Lack of One or Both Parents in Fiction

I don't usually blog on a Sunday, but I've had this on my mind for a bit, and it's time to let this thought out of my head. So here goes:

There is a surprising lack of parentage in fiction. Not just YA fiction either, and not just in novels. Adult fiction, films, plays and all of that have protagonists that--to varying degrees--lack parental ties for one reason or another.


And the parent that is usually lacking--either as an absentee who occasionally shows up but never has much of an intereatction with the protagonist, or deceased, or non-existent for some other reason-- is the mother. I get that in some genres that this is a necessary plot device(ie, the Revenge Plot, the Orphan Plot, or part of the Coming of Age Plot); but sometimes it's a matter of the author's choice.  And the more I thought about it.....well. take a look at this:

1. In Disney Films: Ariel and Belle have no mother at all. Bambi's mother is killed and he has an absentee father. Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty are taken from their parents and raised by a witch/good fairies.

2. In S.E. Hinton's YA novels, the parents are either dead(The Outsiders), or absentee in one form or another(Rumble Fish, Tex)

3. In the the Pink Carnation novels by Lauren Willig, and Deanna Raybourn's Julia Gray books, the parents are mostly there long enough to say something along the lines of: "this is where you came from, I love you, go live your life; and if you screw up I'll give you an earful"

4. The Coming of Age films like Take the Lead, Coach Carter, Forever Strong, Freedom Writers, ATL, Boyz N the Hood, etc, the parents/parental figure(s) is/are there to provide advice and guidence, but ultimately leave the choice up to the protagonist.

There are two pretty good articles I've come across that help illustrate these points. The first is an illustration of the "author's choice" idea in the form of a lovely post by one of my favorite mystery/romance writers Deanna Raybourn. Deanna is an amazing and amusing writer anyway, and I read her blog as much as I can. She made the choice, and the result is...well, read the article and find out.

The second article is from Glamour magazine, and focuses on why Disney won't give heroine's mothers. For the most part it focuses on the release of Malificent, but it does touch on this just a bit. And also brings up a personal bit about the Disney family history, which I quite like.

Personally, I have yet to write anything with a parent(or both) as one of the characters. For some reason, I have more fun in getting the characters into trouble and then making them figure out how to get out of it on their own--with little to no parental guidance, or whatever.

It's part of what makes this fun.