Here’s what I’ve really been liking about Parenthood this season: The writers are daring to give their characters room to make parenting mistakes, to look bad, to be selfish and to openly struggle with the sometimes ugly emotional messiness that is parenting.
As we watch these fictional parents who are actively raising children get their feelings hurt and clumsily try to insinuate themselves into their offsprings’ lives, it’s been nearly impossible for me, a mom of three, not see some of myself in these characters.
In this recent episode, at least two of the parents’ experiences rang particularly true for me, on a personal level:
Kristina, who way overstepped and was too enthusiastic about the fact that her daughter Haddie was running for junior class president, chose to simply ignore the obvious fact that her daughter didn’t want her help and didn’t ask for it. Kristina, who used to run campaigns for a living, was like an out-of-control freight train as she admonished Haddie for not having a platform, a set of issues on which she was basing her campaign. Haddie just wanted Kristina to drive her to Target, not offer advice on colors for her campaign posters or leave inspirational books about making speeches on her bed and then hound her about whether she’d read it yet.
Kristina represented the hyper-involved, helicopter parent who means well but just doesn’t know how to let her kids make their own mistakes, a lesson that’s much easier said than done. Watching Kristina make these missteps served as a reminder to me that just because my middle school-aged daughter says that she’s thinking of joining the school newspaper, doesn’t mean she wants her old mom (who used to be a newspaper reporter) to start intrusively meddling and giving her unsolicited pointers, as much as I might want to.
It was similarly hard to watch Sarah try to out-cool her daughter Amber’s best friend’s parents, with whom Amber’s been spending lots of time. Derisively calling them the “fantastic people,” Sarah felt as though, in some way, she’d lost her daughter to this affluent, hip family. “I can’t compete,” she lamented while she tried to think of ways to best them.
What I loved about this storyline was that the writers are aware that having a mom of a teen try to make herself look like a cool, club-hopper is, what’s the word, um, awkward. (It was downright embarrassing observing Sarah beg her teenager to do her eyeliner so that it looked like her daughter’s.) Having the bouncer call Sarah “ma’am” and not allow her entree into the club — while two young hotties were allowed in — was a clear message that Sarah was trying to be something she wasn’t and can’t really be: Cool in the eyes of her daughter.
And how poignant and painful was Adam’s longing for a connection with his son Max? Sure, he went about trying to make Max pay attention to him, to forcefully engage him in a conversation, in ham-fisted ways. He struggled with Max over silly things, like what music was (or wasn’t) on the radio or whether Max wanted to sit next to him and watch a baseball game on TV. But this was an authentic and raw dramatization of the emotions that I think most parents experience when their children push them away, as they’re supposed to do as part of growing up. In Max’s case, the issue is magnified because of his Asperger’s.
Backing off and allowing a child to make mistakes and choose to spend time with other families is really, really hard, as is trying not to take personally a child’s seeming disinterest in a parent’s life or in hanging out with a parent. And Parenthood is handling these subjects really well.
Crosby and Joel fighting with strong women over child-related control matters — Crosby with Jabbar’s grandmother and Joel with Julia over having a second child — were well done too. And when it comes to Joel’s irritation with being saddled with all the child care responsibilities while Julia works, doesn’t seem as though it’s going to go away any time soon, despite his agreeing to try for another baby.
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Sep 29, 2010 @ 13:00 EST5EDT
