(no subject)

[cahn]

Please rec me books with dads who are major characters (important secondary character is fine) and for whom parenting is an important component of their character, with kids who are older at the time of canon (teenager or above). They don't need to be good parents, necessarily, and they can make horrible mistakes, but they should be (relatively?) non-abusive and clearly love their kid(s).

So far I've got

-Aral Vorkosigan (...I guess he's not super a main character any more, but he casts a pretty long shadow)
-Atticus Finch
-Andrew Wiggin
-Jean Valjean
-Reb Saunders and David Malter
-Van Hohenheim (taking the prize for not being a good parent and making horrible mistakes...)

...this is a much lower percentage of the books we own than I had thought it would be!

Comments

[cahn]

...I am totally there for romantic suspense novels by Mary Stewart with dads. Putting this on my reading list! (Eh, 11 or 12 is close enough :) I just was looking for not-babies/toddlers, since parenting a baby is a much different state of mind than parenting an older child.)

I just read part of the Dark Tower! (so I could read Yuletide fic, lol) -- Sure, that definitely counts! (Boy, talk about fraught parenting, though!)

[genarti]

Ha, yes, it's extremely fraught, and mistakes were definitely made at various points along the way. Roland does eventually try to be a good adoptive dad, in his way and in that situation, but whether and how much he succeeds is very much a matter of interpretation.

The mention of the Little House books reminds me -- isn't The Grapes of Wrath about a family? Mind you, I haven't read it, and for all I know everyone involved is a horrible person. I was just trying to think of older family-centric literature. Similarly, there's The Swiss Family Robinson, although that book has various flaws of basic logic and zoology. So both of these are mentions more than actual recs.

[cahn]

Oh, Swiss Family Robinson! I remember loving that book (and the movie!) when I was a kid. Before I knew enough to check up on the logic and zoology, mind you...