TRIGGER WARNINGS: Authoritarian parenting, teenage sexuality, frank sexual language
Introduction
It’s never easy to be a parent, and it’s possibly now harder than ever before, with so much mainstream media battling over the right way to parent. Before I write any further, I should note: I’m not a parent myself. I don’t have children of my own and I’ve never had a minor living in my care or under my roof for more than the occasional quick visit. But despite my lack of children, I do have parents, and I have my own strong feelings about parenting styles and how they are portrayed in modern media. Something I’m particularly interested in is parenting styles as seen through the cultural lens of “Twilight” – both within the text itself and in the cultural phenomenon that surrounds it.
You may have heard of the “Twilight” series of novels – perhaps from my previous Slactiverse Special on the subject (1) or from my weekly series of deconstruction posts on my blog (2) – and you’re probably passingly familiar with the series’ polarizing protagonist Bella and her sparkly love interest Edward. What you may not be aware of, is that many modern parents are looking to incorporate “Twilight” into their parenting styles – either as a way to reach out and connect with their children during a time when children traditionally start to pull away and create their own cultures, or as a way to share a common pleasure in a world where an increasing variety of media is offered to cater to every possible taste.
“Twilight Moms” are not a new phenomenon: in 2008, articles were noting the number of parents snapping up the series and looking forward to the movie adaptations. Michelle Sager interviewed mothers who were joining the series with gusto and cheerfully sporting “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob” shirts (3); Rachel Silverman pointed out that the closing ‘generation gap’ allows parents to find common ground and quality conversation time with their children (4). There’s even a dedicated site for the phenomenon – TwilightMoms.com – where parents can join a supportive social networking forum to discuss “Twilight”, other book recommendations, and parenting styles with other parents.
One wonders, however, how much actual common ground exists within the Twilight-Readers-Who-Are-Also-Parents demographic. The demographic seems to run the gamut widely from self-described “twihards” who claim the series represents a perfect model of family life, to casual fans who enjoy the book as escapism, to readers who don’t enjoy the series at all but keep up on the details in order to connect with their children. The “Twilight Moms” site itself has a rather interesting motto –The Hand that Rocks the Cradle is the Hand That Rules the World– that is in some contexts a paean to parenthood and in other contexts a more dominionist statement. One way or another, however, parents are reading “Twilight” in droves, and I think it’s worth asking: How is parenting depicted within the pages of “Twilight”, and what are these real life parents being exposed to in their reading?
Platonic Ideals
From my own reading of “Twilight”, I consider the novel to be about a good many things. Most obviously, it is about a love triangle between an emotionally vulnerable young woman and two deeply troubled supernatural men. Moreover, it is a series about exotic secrets and exciting mysteries and the power that comes with leaving behind the helplessness of childhood (and humanity) and confidently joining the world of adults (and vampires), not only as one of them, but as the best of them. Textually-speaking, however, I also firmly believe that the “Twilight” series is about platonic forms (5) and of escaping from an earthly, imperfect reality to a heaven-on-earth paradisiacal ideal.
Everything within the narrative of “Twilight” revolves around the process of ‘perfecting’ the life of Bella Swan. At the start of the series, our young protagonist is disconnected emotionally from her parents, and is moving from her newly-remarried mother’s household to live with a father she barely knows. The reader does not take from the text that Bella’s parents are overtly neglectful, but rather that they are distant and distracted. By the end of the series, Bella has left her father’s household to become the newest member of the Cullen vampire clan - and as daughter to the doting Carlisle, bride to the sexy Edward, and mother to the unique-snowflake Renesmee, Bella has been transformed into a beautiful, graceful, powerful being: utterly loved, adored, and admired. Suddenly the perfect daughter, wife, and mother, she becomes a holy female trinity: ageless, unchanging, and eternal.
The reader will note that, in the midst all of all this perfection, Bella is still living much the same life at the end of the series that she was at the beginning: living in the household of a father figure, repeating high school for eternity, and largely unchanged in terms of her teenage personality. It is my belief that Bella’s enhanced-but-unchanged life is meant by the author to be the ultimate point of the happy ending – if there is no better life to aspire to than living as a young woman in a communal family arrangement, then the perfect version of that ultimate life would obviously be living as an unstoppable badass young woman in a communal family environment where everyone adores and admires you. And if living under the authority of a father figure is the model to follow, then obviously a move from a family characterized by alternately neglectful and authoritarian parenting to one characterized by an indulgent parenting is the ideal – at least from the perspective of our protagonist (6).
But is the Cullen parenting style really better than the Swan parenting styles? As much as the styles sharply contrast, I think that both styles are inordinately unhealthy because they ultimately fail to take into account the unique challenges presented by the individual children involved and because they rely upon slavishly following a set parenting model rather than applying a flexible approach shaped by communication with and feedback from the children involved.
Swan Parenting: Demanding But Not Responsive
There’s no doubt that the Swan family is full of conflict and fragmentation. Bella’s parents, Charlie and Renee, separated when Bella was an infant - Renee fled from gloomy Washington to sunny Arizona and never looked back, apparently even going so far as to confide in her daughter all the details of her final fight-and-flight from Charlie. Bella has dutifully visited her father once a year, but claims no pleasant memories from the visits - a claim that is reinforced when we glimpse the inside of Charlie’s home and realize that, in the absence of pleasant photos of their vacation moments together, he has instead opted to fill his home with Bella’s impersonal yearly school photos to mark the passage of time.
The relationship between Bella and her mother is close but strained. Renee is a functional child who has relied on Bella her entire life to run the daily details of household life. Prior to the start of the series, Renee has effectively ‘replaced’ Bella with her new husband Phil, who has taken over the responsibility of handling the finances, keeping the cars in good repair, and otherwise managing Renee’s life for her. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Bella’s replacement as caretaker is a source of internal conflict for Bella, especially since this ‘replacement’ leads to a major demotion from being head of her mother’s household to being a child in her father’s household.
Once integrated into her father’s household, Bella immediately assumes responsibility for the traditionally feminine household chores: shopping for groceries, preparing dinners, and washing all the laundry. Bella notes in text that this is not a hardship – the chores are, after all, the same she used to perform for her mother – but the reader will note that the power dynamics in Charlie’s household are very different from those in Renee’s household. In Renee’s household, Bella performed her chores in the role as effective parent, with Renee acting as the effective child – with the shouldering of these responsibilities, Bella also gained the full benefits of adulthood: managing the household finances and crafting Renee’s daily routine. In Charlie’s household, by contrast, Bella is no longer the acting adult in the relationship – she is very clearly a daughter serving her father. Never does Bella decide how the household finances are managed; even matters such as what car she will own and drive are decided for her before she arrives in Washington, and entirely without her input or opinions.
If Renee neglected her duties as a parent, Charlie seems almost obsessively interested in micro-managing his daughter’s personal life once she has moved into his household. When Bella announces her completely uncharacteristic decision to move to her father’s home, Charlie accepts this move as his due without ever thinking to ask if Bella is okay, or if the newly-married Phil has hurt her in any way or otherwise prompted this move. When Charlie presents Bella with his gift to her of a ‘new’ car, he tries to deceive her about the age and condition of the car in order to make the gift seem more generous than it is. And when Charlie first begins to suspect that Bella might be romantically interested in boys at her school, he starts disconnecting her car engine at night so that she can’t sneak out of the house and drive off to meet anyone, despite the fact that she has never shown the slightest inclination to this kind of behavior. The message in their relationship is clear: Bella is not a functional adult, but rather an irresponsible child and is therefore worthy only of mistrust and what paternal affection can be spared in between his weekend fishing trips.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Swan parenting styles are intensely unhealthy. Renee has spent her life being a demanding force on her daughter by allowing her childlike helplessness to rob Bella of her own childhood. Bella’s own needs have been utterly neglected as she has been raised to be her mother’s confidant and caretaker – but never to have or fulfill any dreams of her own. Charlie, by contrast, almost completely ignores his daughter as he works long hours, leaves her for weekend fishing trips, rarely speaks to her in the evenings, and studiously avoids engaging her opinions, and yet he still demands that her behavior conform to his ideals. As long as Bella lives under his roof, she will be the sole performer all the feminine chores of the household and her sexuality will be tightly controlled – even to the point of disconnecting her car engine nightly and regularly listening at her bedroom door for any hint that a boy might have been somehow smuggled up to her room.
In these ways and more, Bella is treated by her parents as an object - she is a day planner to be utilized by her mother and a vagina to be controlled by her father. Her hopes and dreams aren’t discussed or acknowledged because her parents don’t care about them; Bella is never treated as anything other than an extension of her parents’ desires and needs.
Cullen Parenting: Responsive But Not Demanding
When the Cullen family first arrives on the scene, they initially seem far more dysfunctional than the Swans: the young doctor Carlisle and his wife Esme have adopted three suspiciously-beautiful children while very pointedly not adopting the two blood-relatives that have been living under Esme’s guardianship since her late-teens/early-twenties. In a series of moves that seem straight out of the cult-leader’s guide-for-dummies, Dr. Cullen has isolated his family in a remote house in the woods, with no income other than his own, and appears to heavily discourage outside socializing, preferring that the teenagers form semi-incestual sexual relationships with their adopted siblings. He removes his children from school for ‘special training’ at random intervals, thereby disrupting their friendships outside of the family. No one has ever seen the children eat the school food, and the constant exhaustion that seems to infuse their slender bodies and the dark bruises under their eyes seem to point to serious abuse.
Of course, the real story is very different from this first appearance - the Cullen children are not abused, rather they are strong immortal beings who have chosen to pretend to be human teenagers in order to live as a family unit. They stay together out of a common sense of self (as rare ‘vegetarian’ vampires) and out of mutual respect. The Cullen parenting style seems to be healthy and nurturing - the children are trusted to come and go as they please, they pick cars and hobbies according to their own tastes, and they form sexual relationships according to their own needs. Edward Cullen in particular represents the freedom that awaits Bella: his doting parents are in raptures with all his choices and accomplishments, from his musical tastes to his choice of new girlfriend. Approval and acceptance suffuses the entire family, and as Bella moves slowly from one household to the other, so too are we to understand that she is moving from an imperfect fractured family to an ideal cohesive one.
While the Cullen parenting style may seem ideal in theory, however, it is fundamentally flawed in practice. Though the Swan parenting styles are unhealthily defined by dependence and mistrust, it does not automatically follow that the opposite parenting style – total independence and complete trust – is therefore the best, most healthy choice available.
Although it is tempting to view the Cullen ‘children’ as functional adults because of their advanced age and sexual maturity, these traits are not the defining aspects of adulthood. The most important aspect of adulthood is – in my opinion – a capacity for self-control, and it is here that the Cullen children are deeply lacking. Because the Cullen children struggle so much with controlling their vampiric blood lust, they are effectively unable to socialize outside the family, hold a regular job, or meaningfully attend higher education – they require complete freedom to take off for extended periods in order to hunt and recharge themselves before returning to the taxing demands of interacting with human society without accidentally murdering someone. It is precisely the issue of “self-control” that defines the makeup of the family: Carlisle is master of his vampiric urges and is therefore father and front man for the family; Edward and his siblings are still susceptible to temptation and are therefore children who defer to Carlisle’s guidance. In this sense, Edward and his siblings are far less mature than the average human teenager (including Bella!) and for the Cullen parents to treat them as adults with full independence and complete trust would seem to be a recipe for disaster – both for themselves and for the community.
The Swan family, for all their dysfunctionality, at least understand that biological urges exist – an authoritarian Charlie Swan sabotages his daughter’s car nightly because he fears that she has a biological compulsion to have sex. The Cullen family, in contrast, live their life in indulgent denial that their son has a biological compulsion for murder – and that he has acted on this compulsion multiple times in the past. The Cullens know their son sneaks out nightly to hover longingly over Bella Swan as she sleeps. They know that Bella is the one person on earth whom Edward feels most compelled to murder – her allure to him is described as that of cocaine to a junkie, and it is an allure that other members of the family have experienced before with disastrous results. The Cullens are also acutely aware that if by some miracle Edward merely turns rather than murders Bella, he’ll hate himself forever for turning her into something he believes is damned. It seems almost certain that this situation is bound to end in either a murder-suicide or a situation where Bella is turned to vampirism and Edward torments himself with an eternity of guilt for losing his self-control.
Faced with this situation and with the individual personalities involved, the Cullen parenting style is just as dysfunctional as the Swan parenting styles! A parenting style where the parents grant total independence and complete trust to their children is most certainly not automatically wrong, but a parenting style where the parents grant total independence and complete trust to a child who has a serious lack of self-control and a known problem with a destructive addiction is negligent in the extreme. The fact that the Cullens never speak to Edward about his dangerous disregard for his own limitations, the fact that they never urge the couple to employ chaperones to prevent an accidental murder, and the fact that they never express anything other than their unconditional support for Edward-the-junkie hanging out constantly and privately with Bella-the-cocaine-vial is incredibly distressing to the reader – and yet, this parenting style is being held up as a model for treating children with mutual respect and trust.
Conclusion: Flexibility and Feedback
It is my opinion that both the Swan and Cullen parenting styles are unhealthy not because there is some perfect, one-size-fits-all parenting model that should be followed blindly by everyone and which they have each failed to employ. No, it is my opinion that they are failures as parents because they are following rigid parenting models without any attempt at modifying those styles periodically with communication, feedback, and a good long hard introspective look at what they are doing and why they are doing it.
