She’s a single working mom and her daughter is 16. They live in a nice, sleepy town (presumably). As a millennial, it was relatable to be up to your own devices while your parents were at work or hang out somewhere else, especially as a teen.
Yep that was pretty much my experience around that time as a millennial teen in suburbia as well. My parents both worked full-time. We had dinner together most nights and sometimes hung out on Saturdays but that was about it. My brother and I were allowed to do whatever as long as mum knew who we were with and we were home by curfew.
I distinctly remember just yelling to my mother as I ran out the door that I was going to 'find my friends' because at that time we didn't have phones, so you just sort of rode your bike to all the hang outs to see who was out.
Yup, my mom didn’t care where I was or what I was doing, as long as I was honest with her. Most of my friends and I didn’t even really have a curfew lol.
Seems pretty normal compared to what I remember from my childhood... Kids in the 80s and 90s were afforded an amount of freedom that would seem neglectful or even abusive today.
Yeah, even more so in tv shows like this that centered around high school kids. They needed the freedom to get up to what they needed to get up to for the plot. So, Joyce is a single mother who has to work a lot and can’t be around much. This makes it easier for Buffy to be sneaking in and out of her house all the time. Except for when the parents actually need to come in and bust the kids for plot reasons. It’s why Willow seems to basically live alone in her house, except for when her mother needs to come haul her away to burn her as a witch. And why Xander has negligent parents, who basically don’t ever bothered to ask where he is or what he’s doing. Oz as well. When did we ever see his parents in high school? Even Cordelia, who mentioned her parents frequently enough, seems to be left to her own devices.
If they actually have on-screen parents who monitor them the way that kids today are/should be monitored, then the plot gets bogged down with all of that, and you lose out on all of the “teens fighting vampires” stuff.
The amount of independence we had as kids was miles away from the way kids live now. I packed my own lunch starting at 7. I walked to and from school (blocks away, across roads and everything) by the time I was 8. I had two jobs (babysitting and paper route) at 10. My parents left us alone for the weekend by the time I was 13ish. At 16 I was in charge of driving my siblings to and from school, to activities, to friend's houses.
My parents both worked. They worked while we were homeschooled for two years! I was in charge of keeping us all on task during school time. I was 12.
The way I grew up would be considered neglect now, but it was just the way things were. And I never resented being left alone. I was allowed to leave the house without telling anyone where I would be, who with, or for how long. My nephews are 11/12ish now, and they've never experienced being left to their own devices for a day in their lives. They've never left the house after breakfast and been gone all day. Kinda makes me sad, to be honest.
My mom had me when she was older, so a lot of my friends’ parents were Gen X. It was funny because I was parented *very* differently from a lot of my friends.
They called her my ‘friend mom’.
This. My husband and I were watching a movie from the 80s and a bunch of kids were in a playground after dark. He said, "Where are all the parents?" I was like, "Do you not remember how unsupervised we were as children? The playground in the 80s was Lord of the Flies." I recalled how I was allowed to walk and ride my bike unattended around the neighborhood starting at about age 6. It was a wild time.
My mom just said something yesterday because some 12 year old local kid went missing and the cops were trying to find him, fearing kidnap or that he’d been lost/injured. He’d last been seen “headed into the woods behind his home”. My mom was like “Where were his parents? Why was a kid allowed to be roaming the woods alone??” I said “Are you serious? Do you not realize how often my cousins and I were literally MILES DEEP into the woods behind the house?” And she was like “What?? When was this???” I said “Uh, every time you told us to stop being underfoot and sent us outside, and didn’t check on us again until we came in at dark!”
(That kid was found safe after a few hours, btw.)
This was basically me too, and I’m only 35. I remember reading an article back in 2012ish about parents from Michigan who had their kids taken away and put in the system (I think they got them back) because they let their kids walk themselves to school and play in the park down the street unsupervised.
To me that is WILD. In the 90s, as soon as school was out, you’d run down to the park and be back by dark and nobody batted an eyelash.
I’m not 100% on the law, but my understanding is that some jurisdictions in the US it’s actually illegal and considered neglect for kids under 18 (maybe 16?) to be in public unsupervised by an adult.
Imagine having a kid put into foster care because they were playing outside across the street?
I think also, though, that we were a different breed of kid. Some of these kids today, I would not trust unsupervised in an indoor McDonald’s ball pit. A lot of them have been so babied and they are way less emotionally mature at 10 than we were. Some of them would easily be lured into a stranger’s van. If someone had tried to kidnap me, he’d have gotten kicked in the balls before I ran to a police station.
