Seeking sff where the main character is a parent
May 19, 2019 6:52 AM   Subscribe

Looking for fantasy/sci-fi stories (whether online or off, short stories or long, whatever) where the main character is a parent

Ideal: their being a parent is shown affecting their day to day life over the course of the story, either as an active part of the plot or just as background noise (like needing to find a babysitter).

Really not so much what I'm looking for: surprise, they have a kid they didn't know about! They interact for five seconds. The kid is conveniently whisked off to Elsewhere, where s/he is someone else's problem and main character can continue to Fight Dragons or whatever, now motivated by the Power of Filial Love without any actual burden of parenting.

Also not really what I'm looking for: the story ends with them having a kid. Same basic problem in a different form if the story starts when they are separated from kid, and ends when they are reunited with the kid.

This ask was actually inspired by a fanfic I read, so fanfic totally counts as an answer. Just to re-emphasize, though, I'm specifically looking for fantasy/scifi. So fanfic of an sff world but the emphasis is slice of life and the sff doesn't play a part isn't what I'm looking for.

I want stories that successfully integrate dealing with dragons (or whatever) and also dealing with daycare (or whatever).
posted by Cozybee to Media & Arts (33 answers total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
Boneshaker is a cool, slightly gritty story about a mom who goes on an adventure to rescue/find her kid.

Wikipedia says: Boneshaker is a science fiction novel by American writer Cherie Priest, combining the steampunk genre with zombies in an alternate history version of Seattle, Washington. It was nominated for the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novel[1] and the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel.[2] It won the 2010 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Edit: Oops this may run a bit afoul of your separation clause, sorry, but still worth checking out. There’s a lot sort of about parenting and parent/child relationships.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:59 AM on May 19, 2019


Best answer: Saga! Complete with fighting people off while breastfeeding.
posted by metasarah at 7:38 AM on May 19, 2019 [16 favorites]


The Secret of NIMH (animated movie, so may not meet your specs) revolves around the main character trying to help her kids.
posted by heatherlogan at 7:40 AM on May 19, 2019 [3 favorites]


Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen has a widow, who is already a mother, looking forward to uncorking more children in a sci-fi setting. She is the protagonist, not Jole. This is not a book that contains lots of danger, if that matters to you.
posted by puddledork at 7:41 AM on May 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


The main character in NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy is a parent, and it's relevant to the story in a bunch of ways.
posted by terretu at 7:45 AM on May 19, 2019 [11 favorites]


Story of your Life, the basis for the movie Arrival, fits the bill.
posted by Young Kullervo at 7:51 AM on May 19, 2019 [7 favorites]


On Star trek Deep Space Nine the relationship of Commander/Captain Sisko and his son Jake isn't forefront in every episode, but it's definitely a major theme. Especially because he's a single father and is doing all the parenting alone.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 8:07 AM on May 19, 2019 [6 favorites]


The Secret of NIMH (animated movie, so may not meet your specs) revolves around the main character trying to help her kids.

Adapted from an excellent book.
posted by Morfil Ffyrnig at 8:32 AM on May 19, 2019 [3 favorites]


Wrt the Broken Earth trilogy, I don't want to spoil the plot but I don't think it meets your criteria. The main character is definitely informed by being a parent and does provide care for other people at various points, but is not actually parenting or interacting with kids for the most part.
posted by trig at 9:00 AM on May 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


In terms of Lois McMaster Bujold's works, I'd say that Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen is a bad place to start as it is, to date, the last-set book in a very long series (the Vorkosigan Saga). Komarr, rather earlier, introduce a main character with a nine-year-old child and the parental relationship is significant to the plot, as it is to the plot of A Civil Campaign, the next book in the series.

