Had motherhood ruined my favorite childhood stories?

As I snuggled in with my husband and my then-first-grader to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I looked forward to sharing my childhood memories of Rankin and Bass’ claymation classic.

Within five minutes of pressing play, though, all I could think was, “Why is everyone being so mean?”

The other reindeer. Rudolph’s father. Rudolph’s teacher, Comet, who first joins Rudolph’s classmates in taunting him, then cheerfully kicks Rudolph out of reindeer school for not looking like everyone else. Even Father Christmas is no help; Santa does nothing to defend the young reindeer as he’s reminded, again and again, that he doesn’t belong. Finally, Rudolph gives up trying to fit in and runs away from home — and straight into his adventure.

As a kid, I wasn’t bothered by this relentless cruelty, even though I no more fit in with my peers than Rudolph did. Instead, I found the abuse Rudolph endured almost comforting because it made his final victory so much more satisfying.

As a parent, I kept glancing at my own child, wondering if she was okay, wondering if we should watch something else.

Wondering if motherhood had spoiled a childhood favorite for me more thoroughly than an unwanted plot reveals ever could.

We kept watching, but it was a near thing. (Photo courtesy of Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash.)

This wasn’t the first time I saw a beloved story differently after sharing it with my daughter. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time was a formative book for me. I identified fiercely with Meg Murray’s braces and tangled hair, her awkwardness, and her anger. The bruises Meg received from her classmates, and the nasty comments she endured from their parents just made me root for her all the harder. When Meg fought the darkness and rescued her loved ones, I saw hope that I would triumph over my misfit childhood, too.

I’ve read my way through so many editions of this book through the years.

I felt none of that hope as I listened to an audiobook that describes Meg’s bruises to my daughter, only an increasing uneasiness. When she got bored with the story, I was relieved to move on to something else. I knew things would only get worse in the sequel, A Wind in the Door, where Meg’s little brother, kindergartner Charles Wallace, comes home bruised and battered every week.

As a parent, I can’t imagine not intervening if my child came home from school bleeding. Yet Meg’s parents do exactly that. “Charles Wallace is going to have to live in a world made up of people who don’t think at all in any of the ways that he does, and the sooner he starts learning to get along with them, the better,” Mrs. Murray tells her daughter. “A life form that can’t adapt doesn’t last very long.”

Now that’s harsh.

Childhood is harsh or can be. I know that firsthand. Books were so important to me because they showed something beyond the harshness, some reward or redemption or reason for it all. Why was this harder to accept as an adult than as a child?

I think at least part of the answer lies in the fact that, as a child, my focus was firmly fixed on the other children in the stories I read. Adults were mostly just background characters. It’s only now, as a grown-up myself, that my gaze doesn’t flicker past other grown-ups as I read.

It’s only now that I see how many of the adults in my favorite childhood stories were acting just as badly as the kids were. Maybe worse — the cruelty of children who might one day learn better is one thing, but the complicit acceptance of adults who have real power is quite another.

In Diane Duane’s So You Want to Be a Wizard, a half dozen girls attack Nita Callahan at once, tearing her jeans and blackening her eye. Afterward, Nita thinks, “I wish Dad would say something … no, that would just make it worse. If only something could just happen to make it stops!”

Nita not only feels powerless, but she assumed her father is powerless too. She accepts what so many adults accepted when I was a child — that kids might be horrid to one another, but they still need to work things out for themselves. Grown-ups can’t solve their problems for them.

This isn’t entirely wrong. Kids do need to learn to work things out, and adult interference can make things worse. Intervening in every last fight between our children and their friends denies them the needed chance to learn how to navigate conflict and stand up for themselves. Parents now know that now, just as they did then.

What’s changed, though, is that most parents now also know there’s a point where they need to step in. We might disagree on where that point is, exactly, but I’m pretty sure we’d all put it somewhere before things escalate to open wounds, torn clothing, and self-imposed exile.

The adults in my favorite childhood stories act powerless, but I know they’re not as an adult myself.

Meg Murray’s parents could talk to the school administration or decide to homeschool Charles Wallace. Comet could show by example, that cruelty has no place in his classroom. Nita Callahan’s father could at least try picking up the phone and calling the parents of her tormentors — out of six families, maybe at least one of mom or dad would be concerned enough to do something.

Even if they weren’t, at least Nita would know her dad cared enough to make an effort.

I know that firsthand, too. When I was in elementary school, my mom was more willing than most parents to speak up about bullying. My elementary school principal was more willing than most school administrators to listen. Their intervention didn’t stop my classmates from throwing rocks at me on the playground, but it did earn me the reprieve of staying off the playground and reading in the school office during recess.

More importantly, it told me that the adults in my life thought I mattered — that they knew the rocks and the taunts weren’t something I somehow deserved, that I was worth the effort of at least trying to make them stop.

Over time, I came to believe that I mattered, too, and that belief gave me the strength, as I grew- to find ways to adapt and survive after all — on my own terms and in my own way.

My shelves are filled with books I read differently now than I would have as a child.

Kids can still be cruel, and that cruelty remains a compelling jumping-off point for stories that do, in the end, still need conflict to engage their readers. Yet fewer adults in today’s children’s books seem to me to be actively complicit — or if they are, the story is more likely to present the fact as a problem rather than as some sad truth about how the world works.

A few weeks after watching Rudolph, my family watched a much more recent release, Spies in Disguise. Spies in Disguise begins on familiar ground as we meet Walter Beckett, another fictional kid who just doesn’t fit in. “Kids think I’m weird,” a young Walter tells his mom as the movie begins, but his mom doesn’t respond with a lecture about how Walter needs to adapt.

“What’s wrong with weird?” Mom asks, rejecting any narrative that misfits must learn to fit in. “The world needs weird.” Walter’s mom doesn’t solve his problems for him, but she doesn’t suggest he face them alone, either. “I will always have your back,” she assures him instead.

Maybe it’s because we never get over needing characters we can identify with that her words made me want to clap and cry at the same time.

Or maybe it’s just a relief to escape into a world with fictional parenting I can cheer for, after all.