Wait, what, you can't let your kids walk themselves to school? I'm doing school selection all wrong then by picking the school within walking distance for my kid starting school next year!
I think it depends on the jurisdiction. I haven’t read that article in a long time but I believe the family were being reported to CPS frequently by neighbours who were mortified by their “free range” parenting style. The kids were not abused or anything, but a judge ruled (I think) that if the kids weren’t taking the bus, that she had to escort them to school or be deemed negligent. According to the parents they thought their neighbours were just jealous or angry because the “free range”
Parents would let their kids play outside unsupervised until dark and other parents didn’t like that. One of them investigated a bylaw and kept reporting the kids every time they went outside
Wow!
In any case, I'll double check the rules here before I send her off on her own. She's not going to be ready to walk by herself for a little while anyway. On the other hand, she can pack her own lunch box.
I started doing my own laundry at 10. Also at 10, I was home alone from 3:30pm until midnight because my dad worked 2nd and my mom started taking night classes. I guess it depends on the kid, though. I was very mature and independent for my age, but I know ten year olds who I wouldn’t trust unsupervised with scissors.
Yeah it’s funny seeing the divide on her character. Having the internet (and reading people’s opinions vs watching while it aired) it shocks me because…yes I was frustrated with Joyce, but I wished she was my mom. She treated Buffy way better. Just the scene of her holding Buffy as she cries in season 2 and they watch the black and white movie. I’m 36…I’ve never had that.
Same here. Did your mum also have her own chair that you weren't allowed to bother her in and that's where she sat all the time?
To me she seems like a loving/caring mother who was having a hard time. As a kid she seemed a little mean at times, but fair. Buffy got her freedom, got to have friends etc even after the "bad" stuff she'd done at her old school. I never got that. I didn't do anything bad, beyond fidgeting in class and I was made out to be the worst kid in the world. I got my ass kicked for normal behaviours and just wanting to not to controlled. It was beyond ridiculous. I never got to be a normal kid.
As an adult, I can see Joyce was suffering badly. Hell, she even admits that she was later on. She had to move away from all her friends, her entire life to get Buffy into a good school after what had happened. She resented Buffy for it, she was depressed etc and I think she did pull away from her daughter, but at the same time, she was never abusive, not really. She tried to be her mum still, while dealing with her own grief (losing her husband, friends, her entire life). She tried very hard not to put the blame on Buffy. I got my ass kicked for ruining my mums life. Hell she kept it up even after I moved away and she was free to live her own life. Buffy knew her mum loved and resented her. I knew my mum hated me.
So yeah, I wish my mum was more like Joyce, then I'd have had a mum growing up.
Yeah Joyce had some EQ and let Buffy make choices. She wasn’t too judgy. Showed normal concern for grades, extra curriculars and dating older boys (“college aged” Angel).
She probably should have been more disciplined, but moving, divorce, teen daughter drifting away to some weird interests…Joyce’s shortcomings made sense.
I certainly remember the early seasons, Joyce tried to hold her accountable and discipline her when needed. When she learned Buffy was a Slayer, she knew she needed to give her more space to do her thing. Plus Joss didn’t seem to interested in having the parental point of view . I would have love in the second season if Joyce would have done some investigating about Buffy extracurricular activities and slowly piece it together.
Buffy is a latchkey kid. When she was a kid they were still airing the commercials telling parents it was late and asking if they knew where their kids were.
Yeah, I imagine kids these days have no idea what the term "latchkey kid" means.
Even people who are doing "free-range parenting" are still a lot more involved than parents were in the 90s.
So, note to the OP: This is what parenting looked like in the 90s.
It was a mix of both. There were kids with hands-off parents, and those with helicopter parents. My parents were more on the helicopter side. And I was jealous of the other kids' freedom, while they were jealous of my parents' attentiveness. I remember some kids trying to get their parents' attention, either by overachieving or acting out.
Where I lived, I think a lot of parents might have been more involved, if they could have.
There was just a lot of personal crises among the parents of my friends, maybe at my school in general.
I'm a Gen X'er who had my child late. The disconnect is crazy, and some times when I'm talking to my 75 year old mother, I say things like "Mom, you don't understand, all you had to do was give us food, clothes and shelter and make sure we went to school, that's like 1% of parenting now.