(I've not cited Barrayar, as although much of the plot is driven by the existence of a child, for most of that time the child is still gestating - although, this being sf, gestating in a uterine replicator rather than the child's mother.)
posted by Major Clanger at 9:27 AM on May 19, 2019 [4 favorites]


IDK if this violates some of your parameters, but the protagonist of Kristine Kathryn Rusch's excellent Retrieval Artist series is motivated throughout by his infant daughter's death at a daycare. The culmination of this aspect of his life comes in the 6th book, Recovery Man, when it turns out that his estranged wife cloned the daughter, and he has to save the clone from the wife's employer and a threatening alien government.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 9:31 AM on May 19, 2019


Best answer: The last book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, Mostly Harmless. Minor spoilers for the preceding 4 books--there is depiction of the difficulties of single parenting both from the mom's side and the dad's side, including dealing with daycare and babysitting (and how time travel/relativity issues at faster-than-light-speed travel can complicate things).
posted by damayanti at 9:39 AM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I think that all of E. M. Foner’s Union Station books are very family-oriented. Light, fun reading. Quite a lot of babysitting going on.

The recent Ted Chiang collection Exhalation contains a couple of stories - “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” and “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” - that might interest you.

Greg Egan’s short story “The Cutie” kinda-sorta meets your criteria. Also several short stories by Ray Bradbury: “The Small Assassin”, “Zero Hour”, “Come Into My Cellar”, and others.

Samuel R. Delany’s Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand is, at it’s heart, about a family.
posted by doctor tough love at 9:44 AM on May 19, 2019


Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood Trilogy is sort of this to the nth power.
posted by supermedusa at 10:05 AM on May 19, 2019 [4 favorites]


Best answer: The Powder Mage books by Brian McClellan: Ben Stykes is very much a big, mean, "break things and kill people" kind of guy, but he's adopted a little orphan girl Celine and has lots of cute scenes with her. There's a plot arc which starts up like a rip-roaring revenge quest and kind of fizzles out in part for her sake.

Fitz and the Fool trilogy by Robin Hobb: all about a former assassin trying to balance his quiet retired life as a husband and father with the needs of his country.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 10:25 AM on May 19, 2019


Best answer: Hyperion fits your criteria; one of the main characters is a parent, this role is very relevant to his piece of the plot line, and he performs everyday parenting duties during the course of the book.
posted by DTMFA at 10:30 AM on May 19, 2019 [4 favorites]


A main character in Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers is a mom of a teenager. It is the third in a trilogy but child rearing and family structure is a theme throughout the series.
posted by Uncle at 10:59 AM on May 19, 2019 [5 favorites]


Best answer: Dark Lord of Derkholm kind of has an ensemble "cast", but several main characters are parents of teens, and dealing with kids/parenthood is very much a plot point.
posted by gudrun at 11:05 AM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: One of the main characters in Tillie Walden’s On A Sunbeam is an aunt raising her niece (in space).
posted by cnidaria at 12:11 PM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Characters in The Expanse series are parents with children they have to look out for.
posted by nickggully at 12:27 PM on May 19, 2019


Best answer: Justina Robson‘s „Glorious Angels“ feature a scientist mother and her two teenage daughters saving the world. I really enjoyed the family aspect of it, the differences and relationships between the protagonists. The setting, a hedonistic matriarchy in a mixed technological/magical world was fascinating.
Plot and pacing were a bit uneven. Might be worth a try if parenting teenagers counts?
posted by Omnomnom at 12:43 PM on May 19, 2019


Best answer: "Lone Wolf and Cub" is a Japanese manga graphic novel about a samurai man who is also a father of a baby, and their adventures.
posted by jillithd at 1:04 PM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Caught in Crystal by Patricia Wrede fits this description. The main character is a widowed mom who was formerly a warrior, now living a quiet life running an inn with her two kids when the story starts. Her past comes knocking on her door and they're all dragged into an adventure.