Renee treats Bella as an adult – she gives her daughter great power and great responsibility. This model is fulfilling for Renee because she has a companion, a confidant, and a caretaker all wrapped up in one, but the model doesn’t work for Bella because she is robbed of a meaningful chance to be a child. There’s nothing automatically wrong with encouraging a child to be mature and self-reliant, but the onus was on Renee to monitor Bella’s growth and note that the demands of completely running a household were effectively isolating Bella from creating meaningful relationships with her peers – in which case, Renee should have re-evaluated her parenting style and changed it appropriately.
Charlie treats Bella as a child – he gives her chores, makes decisions for her, and lays ground rules for the behavior he expects from her. This model is fulfilling for Charlie because he has a well-behaved daughter to brag about to his friends and his time is freed up from all the household chores that he hates, but the model doesn’t work for Bella because she feels stifled and unfulfilled. There’s nothing automatically wrong with laying ground rules and monitoring a child’s behavior, but as Charlie sees Bella become more interested in boys, he fails to re-evaluate his parenting style in order to allow safe exploration, and by continuing to micro-manage his daughter’s sexuality, he inadvertently pushes her into a teenage marriage.
Carlisle and Esme Cullen, by contrast, treat their children as adults – with complete respect, trust, and independence. This model is fulfilling for all the Cullens: the adults have the “children” they always wanted, and the children can live their lives as the “adults” they see themselves as being, based on their advanced age and sexual maturity. But this model ultimately doesn’t work in this situation because as much as the Cullen children like to think of themselves as adults, they aren’t – despite their apparent maturity, their fundamental lack of self-control means they are less of an adult than the most hormonally-driven human teenager. There’s nothing automatically wrong with extending trust and independence to children, but the Cullens failure to acknowledge and act on their childrens’ dangerous addictions puts both their children and their community at serious risk. What they should do and what they fail to do is be honest about Edward’s destructive behavior and communicate to him how dangerous and inappropriate they believe his actions to be – and then suggest safer, alternative ways for him to see Bella, both for his own safety and for hers.
Again, I feel I should mention: I’ve never raised teenagers myself. As such, I may be completely wrong in my opinions, but I personally believe that the responsible parent recognizes that their children are unique individuals and adjusts their parenting style accordingly based on the behavior they observe and the communication they elicit. A child who has demonstrated a propensity for harmful behavior may be granted fewer privileges and independence than a child who has shown good judgment and healthy self-control. To my mind, good parents attempt to provide healthy guidance and will attempt to set the appropriate boundaries that their children might not yet have the self-control to set for themselves. “No, you may not go out with Jimmy alone anymore since the last time you two were together, you two thought it would be a good idea to snort cans of compressed paint,” they may say, or, “I don’t think you need to see Shawna on weeknights until your grades improve past a C-; you two can wait until the weekend to hang out.” Or, even perhaps, “I’m not sure that you should be alone with Bella, given that you’ve had trouble controlling your blood lust in the past, and I’m sure you’d be very sorry if you did something you’ll regret later. Why don’t you take Alice with you as a chaperone?”
To me, being an adult is about healthy self-control, about setting boundaries for yourself so that you don’t unnecessarily harm yourself or others. Select a designated driver. Plan ahead for safe sex. Try not to spend a lot of time alone with people you desperately want to murder, or with people who desperately want to murder you. To me, being a parent is about helping your children be aware of the importance of that self-control, and about helping them to set those boundaries for themselves even when they can’t or don’t want to.
By that rubric, there are no ‘good parents’ in “Twilight”. There is a strong contrast between the Swans and the Cullens, but the contrast is no longer between imperfect and perfect parenting styles, but rather between two equally unhealthy parenting styles: on the one hand, a family so steeped in control and boundaries that the reasons for those boundaries have become meaningless; on the other hand, a family so proud of their indulgent parenting that they’ve managed to completely ignore the fact that their ‘children’ are impulsive serial killers who haven’t yet mastered the self-control to keep themselves out of dangerously triggering situations.
It’s worth noting that among the many fans and anti-fans of “Twilight”, there’s a small but vocal faction that wants to see Bella escape the oppressive love triangle she inhabits with vampire Edward and werewolf Jacob. For myself, I’m just as interested in seeing her escape the irresponsible and stubbornly static parenting styles of Charlie Swan and Carlisle Cullen.
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(1) Good Girls Tell Lies: Internalized Misogyny in Twilight
(2) I regularly post deconstructions on my own website.
(3) Source: The full article is well worth a read, but a particularly funny stand-out is when a 12-year-old quips "My mom got me the book to get me into reading," Jacqueline Capalbo said. "But now she's more into it than me. It's kind of weird."
(4) Source: Again, the full article is worthwhile, but I was pleased to see the author calmly point out the possibilities for bonding within busy families: Reading together is also a way that time-crunched working parents can strengthen bonds with their children, as an example of quality, rather than necessarily quantity, time. (A parent can, say, read the same book as their teen on the subway home, and talk about it over dinner.)
(5) Source:I was particularly interested in philosophy when I was in college and took several elective courses on the subject, but I will also admit that was a rather long time ago and it’s possible that I don’t have all the details right.
(6) Source: I’m using the parenting style names as outlined in this Wikipedia article, but I don’t personally care for the terms used in the article, nor the overall tone of the piece. Words have connotative meanings as well as definitive meanings, and terms like “indulgent parenting” are in my opinion likely to evoke an emotional response in an audience regardless of the definitive meaning of “responsive but not demanding”.
Introduction
It’s never easy to be a parent, and it’s possibly now harder than ever before, with so much mainstream media battling over the right way to parent. Before I write any further, I should note: I’m not a parent myself. I don’t have children of my own and I’ve never had a minor living in my care or under my roof for more than the occasional quick visit. But despite my lack of children, I do have parents, and I have my own strong feelings about parenting styles and how they are portrayed in modern media. Something I’m particularly interested in is parenting styles as seen through the cultural lens of “Twilight” – both within the text itself and in the cultural phenomenon that surrounds it.
You may have heard of the “Twilight” series of novels – perhaps from my previous Slactiverse Special on the subject (1) or from my weekly series of deconstruction posts on my blog (2) – and you’re probably passingly familiar with the series’ polarizing protagonist Bella and her sparkly love interest Edward. What you may not be aware of, is that many modern parents are looking to incorporate “Twilight” into their parenting styles – either as a way to reach out and connect with their children during a time when children traditionally start to pull away and create their own cultures, or as a way to share a common pleasure in a world where an increasing variety of media is offered to cater to every possible taste.
“Twilight Moms” are not a new phenomenon: in 2008, articles were noting the number of parents snapping up the series and looking forward to the movie adaptations. Michelle Sager interviewed mothers who were joining the series with gusto and cheerfully sporting “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob” shirts (3); Rachel Silverman pointed out that the closing ‘generation gap’ allows parents to find common ground and quality conversation time with their children (4). There’s even a dedicated site for the phenomenon – TwilightMoms.com – where parents can join a supportive social networking forum to discuss “Twilight”, other book recommendations, and parenting styles with other parents.
One wonders, however, how much actual common ground exists within the Twilight-Readers-Who-Are-Also-Parents demographic. The demographic seems to run the gamut widely from self-described “twihards” who claim the series represents a perfect model of family life, to casual fans who enjoy the book as escapism, to readers who don’t enjoy the series at all but keep up on the details in order to connect with their children. The “Twilight Moms” site itself has a rather interesting motto –The Hand that Rocks the Cradle is the Hand That Rules the World– that is in some contexts a paean to parenthood and in other contexts a more dominionist statement. One way or another, however, parents are reading “Twilight” in droves, and I think it’s worth asking: How is parenting depicted within the pages of “Twilight”, and what are these real life parents being exposed to in their reading?
Platonic Ideals
From my own reading of “Twilight”, I consider the novel to be about a good many things. Most obviously, it is about a love triangle between an emotionally vulnerable young woman and two deeply troubled supernatural men. Moreover, it is a series about exotic secrets and exciting mysteries and the power that comes with leaving behind the helplessness of childhood (and humanity) and confidently joining the world of adults (and vampires), not only as one of them, but as the best of them. Textually-speaking, however, I also firmly believe that the “Twilight” series is about platonic forms (5) and of escaping from an earthly, imperfect reality to a heaven-on-earth paradisiacal ideal.
Everything within the narrative of “Twilight” revolves around the process of ‘perfecting’ the life of Bella Swan. At the start of the series, our young protagonist is disconnected emotionally from her parents, and is moving from her newly-remarried mother’s household to live with a father she barely knows. The reader does not take from the text that Bella’s parents are overtly neglectful, but rather that they are distant and distracted. By the end of the series, Bella has left her father’s household to become the newest member of the Cullen vampire clan - and as daughter to the doting Carlisle, bride to the sexy Edward, and mother to the unique-snowflake Renesmee, Bella has been transformed into a beautiful, graceful, powerful being: utterly loved, adored, and admired. Suddenly the perfect daughter, wife, and mother, she becomes a holy female trinity: ageless, unchanging, and eternal.
The reader will note that, in the midst all of all this perfection, Bella is still living much the same life at the end of the series that she was at the beginning: living in the household of a father figure, repeating high school for eternity, and largely unchanged in terms of her teenage personality. It is my belief that Bella’s enhanced-but-unchanged life is meant by the author to be the ultimate point of the happy ending – if there is no better life to aspire to than living as a young woman in a communal family arrangement, then the perfect version of that ultimate life would obviously be living as an unstoppable badass young woman in a communal family environment where everyone adores and admires you. And if living under the authority of a father figure is the model to follow, then obviously a move from a family characterized by alternately neglectful and authoritarian parenting to one characterized by an indulgent parenting is the ideal – at least from the perspective of our protagonist (6).
But is the Cullen parenting style really better than the Swan parenting styles? As much as the styles sharply contrast, I think that both styles are inordinately unhealthy because they ultimately fail to take into account the unique challenges presented by the individual children involved and because they rely upon slavishly following a set parenting model rather than applying a flexible approach shaped by communication with and feedback from the children involved.
Swan Parenting: Demanding But Not Responsive
There’s no doubt that the Swan family is full of conflict and fragmentation. Bella’s parents, Charlie and Renee, separated when Bella was an infant - Renee fled from gloomy Washington to sunny Arizona and never looked back, apparently even going so far as to confide in her daughter all the details of her final fight-and-flight from Charlie. Bella has dutifully visited her father once a year, but claims no pleasant memories from the visits - a claim that is reinforced when we glimpse the inside of Charlie’s home and realize that, in the absence of pleasant photos of their vacation moments together, he has instead opted to fill his home with Bella’s impersonal yearly school photos to mark the passage of time.
The relationship between Bella and her mother is close but strained. Renee is a functional child who has relied on Bella her entire life to run the daily details of household life. Prior to the start of the series, Renee has effectively ‘replaced’ Bella with her new husband Phil, who has taken over the responsibility of handling the finances, keeping the cars in good repair, and otherwise managing Renee’s life for her. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Bella’s replacement as caretaker is a source of internal conflict for Bella, especially since this ‘replacement’ leads to a major demotion from being head of her mother’s household to being a child in her father’s household.
Once integrated into her father’s household, Bella immediately assumes responsibility for the traditionally feminine household chores: shopping for groceries, preparing dinners, and washing all the laundry. Bella notes in text that this is not a hardship – the chores are, after all, the same she used to perform for her mother – but the reader will note that the power dynamics in Charlie’s household are very different from those in Renee’s household. In Renee’s household, Bella performed her chores in the role as effective parent, with Renee acting as the effective child – with the shouldering of these responsibilities, Bella also gained the full benefits of adulthood: managing the household finances and crafting Renee’s daily routine. In Charlie’s household, by contrast, Bella is no longer the acting adult in the relationship – she is very clearly a daughter serving her father. Never does Bella decide how the household finances are managed; even matters such as what car she will own and drive are decided for her before she arrives in Washington, and entirely without her input or opinions.
If Renee neglected her duties as a parent, Charlie seems almost obsessively interested in micro-managing his daughter’s personal life once she has moved into his household. When Bella announces her completely uncharacteristic decision to move to her father’s home, Charlie accepts this move as his due without ever thinking to ask if Bella is okay, or if the newly-married Phil has hurt her in any way or otherwise prompted this move. When Charlie presents Bella with his gift to her of a ‘new’ car, he tries to deceive her about the age and condition of the car in order to make the gift seem more generous than it is. And when Charlie first begins to suspect that Bella might be romantically interested in boys at her school, he starts disconnecting her car engine at night so that she can’t sneak out of the house and drive off to meet anyone, despite the fact that she has never shown the slightest inclination to this kind of behavior. The message in their relationship is clear: Bella is not a functional adult, but rather an irresponsible child and is therefore worthy only of mistrust and what paternal affection can be spared in between his weekend fishing trips.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Swan parenting styles are intensely unhealthy. Renee has spent her life being a demanding force on her daughter by allowing her childlike helplessness to rob Bella of her own childhood. Bella’s own needs have been utterly neglected as she has been raised to be her mother’s confidant and caretaker – but never to have or fulfill any dreams of her own. Charlie, by contrast, almost completely ignores his daughter as he works long hours, leaves her for weekend fishing trips, rarely speaks to her in the evenings, and studiously avoids engaging her opinions, and yet he still demands that her behavior conform to his ideals. As long as Bella lives under his roof, she will be the sole performer all the feminine chores of the household and her sexuality will be tightly controlled – even to the point of disconnecting her car engine nightly and regularly listening at her bedroom door for any hint that a boy might have been somehow smuggled up to her room.