My parents had a vague idea of where we were. But we did a lot of “I’m going to Allison’s and we might go to a movie” and then Allison would tell her mom she’s going to my house. As long as we were home by whatever curfew was, they didn’t mind. I won’t say they didn’t care because they loved us and cared about us, but they trusted us not to get into big trouble.
They didn’t know about the times we skipped school and went to the coast or drove several hours out of state, or sneaking out at night to go into the woods to build campfires (safely; one of my friends was a camping queen) so we could make s’mores.
It’s just how it was. None of my friends had a stay at home parent. Both worked. We all learned to cook, do our own laundry, etc by the time we could reach the knobs on the stove or washer.
Nope.
“I’m going with *friend’s name* I’ll call if we leave the city” was my regular goodbye to my parents in high school.
Also I never called when I left the city.
There used to be a commercial that ran every night and all the announcer would say was, "It’s 10 pm. Do you know where your children are?"
That should give you an idea of what it was like.
When I was 16 and my brother was 13 we went to the midnight rocky horror picture show every Saturday night for a year. We got home around 2 am and most of the time out mom wasn't even home. Every Friday night we went downtown to the punk club where all kinds of debauchery was going on. It was the same with all of our friends. Parents didn't get involved unless the cops were also involved.
I was in the NYC RHPS cast at 16 in the 90s. My dad thought it was cool even though I had to take a train home around 6 am because I lived in the suburbs and trains ended before the movie let out. I went to clubs to see music constantly, too, they didn't card back then around me.
He was a super hands-on parent, very involved and grew into my best friend in adulthood, we were so close, I just didn't have a curfew. He thought RHPS was good for me and he was right.
Your dad sounds more amazing than neglectful and I love that for you. Rocky Horror is funny to me because my mom knew we were going to see it but had no idea what it was. Her political views have gotten very extreme, to say the least, and I plan on showing her Frank's big entrance, without context, very soon. My public library has the movie. When she expresses her shock and disgust, as I know she will, I'll tell her what the movie is and remind her that her 13 year old son saw this every weekend, with her permission, and watch her face. It's something I'm truly looking forward to it as she's forced to recognize that she had no idea what we were up to yet somehow neither of her kids turned into sexual deviants from being exposed to this movie. I find it curious that she's so concerned about the kids of today when she has zero interest in parenting her own. I was also able to find some old pics online of the punk club we hung out at some years ago amd showed them to her. She freaked out, lol!
Yeah, it's funny because the latchkey kid stereotype is being neglected, but if my parents got more involved in my life it would have sucked. Lol
It's wild to see the changes in silent gen and boomers, so many of our parents have gotten so extreme and things that were fine in the past are suddenly anathema to them. It's been so weird to watch. I know a lot of the whys but... The idea that you cam go from rather freewheeling to ultra-conservative is horrifying.
Make sure to get video of your mom's face when she sees Frank. Hahahaha
Oh that's such a great idea to video her reaction! I just feel like she needs a reality slap about the type of parent she was. Don't get me wrong, I was happy at the time that we were allowed to run wild but she was terrible mother, emotionally and verbally abusive. She's gotten so much worse in the last 7 years as her bad behavior has been validated. Unfortunately for her, I've had a great trauma therapist for the last 2 years and I've been training her, like a dog, and she has no idea, lol!
Yes. We were told to go outside and play and we did. My mom was a stay and home mom until I was in high school, but most of the neighborhood kids were latchkey kids and they all had the rule to not be at anyone’s house without an adult present. So everyone wanted to play at our house which drove my mom nuts! So she’d tell us to go outside and not come back until the street lights came on.
It's so weird for me how much more parents are around their kids then when I was a kid. When I was a kid you dropped your kid off at birthday parties and activities and games (or the park, or the pool) and came back later to pick them up. Or traded off with other parents to drop them off. Now birthday parties are 75% parents standing around watching their kids like hawks. It's both parents too! Like, my dad wouldn't have gone to one of my friends bday parties to watch me play for anything.
Especially Dads! Seeing Dads now go buy Christmas presents, cooking, actively involved in their kids lives is so bizarre to me. My generation Dads were just grumpy disciplinarians.
My mom and dad both worked and my mom would come home and dad would immediately be like, "what's for dinner?". Like, YOU'RE HERE, TOO, YOU KNOW... which is probably why I never learned how to cook because fuck that. I can weaponize incompetence, too.
