Some parents are loving, some parents are abusive or evil, and some are somewhere in the middle as flawed people. And sometimes, the parents are both, forming a duality between the two extremes.
At this trope's most extreme, the positive parent is The Power of Love incarnate and the negative parent is a Complete Monster. If the Cruel Parent is that bad or just close enough to that bad, then this trope can result in an Archnemesis Dad or Evil Matriarch (depending on the gender), or it can lead to Offing the Offspring.
Due to Double Standards concerning gender assumptions, usually the mother is the loving parent and the father is the violent one.
Sometimes, the parents' differences can also affect their relationship with each-other and not just their relationship with their child, and in extreme cases, this can lead to a Custody Battle or even Til Murder Do Us Part. This trope can be a negative result of Opposites Attract.
Can overlap with All Abusers Are Male, Archnemesis Dad, Bumbling Dad, Evil Matriarch; Stern Parent, Doting Parent (in extreme cases), or Notorious Parent. It can also overlap with Motherhood Is Superior, Stay in the Kitchen, Women Are Wiser and Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication. Hates Their Parent and Disowned Parent (Cruel Parent) can also result from this, as can Momma's Boy, Daddy's Girl or "Well Done, Son" Guy. Can overlap with Deceased Parents Are the Best when the loving parent dies and the child is stuck with the cruel parent for angst.
Contrast Abusive Offspring and Antagonistic Offspring.
Note: This trope is for In-Universe examples only, and No Real Life Examples, Please!
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Examples:
Anime & Manga
- Boy's Abyss: Subverted. Initially, it's shown that Reiji's dad was abusive while his mother Yuko is caring to the point of being an Extreme Doormat for her eldest son Kazu. Later on in the story, however, she's revealed to have emotionally manipulated Kazu and Reiji into becoming dependent on her, including forcing Kazu to pretend to be a demanding son, and especially was grooming Reiji into committing a double-suicide with her. Despite this, and due to trauma from her own youth, it's downplayed into saying that Yuko is bad, but Reiji's father was worse.
- Fairy Tail:
- Layla through various flashbacks is shown to have been a kind, loving and supportive mother to her daughter Lucy when she was growing up, with Lucy herself having nothing but positivity towards her. By contrast Jude was a very flawed parent to say the least, such as committing Parental Neglect on Lucy after Layla died, hired Phantom Lord to kidnap Lucy in order to bring her home to forcibly put her in a Arranged Marriage in a last ditch effort to selfishly save the Family Business from bankruptcy, with the latter incident being the last straw as Lucy temporary disowns Jude as her father, with the two of them only fully reconciling after Jude himself passes away.
- Irene is shown through flashbacks to have deeply cared for Erza before she suffered Sanity Slippage, to the point Irene went full Mama Bear on her husband Rung just to keep an unborn Erza safe. By contrast Rung had zero parental feelings for Erza at all, to the point Rung had no qualms about killing Erza before she was even born.
- My Hero Academia:
- Downplayed with Shoto's parents, Rei and Enji (better known as the hero Endeavor), whom were both abusive to him in his childhood. Enji is Vicariously Ambitious and wants Shoto to surpass All Might, going so far as to isolate Shoto and put him through Training from Hell at the expense of having any normal relationships. Rei loves Shoto but is similarly abused, failing to protect her children from Enji and pouring boiling water on Shoto in a Moment of Weakness after he accidentally startles her. But Shoto doesn't blame her for her reaction, laying the blame solely on Enji's abuse of her.
- Nao Shimura loved her children Tenko and Hana, but failed to stand up to her husband's regular abuse of them. Despite this, she would try to comfort them and was much more affectionate than her husband ever was.
Comic Books
- The Batman Adventures: Two-Face's father was an abusive, alcoholic reprobate and con man, while his mother was kind and doting to both her husband and son. When Two-Face decides to take revenge on his father, he admits he isn't angry about how he mistreated him, but rather how he continuously broke his mother's heart.
