise many children but don't spend too much energy on any one of them, which leads to tensions between Penny and her siblings. Vashti spends most of her time researching; Champagne spends hers on studying and composing artwork.
  • Isaac sees the spirituality of humanity as a key component of its revival and does not accept rebellion against his fundamentalist principles. This drives a wedge between him and his teenage son, as well as between his fundamentalist oldest child and the younger siblings.
  • Halloween teaches his son all the skills that Halloween needed to survive. He does not adapt to the circumstances around them, nor does he train Deuce to address novel situations.
• In The Fault in Our Stars, Hazel's parents are shown to be very loving and supportive of her, but also have their obvious frustrations with the burden her illness has put on their personal lives.
• Essun in The Fifth Season has the heavily stigmatized magic of orogeny and passed the ability on to her children. Her own Trauma Conga Line of personal tragedies, including being Made a Slave and pressed into Training from Hell, then enduring the loss of her lover and first child, left her with a bone-deep fear for her children — which causes her to be cold, distant, and sometimes outright abusive as she tries to prepare them for a world that will hate them if it learns what they are.
• Lampshaded by Poirot in Five Little Pigs: He finds it strange that every witness of a case seems to forget that the murder victim has a baby daughter. It's discussed when Miss Williams, a governess, explains to Poirot that middle-class children know that their parents love them, but the parents are too busy providing for them to pay them attention. The affluent murder victim, on the other hand, and his wife led such intense lives that the baby could never be their first concern.
• In Mary Rodgers' sequel to Freaky Friday, A Billion for Boris, Boris' single mother is too busy with her life to spend much time with her son, and is not very good at certain practical tasks, which means that Boris takes them over. Boris is worried about her and thinks she needs a lot of improvements. When Annabel's younger brother accidentally creates a TV set that shows tomorrow's programs today, Boris takes it over and uses it to get horse race results that he can then use to win lots of money at the races. He does this so he can get the money to completely make over their apartment and pay for therapy for his mother. He eventually finds out that his mother is not as troubled as he makes her out to be, and their relationship can be improved by better communication, rather than the expenditure of lots of money.
• Present in the Fudge series, as shown through the eyes of Peter. His parents don't always get it right — such as Peter's mother blaming him for Fudge getting into trouble even Sheila Tubman, not Peter, was supposed to be supervising Fudge — but they're generally good parents who just don't always have the ideal response to the curveballs of parenting. Notably, they're also able and willing to admit when they're wrong, which helps to preserve the relationship with their children even when they make a mistake.
• An Old Republic survey team, well before Galaxy of Fear, crash-landed on Dagobah and couldn't get off. They couldn't find enough food to support themselves, but a few years into this some still paired off and had children. This meant there were more mouths to feed, and not enough food for any of them, especially as more and more of the adults died from animal attacks and fevers. The remaining adults started to feed the bodies to their children, a practice which the kids adopted when the last parent died, when the oldest child was seven. Malnourished and uneducated, the Children felt cannibalism was an expression of love—and they're forced to confront the truth that in fact it was filled with desperation and horror.
• Go the Fuck to Sleep is a light example and Played for Laughs. It's told from the perspective of all-too-human parents whose despair at their child's unwillingness to fall asleep leads to the use of hilariously inappropriate obscenities. No doubt Truth in Television for many a parent of small overactive kids.
• In Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi, the Jiang family prove that, no matter how much they genuinely care for their children or wards, they are not doing a great job at parenting.
  • Jiang Fengmien is a mild-mannered man who cares for his children and is kind to his adopted son Wei Wuxian. But he is accused of failing to be the same loving father towards his biological son when it comes to showing favoritism towards Wei Wuxian and being more distant to Jiang Cheng, allegedly because he is in an unwanted Arranged Marriage and was rumored to be in love with Wei Wuxian's mother. Jiang Fengmien genuinely tries to make things work with his wife but they keep clashing because of their differing opinions regarding Wei Wuxian. His tendency to avoid properly communicating with his wife and refusal to address the rumors of loving another woman only made things worse for everyone involved.