In these ways and more, Bella is treated by her parents as an object - she is a day planner to be utilized by her mother and a vagina to be controlled by her father. Her hopes and dreams aren’t discussed or acknowledged because her parents don’t care about them; Bella is never treated as anything other than an extension of her parents’ desires and needs.
Cullen Parenting: Responsive But Not Demanding
When the Cullen family first arrives on the scene, they initially seem far more dysfunctional than the Swans: the young doctor Carlisle and his wife Esme have adopted three suspiciously-beautiful children while very pointedly not adopting the two blood-relatives that have been living under Esme’s guardianship since her late-teens/early-twenties. In a series of moves that seem straight out of the cult-leader’s guide-for-dummies, Dr. Cullen has isolated his family in a remote house in the woods, with no income other than his own, and appears to heavily discourage outside socializing, preferring that the teenagers form semi-incestual sexual relationships with their adopted siblings. He removes his children from school for ‘special training’ at random intervals, thereby disrupting their friendships outside of the family. No one has ever seen the children eat the school food, and the constant exhaustion that seems to infuse their slender bodies and the dark bruises under their eyes seem to point to serious abuse.
Of course, the real story is very different from this first appearance - the Cullen children are not abused, rather they are strong immortal beings who have chosen to pretend to be human teenagers in order to live as a family unit. They stay together out of a common sense of self (as rare ‘vegetarian’ vampires) and out of mutual respect. The Cullen parenting style seems to be healthy and nurturing - the children are trusted to come and go as they please, they pick cars and hobbies according to their own tastes, and they form sexual relationships according to their own needs. Edward Cullen in particular represents the freedom that awaits Bella: his doting parents are in raptures with all his choices and accomplishments, from his musical tastes to his choice of new girlfriend. Approval and acceptance suffuses the entire family, and as Bella moves slowly from one household to the other, so too are we to understand that she is moving from an imperfect fractured family to an ideal cohesive one.
While the Cullen parenting style may seem ideal in theory, however, it is fundamentally flawed in practice. Though the Swan parenting styles are unhealthily defined by dependence and mistrust, it does not automatically follow that the opposite parenting style – total independence and complete trust – is therefore the best, most healthy choice available.
Although it is tempting to view the Cullen ‘children’ as functional adults because of their advanced age and sexual maturity, these traits are not the defining aspects of adulthood. The most important aspect of adulthood is – in my opinion – a capacity for self-control, and it is here that the Cullen children are deeply lacking. Because the Cullen children struggle so much with controlling their vampiric blood lust, they are effectively unable to socialize outside the family, hold a regular job, or meaningfully attend higher education – they require complete freedom to take off for extended periods in order to hunt and recharge themselves before returning to the taxing demands of interacting with human society without accidentally murdering someone. It is precisely the issue of “self-control” that defines the makeup of the family: Carlisle is master of his vampiric urges and is therefore father and front man for the family; Edward and his siblings are still susceptible to temptation and are therefore children who defer to Carlisle’s guidance. In this sense, Edward and his siblings are far less mature than the average human teenager (including Bella!) and for the Cullen parents to treat them as adults with full independence and complete trust would seem to be a recipe for disaster – both for themselves and for the community.
The Swan family, for all their dysfunctionality, at least understand that biological urges exist – an authoritarian Charlie Swan sabotages his daughter’s car nightly because he fears that she has a biological compulsion to have sex. The Cullen family, in contrast, live their life in indulgent denial that their son has a biological compulsion for murder – and that he has acted on this compulsion multiple times in the past. The Cullens know their son sneaks out nightly to hover longingly over Bella Swan as she sleeps. They know that Bella is the one person on earth whom Edward feels most compelled to murder – her allure to him is described as that of cocaine to a junkie, and it is an allure that other members of the family have experienced before with disastrous results. The Cullens are also acutely aware that if by some miracle Edward merely turns rather than murders Bella, he’ll hate himself forever for turning her into something he believes is damned. It seems almost certain that this situation is bound to end in either a murder-suicide or a situation where Bella is turned to vampirism and Edward torments himself with an eternity of guilt for losing his self-control.
Faced with this situation and with the individual personalities involved, the Cullen parenting style is just as dysfunctional as the Swan parenting styles! A parenting style where the parents grant total independence and complete trust to their children is most certainly not automatically wrong, but a parenting style where the parents grant total independence and complete trust to a child who has a serious lack of self-control and a known problem with a destructive addiction is negligent in the extreme. The fact that the Cullens never speak to Edward about his dangerous disregard for his own limitations, the fact that they never urge the couple to employ chaperones to prevent an accidental murder, and the fact that they never express anything other than their unconditional support for Edward-the-junkie hanging out constantly and privately with Bella-the-cocaine-vial is incredibly distressing to the reader – and yet, this parenting style is being held up as a model for treating children with mutual respect and trust.
Conclusion: Flexibility and Feedback
It is my opinion that both the Swan and Cullen parenting styles are unhealthy not because there is some perfect, one-size-fits-all parenting model that should be followed blindly by everyone and which they have each failed to employ. No, it is my opinion that they are failures as parents because they are following rigid parenting models without any attempt at modifying those styles periodically with communication, feedback, and a good long hard introspective look at what they are doing and why they are doing it.
Renee treats Bella as an adult – she gives her daughter great power and great responsibility. This model is fulfilling for Renee because she has a companion, a confidant, and a caretaker all wrapped up in one, but the model doesn’t work for Bella because she is robbed of a meaningful chance to be a child. There’s nothing automatically wrong with encouraging a child to be mature and self-reliant, but the onus was on Renee to monitor Bella’s growth and note that the demands of completely running a household were effectively isolating Bella from creating meaningful relationships with her peers – in which case, Renee should have re-evaluated her parenting style and changed it appropriately.
Charlie treats Bella as a child – he gives her chores, makes decisions for her, and lays ground rules for the behavior he expects from her. This model is fulfilling for Charlie because he has a well-behaved daughter to brag about to his friends and his time is freed up from all the household chores that he hates, but the model doesn’t work for Bella because she feels stifled and unfulfilled. There’s nothing automatically wrong with laying ground rules and monitoring a child’s behavior, but as Charlie sees Bella become more interested in boys, he fails to re-evaluate his parenting style in order to allow safe exploration, and by continuing to micro-manage his daughter’s sexuality, he inadvertently pushes her into a teenage marriage.
Carlisle and Esme Cullen, by contrast, treat their children as adults – with complete respect, trust, and independence. This model is fulfilling for all the Cullens: the adults have the “children” they always wanted, and the children can live their lives as the “adults” they see themselves as being, based on their advanced age and sexual maturity. But this model ultimately doesn’t work in this situation because as much as the Cullen children like to think of themselves as adults, they aren’t – despite their apparent maturity, their fundamental lack of self-control means they are less of an adult than the most hormonally-driven human teenager. There’s nothing automatically wrong with extending trust and independence to children, but the Cullens failure to acknowledge and act on their childrens’ dangerous addictions puts both their children and their community at serious risk. What they should do and what they fail to do is be honest about Edward’s destructive behavior and communicate to him how dangerous and inappropriate they believe his actions to be – and then suggest safer, alternative ways for him to see Bella, both for his own safety and for hers.
Again, I feel I should mention: I’ve never raised teenagers myself. As such, I may be completely wrong in my opinions, but I personally believe that the responsible parent recognizes that their children are unique individuals and adjusts their parenting style accordingly based on the behavior they observe and the communication they elicit. A child who has demonstrated a propensity for harmful behavior may be granted fewer privileges and independence than a child who has shown good judgment and healthy self-control. To my mind, good parents attempt to provide healthy guidance and will attempt to set the appropriate boundaries that their children might not yet have the self-control to set for themselves. “No, you may not go out with Jimmy alone anymore since the last time you two were together, you two thought it would be a good idea to snort cans of compressed paint,” they may say, or, “I don’t think you need to see Shawna on weeknights until your grades improve past a C-; you two can wait until the weekend to hang out.” Or, even perhaps, “I’m not sure that you should be alone with Bella, given that you’ve had trouble controlling your blood lust in the past, and I’m sure you’d be very sorry if you did something you’ll regret later. Why don’t you take Alice with you as a chaperone?”
To me, being an adult is about healthy self-control, about setting boundaries for yourself so that you don’t unnecessarily harm yourself or others. Select a designated driver. Plan ahead for safe sex. Try not to spend a lot of time alone with people you desperately want to murder, or with people who desperately want to murder you. To me, being a parent is about helping your children be aware of the importance of that self-control, and about helping them to set those boundaries for themselves even when they can’t or don’t want to.
By that rubric, there are no ‘good parents’ in “Twilight”. There is a strong contrast between the Swans and the Cullens, but the contrast is no longer between imperfect and perfect parenting styles, but rather between two equally unhealthy parenting styles: on the one hand, a family so steeped in control and boundaries that the reasons for those boundaries have become meaningless; on the other hand, a family so proud of their indulgent parenting that they’ve managed to completely ignore the fact that their ‘children’ are impulsive serial killers who haven’t yet mastered the self-control to keep themselves out of dangerously triggering situations.
It’s worth noting that among the many fans and anti-fans of “Twilight”, there’s a small but vocal faction that wants to see Bella escape the oppressive love triangle she inhabits with vampire Edward and werewolf Jacob. For myself, I’m just as interested in seeing her escape the irresponsible and stubbornly static parenting styles of Charlie Swan and Carlisle Cullen.
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(1) Good Girls Tell Lies: Internalized Misogyny in Twilight
(2) I regularly post deconstructions on my own website.
(3) Source: The full article is well worth a read, but a particularly funny stand-out is when a 12-year-old quips "My mom got me the book to get me into reading," Jacqueline Capalbo said. "But now she's more into it than me. It's kind of weird."
(4) Source: Again, the full article is worthwhile, but I was pleased to see the author calmly point out the possibilities for bonding within busy families: Reading together is also a way that time-crunched working parents can strengthen bonds with their children, as an example of quality, rather than necessarily quantity, time. (A parent can, say, read the same book as their teen on the subway home, and talk about it over dinner.)
(5) Source:I was particularly interested in philosophy when I was in college and took several elective courses on the subject, but I will also admit that was a rather long time ago and it’s possible that I don’t have all the details right.
(6) Source: I’m using the parenting style names as outlined in this Wikipedia article, but I don’t personally care for the terms used in the article, nor the overall tone of the piece. Words have connotative meanings as well as definitive meanings, and terms like “indulgent parenting” are in my opinion likely to evoke an emotional response in an audience regardless of the definitive meaning of “responsive but not demanding”.
--Ana Mardoll
Visit Ana's website to read more of her analysis of the Twilight books
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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.
You have an amazing grasp of parenting.
Posted by: cjmr | May 27, 2011 at 12:34 PM
The Hand that Rocks the Cradle is the Hand That Rules the World- William Ross Wallace
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hand_That_Rocks_the_Cradle_(poem)
I just started reading Kathryn Stockett's novel, The Help, and the first chapter is a reminder that the hand that rocks the cradle has often throughout history been that of the hired help, a group that most emphatically is not ruling the world.
Posted by: Coleslaw | May 27, 2011 at 01:05 PM
My daughter and I bonded over Twilight: we both think it's a piece of crap with a pathetic Mary Sue heroine and that there's much better written fanfiction. On the other hand... it's very encouraging to us as writers. If her crap can get published, our much better writing can, too.
Posted by: Dragoness Eclectic | May 27, 2011 at 01:38 PM
Very interesting!
I suspect that a secret of Twilight's success is that it's open to contradictory readings: it manages to balance so many opposites and walk a thin line between 'too specific to be universally applicable' and 'too vague to be comprehensible' that people can see more or less anything they wish in it. I've long thought that it's a book you inhabit and repurpose rather than a book you read - it's a book to fantasise about rather than to follow precisely - and the balance of opposites helps that a great deal: you can pick out the details that suit you and leave the rest.
Perhaps the complementary parenting styles contribute to this?
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 27, 2011 at 01:58 PM
Given what you say of the Cullen household, it would probably be better for Carlisle and Renee to regard their adoptees not so much as children as apprentices, learning the art of shackling and sublimating their bloodthirst. Not sure how much of Meyer's ideal-family conceit would survive in this, though.
Posted by: Skyknight | May 27, 2011 at 02:07 PM
One ditzy parent/serious child relationship that I felt rang truer then Twilight, for me as a non-parent at least, was Mia and Helen's relationship in the BOOK version of The Princess Diaries. Reading between the lines, I felt that Mia's had to take on a lot more responsibility then most 15 year olds (I don't think that they'd be destitute if Mia didn't step up to the plate, but I can see Helen not remembering to pay the bills on time. Not so much that they get cut off, but having to spend too much money in late fees, or just getting lots of phone calls from the electric company), but at the same time, I got the impression that there's a lot of things she goes full on worry mode, almost needlessly (like when she kept obsessing about her mother's pregnancy diet.).
Another one, though I wouldn't put this in the same category is Meg and her mother in A Wrinkle in Time. Though, in that case, it's more that her mother is VERY busy with work, though manages to work from home.
Posted by: Rowen | May 27, 2011 at 02:12 PM
Also not a parent, but my fiancee and I have talked at length about avoiding our own parents' (many, many) mistakes, and this accords with our conclusions.
Weirdly, I was channel-flipping the other night and came across a pretty good observation from professional poopsmith Seth MacFarlane of all people, "Of course you'd rather be your son's friend. Friends are easy, that's why kids have so many of them. But he only gets one father. How dare you take that from him?"
I can only assume either the episode was written by someone else, or he stole the line from somewhere.
Posted by: Froborr | May 27, 2011 at 02:30 PM
cjmr: You have an amazing grasp of parenting.