- Captain America: Steve Rogers' father Joseph was an abusive alcoholic, while his mother Sarah was a kind and loving woman whom Steve has nothing but fond memories of.
- Spider-Man: Subverted with Otto Octavius's parents. While his father Joseph saw his son as a weakling and subjected him to frequent physical and verbal abuse, his mother Mary was loving and doting. However, Mary's love for her son grew into possessiveness and over-attachment, to the point that she made Otto break up with his fellow researcher Mary Anders. When Otto later found out his mother was going on dates of her own, they had an argument and she died of a heart attack on the spot.
- X-Men (1991): Before the retcon during the Krakoan Age, issue #29 showed Shinobi Shaw's childhood: according to his memories, his father Sebastian considered him weak and a failure, while his mother coddled/protected him.
Fan Works
- Bubbles (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic): Derpy's mother is abusive to her daughter because of her birth defects, hitting her, calling her a "retard pony", being implied to have tried to poison her, and eventually abandoning her. Her father, however, is a loving father and tries to teach her to get by with the birth defects.
- A Diamond Under Pressure (Doki Doki Pretty Cure): Percival Wanted a Gender-Conforming Child and always misgenders his son Raquel (who is transgender here) whenever he doesn't comply to his standards of masculinity. Towards the end of the story, he disowns him and kicks him out of the house. When Raquel gets Happily Adopted by Leverett, it's noted that this is the first time he's felt a maternal hug since his mother died, implying that she was nicer than Percival.
- Farther's Day
(Doki Doki! PreCure) by Gullfriend31: It's revealed that the reason Father's Day deeply saddens Sharuru is that her father Marcel cheated on her mother Leverett. When Sharuru begged him not to leave her, he just shoved her to the ground. Leverett went into Mama Bear mode and demanded to know how he could do such a thing to his own daughter, and he flatly responded that he had no daughter. Besides this, Leverett is shown to be a very kind mother to Sharuru, and she even adopted Raquel.
- In the Ghostbusters (1984) fanfic Here Comes the Boogieman, Egon's father is destructive, talks down to him, and often neglects him emotionally in favour of his work, while Egon's mother is relatively kind to him, if a bit of a My Beloved Smother.
- Junior Officers (The Octonauts): A good portion of Deborah's angst comes from living under an emotionally abusive, misogynist/racist father, to the point that she lied about what she was doing after high school (claimed she was going to a university out of town when she was really going to become an Octonaut) because he would not approve of her working a high-skill job managed by a polar bear. By contrast, Deborah's mother Gertrude is a loving, easy-going parent who cares for her and her two older siblings equally.
- An Only Child (Frozen (2013)): Anna's father Agdar is mean, blaming her for accidentally falling downstairs and referring to her as his "spare", but her mother, Ithuna, is relatively fair.
- Pokémpanions: Growing Apart (Pokémon): Carla is supportive of her adopted daughter Carla's dream of becoming a doctor, while Carnivine is less than pleased about it, as he believes she should Stay in the Kitchen. When she dies in a stagecoach accident, he's briefly saddened, he quickly gets over it and states they can take her inheritance. Outraged by his callousness, Carla dumps him on the spot.
- Service with a Smile (RWBY): As per canon, Mercury's father Marcus Black was an abusive parent who tortured him for years until he snapped and killed him. Conversely, Mercury thinks at least a little more highly of his mother based on the regretful way he recounts his father murdering her.
Film – Live-Action
- The Boys from Brazil: Ezra Lieberman visits Doctor Bruckner to inquire if human cloning was possible. Bruckner states that cloning is possible, but that nobody has tried it successfully (which was true for the time). Bruckner also points out that environment, upbringing and social factors would affect how the clone turned out. He muses that some day, someone will be able to clone a hundred Mozarts, but Lieberman informs him that Nazi Doctor Mengele has succeeded at human cloning, but with a darker purpose. "Not Mozart. Not Picasso. Not a genius who will enrich the world. But a lonely little boy with a domineering father, a customs officer who was 52 when he was born. And an affectionate doting mother who was 29. The father died when he was 65 when the boy was nearly 14: Adolf Hitler."
