SPOILER ALERT: Mild spoilers for The Mandalorian 

Innumerable modern thinkers spend their days highlighting that we are living in a time where patriarchal structures of modern societies are crumbling. Gender stereotyped behavior, the way people relate with each other, the importance of career goals, the urge to travel and experience things, it has all changed.

Naughty Dog spoiled all of us by bringing one of the most memorable parent-child relationship stories we have ever had with the first iteration of The Last of Us.

Not as social compelled as it used to

Previous generations argued that to be recognized as an adult you had to become a parent. It was that moment, the birth of your child, which conferred on you the full rights of adulthood. Most of our societies have moved past this way of thinking. And that’s a good thing! But as societies grow older and natural growth rates decrease, it would be natural to expect that our interest in certain stories would also change.

In these times of great socio-cultural changes, especially in the western civilization, it is understandable that modern-day audiences would be drawn to different types of stories, with different underlying themes, and that these would reflect in the stories we are telling ourselves.

However, themes about parent-child relations are now more popular than ever:

The Last of Us, The Mandalorian, God of War, The Witcher 3, The Walking Dead (in all its iterations: comic, series, Telltale games), Interstellar, Death Stranding, Android: Become Human, Inside Out, Rick & Morty. And we are just naming a few.

A huge depth was brought to God Of War franchise by centering its story and gameplay to the addition of Kratos’ son.

It’s interesting to ask ourselves why these stories, all of them centered on the experience of being a parent or taking care of someone that could be your son or daughter, are still popping up everywhere, from film to TV shows, video games, etc.

Why do we like these stories?

We are curious about this trend. We ask ourselves why do we crave this sort of stories. The reasons we find are the following.

• Avoiding romantic centered narrative. The urge to retaliate from romantic love-centered narratives has pushed both creative minds and public interests towards other forms of love and bonding. Parenthood and parent role modeling are topics that are not worn down. They even get to be quite novel in video games!

Million Dollar Baby received worldwide praise and won four academy awards.

When the main character and his or her sidekick are of different genders, audiences naturally tend to read the narrative in a romantic tone and therefore expect some kind of consummation. To avoid this, and still deliver a narrative with characters of both genders, writers naturally draw on age gaps and a parent-child motif, just as The Last of Us, The Witcher or Million Dollar Baby have done.

• The urge to transcend the self. “Raising children? That’s giving up leisure time, easy and frequent holidays and acquiring financial pressure, right?” Yet the human experience is rounded by adding value to our society, by transcending the self and reaching out to others.

Children of Men depicts a world where humans can no longer procreate. Being deprived of that natural right terrifies humans as a species and some interesting ideas emerge out of watching this invitation to think.

Raising a child, providing and passing your love, your culture, and your knowledge to new generations are usually considered to be representational of the pivotal movement from the individual mindset to the communal one.  Children of Men and Interstellar succeded to tell wonderful stories that we felt closer because they centered on sacrificing the self for the next generations and the species as a whole. 

• The value of life.  Do you remember when the Mandalorian struggled after having completed his job and delivered “the child”, a.k.a. Baby Yoda to the imperial forces? He had complied with his mercenary writ and walked away, trying really hard not to be emotionally attached to the baby.

The moment when you can no longer hide that something precious is lacking.

He was in his cockpit, striving to fly away unattached. You could feel it in your bones. He was confronting his own moral code because of an indisputable revelation: How precious and divine life is! Worth to risk our own ease and convenience. Worth to take responsibility.

The Last of Us, The Walking Dead and The Mandalorian revolve around this topic.

A relevant topic that resonates with our nature

Perhaps, in the end, what matters most is not what these stories are about, but the way they resonate with our human nature and our need for emotional bonding. We are captivated by these stories, they entertain us, but we also learn from them.

And in a time when so many arguments are heard urging us to delay or rethink parenthood, by showing us the negative aspects of having children, it might be that we need some kind of collective unconscious message reminding us of the satisfaction, and not only the struggle, that comes with the package. Perhaps we need to be reminded that there are many ways and forms of passing our experiences to new generations, complete with all the hits and misses.

So let us keep enjoying these stories and indulge ourselves in the shameless experience of recognizing a human calling that arises when we see our reflection in them.