  • Yu Ziyuan is a very strict and no-nonsense woman who does care deeply for her children but her way of showing regard for their well-being is questionable, especially when it comes to Jiang Cheng. She tends to drag Jiang Cheng into her arguments with her husband, which didn't help with Jiang Cheng's issues with his Inferiority Superiority Complex. Her resentment towards Wei Wuxian caused her to constantly compare him to her son, driving Jiang Cheng to try to surpass Wei Wuxian instead of helping him deal with it in a healthy, mature manner. She is unnecessarily cruel and verbally abusive to Wei Wuxian for not only being better than her son in many ways but because he is the son of the woman that her husband was rumored to have feelings for and Jiang Fengmien's avoidance of speaking of the matter only made Yu Ziyuan suspect that he was unfaithful to her and fathered Wei Wuxian.
  • Jiang Cheng is the closest person Jin Ling has to a father aside from his paternal uncle Jin Guangyao and is very protective over his nephew but his upbringing has resulted in Jiang Cheng being strict on Jin Ling and he can unfortunately come off as harsh and uncaring. He ends up unintentionally repeating most of his parents' mistakes, though there are signs that he's making a sincere effort to do better.
• Val and Max from Halfway Human both make sacrifices for the family. They are occasionally stressed out, broke, tired, etc. But they love their kid.
• Harry Potter :
  • Petunia Dursley probably doesn't realize she's taking out her anger at the Wizarding World for stealing — and killing — her beloved little sister on Harry. She doesn't mean to turn her own son into a spoiled, selfish oaf either. Petunia needs some serious counseling.
  • Molly Weasley is a good person with noble intentions and is an excellent Parental Substitute for Harry; but because she has so many kids and is very overwhelmed at times, her youngest son Ron feels ignored/neglected sometimes. She also sometimes has a tendency to treat Harry better than her own children, particularly Ron, when her other children are right next to Harry.
  • Sirius, as Harry’s godfather and intended guardian, does truly love him and wants the best for him. However, he got locked in a horrible prison for twelve years for a crime he didn’t commit at 22 and has a nasty case of arrested development because of it. Even though he’s twenty-one years older than Harry, he’s emotionally more like eight or nine years older than him. He just doesn’t quite have the maturity to be the parent Harry needs and treats him more like a buddy or brother. Spending a year stuck in his abusive childhood home only exacerbates this.
  • Dumbledore does genuinely love Harry like the son he never had but like Sirius, he's got a lot of issues that stop him from ever properly expressing that. He's a well-meaning Manipulative Bastard but he's still very manipulative, including to Harry. He still hates himself for something bad he did as a teenager (causing his sister's death) and therefore can't open up to people (he never apologized to his brother for what happened either for similar reasons. There's also the fact that he knows Harry is going to have to die to stop Voldemort. It says a lot that both Harry and his brother have to clear up everything between the two of them and learn to forgive him from information they get from the other.
• In The Haunting Of Cassie Palmer, Cassie's mother is a single parent trying to raise her children despite an inadequate income and hampered by her eccentric spiritualist beliefs, moving around frequently to avoid fallout from her career as a Phony Psychic. Cassie notes that her elder siblings all left home as soon as they could and all now live in foreign countries. The book has occasional moments from Mrs Palmer's point of view, showing that she's genuinely doing her best but often out of her depth.
• Heralds of Valdemar: Queen Selenay of Valdemar is a Herald first, the Queen second, a woman third, and a mother to her child Elspeth... somewhere. She leaves her daughter in other hands mainly because she sees too much of her late husband in Elspeth, not realizing that at least two of her advisors have plans of their own for the girl. Their relationship becomes friendlier thanks to Talia's intervention. Elspeth in her twenties, able to relate as one Herald to another, often thinks of her with some aggravation, seeing Selenay as someone who feels guilty about neglecting her and trying to make up for it by preventing her from taking necessary risks, and wishes Selenay wasn't her mom.
• Fanny Hatter in Howl's Moving Castle, while having good intentions, sends off her late husband's two younger daughters to their new placements without really considering their own thoughts on the matter. She also uses her eldest stepdaughter Sophie to run her hat store without pay and is implied to have an It's All About Me mentality.
• Husband Material: Oliver makes an impromptu speech, during which he seems to fully acknowledge his father was a very complicated man. That, despite his genuine love for his children, and that he always provided and cared for Oliver, he was judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical, and unwilling to question his own beliefs or back down when wrong. During David's wake, Oliver makes it clear that he is sorry his father died and misses him, but that he does not regret their last fight where he stood his ground against him.