- Chronicle: While Andrew's interactions with his sick, bedridden mother are apparently nothing but positive, Andrew's father is a mean drunk who physically and verbally abuses him at home and spends all their money on alcohol instead of treating Andrew's mother. The death of Andrew's mother causes him to completely snap, and his father (who still yells at him even then) is the first person who Andrew tries to off.
- The Dark Knight: The Joker describes this trope occurring in one of his possible backstory monologues, where he claims his father was a drunken psychopath and that his mother died trying to defend him against said father on the night that he gained his facial scars.
- Fearless (2006): When a young Huo Yuanjia loses a fight to Zhao Jian, his father is angry at his son causing trouble and is ready to beat him. Huo's mother speaks up for their son, saying that Huo has been hurt enough. His father settles for a less strict punishment.
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Downplayed and Double Subverted heavily with the Russell family parents. At first, it appears that the mother Emma stayed by their surviving younger child Madison whilst the father Mark became a drunk and then a recluse who abandoned them both, after their elder son's death. This doesn't mean that Mark doesn't regret not being there when Emma and Madison are kidnapped. It turns out around 1/3 of the way through the movie that Emma is actually an emotionally-abusive, genocidal eco-terrorist who manipulated Madison into being part of her evil plan, causing her daughter an untold heap of psychological trauma during the movie. While Mark himself is a very flawed parent, especially in the sequel, Emma is established to be much worse.
- Parents: Michael Laemle's parents, Nick and Lilly, are both cannibals. Nick gets his meat from killing people. When Michael begins snooping around his father's business, Nick acts more hostile to Michael, even as he tries to get his son to adapt to eating human meat. Lilly, on the other hand, is more loving towards her son (and it's implied she too was forced by her husband into eating people). It comes to a head when Lilly dies while trying to save Michael from Nick's wrath.
- Sleepy Hollow (1999): In Ichabod's backstory, his mother was a flighty, eccentric and loving spirit, while his father was a barbaric, Bible-thumping tyrant who eventually murdered his mother for her "ungodly" behaviour using a Medieval torture instrument, traumatizing a young Ichabod.
- Tumbbad: The heinous protagonist Vinayak and his wife after they've had a son, Pandurang, post-time skip. Vinayak, who's defined by his lifelong greed and ambition to better his miserable background and who commits indirect murder to protect his secrets, viciously throws his son around whatever room they're in for offences and bruises to his ego, and he's ultimately a negative influence. Pandurang's mother, though not above striking him one time when he makes a very disrespectful misogynistic comment to her face, is a more nurturing presence who implicitly doesn't want him to grow up to be as bad as his father.
Literature
- Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: Two different examples of this show up, both of which contributed to the upbringing of three different characters:
- Hugh the ostler deeply cared about his mother (a Romani woman), and part of the reason he's such a cruel man is out of anger towards a judicial system and society that hanged his Romani mother just for stealing to support herself and him. In contrast to Hugh's mother, his father, Sir John Chester, is a Faux Affably Evil, vain, hedonistic man who shows no concern for anything except maintaining his own expensive lifestyle and paying off his debtors, and he has entirely negative reasons for manipulating his legitimate son, Edward, into marrying a rich woman instead of someone he actually loves. Sir John effectively disowns Edward after the latter defies him and leaves, and he treats Hugh more like a useful tool than an actual child before knowing of their relation, and after learning of their relation, he refuses to try rescuing Hugh from the gallows. The latter leads a Defiant to the End Hugh to utter a Dying Curse upon his father. While not much is stated about Edward Chester's mother, presumably her way of raising Edward is the reason he's much more compassionate than his father.
