Happy Mother’s Day!
It’s Mother’s Day. I hope you spend a lovely day with your moms or your kids or your grandmothers. I’ll make this post short but not necessarily sweet. Lately, the mothers (and fathers) I read about in romance novels get a raw deal. A lot of them are just plain dead. If they’re alive, they are eeevil. It seems they’ve been designed so that the poor hero or heroine has an excuse for self-esteem and commitment issues because their parents are/were raging idiots.
Now, I took psychology classes in college. I was even engaged to a clinical psychologist for a while, but I wasn’t psychotic enough to sustain his interest. *g* Most of us have parent issues. But I’m getting a little tired of the cold and cruel characters that keep popping up.
I’m just as guilty—two of my fictional mothers have been criminally negligent of their daughters. I just want to use this opportunity to say they aren’t based on my own life!
Tolstoy says in Anna Karenina, “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Do you think writers use bad parenting as an easy plot device? Are you suspicious when you read about that elusive happy family?
Posted in The Inclined
May 11th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Good question, Maggie. I don’t use bad parenting. I tend to kill them off so that their protags have to find their own way. My book now, Elena’s parents are dead, her husband is dead, she has no family. Griffin’s parents are dead, his uncle who raised him was an autocratic jerk, but I’ve killed him too. Even in Lupsicoeur, I killed the parents. lol! I see a theme here. What am I trying to say? Interesting indeed.
Good thing you avoided the psychologist. They have too many issues of their own, and I swear they make the worst parents.
May 11th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I admit it, many of my heroine’s issues stem from her father abandoning her when she was four. But my hero didn’t grow up with a father and he’s pretty well adjusted.
Tiff - Did you kill Claudia’s parents?! Or are you just talking about the were parents?
Maggie - there was prior competition for Mr. R? What a close call…
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!
May 11th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Sure, it’s an easy plot device, I imagine — but when I’ve read enough books over time, I figure that so much of what happens to us is defined by our lives under our parents, or lack thereof (bringing in the dead parents too). There probably is a reason why stereotypically we think of psychologists always say in their first breath, tell me about your parents. I think there is plenty of truth behind it, just in real life it’s also overdone as well. . . not everything we feel or do is because of them.
Lois
May 11th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Oh Terri you are right. Claudia’s parents are alive, and kindhearted and love their daughter to pieces… phew I was getting worried that I was subconsciously trying to tell myself something… lol
May 11th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Happy Mother’s Day!
I’m noticing a trend in my writing, too. I tend to have one set of the parents killed off for either the hero or heroine. Meaning if the hero’s parents are killed off, the heroine’s is still living. The only one who doesn’t fit this mold is Noah whose mom is alive but dad is pretty much nonexistent, having left them and headed back to Tennessee.
I try not to kill off the moms for the heroine because the one time I did back in high school, my mom was convinced it was how I really felt about her. Don’t need to deal with that, thank you very much.
May 11th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I don’t want to freak you all out with the bad relatives, LOL. I notice they do this in TV shows too—the kids are orphans. In YA books the parents are just clueless. I’m sure someone could write a thesis on it (if they haven’t already), but it won’t be me! Thanks for commenting, Tiff, Terri, Lois and Ely! And yes, I thank my lucky stars for Mr. R.
May 11th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Great question Maggie. I think it is a plot device. So many of a person’s issues come from childhood in some way or another, and so we do make parents suffer when writing characters in order to give them mountains of baggage for rich conflict.
In my first book I admit, the heroine’s parents are both dead, but they were good parents who loved their children.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Happy Mother’s Day!
I killed off the father in my book in the first scene and the mother has been gone for quite some time. Odd, that we use that device so much! The parents were good ones tho! I’d really like to write a book in which BOTH parents are alive and wonderful and present.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:10 am
Good parents are good, even if they’re dead, J.K. and Steph! When you think about it, it’s almost an epidemic in fiction, but I think unhappiness drives thrings further along than happiness.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I never thought about this. My current heroine’s father is loving, albeit a little unaware of his daughter’s mind. (but let’s face it, who’s father isn’t) But the heroine’s perception of her relationship is that she isn’t good enough. That is her conflict…. Good entry. I will examine this in the next book I read.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
oh, and my current heroine’s mother died when she was a tot, of smallpox….