• April Cleaver in I Am Not a Serial Killer. As a parent, she's oblivious, emotionally inept, and frequently makes insensitive comments about her son's mental problems, but it's clear she loves John despite his hating her, and just wants to know how to help him. She's also insecure and needy, but it's not for no reason, and is mostly used to frame her as sympathetic.
• Jessica Darling's parents aren't particularly good at being parents to her, but it's not for lack of trying and good intentions. Jess notes at one point that they clearly have her best interests at heart, they just have no idea what those interests actually are — and she finds it hard to hold that against them because most of the time she can't even figure out herself what actually would make her happy.
• Journey to Chaos: Basilard tries to be a good father for Zettai but the fact that he became her father because a Trickster God twisted his arm into committing sacrilege to his clan's religion makes it difficult for him to accept her.
• Kyo Kara Maoh! has a couple examples:
  • First, there's Lady Cecilia, the mother of three of the main characters, a beautiful, flirtatious, and extremely flighty woman eternally on a quest for 'free love'. She loves her sons very much, and they love her, but all of them acknowledge her as being an unreliable and often irritating wild card in social and political situations. She is shown to have a deeper side occasionally: Conrad's father was human, and given the longer lifespan of Mazoku, this relationship ended predictably and tragically, and she seems to still mourn him. She also regrets that her weakness contributed to so much strife and sorrow during her reign as Maou.
  • Secondly was Conrad's father Dan Hiri himself. Although he seems to have been a pretty good parent to Conrad and Parental Substitute to Jozak, to Gwendal he was his endlessly irritating new stepfather, and a human, to boot. Dan Hiri seemed to find Gwendal's childish wrath amusing (while his mother appears to have simply been oblivious, as is her wont, to something she didn't want to see). This only worsened when Dan Hiri decided to leave his family behind and continue traveling the world in search of an immortal legacy he could leave, feeling the weight of his human lifespan. They eventually get some sort of closure when Dan Hiri dies in Gwendal's arms and Gwendal begins to understand how short and frail human lives really are, but the validity of his choices is left ambiguous by the story.
• Bail and Breha Organa in Leia, Princess of Alderaan are by and large very good parents to their adoptive daughter, but her Friendless Background, isolated by being the child of the Queen and the Viceroy, means she basically just has the two of them for love and support. When they take on building the Rebel Alliance they try to leave her ignorant in the hope that innocence will protect her if they're caught and executed, but this means withdrawing from her and Leia feels abandoned and unloved. They have a tearful reconciliation with her after she discovers some of what they're up to but this doesn't mend their relationship with her entirely. Bail took a long time struggling with his sense of morality and duty to his people and the galaxy as a whole before deciding to move against the Empire and seeing Leia with those same struggles makes him fearful and angry enough to lash out at her verbally. He and Breha even fight acrimoniously about whether to allow Leia to help at all, as he is terrified of what could happen to her.
• In Love Letters to the Dead, Laurel's dad comes home tired most days but still tries his best to provide for her after her mother left, her mom doesn't feel equipped to raise her anymore after her sister's death, Natalie's mom often stays out late on dates and doesn't return home until the next morning, and Sky's mom seems to suffer from a mental illness.
• Of Fire and Stars: Dennaleia realizes near the end of the first book that her mother is just a flawed person doing the best she can with what's been given to her, having never truly seen her that way before. She proves herself a good mother by standing with Dennaleia, giving her the support and love that's needed.
• In Oh, Sal, a children's chapter book by Kevin Henkes, the main character Sal is suffering from Middle Child Syndrome, upset because her new baby sister is getting lots of attention and her brother Billy getting attention because he has homework whereas she's never given any homework at the preschool she attends. Her Uncle Jake tells her that the two of them are like soul mates, that he had an older brother too who always did things before he could and got better homework too. "What?" asks Sal, who is confused and up until then hasn't really liked Uncle Jake that much. "Your papa," explains Uncle Jake and Sal is described as having a new, strange understanding sink in as while she knew that her father and uncle were brothers, she never really thought of them as ever having been kids and never really thought about which was older either, as all adults seemed generally the same age to her.