- The titular Barnaby Rudge's parents. His mother, Mary, pushes every resource she has to the limit in taking care of her son (even more so given that he's implied to have some kind of learning difficulty, in an age where such conditions were treated with hostility and mockery); giving him a pet raven, and teaching him how to do work around the farm to put his impressive strength to good use. His father, Barnaby Rudge Sr., is a cynical, violent, mentally unstable man who has spent twenty years absent from his son's life due to murdering two people for selfish reasons. When father and son meet again as prisoners in the same jail, any care Rudge Sr. shows to his son is merely a ploy to trick him into helping him escape, and once they get imprisoned again and are sentenced to the gallows, Rudge Sr. spends his final moments rejecting Mary's attempts to convince him to repent of his crimes, cursing his wife and his son to their faces, and wallowing in self-pity about his grim fate. Which makes it all the more appropriate when Barnaby is spared the gallows but Rudge Sr. isn't.
- The City Without Memory: Old Mole, the father of the Mole twins and their younger sister Squirrel, is a brutal robber and domestic tyrant, while their mother Centipede (whom Old Mole forced to marry him) is gentle and nurturing. The Mole twins mostly take after their father, growing up to become cruel forest bandits, but thanks to their mother's influence, they adopt two unicorn foals as familiars and later make a Heel–Face Turn. With Squirrel, the trope is downplayed, since by the time she reaches her mid-teens, Old Mole has died and Centipede has grown apathetic, leaving Squirrel mostly to her own devices and the toxic influence of their servant Veri-Meri.
- Cookie: Beauty's mother Dilly is a kind and gentle woman who always has her back, tries to build up her confidence and makes her as happy as she can be in their current circumstances. Beauty's father Gerry is a controlling bully who verbally abuses both Beauty and Dilly, and tears them down at every opportunity. Dilly doesn't have much of a backbone when it comes to Gerry (at first), but one of the few times she stands up to him is to defend their daughter.
- Cade's parents are a mild example in The Ember Blade are a mild example. Cade's father frequently criticizes and browbeats him due to his lack of ability in carpentry, and his friendship with Aren, who he considers a traitor to his Ossian heritage. Cade's mother is more loving, but it helps that Cade is more at home in the kitchen, making good food and memorizing Ossian folk tales.
- Harry Potter: Apparently, Snape's father, who was a Muggle, was abusive at home, while Snape apparently doesn't think so badly of his mother, who was a witch. This played a major role in Snape identifying more with his wizard parentage while resenting his Muggle heritage, enough to initially join the Death Eaters in his youth.
- L.A. Confidential: Bud White's father was an abusive, loutish drunk, while his mother was kind and nurturing. Bud's father eventually murdered her in a fit of rage and handcuffed Bud next to her corpse, the trauma of which caused Bud to grow up to become a vicious Dirty Cop.
- The Pianist from Syria - A Memoir: Aeham's mother is stern, cares about her reputation in front of others, and beats Aeham in public at school because he retaliated against a kid who was bullying him. In contrast, his father is a Cool Old Guy who always pushes him to follow his dream of being a musician.
- Room: Ma is an extremely loving parent to Jack — it's implied that she would prefer to risk her life to let him go free even if it means his father, Old Nick, kills her. Old Nick, on the other hand, not only rapes Ma on a near-nightly basis, but he also abuses Jack indirectly by turning off the heat in Room, which makes Jack sick — it's even heavily implied that he would starve Jack to death if he ever tried anything to help Ma.
- Warrior Cats: Rainflower starts out being doting and prideful to both of her kits, Oakkit and Stormkit, but after Stormkit breaks his jaw, she immediately becomes cruel to him; making him sleep out of her nest, renaming him "Crookedkit", and openly favoring Oakkit. The kits' father, Shellheart, remains supportive of and loving to both his sons, and he breaks up with Rainflower as a result of her abuse.
