Discussion Main / DotingParent

I don't think it's ever a a bad idea to do a wick check, but I wouldn't call overlap with Good Parents, even a lot of overlap, as misuse. While Doting Parent is neutral / slightly negative since it has the connotation of being excessive/too much, because it is still a genuine show of affection for the kid it can and does overlap with being considered a "good" parent because loving your kids, being proud of them, and showing them that you care are all things that can be classified under being "good". The page image of Hughes from Fullmetal Alchemist is a good example. He loves his daughter, can't shut up about her, will talk to anyone who will listen about her, to the point of being basically the comic relief for most of his on-screen time. He also genuinely is a family man whose love comes from a place of wanting to do right for his kid. I would expect there to be lots of overlap between the two tropes, is my point.

If anything, I'd say Good Parents is the trope with the issue since "good" is broad and imprecise. There's an ongoing discussion of Nice Guy for similar reasons, i.e. what constitutes "nice" and what are the limitations to it?

I don't think there's an issue with Good Parents and I don't wanna focus too much on it since this is DP discussion's page, but I'll say this: Good Parents is the immediate direct opposite of Abusive Parents. Loving, kind, parents who treat their kids right as in: they don't beat them, yell at them for no reason, insult + belittle + compare them to others better than them, etc. We don't have problems with the scope of Abusive Parents despite having an equally broad name, so why is Good Parents an issue?

The description begins by saying "A Doting Parent is chiefly characterized by their rock-solid belief that no-one on Earth has better, smarter, more talented, or better-looking children and will continually gush about that "fact" to everyone." So, basically, a super proud + boastful parent, negatively/positively/Played for Laughs, doesn't matter bc they can be any of these.

While at the end, the description points out that:

Please Note: this trope solely describes parents who are proud of their children; parents who only love and cherish their children but don't necessarily express pride in them generally fall under the Good Parents category. It's also worth noting that some Doting Parents don't qualify as being Good Parents; they might indulge their children and boast about them, but don't do things like offering guidance and emotional support, or disciplining their kids when necessary.

That makes it clear that DP = excessively proud and boastful parents (who may or may not be bad parents), whereas GP = loving parents who cherish their children (may or may not be excessively proud of them but not necessarily/always). The DP wicks per the site's definitions/distinctions mostly fall under the kind, loving parents which is why they're misuse. If there wasn't misuse then we wouldn't have needed to add this distinction note at all. There is overlap, that's right, but the two still describe different behaviors in parents.

Abusive is not as nebulous a term as "good". There are very clear actions that get labeled as abuse that the trope is used to cover and those actions are what gets described in examples (So much so that there was an old TRS thread about potentially splitting the page into those different forms). Whereas often times "good" is used to cover "the absence of abuse" because it is framed as the opposite of AP. Defining something by a lack of something else is never really a good basis for a trope because you avoid ever honing in on what makes the concept unique in its own right, leading to a lack of clarity of what exactly constitutes the trope.

As for Doting Parent, you highlighted the first sentence, but the rest of that paragraph further elaborates that being heavily invested and involved in the kid's life and showering the kid with affection (via presents) is also part of the doting. Because again, doting is first and foremost, an expression of affection and love. This is supported by the differentiation later on in the description between DP and My Beloved Smother, because the effusive shows of affection can be smothering for the child. So DP includes parents who are highly boastful of their kids and effusively affectionate as an expression of genuine love. A parent just loving their kid isn't DP but would be GP and a consistent effusive display of affection would be both.

The presence of a disclaimer doesn't automatically mean that there's an issue with the trope itself, it's just an acknowledgement that the two tropes are similar and the distinction between them sometimes subtle, so they are easy to confuse.

But again, if you want to do a wick check, by all means. I just think you're interpreting the trope narrower than it actually is.

It's not really that nebulous and it's not just defined by the lack of abuse. AP isn't merely GP's inverse and opposite. A GP is a foil to an AP; think of a show where a good parent & an abusive parent exist (and they aren't married). The AP would hurl abuse at their kid and not provide food or safety for them whereas the GP would care for their kid lovingly when they get sick, be emotionally present and provide comfort and safety when they need it and so on. While MHA doesn't always have clear AP and GP/DP, the variety in parents' behavior serves as a contrast and we're able to label them as good or bad parents based on the behaviors we notice them display in fiction.

I just don't want to do a wick check when I'm not sure I'm getting the trope's definition/scope 100% right and not based on a misunderstanding.

I don't think all doting parents have to be super involved & invested in their kids' lives to be called "doting" regardless of the trope's description. From what I was taught in parenting and child discipline, some parents shower their kids with affection via presents and other material things to compensate for their lack of presence/involvement in their kids' lives esp if they were a Disneyland Dad / negligent parent (I saw an example of such combination of a parent in DP's on-page example). They can be affectionate when they interact but they don't interact much.

Is English your second language?