• Olga Dies Dreaming: Tia Lola, cousin Mabel, and Blanca's friend Karen help Olga and Prieto understand more about their mother's character, acknowledging Blanca lacks the "mothering gene" As Lola says, while growing up, her sister was never happy unless everybody agreed with her. And as an adult, she cannot accept them unless they do and think as she says, which Lola says is not good mothering.
• A Patch Of Blue has the mother and grandfather of the blind protagonist Selina: Rosanne, the villain, and Ole Pa, a sympathetic failure of a man, respectively. They both work most of the day in bathrooms, and Rosanne moonlights as a prostitute. Ole Pa is a stone-dead drunk most of the time but tends to be more humane to Selina, whereas Rosanne frequently beats her.
• Annabeth's human father in Percy Jackson and the Olympians, who is a brilliant man and cares deeply for his children, though he is a bit absent-minded at times, and his relationship with Annabeth is strained by his later marriage and kids. Swooping down to save the day in a vintage Sopwith Camel and strafing Kronos's army with celestial bronze bullets most certainly grants him major parenting points, and helps him make up with Annabeth to the point where she returns home for the school year.
  • The gods in general tend to be this, to greater or lesser degrees, towards their demigod children. Some examples:
    • Poseidon, upon meeting his son Percy for the first time, flat-out tells him that he regrets siring him - not out of cruelty, just because of all the problems that have resulted from it, and the fact that he broke an oath in doing so - and that he's not sure what to make of him. Their relationship remains awkward but improves as the series goes on, and Poseidon is one of the more doting of the godly parents in his own way.
    • Hades once directly says to his son Nico's face that he wished the boy's older sister Bianca had survived instead of him, and openly criticizes Nico's abilities. However, he is later shown acting fond and even proud of his son, and in the sequel series is said to occasionally make awkward efforts to be "fatherly", such as gifting Nico with a zombie chauffeur, though Bianca's memory remains as a cloud over their relationship. He even encourages Nico in his interpersonal relationships, expressing a desire for his son to find the happiness that so few of his children ever have. Also, as Pluto, he deliberately avoids openly interacting with or even acknowledging his daughter Hazel, as she is technically breaking the laws of the Underworld by returning to the living world after her death, and he wants to give her another chance at life instead of enforcing his own law and bringing her back.
    • Even Zeus/Jupiter, though he often tends to slide into Parental Neglect or Abusive Parent territory (the latter more so with his godly children than the half-bloods), has been shown as conflicted, once expressing to his son Jason that he wishes he could be more of a father to his children but feels that he must maintain distance, as he is king of the gods and must make hard decisions that affect the fate of the entire world. He also saves his daughter Thalia's life by turning her into a tree, and later shows concern for her over her decision to join the Hunters.
• Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Mrs. Bennet is a shallow airhead who is an Amazingly Embarrassing Parent attempting to match-make her daughters off in unsubtle and humiliating methods. When Elizabeth calls her out on her behaviour, she reveals her real fear that she and her daughters will be utterly destitute if they don't marry well. Meanwhile, Mr. Bennet copes with his ill-matched marriage by finding refuge in his books and sarcasm. He could care less that he exposes his wife and younger daughters to the ridicule of the world. By the end of the novel, he accepts responsibility for his youngest daughter's mistake and takes measures to instill some sense into his two remaining unmarried daughters.
• In Prince Roger, Empress Alexandra VII is a terrible mother to her youngest son because of unresolved feelings about his bastard of a father. She doesn't mean to take it out on Roger, but she does.
• Ronja the Robber's Daughter: Mattis loves his little girl deeply, but his pride and stubbornness make it impossible for him to end his feud with Borka, even for her sake. In fact, these traits make him the closest thing this book has to a primary antagonist.
• In Room, Jack's Ma loves him unconditionally, but she suffers from severe PTSD from her time being held prisoner against her will by Old Nick. At times, she temporarily snaps and loses her temper with Jack. She wants to get her old life back but Jack wants to cling to her and their pre-escape lives, causing disagreement.
  • Likewise, Ma's mother loves both her daughter and grandson but struggles with trying to reconnect with her daughter and caring for her grandson who has very little experience and knowledge of the outside world.