This. Very much so this. I'm not a parent, but I think this post has given me a lot to think about for if/when I do become one. It reminds me of both this and the blow back against it (which seemed to set up a similar dichotomy to in twilight, with controlling and arbitrary parents and dangerously uninvolved parents). I think it's important to recognize that parents should exercise authority over children and that their authority has to be respectful of each child's individuality and human dignity. It's an incredibly delicate balancing act, so hats off to everyone who just tries.
Froborr: I can only assume either the episode was written by someone else, or he stole the line from somewhere.
I'm inclined to go with "broken clocks are right twice a day" but I think that's about as common as Republican sex scandals to here some throwaway line about how "X needed a father/mother/guardian/parent not a friend!" So, I'm going to put my money on plagiarism (or more charitably maybe of the not-even-realizing-it general cultural osmosis variety).
Posted by: aravind | May 27, 2011 at 03:57 PM
Froborr: professional poopsmith Seth MacFarlane LOL forever!
Also not a parent, but I have found this article intensely interesting. If anything, it's clarified some stuff that I deal with in my own life. For that, thank you.
For more ammo in the argument of Why These Books Are Terrible, thank you again. :)
Posted by: Sixwing | May 27, 2011 at 04:20 PM
@ana mardoll: What amazes me is how you pull out the overarching themes in the books. When I read them I "knew" that there was something that structural/thematic that I felt should be addressed but I didn't quite know how to express it.
Your description of Edward is also devastating -- he is serial murder who is not begin restrained adequately by his community.
I would be interested in hearing more from you about Charlie as well. What does it say about him that he immediately begins crippling the car as soon as Bella shows some interest in guys. Are we to take this as a normal or appropriate way for fathers to respond or is supposed to tell us something about his relationship with Bella's mother?
Posted by: Mmy | May 27, 2011 at 04:25 PM
@Mmy: Are those options mutually exclusive? Everything I've read by and about Stephanie Meyer suggests she comes from a background rife with misogyny and has internalized much of it. The Man of the House as an authoritarian control freak and enforcer of sex rules is typical of such backgrounds, so it seems likely that this is both her idea of how "normal" fatherhood works AND representative of the relationship between Charlie and Bella's mother, which would be her idea of how "normal" marriage works.
Posted by: Froborr | May 27, 2011 at 04:38 PM
@Froborr: No they aren't mutually exclusive I just didn't want to lump all of them in. But the degree to which the controlling of not only female sexuality but female agency is valourized in this book is amazing given how successful it is among the very portion of the population who should resent that.
Posted by: Mmy | May 27, 2011 at 04:53 PM
Good post, Ana. Bella as the Triple Goddess? I'd never have thought of that one!
As a parent, I have all sorts of thoughts about it, I just can't seem to make them cohere into sentences right now.
You know what this kind of reminds me of? In the evangelical novels of Grace Livingston Hill (mmy- do you know those? Not-very-well-written 1900-1940's religious romances, and where I first heard about the Rapture long before I ever heard of Tim LaHaye...Okay, close paren). In GLH's novels, you can always tell who's going to be Mr. or Ms. Right, because they're the one (English language needs a 3rd-person-singular-indefinite...again with the parentheticals...) who gets along with the protagonist's family, as well or better than their own family. And many of the books end with the young couple planning to live with or in close proximity to their family, all one big happy household.
And I was going somewhere with this about fundamentalist culture and the primacy of the family and the assumption that togetherness is happiness...but Real Life is talking loudly at the moment...maybe later.
But tell me, are Charlie and Renee totally out of Bella's life by the time that she's a mother herself? And does she really go back to high school with a vampire baby in tow?
A bunch of sentences after all, but not what's really on my mind; oh well.
Posted by: Amaryllis | May 27, 2011 at 04:55 PM
Nicely explicated. As a teacher I have seen kids brought up in both 'demanding but not responsive' and 'responsive but not demanding' environments and they are both so much harder to handle than those in the middle who have been brought up with flexibility and feedback. I used to remind my students that neither the school nor the army is a democracy so get used to it. We're talking benevolent dictatorship (better than no dictatorship at all, as Thomas Hobbes would say). However, I always find that I get the best results in the classroom by building in as much democracy (feedback, limited power for the powerless) as possible. Platonic parenting is also an intriguing concept. Plato was certainly concerned about how to design an environment in order to produce as ideal a citizen of the republic as possible. He was anything but pro-democracy unfortunately.
After reading your piece my mind thought back to the story 'It's a Good Life' by Jerome Bixby. It's about a spoiled child who could read people's minds and with his own mind he could destroy anyone who had thoughts he didn't like - his parents, and everyone else in the world, were terrified of him.
I love your line Try not to spend a lot of time alone with people you desperately want to murder, or with people who desperately want to murder you.
Posted by: The Kidd | May 27, 2011 at 05:05 PM
It has one: "They." It is long-attested in the literature, including such luminaries as Jane Austen and Samuel Johnson. There are also precedents: "You" is also both singular and plural and takes a plural verb. Do you bat an eye at "You're the one?"
Like split infinitives, singular they is a perfectly acceptable feature of English that certain jackasses with sticks up their butts (*coughcoughStrunkandWhitecoughcough*) decided to try to ban because they wanted English to be more like a Romance language. Which, you know, there's nothing wrong with Romance languages, but it's like trying to make a nightingale more like a parrot. Regardless of which you prefer, it's not going to work and it's only going to harm the nightingale.
Posted by: Froborr | May 27, 2011 at 05:08 PM
I love this article as an after-the-fact analysis, but it does make me wonder about the emphasis placed by pop-parenting self-help books on "adopting your preferred parenting style."
("Breaking / establishing relationship patterns" is a phrase that puzzles me in a similar fashion. It might be a great tool for looking at the general nature of my past; not so useful when it comes to applying to specific present or future situations.)
Does anyone ever make the conscious decision that "Hey, I'm going to be controlling / indulgent / responsive / flexible / authoritatian / whatever"?
If so, does that determination ever last past the six-month-scream-all-night phase?
I'm honestly not trying to be snarky here. A lot of this is introspection that comes from having a daughter graduate from high school (and therefore is, according to tradition, no longer "mine" to parent), and listening to her examine, analyze, and criticize (in the theoretical way, not the snotty teen way) how she was raised.
Daughter keeps asking me why we made this or that choice; and I keep saying "I don't know. We threw a lot of parenting spaghetti at the wall, and went with what stuck."
(And spouse, to be fair, says "I kept asking myself 'What Would [my] Dad do?' and whatever that was, I did the opposite!")
I'm not saying our parenting was random, mind you; we certainly have enough coherence and consistency that our children can predict (and sometimes manipulate, bless their hearts) our reactions remarkably well.
But I don't think I've ever articulated a "style" or "philosophy" either to my family or myself.
Not everybody here's a parent, of course, but everyone's a child, a friend, many are lovers and partners.
Am I an oblivious anomaly? Do most of you consciously adopt or avoid a particular "style" in your relationships?
Posted by: hapax | May 27, 2011 at 05:10 PM
I am also not a parent, but I really like this post, and I think it makes sense.
Hapax: Good question! My folks apparently had *something* of a philosophy, or at least Mom mentioned as much last time I went home. I don't know that they stuck to it all the time, though, and I think they were in a less-common position: having to deal with kids and their parents professionally might well have pushed them to articulate a definite position on things, if only in a "we are fucking *never* doing *that*" sense.
I don't consciously adapt any particular style in my relationships, but there are many I consciously try to avoid. If I had to articulate my ideal relationship style, whether as a grown kid or a lover or a friend, it'd probably be "independent and available": I want to be Over Here, Doing My Own Thing a lot, but I try to keep in touch/hang out regularly, and I try to be there for important or painful moments.
Posted by: Izzy | May 27, 2011 at 05:21 PM
Ana--I have really been enjoying your Twilight deconstructions, even though I haven't read the books myself. This post summarizes much of what you've pointed out as problematic in a devastating way--particularly the point about Edward as an out-of-control serial killer!
Posted by: Aaaaaaaaaaaargh | May 27, 2011 at 05:32 PM
Am I an oblivious anomaly? Do most of you consciously adopt or avoid a particular "style" in your relationships?
It's an interesting question. Husband and I talked quite a bit about what kind of upbringing we wanted to give before we had our son - rules to be clear and fair, no punishment for misdeeds spontaneously confessed, lots of praise, that kind of thing - but while we're doing what we planned, more or less, so far ... well, theoretical parenting is just completely different from the massive reality of having a child in front of you. I used to judge people who gave in to whining; now, while I hope I won't go that way, the sight of my son unhappy is just so viscerally, immediately painful that it's practically impossible to think long-term.
Of course, my child is only nine months old at the moment. So far he thinks I'm wonderful, but no doubt he'll get a more complicated view of me as time goes on. (Which, when I had postnatal depression, translated into 'He'll hate me and never forgive me,' which I hope was an exaggeration.)
I think an element of modern parenting is that when we're raised in smaller families, many of us don't get to practice on younger siblings. As a result, when we have children of our own, we really don't know what we're doing. What I've seen in all my friends with babies is a sense of constant adaptation and winging it: parental plans are like the rope you hang on to while picking your way across the icy mountain path that is real parenting. You may have your hand on it somewhere, but you really need to be looking at what's happening on the ground.
I don't know. At the moment I tend to feel that my son is teaching me how to raise him far more than I'm teaching him anything (he's learning, of course, but he mostly seems to be teaching himself). Where that'll lead remains to be seen. I have a few rules I hold myself to, but they basically boil down to 'Know the difference between a grumble and a cry of serious distress; only the former can be ignored,' 'Try to make sure he gets at least a bit of interesting activity each day,' and 'Praise him a lot.' Again, these will doubtless have to get more complicated. But in general, I find that pre-planned stuff tends to wither in the implacable light of What Works and What Doesn't Work.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 27, 2011 at 05:33 PM
@hapax, I came up with a relationship style or stable of styles long before I had any consciousness about what those styles were, or whether they were at all effective. Most of them were actually ineffective, and I've been working ever since at modifying them. But since I don't really have models to follow so much as models to *not* follow, it's been a long hard slog.
My parents were Demanding but not Responsive. Like Bella, I was my mother's confidant and her main emotional support, even though my parents are not divorced. I was never allowed to have a say in plans for my own life, though, until I was 19, when they expected me to fend for myself. My problem-solving skills were weak from lack of practice, so when I asserted my independence I often made poor decisions. Neither of my parents was interested in helping me make better decisions. We did not problem solve together, nor was I allowed to explain my actions and my thought process. I was just punished and ridiculed and held up as a bad example.
I decided not to have children of my own. With no positive models to follow, I didn't want to make the same mistakes.
Posted by: Laiima | May 27, 2011 at 05:36 PM
@hapax: There are two theories of human behavior that have been very influential over me. One I'm not sure where it came from, but basically it says that everyone always does whatever seems like a good idea at the time, based on immediate emotional responses and not-entirely-conscious rules of thumb, and then rationalizes it after the fact.
The other was articulated by Daniel Dennett in Freedom Evolves, and he described it in terms of Odysseus tying himself to the mast of his ship so that he could listen to the Sirens' song without being drawn to them. The idea is that we mentally rehearse potential future choices, and try to metaphorically "tie ourselves to the mast"--make ourselves emotionally unable to pick the choices that don't accord with the way we want to be.
The two interact rather well, I think: we use after-the-fact rationalizations and before-the-fact imaginary scenarios to construct a self-image, and then this self-image constrains and informs the immediate emotional responses and simple behavioral rubrics that actually determine our actions at the moment of truth.
I think most people, most of the time, do this largely automatically and subconsciously, but the whole point of things like ethical codes or choosing a relationship style or roleplaying* is to take conscious control of the process. Safe to say, I think, that results vary on whether that is a good or bad thing.
*The psychological/educational technique, not the genre of games. Though the games certainly can have this effect, too.
Posted by: Froborr | May 27, 2011 at 05:41 PM
Ana's deconstruction is well worth a read, as well, for anyone who's intrigued.
The pair of parenting styles we have here looks like a fantasy scenario played out - Isabella, having been stuck with someone who was co-dependent with her for the most point and just recently transferred her co-dependence to a new person, visits her otherwise cold and distant other parent, who tries to restrict her freedom and treat her like a little child, is suddenly confronted with a warm and accepting family that doesn't seem inclined to place limits on how their children behave, who they hang out with, or what they do. They even get out of school at the dad's whim! Who wouldn't want to be a part of that family?
At least until you're in the middle of it, and you find that behind that warm and inviting facade there is actually a set of iron rules about association, even more restricted freedom than before, and the eye of the Patriarch always watching to make sure that nobody goes off the reservation without his permission. Isabella walked into a cult with open arms, and as best we can tell, without a single klaxon telling her that something was wrong. And likes it and does well in it. (Darkest Sketch says Bella has True Believer's Stockholm Syndrome.)
As for conscious decisions on parenting style, most parents don't usually say, "We're going to be cold authoritarian parents who ill-equip our children for life outside the house!" They say, "That's my only child, and I don't want them to be hurt, so I'm going to try and guide them away from bad influenced, dropping anvils if I have to." As part of a family of many children, the oldest children can say with certainty that the youngest children got more relaxed parenting, after the oldest children forged the way there, fought for every inch they could get, and then proved that it could, in fact, be done without the world coming to an end. There's some sibling bitter there, sure, but it seems to be the way of things - after the first (two), priorities and what's important get rearranged commensurate with the added experience.
