Basic Trope: A parent wants their child to pursue an interest in line with traditional gender roles, when the child's preferred hobby challenges them.
- Straight: Bob wants nothing more than for his son, Billy, to be a good football player. However, Billy is interested in being a professional chef.
- Exaggerated: Bob wants Billy to be a fighter in the MMA profession - but Billy wants to be a ballet dancer.note
- Downplayed:
- Bob wants Billy to play rugby. Billy wants to play soccer.
- Bob wants Billy to play football, but Billy wants to program computers (or something else that's male-dominated but not classically "masculine".)
- Bob expects Billy to apply the agility and athleticism from his dancing lessons to boxing or football.
- Justified:
- Bob is genuinely afraid that Billy won't grow up right without the right influences.
- Bob is worried that by choosing a more feminine profession, Billy is opening himself up for harassment, and only wants to protect his son.
- Inverted:
- Bob wants Billy to engage in a non-masculine hobby - but Billy isn't having any of it, as he wants to partake in a masculine hobby.
- Bob is a playwright and wanted Billy to become part of the industry, but Billy is far more interested in coal-mining.
- Subverted: Billy tells Bob he'd rather be a professional chef than a football star. Bob says "OK" and congratulates him.
- Double Subverted:
- At first, anyway. After he's slept on it for a couple of days, he comes back and tells Billy "no".
- Billy's mother Alice, on the other hand, is not pleased.
- Gender Inverted:
- Alice wants her daughter Annie to be a ballet dancer, but Annie wants to play basketball instead.
- Parodied:
- Bob is a professional chef himself, but won't allow Billy to follow in his footsteps.
- Bob tries to make Billy into a football star even though Billy already routinely cooks gourmet meals for the family, and is skilled enough that several chefs are interested in apprenticing him.
- Zig Zagged: Bob can never decide whether or not he wants to support Billy.
- Averted: There is no strain between what Bob and Billy want.
- Enforced: "So I figure the son wants to be a chef and the dad wants him to be a football star. This thing writes itself!"
- Lampshaded: "Why can't you just support what I want to do?!"
- Invoked: Bob is talking with his drinking buddy Charlie, who's talking about his own experiences with his son, Chuck. "You know, if you don't start your boy in football soon, he may grow up to be a pansy like my boy Chuck over there."
- Exploited: A paid cooking class specifically advertises to children looking to escape restrictive parents.
- Defied: "I don't like the idea of you being a chef - but I will support you anyway."
- Discussed: "I'm not letting our son go for any after school activities. I just know he's going to pick cooking."
- Conversed: "Lets see: amazing food every time the kid visits and he could get his own daytime TV show. Why is the dad against this again?"
- Deconstructed:
- Bob puts his foot down and forces Billy to stay on the football team. Billy ends up resenting Bob because he wouldn't let him follow his heart.
- The dad's point of view is explored — Bob knows that supporting his son with a smile, even when he's pursuing a "feminine" interest, is "the right thing to do", but at the end of it all, he doesn't feel comfortable about it. Not to mention in a society that values a person's dignity above all else, Bob is mocked by other fathers and mothers for having a "sissy" son (i.e., losing face). Torn, humiliated, and frustrated, Bob gradually develops a strong resentment towards Billy.
- Reconstructed: Billy defies Bob's word, and while there's considerable strain on their relationship at first, Bob ultimately accepts that this is what Billy wants to do - so he'll support him anyway.
Back to "Gender-Normative Parent" Plot. Unless you want something else. That's, uhhhh, fine too, son.