• In The Secret Garden, Mary's own parents were rather vain and neglectful, but Colin's father, Archibald, has a bit more of an excuse. His wife suffered Death by Childbirth and Colin himself was quite sickly; he never grew too attached to Colin, assuming that he would die too, and the fact that he so resembled his dead wife (while acting so different) made their time together especially painful. Thankfully things clear up by the novel's end.
• In The Ship Who... Searched, Tia's parents are archeologists specializing in discoveries on airless alien planets, working alone with little contact with other people. This is their dream job and they planned things out so that when they had a child they wouldn't have to change their lifestyle - meaning that they leave her alone in the habitat all day every day while they work, continue to talk about work when they come home, and on making a discovery leave her completely alone for several weeks on end. When they're present and not discussing the job they're quite loving with Tia, but she is a low priority in their lives. After their neglect leads to her becoming paralyzed at the age of seven they bring her to a hospital, and when their work tells them to choose between their child and their dream job... they make her doctor her guardian and return to work.
  • Tia has such Delusions of Parental Love that she thinks of them as faultless. Regarding the various people who thought she shouldn't be left alone all the time as the Department of Child Disservices, she refused medical treatment at a crucial juncture because that might lead to being taken away from them. Even as an adult, Tia thinks of them only as Good Parents who gave her a happy childhood, though she does turn to her doctor instead of them for comfort and advice.
  • =[Partner Ship]= has Nancia's father. Most shellpeople have no contact with their birth parents, but he came by every now and then to see how Nancia was doing and complain about how far out of his way he had to go and how much important business was on hold in order for him to visit her. He misses her graduation and sends a harried, interrupted message to her about it, and then they don't see each other at all for five years. At the end of it he visits Nancia and tells her that he felt like by giving her so much attention he neglected his other two children, one of whom became a Black Sheep going into music, and has spent the last five years trying and failing to get her brother a "real job". Nancia, who'd feared that he was disappointed in her and had withdrawn attention to show it, forgives him instantly.
• A Song of Ice and Fire has several noble parents who only see their children as pawns for political alliances and never bother their wellbeing. But there are a few who really love their children; it's just that they live in a Crapsack World where they need to make alliances:
  • Catelyn Stark has to leave Winterfell to find those responsible for the crippling and attempted assassination of her younger son Bran. She stayed with Robb, when the War of the Five Kings broke out, to help him rescue Sansa and Arya, leaving Bran and Rickon in Winterfell, which is later invaded by the Ironborn and sacked by Ramsey Snow. While Catelyn loves her children, her desire to protect and save them led to dire consequences which resulted in the downfall of her family.
  • Doran Martell is not as much of a good parent as his brother Oberyn. He even sent his oldest son Quentyn to a rival house due to Oberyn's mishap with its lord, causing his wife to leave him. His daughter Arianne noted that he doesn't mind that she lost her virginity at a young age and arranges marriages to very old people, which made her think that he's going to pass her inheritance to Quentyn, and all the important duties at Sunspear are done by Oberyn rather than her despite being the heir. But it turns out that Doran really cared about his family except that he's too caught up in wanting to avenge the brutal deaths of his sister, niece, and nephew and paranoid in not telling his plans to Arianne and his brother's bastard daughters. It takes Arianne's failed coup to realize his weakness.
  • Lysa Arryn loves her sickly son Robert to the point of being My Beloved Smother due to suffering several past miscarriages. When she heard that her husband Jon planned to take Robert away, she poisoned him with help from her childhood friend and crush Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish. Unfortunately, Littlefinger is only manipulating her to sow distrust between the Starks and the Lannisters. He later admits to Lysa, before he murders her, that he loved her sister Catelyn. As of A Feast Of Crows, poor Robert is under the care of Littlefinger, who is using him to further his plans.
• Spinning Silver
  • Miryem's father is a good and kind man who loves his family and does everything he can to ease their burdens — but it's his kindness and generosity that gives him difficulties because he's a Jewish moneylender in a severely antisemitic town and he's too easily put off by the cheap excuses his neighbors give him to not pay what they legally owe him. This puts them into poverty and endangers her mother's life when she gets sick during a very bad winter, which drives Miryem to start collecting debts herself.
