Why Parents Shouldn’t Read YA Fiction

Because it’s not for you.

Because, when you do read it, you produce articles like this one from the Times, bemoaning the fact that you’ve been treated so poorly by the genre. “It’s not fair!” you cry. “I’m a perfectly nice parent — I drive my kid to soccer practice, I produce square and tasty meals, I buy him every new electronic gadget the moment he mentions it… Why am I being depicted as such an ogre?”

One study from the 1970s compared mothers in young adult fiction with the ones in real life, based on statistics from the Census Bureau and the Department of Labor, and concluded that less than 3 percent of the depictions were “realistic”.

Um… okay. And since when are novels required to describe the traumas of life in precisely the proportions that they actually occur? Is it really so surprising that fiction would tend to focus on the extremes of life, rather than its dull reality?

the father in “Once Was Lost” becomes somehow peripheral, his problems more muted and less interesting than his teenage daughter’s.

Right. And you know, there have been any number of novels written about middle aged men, in which the problems of their teenage daughters or granddaughters are, you guessed it — more peripheral and less interesting than the old man’s.

See, when it comes to fiction, there’s this little thing called perspective. YA fiction is not, for the most part, about depicting life the way it really is (indeed, very little fiction has this as a goal). It’s about showing the world the way a teenager sees it. (And sure, fine, not EVERY teenager sees the world this way, not yours certainly — yours recites poems in English class about how you’re his best friend, confidante, and role model, while a Bette Midler song plays in the background.) Is it very likely that a teenager would live in such a cruel world that there is not a single sensible, caring adult to whom she can turn in a crisis? Simply put: no. The world contains a great many tender, generous, capable adults who would be glad to offer guidance and support.

But guess what. That’s not how the world looks when you’re sixteen. For your average disaffected sixteen-year-old, pretty much every adult can be tossed into one of a few piles: petty, cruel, unjust, hypocritical, oblivious, out of touch, stupid, or ineffectual. Don’t take it personally! It’s all part of the growing up process. If kids didn’t go through this phase, they’d still be eating your food and borrowing your car at 37.  Is that what you want?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 7:38 pm and is filed under books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.