(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

[duskpeterson]

As a lifelong young adult fiction reader, I am appalled at how few titles I can think of that fit your criteria. YA authors seem to be very fond of killing off parents.

Here's what I came up with:

Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" (fantasy; originally marketed as children's fiction, now marketed as YA) features a large family with a father and teenagers.

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series (time travel) has a number of father-offspring and father-in-loco-parentis relationships.

Following up on what Melannen said, Robert A. Heinlein's father portrayals are definitely a matter of taste, but I liked them as a teenager. "Farmer in the Sky" and "Have Space Suit - Will Travel" (YA science fiction) include some close father-son bonds.

Norma Johnston's The Keeping Days series (YA historical fiction) is about a large family, including a father and teenagers.

Madeleine L'Engle's fiction (YA science fiction and YA realistic fiction *with the same characters*) nearly always features husbands and wives raising kids, including teenagers.

Following up on what Genarti said, Mary Stewart is fond of inserting boys into her romantic suspense stories and having the heroes interact with the boys in a parental or quasi-parental manner; however, most of the boys appear to be fairly young. (She tends not to give ages.) One of her novels that does fit your criteria is "This Rough Magic," which features a loving relationship between an actor and his grown-up son.

[mildred_of_midgard]

I thought about the Outlander series and ended up rejecting it on the grounds that, the most major character doesn't get to parent either of his children, and the other fathers who do are mostly off page or only present in snippets: Brian, the Reverend, Lord John Grey, Ian Murray (the elder). Frank, maybe, gets some real page time as a father, so that would fall under important secondary character.

But you're right that there a lot of important father-son relationships throughout, and I guess by volume 4 Wnzvr vf svanyyl trggvat gb vagrenpg jvgu uvf nqhyg qnhtugre, naq cneragvat pbzrf vagb vg. Nyfb, fgnegvat jvgu obbx 5, jr trg gb frr Ebtre nf n sngure, naq cneragvat vf na vzcbegnag cneg bs uvf punenpgre sebz gura ba, naq ur'f qrsvavgryl n fhcre znwbe punenpgre. Hasbeghangryl, V ernyyl bayl yvxrq obbxf 1-4, fb vg gbbx zr n juvyr gb erzrzore nyy gur cneragvat Ebtre qbrf va 5-8 (naq jvyy cerfhznoyl pbagvahr qbvat jurarire obbx 9 pbzrf bhg).

So it might count!

[cahn]

I am appalled at how few titles I can think of that fit your criteria. YA authors seem to be very fond of killing off parents.

I KNOW, right?? I could easily come up with twice as many YA books where the parents were dead or missing or alive but just not at all... present. (And to be fair quite a number where the parents are around, just not at all an interesting part of the story.)

Taking notes on these! I've read Cooper and L'Engle, and it's definitely true that one of the things I love about both of them is the lovely family writing...