– Oh no, not now again, I thought when my son and I sat at home and watched the premiere of “Snøfall 2”. The mother of the main character of the series is seriously ill with cancer, the father is absent, and I sighed. Here we go again. Three years ago I lost my wife to cancer. I have a son who is 11 years old, and my life as a widower and father is a literary cliché. My son and I, like many others, like to read books or watch movies and series together. But we are both tired of the fact that children’s drama almost always has the same family story: An (only) child who has been tragically robbed of a parent or two. As a rule, the mother is dead, and the father is either a hero, a badass, or he is dead too. For a while I thought that these are just our glasses: With my little family’s history, it is extra easy to spot the books and dramas that are most similar to our own lives. Last year, however, Aftenposten spoke up and proved me right: They found that mothers die a hundred times more often in children’s literature than in reality. And if you look, a disproportionate number of the children’s dramas take the lives of the main character’s parents: “Harry Potter” (both parents dead), “Markus and Diana” (mother dead), “Brødrene Løvehjerte” (both parents dead), “Pippi Longstocking” (dead mum), “Karius and Baktus” (dead dad), “Karsten and Petra” (dead dad), – to name a few. If you look at news’s Christmas calendar from recent years, we find dead parents in “Snøfall 1”, “Snøfall 2”, “Jul i Svingen”, “Kristiania magiske Tivoliteater” and “The Christmas King”. The mother of the main character Noah (10) in “Snøfall 2” has a relapse of cancer just before Christmas. Photo: news Does it have to be like that? Of course, death should not be a taboo for children. It is healthy and important for children to learn about grief and sad feelings. We will all experience the loss of someone we love, and our society benefits from an open dialogue about this. It is also easy to understand that writers and playwrights use the death of parents as a tool: it represents all children’s greatest fear, and creates sympathy for the main characters in young and old. But must everyone tell the same story, a story that luckily affects very few of us? For those of us who live this story, it’s a bit tiring, because even though both the 11-year-old and I can devour the occasional book or series with dead parents, we want more variety. We want to hear other stories too! It can be painful and nice to feel sadness and care for an orphaned main character, but what about other kinds of families with other kinds of feelings? What happens to children with complicated relationships with siblings and parents in completely normal modern nuclear families, with more complex feelings such as guilt and shame? Will it be too complicated for the children? I do not believe. Many children feel these feelings, and they will recognize them in a well-described main character. They will probably also find comfort and learning in situations many people can relate to: the feeling of guilt when parents separate, the envy of their little sister or the shame that the family can’t afford it. This should provide more than enough drama without the writer needing to kill a parent or two to achieve emotional engagement. And as a bonus, the kids who have lost a real-life mom or dad can occasionally get a break from their own story when they read or watch series. So for the next Christmas calendar, news, can we agree that this is a literary cliché we try to steer clear of – at least a little more often? Pls? Watch “Snøfall 2” here:
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Really exciting with dead mum – Ytring
