"But why kill the mother or take her out of the picture? Why is it that outside of showing homosocial relationships of Father/Son and Mother/Daughter as dominant, why aren't we seeing a father/daughter relationships that is genuinely stronger than others? Are screenwriters sqwicked out by?

I think possibly yes. If they show a relationship between a father and daughter with the mother present they may worry about the relationship coming off as inappropriate.

I mean, people see unintended messages all the time.

I think that My So-Called Life may be the exception to this rule. But that show was the exception to every other television trope dealing with shows centered on teenagers.

Hmm. This was an interesting post.

You bring up a very interesting point. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a few friends some time ago about how Disney Princesses don't have mothers present in their lives. To me, that brings it beyond Hollywood screenwriters as many of these stories go back 100+ years. At that point, it begins to look like a societal fixation on maternal absence...

With many of the stories being over 100 years old, do you think it could be related in any way to death from child labor?

Also, every story needs to have some tension, something to drive it, and in the olden days I don't think stories of single mothers would have been that popular.

And many of the stories with a single father (seem to me) to be geared towards how the father ends up falling in love with a woman who ends up becoming the new mother (Jersey Girl, anyone).

Many of those movies seem to be geared to the general female audience... the daughter is usually a strong character.

@Steven

"And many of the stories with a single father (seem to me) to be geared towards how the father ends up falling in love with a woman who ends up becoming the new mother (Jersey Girl, anyone)."

Yes, in these depictions the child is treated as an accessory. It indicates that he is nurturing. But also hapless, hence the strong, wise-beyond-their years personality of the child (son or daughter).

h*yaforchoice commented at July 15, 2008 1:29 PM: "This reminds me of a conversation I had with a few friends some time ago about how Disney Princesses don't have mothers present in their lives. To me, that brings it beyond Hollywood screenwriters as many of these stories go back 100+ years."

That reminds me of Halting State by Charles Stross. In that novel, bairn Davey Smith does have a mother present in his life (in fact, he has two). They're loving and responsible, they look out for him, and so they protect him from the conflict driving the plot. No wonder his mother Sergeant Sue Smith (of the Edinburgh constabulary in 2018) is one of the main characters instead of Davey being a main character.

Steven commented at July 15, 2008 1:48 PM: "Also, every story needs to have some tension, something to drive it, and in the olden days I don't think stories of single mothers would have been that popular."

For that matter, what about stories with parents who are supposedly all present but still leaving a child to deal with the main problem and be the main character?

I am not saying that the father/daughter/dead mother relationship is in all stories/films/television, only that the rare times that we have seen a father take such an active parenting role in the lives of their daughters is if the mother is dead.

The archtype, of a sort does go back quite far. It is as present in Greek and Roman mythology as it is in German folktales, when death by labour was a way of life. Today, while birth techonologies are not entirely perfect, the trope does persist. But why? Should we think it significant that, since a majority of families on sitcoms and dramas are middle-class to affluent, the common cause of death for TV moms is either Cancer or a car accident?

My relationship with my father was always much better than what I had with my mother. Needless to say I could never watch a show or film without thinking that the bond I had with my Dad, with my biological mother very much in the picture, was rare, it not downright unheard of. My mother also worked as a crisis counsellor at the local women's shelter, so for a while I had a built in explanation: even as I grew up in the 90s, society was only just gradually encouraging men to accept their own abilities to nurture.

However, I am not sure that satisfies anymore.

Yes, in these depictions the child is treated as an accessory. It indicates that he is nurturing. But also hapless, hence the strong, wise-beyond-their years personality of the child (son or daughter).

To see a fantastic counterpoint to that, see Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon. They don't make them like that anymore. Ironically (or perhaps not), Bogdanovich was dead set against making the movie, the idea and casting for the daughter was the idea of his ex wife Polly Platt.

Truly ironically (or perhaps not) with regard to the OP however, the film opens with the mother's funeral leaving young Addie Pray without guardianship: enter her father.

Returning to the subject of the OP, though, I wonder what she thinks of films such as Kramer vs. Kramer or Pursuit of Happyness where the mother is not dead, but somehow villanized? Given that about 90% of poor single parents, particularly African-American poor single parents, are mothers, there is an interesting dynamic that the most successful story of a poor single parent is Will Smith (who achieved what a woman in his position would probably not have been able to do).

