The Thing About Parents

My friend Genevieve and I were talking the other day about the role protagonists' parents play in a plot. YA is a genre riddled with awkward explanations and excuses as to where the characters' Moms and Dads go when they're not in the story. They're usually one of three D's, or a combination of them: dead (Harry Potter), divorced (What Happened to Goodbye), or derelict (The Hunger Games).

Reading New Adult and contemporary fiction, the parents are more believably written out of the story, mostly because the characters are not in high school and usually living on their own, if not staying at school when they go off to college. Still, they're not major players to the story; they're mentioned sparsely, maybe given one or two physical scenes with the main character, usually in order to move the plot along or as characterization for the protagonist.

But it raises the question: why do writers have such a hard time writing about the parental unit of their characters?

I believe it stems back to the old unspoken truth that is universally acknowledged when it comes to writers: we're all just a little bit conceited. Or, if you're being honest, more than a little bit. Maybe a lot. Maybe when you write about anyone, you are putting a chunk of yourself into the story. And when we think like that, we might not be comfortable with writing about our own parents.

It's not easy opening up about the relationship we have with Mom and Dad, two people who influenced most of us the most, positive or negatively. And to think of our characters' parents in the same way, to give them the same relationship as I do, can be awkward. In most of what I've read the hero usually has a bad relationship with their parents and/or single parent, or they're dead, allowing them to have the perfect relationship: one where the author won't have to write them into the story and at the same time can even lend to some characterization of the main character. I'm looking at you, Potter.

I'm always drawn more to novels where the parents are still alive, are present in some way in their lives, etc. They don't have to be the picture of perfection and act like the Bradys - I'm working on a piece where the main character has divorced parents - but they're most definitely alive.

Maybe that's a good start for some writers. Write a story in which the main character has a relationship with their parents - shitty or happy, but a relationship just the same.