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@rosemarylouise Wow, I am impressed by your insight. I think you really hit the target when you said why parents are so underrated in things these days. It’s part of cultures war against every kind of authority. They started warring against God, then moved on to parents. Really good post. 🙂

I’m sure if I thought for a couple of days I could come up with a better example, but the first one that comes to mind is Elizabeth’s relationship with her dad in Pride and Prejudice. He’s not the best of fathers but it always seemed pretty clear to me that he was a consistent figure in her life and that he really loved her and cared about her needs. In the book they had conversations where they interacted and I felt like they actually connected. Yes, in most of the movie adaptations his role is downplayed to mostly focus on the romance, but as Elizabeth’s father I believe he had a huge role in helping her become the woman that she was.

I agree with Rose Mary Louise. For better or worse, our parents play a huge role in our lives and what sort of people we become. Yes, we have the final word in who we become, but the undeniable fact is that our parents have a huge influence on us. The older I get the more I see my parents’ influence on my life in small but important things. Why did I become a big reader? Because my mom read aloud to us for years and years. Why do I love certain hymns? Because I remember my dad singing them. Why do I hold such a stubborn stance on certain political topics? Because I remember my parents talking about them repeatedly as I was growing up.

I moved out, went to collage, started dating and hardly saw my parents for the past six years, (not by choice, due to distance and income) and despite the fact I hardly had a chance to interact with them, I found out what they had taught me weather by words or actions was still with me. I am not my parents, I have my own likes and dislikes, and we don’t agree on everything. But I still see their influence on my life and my writing for that matter.

Writing people, or at least writing them well, means we are working with something complicated. Real people have many sides to their character, my dad was many things before he became my dad. He had pros and cons, he was constant and many faceted. He has some things in common with my best friend’s dad and yet they are two separate very different men. And yet for years the only father figure I could write with detail in any story, always turned out to be my dad. Because what father figure did I have the most experience with? My own father. Complicated, frustrating at times, but my loving dad.

What kind of parent relationships does literature need right now? The ones that are the most different from what the world shows them for all the right reasons. Parents that are loving, are human and flawed but aren’t seriously messed up, and that do have authority. Make them realistically complicated, and hopefully don’t kill them off just to make your character feel vulnerable and all alone except for their love interest. 🙂