I'm glad someone else mentioned Disney, because I was always very weirded out by that. Why do none of the Disney princesses ever have a mother? My own mother's theory was that Walt Disney had a problem with his mother, but it is interesting to notice the phenomenon in a lot of other places.

Now I'm having a hard time thinking of movies where dad and daughter have a good relationship and mom is still in the picture. Juno. Juno has step-mom acting as "mom," but also has dad giving comfort and advice. Ok, really I've got nothing. I can't think of any other movie with a female lead who has a good relationship with her dad and mom's around.
But when I think about it I have to agree, it seems to fit into the idea of dad seeking to work against his nature and over come the difficulty of having to take care of his child is an interesting plot, while mom doing the same work is just what we expect.

In the Rosanne series for quite a while Darleen had a strong bond with Dan, and Becky had a strong bond with Rosanne.... Kinda a real dynamic. Not ideal, but real.

Wow, that was a while ago. I think in the series both D and B got boyfriends and moved out... so long ago.

Original Poster here. Somehow, it is putting out my real name versus my chosen login name of Pandrosion, but there we go.

@Oi, had the pitch been picked up, and as I pointed out early in the pitch, a sub-group of the 'mom-in-a-coffin' are the stories where the mom is present/not yet dead, but clearly the villain of the piece. The father thus has to work even harder to undo any 'damage' inflicted by the mother. How one interprets 'damage' is subjective.

i.e. The Sci-Fi Channel Shoe 'Eureka'. When the show began, Zoe was not doing well in school, dealing with her parents divorce, had little contact with her father, and was committing a series of scams. Midway through the first season, Jack Carter's ex-Wife shows up and reveals that the only reason Zoe was able to stay in Eureka with her father was because a deal her parents had for Zoe to return to live with her mother at the end of the school year. It is implied that Zoe has not talked to her mother during that time and that her attitude and marks have improve while her criminal record has remained stagnant. It is only after her mother witnesses the community rallying around Jack and his daughter after a near death experience that the former Mrs. Carter sees that she will be doing more harm than good by bringing Zoe home, thus no longer being lonely. She is hardly seen nor spoken of afterwards with the exception of a comment in a flash-forward episode that states Zoe's bio mom will not be attending Zoe's High School Grad. I have taken that as implying that Zoe's bio mom is dead, given how quiet and sad Zoe seemed, but it could be due to other reasons.

Another is the Shipping News by Annie Proulx (sp?) A book first, than a movie. I believe the mother leaves town with her daughters, sells them to a black market adoption agency, and then dies in a car accident with her lover. All I know about the movie is that there is only one daughter and her mother sells her the black market adoption agency. I do not know what happens to the mother; I haven't seen the film.

@Steven - Well, Roseanne was a long time ago. Could you just clarify as to what you mean by ideal dynamic? I assume that you mean both daughters have equally strong relationships to both parents. To you earlier point, there are many portrayals of single Mom's raising their son/s/children, sometimes with a rocketing incest factor, but such dynamics are out-represented by the struggling single mother portrayals.
Are we that preoccupied with the Humbert Humbert scenario?

@WINJessica -I have thought about Juno. It is clear from Juno's monologue that Juno and her stepmom are not close-bordering on chronic antagonistic, hence Juno's surprise when stepmom steps up to keep her and the baby happy and still subsequently disappointed when her stepmom steps up to warn Juno about marriage dynamics that Juno did not understand (who better to help her, really, since she recently had a child of her own and is involved in Juno's life).

You know, I recently ranted at my mother about the depiction of mother/daughter vs father/daughter bonds on TV. I could think of a couple of whodunnit series on German TV where the detective is a single mother, and inevitably she has a beyond screwed up relationship with the daughter who feels chronically abandoned by the mother rushing off to solve crimes. The single-mother-as-detective scenario always has a serious, tough, aloof and a bit cynical woman who tries to juggle job and child but where the child always falls short and where the clear implication is that she's being a lousy mother. Now on the other hand, when we're talking single-father-as-detective scenarios, I can think of several shows off hand where the father is just as likely to run out during important moments with the daughter, but where she LOVES him to death regardless. There are no fights, no disappointments, no slammed doors. The daughters expect the father to run out to save the world in the middle of dinner. And rather than sulking, they clean the dishes and make coffee when he returns.