  • Irina's father, the Duke of Visnya. He is a hard but entirely pragmatic and competent ruler. However, that hard pragmatism has him view Irina largely as a waste of resources once he has two sons because he's not wealthy enough to give her a large dowry (thus marrying her advantageously) and she's too plain-looking to woo any young men of powerful families without one. When he does see a way to marry her to the tsar, she knows that he views giving her a bad husband the same way he views having to go to war to become a duke—it was difficult and unpleasant, and he won't spare her when he didn't spare himself. When she uses her position as tsarina to start making clever political decisions and plans to end the Endless Winter, the duke starts speaking to her the way he does anyone else he respects.
• Supergifted: At one point, Donovan goes into the bathroom and finds his brother-in-law, Brad, in there after having finally gotten his baby daughter back to sleep. When Brad sees Donovan, he confides in him that he has no real idea how to be a parent. He knows what to do right away on the battlefield but is completely lost on what to do with his daughter.
• In They Never Came Back by Caroline B. Cooney, Murielle's parents are like this, eventually abandoning her to escape charges of embezzlement.
• In This Is Not a Werewolf Story, Raul's father lapsed into a deep depression after his wife disappeared; he often forgot to take Raul to school, and eventually a social worker showed up and saw that Raul was suffering from significant neglect. After that Raul got sent to a special boarding school for kids with problems at home, and eventually his dad stopped picking him up for the weekends because he was tricked by the villain. Raul is overall sympathetic, but at times understandably angry about this whole situation.
• Tiger Eyes is about a teenage girl named Davey whose father, a convenience store clerk, was shot during a robbery and, it is eventually revealed, died in her arms. Davey's mother turns into pretty much a space cadet for most of the novel, unable to function, and transplants Davey and her brother Jason to the opposite side of the country. The three live for most of the story with the dad's sister and her husband, who try to act as substitute parents for the kids, but do so in the most ham-fisted manner possible.
• Jon and Thayet are Royals Who Actually Do Something in the Tortall Universe books, but according to Word of God, being king usually takes precedence over being a daddy in Jon's book (he blackmailed his daughter out of becoming a knight in case that endangered her marriage prospects), and Thayet is often busy with the Queen's Riders military group.
  • As the King's Champion, Alanna just hadn't spent as much time with her children Thom, Alan, and Alianne as she otherwise might have. To a degree, Thom takes after Alanna's twin, who he was named for, and Alan takes after her, but Alianne takes after Alanna's husband and Alanna, being a very direct person, just doesn't understand her.
• Touch (2017): The early chapters depict James' parents, Peter and Sarah, dealing with the aftermath of James' rape. They're trying to seem brave about it but obviously freaking out when he's not around, and he's fully aware of that and feels worse because of it.
  • In a more extreme example: in this world, magical powers are always activated by a Traumatic Superpower Awakening. As a result, some parents (including Caspar's) honestly believe that it's okay to abuse your kid just enough for their abilities to manifest. Peter himself went through this as a child and insists that no, good intentions do not excuse child abuse.
• All four of The Ultra Violets' mothers are brilliant scientists and consumed with work. The only time they ever do get involved with their daughters is when they unintentionally impede their plans to save Sync City.
• Kasia's mother Wensa in Uprooted loved her daughter "carefully" once she saw that Kasia was going to be pretty and intelligent and therefore most likely to be taken away by the wizard called the Dragon. Wensa also sent Kasia on exhausting walks to other villages to learn how to bake, sew, etc fit for a lord's mistress and set her to frightening tasks to make her braver. When Kasia was not picked, the return home was therefore rather awkward, but Wensa is still distraught enough to go all the way to the Dragon's tower and beg Agnieszka's help when Kasia is abducted by the Wood. At the end, Kasia elects to remain with the royal children for a while. Her strained relationship with Wensa is a major reason why.
• Janine Hathaway from Vampire Academy is a legendary guardian but Mother of the Year she is not. When we meet her she barely knows Rose, Rose doesn't like or trust her at all, and Janine has the tendency to project her own fears and failures onto Rose.
• The Veldt: George and Lydia are a loving couple who care deeply about each other and their kids, but who unintentionally neglect them since the robot house does an inhumanly perfect job of looking after them than they do. To their credit, they realize this and resolve to fix things.

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