As I prepare for a day at home with a sick eleven-year-old (most of my day will probably be ordering her to lie down and get off the internet), I find myself musing about the parenting examples set for us by our fictions. Most of the time, babies are invisible (like how baby Judith on ‘The Walking Dead’ will disappear for episodes on end, only to reappear right before the next zombie attack) or aged up (like most soap opera kids, but also Cable.) The idea of HAVING a baby makes for great drama, the idea of RAISING a baby really doesn’t, which leads to strange situations like Franklin Richards (whose age-shifting was so extreme and noticeable that it changed the way I think about his universe) and the sheer number of bad examples, like Robin Scherbatsky Sr., far outnumber the positive ones, leading us to today’s familial query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) thinks that the smart money will always be with The Incredibles, even if Helen didn’t know that her kids had stowed away on her plane, asking: What’s the best examples of excellent pop-culture parenting to you?
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Mortician and Gomez Adams are some of the best parents ever.
They love and support their kids in every way.
This is the correct answer. We can close the comments now.
Nope, weeee can’t.
I think the answer is obvious… I am :)
Aunt May. Especially as written by the always difficult to spell J. Michael Straczynski.
Aunt May is good. The original Kent family is pretty great though, and I loved John Schneider’s Jonathan Kent in Smallville. Costner’s, not so much.
Jaime Reyes’ parents were excellent. One of my favorite scenes in comics is the one where Jaime is crying in his room after a few of the people in the big group he was defending didn’t make it and his dad comes to console him.
Another one of my favorite scenes in comics is when Wolverine told X-23 he wanted to officially adopt her. He wasn’t the best parent in a traditional sense, but you could always see how much he loved and cared for Laura.
“I won’t be a good father. But I’ll be yours. Your family.”
“You already are.”