The Babble List: 25 Best Fictional Parents
From the Huxtables to Ma & Pa Wilder, parents we wish we could be.
by Marisa Meltzer
May 20, 2009
Remember when you'd come home from a hard band practice, and your mom poured you a glass of milk and your dad offered homespun wisdom that made everything better? Wait, that wasn't your parents — that was Clair and Heathcliff Huxtable on afternoon Cosby re-runs. Pop culture has always been full of enviable parents, and for a generation of latchkey kids they were always the next-best thing. Here are 25 that we'd like to adopt — or at least model ourselves after, now that we have kids of our own. — Marisa Meltzer
25. Joyce Summers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
As if raising an adolescent wasn't enough to deal with as a single mom, Joyce Summer has to contend with a daughter whose destiny is to slay vampires and save the world. Instead of disowning or discouraging her, though, Joyce embraces Buffy's fate. Plus, she's an awesome surrogate mom to Buffy's equally eccentric crew of friends.
24 Mom and Dad, Knuffle Bunny
Trixie's stuffed bunny has gone missing. But as a toddler who can't quite speak, she can't just say that, so she expresses herself in various forms of gibberish. Instead of ignoring her baby talk, her parents figure out what she's trying to say and save the day, proving that most parents demonstrate some kind of heroism on a daily basis.
23. Roseanne Conner, Roseanne
Just the fact that a blue collar, feminist, middle-aged woman with a bone-dry sense of humor (and who wasn't a size two!) was on TV for nine seasons was pretty radical. But what was even more radical was that, as the antithesis of the stereotypical Stepford sitcom mom, Roseanne Conner was portrayed as a great mother, who negotiated her kids' battles with puberty and rebelliousness with ease.
22. Carson Drew, the Nancy Drew series
He may have been the most respected lawyer in River Heights, but Carson Drew seemed to have little in the way of a life of his own. As a widower, he rarely had a love interest and instead devoted himself to his spunky girl-detective daughter, Nancy. But that's what also makes him so cool--he knows Nancy's special and doesn't try to get in the way of her passion, even if that means he has to get kidnapped occasionally so she can save him.
21. Gil Buckman, Parenthood
When Cowboy Dan, a children's entertainer, fails to show at his socially awkward son's birthday, Gil Buckman makes himself into a DIY cowboy. Any father who will make balloon animals to placate his kids is a true hero.
20. Ma and Pa, Little House on the Prairie
What other parents could successfully turn a pig's bladder into a toy? As actual pioneers, Ma and Pa do things like make butter, trap muskrats, and chop wood, earning them an exalted place in the hearts of many a dreamy adolescent girl.
19. Sophia Petrillo, The Golden Girls
Fake senility, mob connections, endless straight talk... No one made cranky as lovable as Sophia Petrillo, who, as she once put it, lived through "two world wars, fifteen vendettas, four operations and two Darrins on Bewitched."
18. Elyse and Steven Keaton, Family Ties
As classic hippie parents who participated in the Peace Corps and went to Berkeley, they seem more amused than annoyed at the culture divide embodied in their kids: Jennifer, the tomboy; Mallory, the boy-crazy clothes horse; and Alex, the Young Republican. The Keatons' parenting was a hit with both the health-food crowd and Reaganites.
About the Author
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Marisa Meltzer is is co-author of How Sassy Changed My Life:
A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time. Her second
book, Girl Power, will be published this fall. |
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