When I was 16, my mother kicked me out of the house.
Why? I hadn’t put a glass in the dishwasher.
If you live under my roof, you live by my rules!
Mom had determined my incorrigible defiance would come to an end.
To be fair, I was a dark, bitter, sharp, sarcastic bitch. For good reason. My parents had just split up and, no exaggeration, their separation came completely out of the blue. Not a single hint of marital tension, let alone telling arguments. Dad had moved out. My older sister was at college. It was just me and my mom. And we didn’t get along at the best of times.
Yet I was incensed that something so trivial (a glass! In the sink, not the dishwasher!) would lead to my banishment. You’re damn right I was dark, bitter, sharp and sarcastic as I stormed out of the house. I didn’t go far, to my best friend’s around the corner. My exile was short-lived when Mom, needing no detective skills, found me the next day and told me to come home. No apology, but she’d softened. I stalked home; we lived in a stormy truce.
Only years later did it occur to me why Mom had overreacted. She’d never wanted the divorce; she was crumbling, barely able to hold herself together as her one true love walked out on her. I was a handful; she’d come to her breaking point.
Only years later could I summon the empathy for her that maybe I could or should have had as a 16-year-old.
But I didn’t have it. I couldn’t. I was hurting, too, and all I could do was blame my mom. It turns out she was a real person—flawed and stumbling and doing her damndest with a bad situation. It’s incredibly hard for teens to recognize that. But the question is, should they? Eventually, yes, teens grow up and realize their parents are human. But in the moment?
I don’t know the right answer. What I do know is how YA novels show us the damage—inadvertent or otherwise—that well-meaning parents can do to their kids. It’s impossible to be perfect as a parent (I am one now—I know how hard it can be!) but teen lit isn’t about the parents. It’s about the teens, and, whether their feelings are objectively justified or not, it’s about showing us, the readers, their inner turmoil as a result of complicated parent-child relationships.
Take Lyra, in my upcoming novel Amaranth. She has unique “phoenix cells” that regenerate no matter the injury or illness. She lives in a world with a tyrannical government that wants to clone her cells to create super-soldiers and decimate their enemies in war. Of course, her cells could also cure the rampaging worldwide plague, but her parents refuse to let her be a pawn. They go on the run—for years. Lyra’s formative years are a lonely, frazzled existence, with only the love of her suffocating parents. As the story progresses, Lyra learns more about her parents’ motivation. She understands them better. But whether she can forgive them is another question. (Pick it up next spring and find out!)
Parents often make decisions for their children based on what they think is best. What to wear outside the house, what university programs to apply to, whom they should date, and more. Their reasons vary—cultural norms, family expectations, societal demands, their own upbringing—but what it comes down to is that sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong. YA lit reminds us of that very fact. Parents aren’t perfect.
Then again, teens aren’t perfect either. 🙂