So basically, a working mother is a Bad Mother by definition, deserving of the scorn of her neglected children. But a working father is simply the Way Of The World and it's completely healthy and okay.

(Predictably, my mother told me I was seeing things, but I'm almost tempted to look into this more closely and find a way to write a paper about this.)

The adult women I know tend to have more idealistic relationships with their dads (if they have a good relationship, that is), and a more realistic one with their moms. When you're sick, or have a hassle at work, you call your mom, but call dad to dose up on unconditional love or get reassurance. But an awful lot of the women I know have little to know relationship with their dads because their dad was either physically or emotionally absent during their childhood.

In other words, there's a certain distance, even in the best father/daughter relationships. Generally. Obviously, there are lots of wonderful exceptions, and hopefully things have changed for the younger generation.

The fathers of daughters that I'm friends with struggle with this. We want to be involved as much as we can, but there are a lot of biological and social barriers that make it difficult. The path of least resistance is definitely for us to step back and let our wives/partners do the heavy lifting.

I think, for a screenwriter, this is a problem, as a father who is very close to his daughter (and vice versa) is thought to be hard for the audience to identify with unless there's a convenient explanation. It's particularly rough with sitcoms, where the default dad character is a buffoon. I always loved Dan on Roseanne for being one of the few good dads and good husbands in TV world.

@ Lady Vampire - Very astute. I have noticed the same thing, but in a general crime-fighting sense: In 'Crossing Jordan' ( A show unlike any other in which all but one of the starring characters had a dead/incapacitated mother by series end), the female lead, Jordan Cavanaugh, has a very good relationship with her widowed father, a former Police Officer, until her mid/late thirties when the mystery around her mother's murder (which happened when Jordan was 7 or 8 I think), becomes overwhelming. They become estranged from the second to last season onwards.

Catherine Willows from CSI gets nothing but flack for how she tries to balance her night shift job and raising her teenage daughter alone, albeit one who was left to drown to death in a car with the body of her troubled, but dead, father.

There is something different in the series 'Dexter'; dues to Dexter's 'issues' Harry Morgan, a cop, devotes much more time with Dexter than he does to he daughter Deborah, who repeatedly makes it clear in flashbacks that if she can't have Harry to herself once and a while, they could at least do things together. A mother is present in some flashbacks but it is assumed that she died while Dexter was a pre/teen.

@ MikeT - Certainly a fair point. Would you say vice versa is true for Mothers and Sons?

There's a lot of "cult of the father" stuff going on, but it's pretty much unheard of for a "mama's boy" to even exist on TV without being a total loser. (Like Skinner on the Simpsons) However, a daughter can idolize and adore her father, and emulate him in every way, trying to grow up to be just like her dad, taking on the old man's profession and the whole deal. The same is true for a father and son.

There's just not much for a personal relationship depicted positively between adult child and his/her mother in the same way there is for the adult child's father.

This is old, I know, dating to the brothers Grimm and beyond, but, honestly, why does this keep continuing? Can't anyone have mommy issues like TV characters all have daddy issues? (King of Queens on down)

The only show that I can think of where the father and daughter have a good relationship and the mother is still around is South of Nowhere. But those two don't get that many scenes together, so it's barely there.

Why can't there be a show that features a family like mine. I'm a daddy's girl, we do stuff together all the time. My parents are still together so yes, my mom is around.

@Bronwyn - my from the guy answer is yes. And as werechick points out, "mama's boys" are rarely portrayed positively in the media. There's a sort of 'love your mother but not too much' message sent out.

I think we, as a culture, are very uncomfortable with opposite sex relationships that aren't based in sex, and that discomfort translates to all sorts of relationships where sex should never enter into it, like teacher/student, mentor/mentee, and parent/child.

The mother/son relationship tends to be closer than the father/daughter one, because of biology and societal norms regarding childrearing. Growing up, Mom and Grandma were the nurturers, and Dad was the disciplinarian, and that effected my relationship with my dad for years.