Live-Action TV
- The Boys (2019): Butcher's parents. His father viciously abused and terrorized Butcher and his beloved younger brother throughout their childhoods, which eventually drove the latter to suicide; a crime for which the father shows no remorse even when he's dying from cancer. Butcher doesn't hate his mother nearly so much, and she admits to him in the present that the reason why she tricked Butcher into getting back in contact with his father wasn't because she's defending her husband (as she admits he doesn't deserve it at all), but because she was hoping that Butcher confronting the man would give her son some much-needed closure.
- Cursed (2020): Nimue's relationship with her mother Lenore is strained at times, but it's made clear they love each other and Lenore wants what's best for Nimue; she also defends her from the Sky Folk, who claim Nimue is cursed and shun her for it. Nimue's father Jonah bought into the claims she was cursed and was always cold towards her, eventually abandoning her when she was a child. It turns out Jonah also never bonded with Nimue because he became aware she was not actually his child; Lenore had a secret relationship with Merlin shortly before marrying Jonah. Merlin, in contrast, is much more loving and protective towards Nimue once he learns he's her biological father.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Lou Smith is Will's father who abandoned him when he was only four years old. After 15 years, he meets Will again and tries to be a better father to him, only for abandoning him again and refusing to take any kind of responsibility as father. Will's mother, Viola Smith, is the complete opposite of Lou, as she is sweet and kind to her family, especially Will.
- Once Upon a Time: Regina's, the Evil Queen, backstory is given as this. In season 1, episode 18, Cora is such a controlling mother she uses her magic to chastise Regina's unladylike horsemanship after a ride — Henry (Senior) rushes to his daughter's aid, but Cora simply glares at him and he recoils. In season 2, episode 2, Regina is trying to escape her upcoming marriage to King Leopold, when Cora uses her magic on some branches to hold her above her horse. Cora tries to convince her daughter to go through with the wedding, since Regina will be the queen Cora has worked years to groom. In another scene, a distraught Regina confides in her father about getting anxious about her wedding, and Henry is supportive of her trying to find a way out.
- Supernatural:
- Downplayed with the protagonists Sam and Dean's parents. Whilst they perceive their late mother Mary, who died when they were both in infancy, as the paragon of maternal love and virtue, their psychologically-wracked father John, who raised them after her death, was borderline-abusive if not flat-out abusive; as he dragged the boys along on his cross-country crusade for vengeance for their entire childhood and he reared them in the brutal monster-hunting lifestyle. That being said, John still very much loves his sons and they him despite the quarrels they have with him. From Season 12 onwards, after Mary is resurrected, the trope is increasingly subverted as Mary demonstrates that she was a pretty flawed person in her own right even to her sons.
- The Nephilim Jack's parentage in the last four seasons of the show. His human late mother, Kelly Kline, loved him with all her heart and wanted the best for him, and Jack in turn remembers her positively. Jack's biological father Lucifer – yes, that Lucifer – initially tries to form a relationship with Jack, but he's a petty, omnicidal monster at his core who only loves Jack as an extension of himself, and once Jack realizes Lucifer's true colors and disowns him, Lucifer proceeds to brutalize and torture Jack out of spite and tries to force Jack and Sam to kill each-other.
- The Tudors: Per Real Life, all of Henry VIII's children are presented as having comparatively better relationships with their mothers than they do with him. Elizabeth in particular is unfeeling during Henry's dying days because she never forgave or forgot that he had her proud and beloved mother Anne executed on trumped-up charges. Edward is unwittingly condemned to ultimately die of stress due to the pressure Henry puts on him to be his heir to the throne coupled with Henry's paradoxical coddling and controlling treatment of him, all of which the specter of Edward's late mother morosely chides Henry for.
- Whoniverse:
- Doctor Who:
- "The Idiot's Lantern": The Connolly parents. Tommy's father Eddie, though implied to have been a decent man before, is now an insecure bully who constantly browbeats his wife and son, and threatens to deprive Tommy of a chance to go to college because of the threat to his fragile macho ego. Tommy's mother on the other hand is nurturing, and near the end, she recognizes how toxic their family unit has become and she encourages Tommy to do what's best for him.