Perhaps that's where the problems stem from - Renee has a daughter that she wants to relate to, desperately, and make her friend and ally, after her divorce from Charlie. Charlie, on the other hand, is bitter about the girl that was stolen from him, and so when she returns, he wants to make sure she can't be taken from him again, by anyone. Carlisle is trying to figure out how to raise adults, but discipline and boundaries against vampires isn't going to do a whole lot when they're just as strong as you are, and could end up very badly for him if one of his kids decided to tear his head off. So he's trying to suggest, and insinuate, and let them make choices in the hopes that they'll learn what he's supposed to have been teaching them when their choices go wrong. And he'll come in and clean up after them so they don't get staked by a Slayer when they lose control on the wrong person.
Not that this excuses any of them for how Bella and the Cullens have turned out, and we conveniently fade to black not too soon after Renesmee is born, so we don't get to see Bella-as-parent at work. I wonder what kind of girl Renesmee will turn out to be, raised by Bella-of-conflicting-natures and Edward-the-indulgent?
Posted by: Silver Adept | May 27, 2011 at 06:50 PM
@Silver Adept: Will she be, though? Given the hierarchical nature of these families, isn't it likely that most of the decisions regarding Renesmee's upbringing will actually be made by Carlisle?
Was the Silver Adept the one with gesture-based powers? Gods, I haven't read those books in like 15 years, not since I finished puberty and realized, oh hey, Piers Anthony is actually kind of terrible.
Posted by: Froborr | May 27, 2011 at 06:55 PM
I am a parent (of 3, youngest 19) and I think the other thing that's missing from the "rigid rule" styles of parenting is this: CHILDREN ARE DIFFERENT. What works for one child will not necessarily work for the next child; indeed, we often felt that we had to start completely over at Square One with our second child. Kids come equipped with personalities, temperaments, likes, dislikes, talents, weaknesses, etc. etc. There HAS to be some flexibility built into your parenting style to reflect this.
To the extent that I have a parenting philosphy, it includes a commitment not to lie to my kids, and a mental image of a trajectory that starts at birth and ends in responsible adulthood. Theoretically, everything I do with my kids should be in service of getting them from point A to point B.
Also: children are people. Not accessories, not companions, not pets, not medals to hang around your neck: people.
Posted by: Lila | May 27, 2011 at 07:21 PM
Froborr:
That's ... actually kinda cool.
And if I bang it with a mental hammer long enough, can be forced to fit in with my mental paradigm of "relationships as stories."
With regard to Renesmee, though, Meyers really cheated on that one. There's no point to even speculating on Bella's parenting style.
SPOILERS FOR BREAKING DAWN IF ANYONE CARES
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First of all, the kid goes from newborn to what, six? -- some age in which she is still adorable yet not constantly dependent, anyways -- in about a month.
Second of all, Daddy's telepathic, so there's never any confusion about what she really wants and needs, while Mama's got that whole psychic shield deal, so no worries about parental privacy, either. And then there's Aunt Alice who can predict the outcome of any tricky decision and Uncle Jasper who can manipulate the emotions of anyone if things get out of hand, not to mention incalculable wealth and inexhaustible energy, and it's hard to imagine how anyone could NOT pull off a halfway decent job of raising a child.
And finally, the kid's got a whole passel of substitute parents, who are frankly more committed to the role than Bella -- Jacob, of course, with the freaky soulmate connection*, but also Esme, who has been set up as having no function in life but to be a mother, and Rosalie, who has no desire in life but to be a mother, and then whatsisname the OTHER half-vampire, who shows up in the very end, who also makes it clear that he's putting in his claim on the precious widdle moppet...
...heckopete, I don't see why Bella doesn't pack a box of thong underwear and leather whips and drag Edward back to their private island, and just check in on Nessie when she's ready to graduate college.
*about which I have a theory (that doesn't involve bunnies) so it doesn't squick me out as badly as some people
Posted by: hapax | May 27, 2011 at 08:47 PM
I don't see why Bella doesn't pack a box of thong underwear and leather whips and drag Edward back to their private island, and just check in on Nessie when she's ready to graduate college.
To some extent, I think that's a feature not a bug. According to wikipedia, Meyer (the good "straitlaced" Mormon girl in a family of five) had to give up on going to law school in order to take care of her children. Lots of other people have seen this as more wish fulfillment in the saga - a woman in a somewhat more traditionally patriarchal subculture writes about having tons of assistance during an unnaturally fast pregnancy/infancy of her only child and in the middle of all this she gets turned into a sexy and immortal superhuman? I mean, it's not exactly subtle.
Posted by: aravind | May 27, 2011 at 09:22 PM
PS: I'm intrigued by your theory. Care to share it?
Posted by: aravind | May 27, 2011 at 09:23 PM
I had a big 'ol post that got devoured, I think because I hit Preview instead of Post and then closed the browser. Ha! :P
Basically it was me fangirling over all the really incredible comments in this thread, particularly the dark culty interpretations of the whole series. Those are my favorite, probably because - unlike Edward - I have no soul. :D
I did want to note one thing: Bella's baby is named "Renesmee Carlie" as a portmanteau of the four grandparents' names. It somehow strikes me as utterly tragic that Bella's ONE baby wasn't even named for some random name she'd always wanted - at least then we'd see one dream cherished and fulfilled. I don't know why, but this one little detail is just so sad to me. :( (Not that there's anything wrong with naming a child after beloved grandparents, but it's just following a theme. And apparently if the baby had been a boy, its name would have been EDWARD JACOB. Ugh.)
Posted by: anamardoll | May 27, 2011 at 09:35 PM
(But it would have been Totally Worth It if Jacob had imprinted on EDWARD JACOB. All the lols.)
Posted by: anamardoll | May 27, 2011 at 09:37 PM
(Except of course that imprinting on children is creepy and wrong and terrible and I have a whole post on that in my head and I'm totally not condoning it in any way and it's Friday night and I have so many sheep in my head. Sorry for the rambles, folks.)
Posted by: anamardoll | May 27, 2011 at 09:40 PM
the kid goes from newborn to what, six? -- some age in which she is still adorable yet not constantly dependent, anyways -- in about a month.
Really? Bella missed a lot, then, didn't she?
I mean, I know it's hard work taking care of a baby, and if you ask me, toddlers are even more exhausting-- I know perfectly well that there are times when all you want to say to your offspring is, Would you just Go the **** to Sleep?!
But think of all those infant smiles and baby giggles and toddler chortles, and first words and first steps, and picture books and bedtime stories, and those cute little clothes...all right, I'm getting soppy over babies again. And no, I haven't forgotten teething and toilet training and temper tantrums. But still, I wouldn't have missed it. Or hurried through it.
But then, I wasn't eighteen, either.
I was outside tonight at dusk, when I heard someone calling for "Edward!" in that come-in-it's-getting-dark mother-type voice. I knew plenty of Edwards when I was a kid, but they all went by Ed or Eddie; no one would have dreamed of using the full name. So, a Twilight namesake, do you think? Or just the current fashion for shunning nicknames and using the whole formal name all the time?
Posted by: Amaryllis | May 27, 2011 at 10:15 PM
I was raised with a fairly light-handed parental style, my two much younger siblings even more so. I thought that worked out pretty well, and I was expecting to take a similar approach with my adopted son.
Whoops. No. Totally not feasible. Even now, three years later, he needs rock-solid rules and limits in order to be at all relaxed; if he gets too much freedom he gets stressed out and weird and insecure and his behavior deteriorates markedly.
This has been really hard. Flexibility is personally easier for me, and I feel like an ogre when I say "No, it's bedtime now; not even ten minutes." And it's exhausting to maintain. But I have learned through bitter experience that "Okay, ten minutes" has a high probability of ending with a nasty temper tantrum, and it works better to be rigid right at the start.
We have read a lot of books on parenting, and a lot of highly recommended ones (particularly _Parenting with Love and Logic_, which my friends swear by) were totally and utterly useless. That one was useless because it assumes that kids have the chops to take action to avoid painful consequences. You know what? Too many moves early in childhood and you get "learned helplessness" and a deep-seated feeling that bad things cannot be avoided, and you get exactly what Love and Logic says won't happen--a child who is willing to do something, get hurt, and do it again and again, getting hurt each time, and working himself into a deeper and deeper depression.
The first year I was in an utter panic because it was not possible to punish my son usefully, and I couldn't always count on social pressure short of punishment to work either. I felt incredibly helpless. Each year it gets a little better. We are actually at the point where "25 cents for each piece of clothing left in the common areas at the end of the day" works, yay! And that is a huge step forward from "It doesn't matter what I do, life will suck anyway, so I'm going to do what's easy in the moment and ignore consequences."
Anyway. Kids are different; what works with one doesn't work with another. Good parenting has to involve a serious research project into "What works with this one?" I thought I knew how to parent, having had two 10-years-younger siblings, but I had to learn it from scratch.
Posted by: MaryKaye | May 27, 2011 at 10:26 PM
I think it would have actually been really interesting if Bella had taken the parent role herself, in being the one to teach the Cullen children to be adults. If she went and got a job and convinced Edward to, and worked them into full society as respectable members. Basically, if she taught them self-control, as you argue parents do. It would still be a weirdly sexist trope - the taming of the wild beast - but could at least be a healthier message about growing up and finding yourself. But I suppose that wouldn't fulfill the strange teenage dream here. When I read "and they stay in high school," I thought, "Who the hell would want to do that?" But I guess a lot of HS students would so long as they were beautiful, endlessly popular, and eternally young.
Posted by: storiteller | May 27, 2011 at 11:08 PM
I read recently that 'Edward' was on the way out as a name, but Twilight saved it from extinction. It was doing badly enough that it still hasn't broken the top ten yet, though it's moving on up.
Jacob, otoh, looks primed to go all the way.
Posted by: Ross | May 27, 2011 at 11:11 PM
storiteller: When I read "and they stay in high school," I thought, "Who the hell would want to do that?"
I thought the same thing. Even being impossibly beautiful and immortal and popular wouldn't make up for the stultifying boredom.
Posted by: Laiima | May 27, 2011 at 11:38 PM
This is a brilliant analysis of the parenting styles in the books! I wouldn't be at all surprised to see something like this in a parenting magazine, for that matter. It's very well-written and insightful.
Also, mods: permalink ends in 'tw.html' - intentional or bug?
Posted by: Andrew Glasgow | May 28, 2011 at 12:00 AM
re: perpetual high school - I seriously never understood that. I understand the basic concept of trying to mask the fact that you're not aging. But at least do college! At least there you can learn DIFFERENT things over and over again!
Posted by: Samantha C | May 28, 2011 at 01:23 AM
Well, vampires are undead. It would be appropriate for them to lack a living creature's capacity for growth and change. So if high school was appropriate to the vampire before his death, it remains so, endlessly. (This is why it's undeath and not actual life--a hollow mockery of the real thing.)
Of course, this idea does not go well with the romance; it makes it a tragedy, Bella's loss of her capacity for growth in return for the cheat of pseudo-life. And now she will have to do Edward's dishes forever....
Van Helsing says that Dracula has a child-brain--we would say "arrested development"--so this idea is there in the original literary sources.
Posted by: MaryKaye | May 28, 2011 at 02:38 AM
Um, spam above?
Also, in terms of parenting style, thinking back to the non-totally-controversial part of the Seuss thread, I'd be interested to see the parenting styles of the Harry Potter characters. In that thread, someone had mentioned that the epilogue only mentions that the characters had kids, with no information on their professional lives. I mentioned this to my husband, and he made a really good thematic point. Much of the books are about how the current generation pays for the sins and mistakes of the past generation, and how an absence of parents (Harry and Neville) and potential absence (Ron and Hermione) negatively affects children. The epilogue shows that the wounds of the past have been healed. So I wonder - how would these characters' childhood traumas influence their own parenting?
Posted by: storiteller | May 28, 2011 at 02:58 AM
I can definitely see the appeal of an unnaturally fast pregnancy. Most of the women I know agree that at about six months, you've pretty much had enough of being pregnant - except you've got another three months to go, and they're harder on your body than the other two. A vampirically fast one doesn't sound all that bad: you get the baby without the backache.
Or just the current fashion for shunning nicknames and using the whole formal name all the time?
Is there such a fashion? When we named our son last year, we specifically picked a name whose nickname we liked (Nathaniel, shortened to Nat), and that's all we call him now. We figured that English men simply do not allow each other to do without a nickname, so we might as well anticipate.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 28, 2011 at 04:53 AM
Thinking about it, I think there's quite a clear appeal for mothers. Bella's everybody's child: everyone ties themselves in knots to protect her, she gets to make demands without having to make any sacrifices (except of her own will, in the times when she obeys and lets other people do her thinking for her, thus sparing her the stress of independent decision-making), other people provide for her financially, and generally speaking she gets to enjoy the sexy bits of adulthood with none of the responsibilities. And when she has a baby, other people care for it.
Hey moms: remember when being in a relationship was just about the sex and the romance? When it didn't involve having dependent people to look after? When it was just you and your man? Remember when sex was just about sex and not about begetting, and then not-waking, the kids? Remember when you weren't the mommy?
Yeah. For women who love their families and wouldn't want to do a Renee-style flit from their responsibilities, but could do with the occasional fantasy about relationships, sex and family where the woman gets to be selfish and waited upon, it's probably a very soothing break.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 28, 2011 at 05:07 AM
Kit--the short answer to your question is: NO.
(But then my memory is so flaky lately sometimes I don't remember things from last week.)
