Oh Mother (and Father), Where Art Thou? : Why do we always kill off the parents?

It all started when I went to make a literary Mother's Day post on instagram. I sat thinking for a while and even requested help on facebook, but I couldn't come up with more than five mothers from books that I could congratulate for their maternal skills. I ended up including Mrs. Bennet simply for her humor!

It has long been a joke of the internet that Disney seems to relish killing off the parents of it heroes or making them cruel, stupid, or generally disconnected from their children. As Disney, at least the Disney of the past, thrives off classic fairytales of good and evil, it's unsurprising that this trope is also found in many epic novels and stories. These include Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Cinder Linh (and every other main character in TLC), Katniss Everdeen, Tris Prior, Charlotte Doyle, and even Frodo Baggins, whose parents drowned when he was a young hobbit. Less "epic" heroes include Jane Eyre, Esther Summerson, Elizabeth Bennet, Huck Finn, and many others.

I too have given in to this rather exhausted trope in my debut work, All the Queen's Men, though in my own pathetic defense, I didn't realize how annoying it was until after the first installment was published.

So, I ask, why? Why do the parents have to be dead or emotionally unavailable? (I encourage anyone who disagrees or thinks my comments are insufficient to please comment below!!!)

My quick answer is I think authors feel taking their hero's parents is an easy way to put them through an early trauma they have to fight threw, and thus emerge more heroic. It usually means they have to teach themselves or work harder than everyone else, or have a level of emotional detachment that is excellent fodder for later romantic turmoil. This is is not to criticize authors who do it. I do, for crying out loud! I'm just wondering if we can do better...

The thing is, most of us do have parents or guardian figures who loved us. They impacted us positively, guiding us to find our futures and teaching us the values that we now have. I for one called my mom regularly in college, venting to her and feeling better just when I heard her voice on the other line, telling me I could do it.

My point here is, I feel like stories would be more relatable if they worked in the hero having a strong parental relationship that then guides them in their adventures. I'm sure there are already a lot of books that don't do this, but it's troubling to me that the NY Times bestsellers I referenced above lap up this tendency to kill off mom and dad before twenty pages in.

Moreover, one of my all time favorite plot lines is a mending relationship between a parent and child. The popularity of shows like the Mandalorian prove to me that I can't be the only one who loves this trope. The book Entwined is another excellent example. I can't help but tear up as I read about Azalea and her sisters realizing that their father does, in fact, love them.

In short, while I understand the temptation to drag your MC through the emotional mud by making their childhood lonely maybe think twice. How can you work this in so that it's more realistic and more relatable to the average reader?

Alright, time to get off my soapbox for the day. Happy reading!