- "Fear Her": Slightly downplayed. Chloe Webber's living mother is a pretty flawed and ineffectual but loving person, while Chloe's deceased father was evidently an abuser who still haunts them. This leads to one of the Isolus' living drawings depicting Chloe's father to come to life as a literal monster which terrorizes them.
- The Sarah Jane Adventures: A mild case. Although both of Clyde's parents do ultimately prove to love him, his mother who stayed by him is... a much healthier parent and better person than his disappeared dad is. Clyde's father Paul ran out on him and his mother with the latter's sister, ran back to Clyde when his new girlfriend got pregnant by him years later, and quickly gave in to an alien artifact's temptation to wipe his son's mind and kidnap him. Paul briefly becomes a straight case when the artifact begins turning him into an alien creature called a Berserker, and its conditioning forces him to attempt to enslave his son fully.
- Doctor Who:
Video Games
- Dishonored: Delilah Copperspoon is the bastard sister of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin, and therefore Emily Kaldwin's aunt. Delilah claims in conversations with Daud in the first game and Emily or Corvo in the second game that she was blamed for Jessamine breaking a valuable item, and she and her mother were exiled from Dunwall Tower by Emperor Euhorn Kaldwin, and her mother lived out the rest of her life caring for her in a debtor's prison. As Delilah is an Unreliable Narrator at best, it's unclear if she's telling the truth.
- Final Fantasy XIV: Subverted in the Gunbreaker questline. While working in Ul'dah, you encounter a woman who claims that her husband is abusing her and their child. You chase said husband off, but Sophie feels there's something amiss and asks you to tail the woman. You very narrowly catch her in the act of selling her son into slavery in exchange for drug money and stop her. Her husband then catches up to you, explaining that she's addicted to Somnus. He was desperately pleading with her to seek help for her addiction when you encountered her.
- Hades: Zagreus's father, the titular God of the Dead, regularly sneers down his nose at Zagreus and his efforts to escape the Underworld, going so far as to send monsters after him and act as the Final Boss. Zagreus's adoptive mother, Nyx, gives him the Mirror of Darkness that he uses to upgrade his skills and encourages him to fight his way out of the underworld and find his real mother, Persephone. When he does, Persephone at first disbelieves that Zagreus is her son, as he was a Tragic Stillbirth as far as she knew, being revived by Nyx after she fled back to the surface. After she gets over this, Persephone dotes on her son as much as she can during his short visits, and after ten clears of the underworld, joins him and his father in the House of Hades. After this, Hades starts to go a little easier on Zagreus in every context except for combat.
- Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus: Introduces B.J.'s parents for the first time: Zofia Blazkowicz, a loving, caring, gentle, and compassionate woman who did her best to raise her son, and Rip Blazkowicz, an abusive, greedy and bigoted man who constantly abused his wife and son.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Shania's late father threw in his support of her becoming a painter rather than a fighter, and frequently helped cool her down in times of stress even after her sister Titania died. But Shania's mother, particularly after her father's death, browbeat her over her hobby, claiming it was worthless, pressured her into becoming something she was not suited to — a fighter — and has the gall to speak ill of her daughter even when she dies twice.
Web Animation
- Egon: There is a married couple named Egon and Vera, and their two children, Kevin and Egoina.note Egon is a bad father, doing things like making Kevin work while he has the chickenpox and calling him braindead, while Vera is generally the voice of reason and is usually nice to the kids.
- Helluva Boss:
- Blitzø's mother, with what little we've seen and heard of her, is a loving and nurturing woman to her children, whom miss her dearly, while Blitzø's father Cash was a shallow, abusive, greedy prick who treated Blitzø as nothing more than an employee and a means to make money, and wasn't above emotionally backmailing and threatening him.
- Moxxie's parents are arguably an even starker case. His father Crimson is a sociopathic mob boss who is no less tyrannical than Cash while being even more abusive, and he isn't above selling off, threatening and trying to murder his own son for the crime of "going against" him in any way. Moxxie's late mother on the other hand was a nurturing presence who tried to shield him from the gang life and from Crimson's desire to raise Moxxie in it, which eventually led Crimson to murder her.