Posted by: cjmr | May 28, 2011 at 07:13 AM
I would absolutely sign up for eternal college. Maybe eternal college with more spending money, but still: everyone's in the same place, you can hang out until 3 AM and just skip class the next day, people are young and attractive, you get to take a break every May and start over in September, you can take classes that interest you, writing papers would be a snap if you weren't worried about making the grades for a job, no worries about insurance or rent...
...*sigh*. I feel some Avenue Q coming on.
Eternal high school? I wouldn't be averse to that, but I liked my high school experience pretty well. Still, a few too many rules and regulations for my taste, when all is said and done. It's one of the bits of Twilight I sort of understand--if you don't give a damn about getting a job/going to college, you don't worry about the more school-y bits of high school, so it's more of a social scene--but no, thanks.
Amaryllis: Well, that or the mom in question usually calls him Ed/Eddie and it's the third time she's called him, so she's gone to the mom equivalent of Defcon 4. I think "Edward John Smith!" is next.
Posted by: Izzy | May 28, 2011 at 08:50 AM
This is a most interesting breakdown. I was parented by folks who did sit down and figure out all the ways they didn't want to parent; while it had its ups and downs, I think it's a great way to get started. Likewise, it is essential that each child gets some considerations for their individual needs; I'd argue that's what parenting is all about.
The fact that Meyer's fantasies struck such thundering chords in the female population expresses how oppressed so many women still are; worse, how they see no other way out. Because I found Meyer's dream life to be distinctly off-putting, and her heroine to be one of the most indistinct, vague, and unappealing creatures in literature.
Far from having the freedom to make her own decisions, Bella makes none. She has no interests, she has no impulses, she is still stagemanaged down to her DNA; the only difference is that she likes her Cullen oppression far more than her Charlie/Renee one.
I still say there are no real adults in the Twilight Universe; I agree that self-control is a hallmark of adulthood. The humans have no real grip on this, but the vampires and werewolves are constantly fighting their own nature. Not having stupid impulses anymore; that's when I knew I was out of adolescence and navigating my own seas at last.
Posted by: Pamela Merritt | May 28, 2011 at 11:47 AM
@Pamela Merritt: I understand not *acting* on stupid impulses, or at least *mostly* not acting on them, as a marker for adulthood, but *not having them*? How did you manage that?
For me personally, that doesn't actually seem that desirable. I've learned WAY more from making stupid mistakes than I ever learned from "doing the socially acceptable thing (when I could figure out what it was)".
I would agree that none of the characters in Twilight seem like psychologically healthy/functional adults.
Posted by: Laiima | May 28, 2011 at 01:08 PM
A curious thing about Twilight and parenting is that one the one hand I'm under the impression that some parents give it to their kids to encourage them in abstinence ... while at the same time, it's basically a series of books all about female desires, which are treated as so massively important that pretty much the entire world revolves around them.
I'm curious: what would everyone's parents have thought of it. I suspect that my mother would just have thought it was trashy but not particularly minded what I read, which is not a very interesting answer - but I'd very much like to hear what the mothers of people raised in deeply religious environments would have thought? And would you have agreed with them?
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 28, 2011 at 01:18 PM
I'm curious: what would everyone's parents have thought of it. I suspect that my mother would just have thought it was trashy but not particularly minded what I read, which is not a very interesting answer - but I'd very much like to hear what the mothers of people raised in deeply religious environments would have thought? And would you have agreed with them?
I can honestly say that my mother doesn't approve of them. When I was a kid, she was strict enough that they wouldn't have been allowed in the house; now that I'm older and she's a little more relaxed, she can just quietly disapprove when my niece asks for Edward posters at Christmas. But it *does* make her uncomfortable.
I've seen online that the Twilight books are rated "mature themes" for sexuality and a lot of fans get annoyed because what sexuality??. There's very little physical sex in the books - I think we get one sexual act in a 1500 page series? - but there's a very strong sexuality layer over everything with the yearning and the wanting and the cold/warm bodies and so forth. There's quite a bit of eroticism of denial/abstinence there, at least if you want to see it in there. (As you say, Kit, the books are nebulous enough that almost every interpretation is supported.)
One more thought: even innocuous things like "The Enchanted Forest Chronicles" were forbidden in my house growing up because mom felt like dragons had satanic connotations. I can't imagine she'd feel any better about vampires and werewolves.
In some ways, coming from an EXTREMELY conservative culture, I can see how the Twilight books could be liberating for some women. As I said in the OP, if there's no better lifestyle available than living in a family community structure, you can at least live in a family community structure where you're an unstoppable badass with unprecedented power and control and EVERYONE ADORES AND ADMIRES YOU. It's heady stuff in its own way. :)
Posted by: anamardoll | May 28, 2011 at 01:31 PM
Wow. My first time breaking italics. Sorry!
Posted by: anamardoll | May 28, 2011 at 01:32 PM
@Kit Whitfield: I'd very much like to hear what the mothers of people raised in deeply religious environments would have though
I am not sure what my mother would think of Twilight. My guess is that she would dismiss it as "drivel" and "silly." Not silly because it was about teenage love/lust/angst* nor because it was about vampires but rather because of the writing style and the lack of the psychological realism of the characters. Also I am fairly sure that she would decide that neither Meyer, nor Bella nor Edward had a sense of humour.
*My mother had a serious, serious crush on Laurence Olivier when she was a young woman and told me once that she went to see Rebecca scores of times just to sigh over him.
Posted by: Mmy | May 28, 2011 at 01:34 PM
In some ways, coming from an EXTREMELY conservative culture, I can see how the Twilight books could be liberating for some women. As I said in the OP, if there's no better lifestyle available than living in a family community structure, you can at least live in a family community structure where you're an unstoppable badass with unprecedented power and control and EVERYONE ADORES AND ADMIRES YOU. It's heady stuff in its own way. :)
That's interesting. I can think of two other ways it might be liberating: one, it takes female desire seriously, and two, vampirism definitely transgresses conservative values.
Or sort of. The Cullens are pretty conservative in their way, and Bella's rebellion largely takes the form of resisting education, employment, independence and all those feminist things she doesn't want. You could make a strong case that she rebels against the free-wheeling upbringing that her mother gave her by being conservative, I suppose - but if a girl lives in an environment that's very limiting in the roles it allows her, Bella's safely enviable. You can envy her Edward, but in a way that provides fuel for fantasies and hopes of a good partner of your own; you don't have to envy her having things that, if you're going to comply with your family's plans for you, you can't actually have. There's a lot less bitterness in envying somebody who has a slightly better version of something than you, or who already has something you might have one day, than in envying someone who has something that's very possibly closed to you.
So while she doesn't transgress conservative values in a way that would make a conservative girl feel threatened, or like Bella thinks she's way better than you, she does get to wear the outlaw's crown. Which is something that appeals to most teenagers, one way or another.
That's my theory anyway, but I was raised in a left-leaning English/Irish household by a couple of lapsed Catholics who let me read and watch whatever I wanted and didn't mind whether I had sex or not as long as I was sensible about contraception, so what do I know? Anyone with actual experience got a view?
--
Also I am fairly sure that she would decide that neither Meyer, nor Bella nor Edward had a sense of humour.
I've only read the first book, but I've seen the films, and you're right: they're really very straight-faced. That'd be fine for high melodrama, but somehow the melodrama doesn't seem high enough to make it work, or at least for me. In the movies, I really couldn't be bothered with the central characters; mostly I enjoyed them because everybody around them seemed like nice, fun people who were having a good time despite Edward and Bella's moping. And after the first film, it really didn't seem like Edward and Bella were even enjoying each others' company. I like a good bit of melancholia, but I really don't think the odd smile would have spoiled anything.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 28, 2011 at 02:36 PM
My parents were religious but not conservative, but I think my mother would have been seriously down on _Twilight_. She never forbade me books (and I read _The Happy Hooker_ at around age 12) but she did express her opinions on what I was reading. ("That one is more about what she wants you to believe her life is like--maybe about what she wants to believe her life is like--than what it's actually like. Just bear that in mind.")
One of her big fears was that I might marry someone "beneath me"--not social class but education and intelligence. She loathed Billy Joel's song about the school failure who's wistfully longing for the bright girl, and she mistrusted anyone who seemed to encourage that dynamic. I think Edward would have made her extremely uncomfortable. Endless high school, yecch!
My mother was a darned good parent, all things considered. She told me that having daughters had made her a feminist. Her one flaw was that, having been in denial about her own clinical depression, she was slow to recognize it in her children (mainly me)--I know I would have been better off with earlier diagnosis and treatment, and my father believes she would have too. But she was a good combination, for me, of permissive and challenging. She allowed a lot of stupid experiments but she was harsh on muddy thinking about their consequences.
My great struggle is that her parenting style is a total failure with my son, who is a very different person.
Posted by: MaryKaye | May 28, 2011 at 03:05 PM
@Laiima: I understand not *acting* on stupid impulses, or at least *mostly* not acting on them, as a marker for adulthood, but *not having them*? How did you manage that?
I guess I should have added "by comparison." Because I probably have as many stupid impulses as anyone else :)
Like most teenagers, I was a complete mystery to myself. I had the added burden of "being the adult" once my parents broke up and had serious troubles of their own. So I was sorely sorely tempted to do stupid stupid things quite a bit; I was desperate to feel loved and valued, heck, I was desperate to feel good, at all, I was under so much stress.
I thank heaven I was able to wrestle these potential acts of desperation to the ground enough times to grow up and get out.
The contrast with my adulthood couldn't be more stark. By comparison, the number and idiocy of my stupid impulses is now vanishingly small.
Posted by: Pamela Merritt | May 28, 2011 at 03:08 PM
Kit:
it's basically a series of books all about female desires, which are treated as so massively important that pretty much the entire world revolves around them.
The interesting thing is that Bella is now a superpredator in a tiny town, and while she's got her family and child, while she's got all the adoration and all the role-power already listed with no drawbacks at all...
...she's also no longer responsible for her own actions, and it's possible for her to claim she can never be. If only Carlisle has been able to restrain himself from eating anyone, and he has to oversee everyone else, and a hundred years after turning they still could snap and eat all of Forks, what does that say about them? And if their patriarch figure is supposed to be the one who has total control of himself, and the others have roles that depend on supporting each other, and they all know this setup could continue indefinitely until it's four or five centuries down the road, are they really being set up to become adults, ever? Or are they just locked into a comfort zone in which every need is met and one person growing up just makes the others look bad?
We're supposed to buy Bella as good and safe. But also as this unbelievably dangerous vampire that won't snap and eat anyone, but should certainly be forgiven if she did.
Posted by: sharky | May 28, 2011 at 03:37 PM
MaryKaye, if punishment doesn't work on your son, and social pressure short of punishment doesn't work either, what can you do? I guess I'm just not really sure what other options there are, so I'm curious about them. I'm glad you've managed to come up with them, at any rate!
I think my mother would have discouraged me from reading the Twilight books and would not have bought them for me, due partly to the vampires/horror thing and partly to the unhealthy relationships. My parents didn't restrict what I read a whole lot, and I think I basically accepted it when they did disapprove of something. They thought horror was bad, but I was never really interested in it. They didn't want to buy me Judy Blume books for some reason, but I didn't really fight them on it--I just read the books at school. I would probably have been anti-Twilight as a preteen or teen, for the same reasons as my mother and because I tended to oppose and dislike things that I thought people conformed to mindlessly.
Posted by: kisekileia | May 28, 2011 at 03:54 PM
@sharky, your points are absolutely chilling.
I keep coming back to the idea that Bella is universally loved and admired, so there are no social checks and balances on her behavior. Can that ever be a good thing? how would that even work? (I recognize that she's probably a Mary Sue) I'm trying to imagine how someone who's allowed to do anything at all -- and who is as sharky said, a superpredator to boot -- could possibly develop into a moral being, and I just don't see it. She didn't have empathy when she was human, how could she possibly develop it now?
The whole idea is just really disturbing. I'm glad I didn't find the books appealing before now.
Posted by: Laiima | May 28, 2011 at 03:56 PM
My parents made no attempts to monitor my reading material. I read several things as a child that were traumatizing because they were far beyond my maturity level (graphic descriptions of torture and murder in Vietnam, I believe in Reader's Digest, when I was eight or so; demonic possession, torture and murder in the book The Omen at age 11). I remember having to persuade my mother I should be allowed to watch _Roots_ on TV, which our teachers had talked about at school, because it was history and genealogy; she'd heard it was too intense for children. I was 10, and I was absolutely riveted by it. A year later, she let me watch _Jaws_ on TV, thinking nothing of it, and I had nightmares for two years.
For a long time I hoped my mother would be someone I could discuss books with, since I read so much, and she will read almost anything. She liked books I picked out for her, based on her preferences, but she only perceives stories at the level of plot and character. She was oblivious to motifs and themes. So discussing books we'd both read was mostly pointless.
She might well like the Twilight books, because she enjoys supernatural elements. She would miss all the subtext.
Posted by: Laiima | May 28, 2011 at 04:12 PM
@Kit Whitfield: I'd very much like to hear what the mothers of people raised in deeply religious environments would have though
I would like to respectfully point out that "deeply religious" does not necessarily map onto "socially conservative" -- and that the reverse also does not hold.
I for example consider myself "deeply religious", and I gave the TWILIGHT books to my teen daughter to read. Not because I thought anyone in the books was a good role model, but because I enjoyed reading them, and thought she would too. (I continue to argue that what the books do well, they do very well indeed). We also saw the first two movies together, laughing our heads off the whole time.
Meanwhile, *my* mother, while far from being either "deeply religious" OR "socially conservative", would probably have disapproved of the books (although as a librarian and a daughter of a librarian, she would NEVER have forbid me from reading anything).
