From Enrico to Charlie: The Parent-Child Relationship in Children's Literature

Considering that the parent-child relation is at the core of family life, this paper intends to explore how and to what extent this relation is mirrored in children’s literature of the 19th-20th centuries.As it is well know, the relationship between parents and children, with its psychological, social and of course legal implications, underwent a continuous change in the 1900s. In short, the content of that change goes back to overcoming the traditional idea that the parent’s main task is to safeguard, educate, and direct the offspring, and also to its substitution with the belief that the mother and father have above all to love, comprehend and support the children. The function of parental support has replaced the role of parent-teacher of the past.The paper will show that the above development has in fact been faithfully – although often unconscionably - described in children's literature, that is to say either texts to be read by children either ones to be read by adults and later on categorized as coming-of-age texts. To this purpose, several novels and tales written in the last two centuries will be analyzed and compared.The research's method is the one that belongs to the Law and Literature's approach.