- Stolas is very loving and protective toward his daughter Octavia. His wife Stella is neglectful at best. She tells Stolas to comfort her after she had a nightmare, and refers to her as an "egg" at a party in front of her rich friends.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Original series: Zuko and Azula's parents, particularly towards Zuko. Their father Ozai is described by Zuko as the worst father of all time, for good reason: Ozai is a heartless, genocidal despot who thoroughly abused both his children in differing ways throughout their upbringings, including burning the side of Zuko's face as a "lesson", and Ozai ultimately tries to kill or discard both his children once they're no longer useful amid his genocidal plans. Zuko and Azula's mother Ursa was a much more nurturing and positive influence – more to Zuko than Azula, although it's all but stated that her strained relationship with Azula was due to Ursa's efforts to curb Azula's troubling unchildlike behaviour backfiring.
- The Legend of Korra: Yakone was an Abusive Parent towards his sons Noatak and Tarrlok, whereas their unnamed mother was much nicer.
- Final Space: Gary's late father John is an awesome, selfless and loving dad who died a hero and is all but idolized by Gary; while his mother Sheryl is an inter-galactic criminal who resented and despised Gary from infancy, abandoned him after John died, and who manipulates and eventually tries to kill Gary in his adulthood, much to his bitter disappointment.
- Invincible (2021):
- The title character Invincible/Mark Grayson's parents are a pretty complicated case, but ultimately, Mark's mother Debbie comes out looking like a way better parent and person all-round than his father Nolan (a.k.a. Omni-Man) does. Debbie is a good woman who extolls the virtues of valuing human life and not letting Mark's superpowers get to his head and make him think he's inherently superior to everyone, and she's never in any meaningful way abusive to Mark. Omni-Man on the other hand is eventually revealed to be an infiltrator for the aggressive and genocidal Viltrum Empire who was sent to Earth to conquer it – at the first season's end, he tries to include Mark in his mission on his side, and when Mark refuses, Omni-Man attempts to break him into obeying via mercilessly murdering and massacring people in front of Mark and beating him to near-death.
- Highly downplayed with Eve's parents. Neither of them are very supportive or understanding of her, but Eve's mother is comparatively a little more empathetic and considerate than Eve's insecure, domineering father is.
- Looney Tunes: In the shorts featuring the Three Bears, Ma is caring towards Junyer and tries (often unsuccessfully) to reason with Pa when the latter loses his temper. Pa is short-tempered and often beats up Junyer for messing up.
- The Owl House: The Blight parents as they're increasingly fleshed out and as the father, Alador, develops as a character. At first, they both appear to be equally abusive parents to their children although Alador comes across as less malicious and more reasonable than Odalia, the mother. As Season 2 goes on, it's gradually revealed that Alador used to have a good relationship with his children, but Odalia has been overworking him to fuel her ambitions for their business which has prevented Alador from having enough time or energy to really be there for his kids — conversely, Odalia is an unrepetant, psychologically-abusive control freak who never has any positive interactions with their children, and in fact uses the threat of turning them into factory labor to keep Alador in line, and is disowned by the rest of the family once it comes out that she was knowingly aiding Belos' plans for total genocide. At the series end, Alador and his children are mutually eager to make up and be a healthy family again, while Odalia is pointedly and tellingly excluded from all of this.
- Young Justice (2010): Artemis Crock and Jade Nguyen's mother Paula was once the villainess known as the Huntress, but has since retired from her life of crime and wants her daughters to avoid the same mistakes she did (though she has better luck with Artemis). On the other hand, Paula's ex-husband Lawrence Crock, a.k.a. Sportsmaster, remains a villain and is the one responsible for Jade becoming the criminal Cheshire. He was also abusive towards the girls while they were in his care during the time Paula was in prison.