I assume this because she disapproved of my adolescent taste for romance, fairy tales, and fantasy, because she wished to encourage her daughters to want to be "strong" and "rational" rather than "emotional", and wished us to be ambitious for our careers, rather than dream about true love, magic, and happy endings.
(She was also fairly uneasy with my religious inclinations until the day she died, bless her heart, and was suspicious of the Episcopalian Church as being vaguely cult-ish and FAR too close to Catholicism for comfort.)
Posted by: hapax | May 28, 2011 at 04:50 PM
It has been essential to my mental health and parenting to have semi-regular intervals where I am NOT the mommy - mostly it means taking myself out to dinner or a movie, or hanging out with friends.
I consider myself blessed that my husband understands and approves of this. :)
Posted by: renniejoy | May 28, 2011 at 07:30 PM
@Froborr - There was no Silver Adept.
As for Carlisle making all the decisions, considering (for how much I've seen him, which is mostly movie!Carlisle) that he doesn't seem to be all that active in decision-making, except in duress situations, so long as Bella doesn't get herself or Renesmeee into trouble, I can see her being able to skip through Forks doing whatever she wants. Which, as sharky points out, is a Very Bad Thing. I suspect that Isabella will want to raise a child her way and will snap at anyone who tries to change that, even though all the other members of the family are trying their very best to make sure the child is raised without incidents that will results in the Cullens having to move because of too many bodies.
Posted by: Silver Adept | May 28, 2011 at 07:51 PM
but if a girl lives in an environment that's very limiting in the roles it allows her, Bella's safely enviable.
Precisely, and I do think that's where the appeal lies. Bella is a Mary Sue with a Mary Sue's happy ending - a happy ending that can particularly make sense when you're a teenager and the world seems like a scary place. Her happy ending seems cozy and happy and perfect until you poke a little deeper.
Heck, *I* envy Bella sometimes. On paper, she has a husband who adores her, and is endlessly fascinated in her every thought, word, and deed. On paper, she has a whole family full of parents and siblings who love her and who are always full of interesting conversation and exciting games. On paper, she has a daughter who is beautiful and talented and loves her mother utterly. She's powerful, beautiful, rich. She's never unhappy, never in pain, never sick. I can't honestly say there are days when I'd love to have all those things.
Of course, Twilight is a fantasy, so it's not real, but it's interesting to note that even in the text it all falls down. Edward is frequently sullen, uncommunicative, and controlling -- not necessarily features you want in an immortal life partner. The Cullens in general are stagnant (LOVE the comment about undeath being a tragedy) and tiresome, endlessly repeating high school and "remarrying" every few years for no good reason. Renesmee may be perfect now, but at her accelerated aging, Bella is going to miss a LOT of motherhood moments, and god knows how Renesmee will be when she's a seven-year-old in a seventeen-year-old's body.
---
And after the first film, it really didn't seem like Edward and Bella were even enjoying each others' company.
I know the movies have to compress a lot of material into a little space, but it did seem like the two were so miserable with each other. It reminded me a lot of melodramatic high school romances that I've had, where both people are so caught up in the SADNESS and DRAMA of making sure they won't be separated by college that they never actually enjoy each other's company. Bella can't enjoy her own birthday because she's absolutely obsessed with her mortality separating her from Edward. One fears that once those facets of DRAMA are removed, the romance may fizzle out entirely.
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FWIW, re: Bella-as-feeder-of-the-innocent-Forks, Bella's Mary Sue powers extends to her hunger urges, apparently. If I understand correctly, she demonstrates absolutely unheard of levels of self-control in a newborn.
I actually read an article when Breaking Dawn came out where a fan wasn't terribly pleased with this, as it really robbed a lot of the build-up that Bella was going to have to grow and mature and learn self-control the hard way.
Posted by: AnaMardoll | May 28, 2011 at 08:05 PM
Laiima,
The piece with torture in Vietnam that you remember reading in Reader's Digest--I think it was a condensation from John McCain's memoirs. I remember reading it, too. I think I must be a couple years older than you. Mom let me watch Roots, and then let me READ it, not realizing how much more graphic it was than the TV mini-series.
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(why is it that I can stay logged in here for days, and then when I go to comment I'm logged out...)
Posted by: cjmr | May 28, 2011 at 08:23 PM
@cjmr, the piece I read was about Southeast Asian people (I esp remember a pregnant woman) being tortured and killed by soldiers berserk with bloodlust. Possibly raped first, although I don't think at age 8 I would've understood that part, mercifully. The mental image is still vivid in its horror, which I will not describe, but it was not an account of a POW's torture.
(Although I did read stuff about POW's and torture later. But not at age 8.)
I never read Roots, but I was shocked by the violence I saw. I wonder why it didn't give me nightmares, or maybe it did, and I just don't remember.
Posted by: Laiima | May 28, 2011 at 09:36 PM
...she demonstrates absolutely unheard of levels of self-control in a newborn.
Bella can still claim that it just took so much work to be that paragon-ly, of course she fell when one human finally pushed her buttons too hard.
And it's still a bad thing, because now the other members of the family, who've been trying for decades if not centuries to get close to Bella's control, can now just say it's an innate thing that they can't overcome. It's like any family where one child is the "good child." The other child may actually also have the potential to be just as nice, courteous, thoughtful, studious, and restrained, but since one child is "the good child," their role ends up being "not the good child."
Posted by: sharky | May 28, 2011 at 10:30 PM
Kisekileia writes:
The single biggest thing that helps is attachment. But you have to wait for that....
One adoption book said: Imagine you were suddenly shoved into a strange house with rules you didn't know, and people with whom you had no relationship whatsoever started telling you what to do, and perhaps threatening you if you didn't do it. You might cooperate out of fear, but that's about it--there's not much in that situation to motivate cooperation.
We did a lot of just insisting that he do things, even when it didn't seem to be doing any good. So, he threw tantrums and didn't do his homework. The next day we were still in there asking him to do his homework, and the next day, and the next. This was awful but it did eventually pay off. Social pressure requires connection, and connection takes time.
We did a certain amount of distraction-removal. "I'm not taking away video games, but now is homework time. If you do the homework, homework time is over. If not, it's still homework time." We found that early on any consequences had to be *right now*--it was useless to threaten anything tomorrow, much less later on.
We did a certain amount--more than I would have liked--of outright bribery. Tiny sums of money, tiny gifts, getting to pick a restaurant. Again, they had to be right away. We experimented with "keep this grade up for four weeks and--" and that was a horrible disaster, never to be repeated. (He failed that class due to the way he reacted when he didn't get the prize.)
We let some things slide. He didn't brush his teeth for most of a year, but he brushes them now.
Mainly, it was bad at first. It got better, slowly, with one dramatic downturn when he started getting some attachment. (Attachment is very scary if you have been moved too often, as it's the prelude to heartbreak.)
But yeah, there were times when nothing worked. Two or three where we had to resort to physically holding him down. One trip to the ER.
Prolonged short-term foster care is not good for children. I knew that abstractly before I started the adoption process, but I had no idea *how* not-good it was.
Tonight, on a hike, he chewed up a leaf and twenty minutes later was throwing up in the bushes. Had anyone ever gotten across to him that you shouldn't put unknown plants in your mouth? I don't know if he missed it or was just in a regressive state of mind, as he often is on weekends. He's thirteen but sometimes seems to be six.
In retrospect some of our early discipline problems were almost surely because we thought he was ten, and he was two or three. But it is hard to use two-year-old discipline on someone that large. And a two-year-old with an IQ around 120 is...a bit scary, frankly. I love how smart he is but it's a tricky combo with the regression.
I love him dearly, but it's going to be a long slog uphill to pick up all the stuff he missed, and there will be more poisonous plants in our future, I don't doubt.
Posted by: Mary Kaye | May 29, 2011 at 01:02 AM
I would like to respectfully point out that "deeply religious" does not necessarily map onto "socially conservative" -- and that the reverse also does not hold.
You are quite right, I was quite wrong, and I apologise. Thank you for pointing out my stupidity so gently. I do not think the two automatically map on to each other, and it was dumb of me to say so. I'm sorry if I offended anyone.
I'd be interested to hear why you enjoyed it?
--
Mary Kaye, your posts are fascinating and moving, so thank you for them.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 29, 2011 at 02:22 AM
I have a few rules I hold myself to, but they basically boil down to 'Know the difference between a grumble and a cry of serious distress; only the former can be ignored,' 'Try to make sure he gets at least a bit of interesting activity each day,' and 'Praise him a lot.' Again, these will doubtless have to get more complicated.
No. That's pretty much it.
Posted by: pepperjackcandy | May 29, 2011 at 05:33 AM
I'd be interested to hear why you enjoyed it?
I think we've talked about this before, but I personally liked the TWILIGHT series because I thought the books perfectly expressed a certain adolescent mindset, in which every emotion was heightened to almost unbearable intensity, every decision was life or death, every sensation was felt with exquisite sensitivity, and of course everybody was looking and thinking about ME all the time.
It's a fairly common state, and it's a very silly state, and not altogether pleasant at the time (I wouldn't be fifteen again for all the chocolate in Switzerland), but it is also a fizzy, heady state, and there's some charm in revisiting it and then closing the book and saying "Thank the good Lord, I'm not like that anymore."
Daughter enjoyed them because (at the time) she was still in that state, but knew objectively how ridiculous it all was. She could identify with Bella, and wallow in her melodrama, and laugh at her when she closed the books, while still being free to take herself (and her own VERY VERY IMPORTANT ISSUES) deadly seriously.
(We both still enjoy a lot of shojo manga for much the same reasons)
Posted by: hapax | May 29, 2011 at 11:19 AM
MaryKaye, I would like to chime in on how inspiring and moving I find your posts about your son.
The frustration and wisdom and deep deep love and pride you have in him come through so clearly.
If I may be so bold to suggest -- have you thought about collecting some of these posts, or writing down similar thoughts, so you can share them with him many years from now, when he has become the happy healthy adult I'm sure he'll be?
I know that when I found mentions in my mother's letters, etc., after she died about how she and my father coped with the trials of raising her children, they were incredibly powerful expressions of her love and dedication.
Posted by: hapax | May 29, 2011 at 11:24 AM
A little catching-up, after what turned out to be a busy day yesterday. (And nothing interesting, either. You know what happens when you have a holiday weekend without having made holiday plans? Work happens, that's what. As in, when did the yard get so overgrown? And who knew the kitchen needed cleaning quite this badly?)
MaryKaye: [a parenting book]assumes that kids have the chops to take action to avoid painful consequences. You know what? Too many moves early in childhood and you get "learned helplessness" and a deep-seated feeling that bad things cannot be avoided, and you get exactly what Love and Logic says won't happen--a child who is willing to do something, get hurt, and do it again and again, getting hurt each time, and working himself into a deeper and deeper depression.
Oh yeah. Everyone knows that kids learn from their mistakes: just give consequences, and they'll straighten right up! And no one tells you what to do with a kid for whom that doesn't work, whether from early childhood experiences or innate temperament or some other combination of factors.
Kids are different; what works with one doesn't work with another. Good parenting has to involve a serious research project into "What works with this one?"
QFT. Also, life will be much better for everyone if both parents have the same definitions of "works."
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SamanthaC: re: perpetual high school - I seriously never understood that. I understand the basic concept of trying to mask the fact that you're not aging. But at least do college!
Do they actually stay in high school forever? I thought the idea was to move to a new town, start with high school and go on to college and young adulthood, and move on when the agelessness thing becomes too apparent. Even that's a pretty limited slice of life, but at least better than an eternity in high school.
I gather from these comments, though, that the effect of the books is the endless-high-school fantasy, that none of the younger vampires is seen in any kind of adult context.
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MaryKaye: vampires are undead. It would be appropriate for them to lack a living creature's capacity for growth and change.
In which case, I still don't understand how it's appropriate for Edward to procreate, another thing that I'd expect to be reserved to the living!
Of course, this idea does not go well with the romance; it makes it a tragedy, Bella's loss of her capacity for growth in return for the cheat of pseudo-life.
Do kids still read Tuck Everlasting? Maybe it's a good idea to meet Winnie before you meet Bella!
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Ki tWhitfield: I can definitely see the appeal of an unnaturally fast pregnancy. Most of the women I know agree that at about six months, you've pretty much had enough of being pregnant - except you've got another three months to go, and they're harder on your body than the other two. A vampirically fast one doesn't sound all that bad: you get the baby without the backache.
Oh, I wouldn't argue with that! Those last two months seem to go on forever. I know that some women say they enjoy being pregnant, but as far as I'm concerned, bring on the uterine replicators!
There's probably something to be said for an adequate transition period between being not-parent and parent. But enough is enough.
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nicknames, or lack thereof; around here, anyway, there seems to be a fashion around here for using full names rather than nicknames. I know a bunch of Margaret-not-Megs and Stephen-not-Steves and I admit that we were part of that when we named our daughter. She's always been called by her full, old-fashioned name rather than any of its numerous nicknames or variants. So of course, her true intimates among her peers call her something else entirely!
Izzy: I think "Edward John Smith!" is next.
Probably. :)
--------------
My parents pretty much stopped monitoring what I read as soon as I could bike to the library by myself. (Which was at a fairly young age, in those less-restrictive times.) I doubt that my mother would care for Twilight; when I was young she read mostly murder mysteries and novels about the English upper classes (paging Mmy!). She and her granddaughters bonded over Harry Potter, though.
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It looks like I won't in fact catch up, so I'll just lift this from downthread:
Mary Kaye, your posts are fascinating and moving, so thank you for them.
Indeed.
