Seeking Orphans in MG/YA Literature – Or Are We?

The orphaned hobbit.
The orphaned and abused young wizard.
The disgruntled teen girl of divorced parents with a penchant for vampires.

I was recently asked, “Why do so many stories geared toward the middle grade and young adult audience have a somewhat dystopian view of the family?”
Well, there are a few good reasons why it’s been that way. This is especially true in the Fantasy genre, in fact it seems to be the rule of thumb. In this article I will talk about all the valid reasons why this is done, yet through the article, I will talk about options that don’t require dead parents, dysfunctional parents, or other poor family examples. I know, for some this might be heresy, but i am trying to buck the trend of the broken family in stories we read without losing the enjoyment of the story.
When a person is reading a story, to truly enjoy the story, you need to be given some anxiety that builds beyond the type of anxiety that the reader normally encounters. Something more than the normal, “Oh fooey, I didn’t get nominated to student council”.
With reasonable parents around, most kids are prevented from entering an uncommon amount of trouble. However for a story to be satisfying, the reader needs to be somewhat put through an emotional wringer. Life and death scenarios are good for that. Let’s not forget that at the end of the story, the conclusion should bring that stress back to normal levels, giving a feeling of relief, and therefore bringing the feeling of satisfaction.
For instance, you might imagine a scene where a ten year old orphan named Vincent entered a haunted forest and was attacked by giant spiders. Admittedly, not a scene that I would want to live through, and would raise the heart rate of most who imagine themselves in that scenario.
Could Vincent have had a loving set of parents by his side and this scene still played out believably?
Probably not.
“Why,” you ask? Well simply put, what sane and responsible parents allow their ten year old to wander with them in an extremely dangerous haunted forest, thus exposing themselves and him to true danger?
This scene only works because he was physically separated from his parents (by death in this case). It could have worked equally well if his parents were alive and well, but separated from Vincent because he was off to school. In either case, you’ll notice there are no parents around, you simply have someone put into a stressful situation and needing to figure out a way out.
Parents do cause complications in the storytelling process simply because they are the care givers. Being care givers, if they are at all good at their job, they are responsible for keeping the child out of harm. If the child never gets into danger, then you don’t have much to work with in excitement arena. If you don’t have excitement, you don’t necessarily have a lot of emotional turmoil beyond the reader’s normal experience. Therefore you have one of three choices.

• Kill the parent
• Make the parents dysfunctional, thus ineffective in protecting the child from dangers
• Separate the child from their parents

The common theme between those choices is that there isn’t a “protector” shielding the protagonist from the dangers in this world.
As an orphan, it is very easy to craft a story that unleashes the child on the dangerous world that he or she is largely unprepared for. That is likely why we see such a prevalence of the poor little orphans in the story.
With the dysfunctional parents, it can sometimes be tricky to portray to a younger audience what a truly dysfunctional set of parents can be, especially for a younger audience. There are some taboos associated with literature for the younger audience (especially middle grade) when it comes to the common social issues like alcohol or drugs, but if we imagine divorced or emotionally distant parents that do not take a strong hand in their role of “protector” – those would suffice.
With the separation of the child from what might otherwise be a perfectly normal set of parents, this need not be a traumatic separation unless the author so desires it to be. A common scenario might be where a child is sent to a boarding school. Or depending on the genre, sent off to a camp to train for a particular event/activity.
I’d assert to answer the original question, “Why the dystopian family environment” – the answer is simply in my opinion convenience. The more characters you have, the harder it is to keep track of their interactions. With decent parental units present, you simply have a blanket muffling the action that is necessary for a good emotional rollercoaster. Getting rid of them, or never having them in the first place is a very convenient method of solving that little bit of literary inconvenience.
-Mike Rothman