It's technically part of a series, but is a standalone story. It was actually the first real full-length fantasy novel I ever read as a pre-teen, back sometime around 1987 when it was originally published. I revisited it for the first time last year, and it was still a pretty good read.
posted by Pryde at 2:42 PM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: The Interior Life, by Katherine Blake (Dorothy Heydt), is about the...internal fantasy world? double life? hard to express clearly...of a housewife with three young kids, and the fantasy story goes on in tandem with her everyday life. It's a wonderful original happy-making book.
John M. Ford's Growing Up Weightless is half the coming-of-age story of a thirteen-year-old and half a quite different story from the perspective of his father, happening at the same time.
posted by huimangm at 3:20 PM on May 19, 2019


Ted Chiang’s story “Story of your Life” is amazing - the movie Arrival was based on it but changed the mother-child story significantly.
posted by Mchelly at 3:33 PM on May 19, 2019


The later novels of the Dresden Files involve parenthood, and several central characters are parents early on as well. Family, being parents and the decisions we make for children as well as ordinary family life are part of the later books quite well. There's also a lot of good fanfic on parenting there too :-)

LeGuin has parents in almost all her books. I'm pressed to think who isn't. The Dispossessed in particular has notable family scenes. Always Coming Home and her Hainish cycle stories explore parenting in different ways.

Absolutely seconding Lone Wolf and Cub.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:28 PM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


Seconding 'Hyperion Cantos' - Sol Weintraub's one of the main characters and their status as a parent with his child present is directly - and devastatingly - relevant to the entire plot.

Probably not what you're looking for, but the later 'Stainless Steel Rat' novels involve pulling off intergalactic swindles with their kids.

The plot to Red Country by Joe Abercrombie is more of a conciencious step-parent to a dismissive young adult chasing down her younger siblings who've been kidnapped, then a bunch of older sibling playing the role of parent to the younger ones. 'Red Country' is a standalone that caps off the (probable) endings of a couple of prominent characters, including arguably the principle character, in the really super fun 'The First Law' series. The first couple stumble, but the rest of the series picks up admirably.

'The Amber Chronicles' is about a couple of super dysfunctional families and by the end span three+ generations. But it's mainly adult interactions, and it's weird and fucked up. More instances of generational interactions than fillial, though.
posted by porpoise at 6:27 PM on May 19, 2019


As noted above, Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold has a main character who is a parent to a nine-year old, and parenting is part of the fabric of her life. It's also a very good entry point to the series.
posted by jb at 8:55 PM on May 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


How about Robert Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones"? The parents are present through out the story, but it's mostly about the twins.
posted by james33 at 5:15 AM on May 20, 2019


If you're open to tv, you might give Once Upon a Time a go. Dealing with the responsibilities of parenthood and looking for lost parents/children are major themes of the show.
posted by rjs at 5:45 AM on May 20, 2019


To clarify: the focus is not on looking for the lost parent/child, but rather on what happens once they're found.
posted by rjs at 5:51 AM on May 20, 2019


Not mentioned yet - I wonder why? - is Cormac McCarthy's _The Road_. Hits very hard in the parent department.
posted by Glomar response at 6:37 AM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]


Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling and Psy-Changeling Trinity books might fit this bill? The series starts as paranormal romance but as it goes on the overarching political plot becomes a much larger piece of the books and the romances, while still large pieces of each story, start to take a bit of backseat. So far there are about 17 books. There are a few books where one of the leads is either a parent or a parent figure (i.e. foster parent, uncle/near father figure), all the books have kids in them and supporting characters who are actively parenting, and several books where earlier MC couples have children and the family comes up/the fact the former MCs/now side characters have kids are major plot points. (The fantasy part comes in because there are three races in this alternate US: regular humans, psy: basically humans with psychic powers, and changelings: basically humans who can shift into animals. The overarching plot is how the three races interact with each other and the struggle for equality in a shifting political environment.) Family, the meaning of family, the lengths people will go to to protect children, the impact of parenting on both parents and children, and how people deal with, reject, or embrace change as a result of being parents are all major themes of the series. The books are great, the first one is one of the weakest in my opinion (Singh's writing gets better and better and the overarching plot gets more interesting and complex later in the series); these are worth checking out. I think the third book (Caressed by Ice) is the first one that really has a parent figure as an MC.
posted by john_snow at 9:29 AM on May 20, 2019


« Older Make A Wish Mermaid Party Ideas   |   Prochoice gatekeeping / thought-police OR new-wave... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.