A Son of the Rock

The above is one of the enduring requirements of children’s fiction. It extends all the way from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven to Harry Potter. It might almost be considered a necessary condition for the form. The absence of parents is the mechanism which allows the child in the story to have the adventure, whatever that adventure is.

With parents, a child is tethered, circumscribed; any wanderings are restricted. In fiction, the absence of parents is made safe; it is the character(s) whose parents are missing, allowing the reader the vicarious adventure, which they almost certainly cannot ever experience in real life.

Most modern parents would freak out if their child were to take part in the activities of the protagonists in children’s fiction – confronting criminals and so on. In this regard the freedom of children in older stories such as the Railway Children, the Famous Five and Just William is striking to modern eyes, in a world where parents are reluctant to let children out of their sight for fear of abduction and worse.

– Despite this fear, the yearly incidence of stranger abduction of children has remained static in Britain since the 1930s. It is in fact remarkably low. But high profile cases stoke the fear. (It may be they were less reported in the past to avoid just this fear effect.) Of course, the possibility of a playing child being killed by a car also looms larger these days. –

Spoiler warning for next sentence.

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials perhaps takes the absence aspect to an extreme: one of Lyra’s parents is not only estranged, she is actually the enemy. That heightens the estrangement but also cleverly plays on a child’s resentment of restriction, the thought that parents actually are enemies in this regard.

My thanks go to the good lady for the idea this post expounds.

(Edited 15/1/09 to take account of comments.)