Posted by: Amaryllis | May 29, 2011 at 12:07 PM
There's probably something to be said for an adequate transition period between being not-parent and parent. But enough is enough.
Quite. And a transition period that leaves you utterly physically exhausted by the time the baby arrives and suddenly needs caring for ... well, there's a flaw in that somewhere.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 29, 2011 at 12:39 PM
@Kit Whitfield: And a transition period that leaves you utterly physically exhausted by the time the baby arrives and suddenly needs caring for ... well, there's a flaw in that somewhere.
Indeed, one might say, a shining example of nonintelligent design.
Posted by: Mmy | May 29, 2011 at 12:49 PM
'S why we evolved to be social animals.
Posted by: MercuryBlue | May 29, 2011 at 01:15 PM
in re perpetual high school -- I believe that Edward claims to have at least one medical degree, which would involve faking "aging" up to at least twenty-six or so. That would give him a full decade before starting over, which isn't too implausible.
He also continually nags Bella to go to college, although that's before she's vamped. The subject is kind of dropped at that point, although in all fairness, they do have more immediate pressing concerns (and it was assumed that with a "typical newborn" it would be a long long time before she was sufficiently in control to be "safe" around other humans).
Posted by: hapax | May 29, 2011 at 02:08 PM
If they have to move on every ten or twenty years, and only the 'adults' can work, how on earth do they afford American college for five people?
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 29, 2011 at 02:20 PM
how on earth do they afford American college for five people?
Alice uses her precog abilities to make high-risk, high-reward investments.
That's the canonical explanation, anyway.
Posted by: hapax | May 29, 2011 at 02:33 PM
hapax, I love your description of the kind of teenage emotional mindset that Twilight evokes. I understand its appeal much better now. I was also, around ages 13-15, very much like your daughter in the sense of being in that mindset while also knowing how ridiculous it is! Unfortunately I was pulled out of it probably a little too early due to trauma.
Posted by: kisekileia | May 29, 2011 at 03:57 PM
In which case, I still don't understand how it's appropriate for Edward to procreate, another thing that I'd expect to be reserved to the living!
My understanding is that this isn't supposed to happen, but vampire bodies are in a state of "stasis" from when they were first turned, and Ed hasn't, ah, ejaculated in over 100 years so he had some live sperm "leftover" from when he was human.
This is what I've read anyway - I haven't actually dived into Breaking Dawn yet.
Posted by: AnaMardoll | May 29, 2011 at 04:23 PM
Talk about your blue balls. But don't sperm have a lifespan of about a week? So wouldn't they have died off ages ago? Unless they're now vampire cells same as the rest of his cells, in which case why are they still capable of impregnating a woman?
Posted by: MercuryBlue | May 29, 2011 at 05:28 PM
The First Rule of understanding the biological implications of BREAKING DAWN is that you don't think about the biological implications of BREAKING DAWN.
Posted by: hapax | May 29, 2011 at 05:39 PM
But don't sperm have a lifespan of about a week? So wouldn't they have died off ages ago?
Yes.
The First Rule of understanding the biological implications of BREAKING DAWN is that you don't think about the biological implications of BREAKING DAWN.
Haha, exactly. The technobabble - as I understand it - is that vampire bodies never change. So female vampires can't get pregnant because female fertility is a cycle of constant changes. But male fertility is static - sperm lasts forever and ever.
This is what is known on TV Tropes as You Fail Biology Forever. :/
Posted by: AnaMardoll | May 29, 2011 at 06:02 PM
Reading all this deconstruction, I see the seed of something better within all the nonsense in Twilight. There's room for an unhappily-ever-after follow-up, there's room to explore Bella feeling stifled or Carlisle wondering if he really has made the right choices for his family or any number of things... ggnhh, but to actually explore this properly, I'd have to read the books, wouldn't I? I made it 4 chapters into the first, rolled my eyes, and gave up. I'd have loved it when I was 15. I'm not 15 anymore. 15 is such a distant country to me, and I've changed so much, and I don't much want to go to 15 again. Twilight doesn't work for me.
I also can't help but look at the book through the filter of someone familiar with White Wolf's World of Darkness games, both old school Vampire: The Masquerade and the newer Vampire: the Requiem. The situation presented in Twilight could very well be set up and played out in either of these more-traditional vampire-based universes, but the outcome would be much more grim. One would need to tweak things to let vampires go out during the day, but keeping the other issues intact (ravenous hunger for blood, having a generally inhuman presence, odd issues or compulsions unique to each vampire and not precisely gifts) would work within the premise and make things much more serious. The family of vampires that Bella gets drawn into could be a particular Daeva bloodline, or maybe a group of anarch Caitiff making a go of it as best they can. And the family structure could be much more fragile, and Bella's "happy ending" could be much more bittersweet. I hesitate to think of how something like Renesmee would play out in a WoD setting, but it would be horrifying rather than cute and special.
The story also desperately needs a Nosferatu in it. Everything's better with Nosferatu in it. The Cullens need a "distant uncle" showing up from out of town, banging on the door, and waltzing in all horrible rictus face and grave-rot smell, flopping cheerfully all over the nice furniture.
(The carping about "Edward's not a real vampire, real vampires don't sparkle, hurr hurr" that is one of the shallow rejections of Twilight does have some validity, to my mind. These are vampires without the usual problems of vampirism. It is all glamour and awesome all of the time, with only "OM NOM NOM HUMANS" as a real limiter. Being gorgeous and immortal is more of a curse in the long run, when you start to unravel a bit with age. In the short term, it's pretty damned sweet. The fangs have been blunted on these vampires and I think it irritates folk that LIKE the scary-moody-monster aspects of the myth.)
Posted by: Lampdevil | May 30, 2011 at 11:04 AM
Typepad seemed unwilling to post my WHOLE post, I guess it was a bit too long, so here's the rest....
My parents wouldn't have objected to me reading Twilight. My mom only ever showed concern about what I was reading when it was obviously something excessively smutty that I had yoinked from her big bookshelf out back. (A whole lot of stuff goes down under the unsuspecting cover of the 'romance novel', I'll tell you what.) She always valued reading (note the big bookshelf out back) and was always encouraged that I was such a voracious reader. She didn't care to be picky about what I chose to read, which I'm thankful for. I read a lot of geeky stuff (D&D tie in novels, piles of manga, my dad's old comics, SF of all sorts) and I'm glad she didn't discourage me from it like some other parents might have. I am open about my geeky interests to her, honest about how I spend my weekends and the sort of movies and TV that I watch, and she's happy to engage in conversation with me about it. It makes me so happy. I have friends who still won't admit to their parents that they play tabletop games or paint minis or LARP for fear, real or imagined, of them staging some kind of intervention or exorcism.
Posted by: Lampdevil | May 30, 2011 at 11:06 AM
The story also desperately needs a Nosferatu in it.
This paragraph made me laugh.
Also, all of the vampire love reminds me of the episode of Buffy where there's a bunch of vampire-wannabes who link in with the real vampires. They think they're all going to be turned but the real vampires just see them as a buffet. Is there any explanation in Twilight as to why they are "vegetarians" other than cause they felt like it? That seems pretty weak in terms of turning against their essential nature.
Posted by: storiteller | May 30, 2011 at 11:43 AM
These are vampires without the usual problems of vampirism. It is all glamour and awesome all of the time, with only "OM NOM NOM HUMANS" as a real limiter.
Y'know, I hate to blame Meyer for this. Sands, Feehan, Kenyon, Ward, and similar "vampire romance" authors were all published before her, and *their* vampires are even worse. Some (but not all of them) might be stuck at home during the daylight, but they are sexy and rich, and most of them have bed-breaking multi-orgasmic sex alllllll the time, plus kids if the author likes 'em and never nope and no birth control if the author doesn't; and that whole "eating people" is usually more of a light nibble, more of sexy kink, and nobody ever feels guilty or damned or anything but mildly inconvenienced by being a Dark Fiend of Eternal Night.
Pfui.
Posted by: hapax | May 30, 2011 at 11:44 AM
I'm not usually into vampire stuff, but I did like the solidly-B Blood Ties TV series (I have not read the original books), and those vampires were largely of the Invincibly Sexy variety as well. I think what worked for me there was that the vampire, rather than having insatiable hunger or sociopathy, was simply... kind of a jackass. Not irredeemably so, just rather a twerp in that way that people often are when they have (or think they have) the power to make everything go their way. And in that way, Edward totally succeeds as a character for me. (My issues revolve entirely around how this is presented as an unalloyed good thing.)
---
I just thought of an entirely different level of Squick - what if your fertility level as a vampire was set as static to the moment when you were turned? Males don't have a fertility cycle, so as a vamp Edward would still be 'frozen' with working bits, whereas females would usually be vamped during an infertile stage and remain that way forever. (The horror comes in when this produces the implication that some vampire women could be stuck in the bleeding stage for eternity.)
How does this relate to other cycles/changes, anyway? It seems like Edward is assumed to not have had a 17-year-old's hormone levels for the last century, but why not?
---
Early vampire myths contained the idea that vampires were their strongest at noon, when they cast the smallest shadow. I would like to see this idea revived.
Posted by: Will Wildman | May 30, 2011 at 12:20 PM
@hapax - Good point, Myers isn't the first person to write a story that makes vampirism an all-night sexy funfest. Hers just happened to have the good luck to get very successful, and the bad luck to be so successful as to be an easy target for this kind of mainstream (or mainstream-er) criticism. Your average person probably thinks of Dracula when they hear the word "vampire", or possibly Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Twilight is a wee bit of a leap forward from those, without an intermediate step of other vampire romances.
(I remember reading somewhere that Myers didn't read up on other vampire stories first? She wanted to try to be as original as possible? Can someone confirm this?)
Heck, I remember people carping about Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles being stupid in an assortment of ways. Vampires have gone from Outright Monster to Sexy Scary Monster to Sexy Misunderstood Monster, to Sexy Misunderstood Guy That's So Pretty It Makes Him Sad. Some people liked the Outright Monster just fine, thank you, and Twilight gets their underpants in a wad because of it. Me, I prefer to be somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. The angst and horror is the admission price you pay for the exciting supernatural sexy bits!
Posted by: Lampdevil | May 30, 2011 at 12:32 PM
Will,
True Blood has a girl who was turned vampire as a virgin, and every time she has sex, her hymen "heals" afterwards, due to the vampire healing factor. This does NOT amuse her.
Posted by: anamardoll | May 30, 2011 at 12:44 PM
@Lampdevil: I don't know the new WoD well enough to comment, but old WoD? Edward would have to be a 15th Gen vampire to be able to get Bella pregnant. That means he wouldn't be able to turn her because 15th Gen vampires and a significant number of 14th generation vampires can't. It also means that as far as vampires go, Carlisle is a relative wuss, and his childer are complete wusses.
OTOH, some thin blooded vampires have oracular abilities which would explain Alice, and apparently some thin blooded vampires are able to invent their own disciplines which might explain several of the rest of Carlisle's little coterie. Are Carlisle and Esme ever explicitly given special abilities? If you stick to the standard oWoD disciplines, I think Carlisle must have at least a couple of dots of Presence (at 14th Gen he'd max out at four dots). One more thing, 15th Generation vampires can tolerate limited amounts of sunlight; sometimes they even tan. So, if we give all of the "kids" the Light Sleeper merit, or perhaps a unique to them Daytime Wakefulness discipline, then they can go to school in Forks just fine as long as they don't come in on the rare sunny days when their limited sun tolerance would be exceeded by going outside.
Bella presumably has the Merit Iron Will which protects her against magical mental intrusion, and also makes her stubborn as all get out. The offspring of a vampire and mortal is functionally a revenant that ages normally until puberty when their aging slows to normal revenant rates. Such a child is called a dhampir. So, Bella would have to put up with the normal nine months of pregnancy, and the kid would grow up at the normal rate, but she'd be unusually strong, and have a few other ghoulish characteristics. I don't have a good explanation for why she smells so good to Edward and Edward only. Potent Blood would make her smell that good to any vampire that got in range.
Maybe this is at least a partial explanation for the coterie's "vegetarianism." It may be partly a moral stance, but it may also be a way of avoiding the attention of the larger vampiric community. Princes don't likes strange vampires hunting in their towns without consent. As very weak vampires, they could get way with it. Note that in the oWoD, vampires can feed on each other, and the most powerful ones don't have a choice in the matter.
The Quileute werewolves, are of course, Wendigo, well, mostly anyway. I suppose there might be an Uktena or two among them. I'd expect to see a wereraven (Corax) or two around as well, but of course, there's no mention of them in the stories.
Posted by: Inquisitiveravn | May 30, 2011 at 07:27 PM
Are Carlisle and Esme ever explicitly given special abilities?
Well....
Carlisle has superhuman Compassion. Esme is +6 Motherliness.
I could not possibly make this up.
Posted by: hapax | May 30, 2011 at 08:49 PM
Also, Rosalie's special power is either Beauty or being snippy all the time. Truly, she is Blessed With Suck.
Posted by: anamardoll | May 30, 2011 at 10:22 PM
@hapax
I somehow feel like I can enjoy shojo manga/anime, but have never been able to enjoy Twilight for that reason. My all time favorite tear-jerker melodrama is Kanazuki no Miko, and it is some of the most blatantly ridiculously bizarre stuff ever. Yet it still managed to keep my attention better. I've found a certain disconnect in my thinking lately- I can enjoy a lot of shojo anime tropes in shojo alone, but I find it mock worthy in anything Western and I'm trying to decide what that makes me. *shrugs*
Posted by: Asha | May 30, 2011 at 10:49 PM