Basic Trope: Humans Are Flawed, applied to parenting.
- Straight: Hiro's parents, Alice and Bob, both work 9-to-5 jobs which restricts the time they can spend with their son, who feels neglected as a result, but they have no choice if they want to stay afloat and feed the family. They love their son very much and wish the situation were better so they could spend more time together, but have to deal with the pressure of their livelihoods and are stricter than necessary with him at times due to their stress overtaking them.
- Exaggerated:
- Hiro's parents are the protagonists.
- Hiro's father is an extreme case of Bumbling Dad and his mother is so much of a Hard-Drinking Party Girl she spends most of the day recovering from her hangovers.
- Downplayed: Hiro's parents have Informed Flaws, but they rarely come into play if ever.
- Justified:
- Humans Are Flawed - and it doesn't escape parents.
- Hiro's parents had Abusive Parents or neglectful parents themselves, and unwittingly they perpetrate the cycle.
- Inverted: Parent ex Machina
- Subverted: We start getting a glimpse of what looks like a busy life for Alice and Bob, but soon after the narration no longer makes mention of it and Hiro's parents become perfect authority figures for the rest of the franchise.
- Double Subverted: A special episode focuses on the shortcomings of Hiro's parents and the effect on the household dynamics.
- Parodied: Alice and Bob are bizarre parents to Hiro, who are some sort of Amazing Technicolor Population with strange clothes and builds.
- Zig Zagged: The series never seems to make up its mind on whether Hiro's parents are Reasonable Authority Figures or complete failures at being parents.
- Averted: Hiro's parents are not mentioned.
- Enforced: The producer demanded the writer to make it so that Hiro's parents are used as explanations - or even a Freudian Excuse - to his personality, qualities and flaws, because the producers want to make the show more "deep" or "complex" to increase viewership.
- Lampshaded: "My parents are always out working, even when they come back home. I know they try their best, but sometimes I wish they had more time for me..."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz tries to turn Hiro against his parents by hammering their shortcomings and failures in his head.
- Defied: Before having kids, Alice and Bob decide to work out their troubles.
- Discussed: "Your parents, first and foremost, are human. They do good stuff, but they also do bad stuff, like you, Hiro. You can't expect them to be perfect all the time."
- Conversed: "When this show went into detail about the reasons why Hiro's parents don't spend much time with him, I started feeling sympathy for them."
- Deconstructed:
- As Hiro grows up and acknowledges this trope, a Broken Pedestal situation happens in which the ideal image of his parents shatters, putting a great toll on his self-esteem.
- Even if they have sympathetic qualities, Hiro's parents still snap under the pressure and abandon Hiro, leaving him to the tender mercies of the foster system.
- The belief that parents are flawed leads to a majority of Troperian people to ditch parenthood.
- Reconstructed: Afterwards, he understands that his parents are only human and only had their best intentions at heart, leading to a Rebuilt Pedestal and increased respect for his parents.
Click here to return to Parents as People, and don't worry about any mistakes you do on the way - your kids will eventually understand you always did everything for the best.