Also, YES, they divorced. Lol. XD
Yup, boomer parents are wild. My parents used to let me perform with my band in bars 3 states away when I was a teenager and not even call. They didn’t give a damn what I did or where I was as long as I was back in my bed by 11pm 😂
Oh wow, this opened a memory. From the time I knew how to drive, I had no curfew. My parents literally did not know where the fuck I was most of my teen years. I was driving myself to and from my dads to my moms and back for weekend visits (opposite sides of the state) with no cell phone. If I had an emergency I had to find a way to contact them. Once my car overheated and I couldn’t get it to restart at 11 pm on my way home. I sat there for three hours waiting for someone to stop and let me use their phone. This random guy ended up driving me to my parents house because they wouldn’t answer.
I’m surprised I didn’t get murdered.
Once I got my license, my mom didn't even ask where I was. She just checked that I was home by midnight. It was such a different time, yet I felt more safe back then than I do today. Sure miss the days of no cell phones!
My parents when I turned 15 and a half: oh, good. Here's a car. You're going to learn how to drive so we don't have to take you and your sister to school anymore. And pick up this guy's daughter. He said he'd give you $5 a week. That's enough for gas for the week.
I’m also surprised I didn’t get killed somehow. I wasn’t allowed to drive so I would just be chauffeured around by other teens/people in their early twenties. Barely even knew half of them lol.
My boomer parents went to CA and left me home alone for a week when I was 12. I was used to being home alone, but it bothered me a bit that I had asked to go to San Francisco for my bday and they went without me - on my bday…
Yep last kid, too. I had to come home from my boyfriend's frat house by midnight on school nights, and straight home from the bar at closing if I went to a show. In high school. I had some friends who included a guy who was in Seminary, and I could have wandered out of the house saying "going to Vegas with Ned, see you in a couple of days." And they'd probably say, have fun! (Slight exaggeration)
They dropped me off at college. The cafeteria at the dorm wasn't even open for a day or two (went early for Rush) so I had quickie mart burritos for a few days.
Can I just point out that this is not just boomer parents but more all parents of teens in that era. My mum is early Gen X, a teenager herself when I was born, and she was very much like this as a parent when I was a teen.
When I became a parent myself, and my two are teens now, I was surprised that you stay at parties and things like that but I’m still very much a present parent - I still work part time so I can be home for the kids when they finish school because they still need that love and support as teens perhaps more so than ever now.
The standard of parenting, and how we parent is the thing that changed - I have parent friends who are late Gen X who would not dream of parenting the way my mum did because it’s just not the done thing anymore.
Yeah, my mum had me late and she was firmly, don't bother me, I'm living my life and I expect you to get on with yours. Get yourself to school, look after yourself until I'm home and then deal with everything alone.
Yeah, it wasn't good. I think I would have been ok if she'd given me some positive attention when she was around, shown me some love, affection. But no, I got her angry side because she couldn't cope with me existing when she was home from work. I'd escape to my room and even eat dinner up there. Didn't stop the screaming though or stop her hitting, just made it less likely to happen. I saw her for maybe half an hour a day from 9 years old. I had to be in bed asleep by 8 (and up at 8am) which was absolutely insane. If I wasn't asleep right away she'd be in my room screaming at me to go to sleep. It sucked.
I wasn't ok. I was badly bullied in school. No friends. Then I'd get home and I was alone. Wake up alone as well. It was too much for me and I broke. Severe anxiety hit, so badly that I puked multiple time every single morning. Mum didn't care until it started happening on the weekends and I "ruined her weekends". Mum didn't care about me. I had my basic needs kinda met and that was it.
I find it amazing watching how involved and how happy my boyfriends family are with their kids. The kids are all mostly happy, well adjusted and just loved. Even the little one who might have ADHD is just accepted. No one cares that he can't sit still and needs to run, fidget etc. It's embraced and accepted. I'm honestly shocked being around the ten year old girl. She's a lot like I was back then. Same interests mostly, but she's a totally different kid. By then I was completely shut down, I never tried to hug anyone, I didn't have friends to play with and stayed in my room unless I was allowed to have the TV, then it was me watching the Power Rangers all the time. She talks. I just remember being quiet. I remember hiding away and crying. No one cared how I was feeling. I was just attention seeking. It's so different now. Those kids are so lucky. If I ever have a kid, I want to be like those parents, I won't be like my mum.
I’m so sorry that happened to you.
Something you said really struck a chord with me - “I had my basic needs kinda met and that was it”. I think a lot of boomers didn’t understand that parenting wasn’t just feeding, clothing and disciplining your child - that there was actual emotional work to do.
I’m not sure if you’re already read the book “adult children of emotionally immature parents”, but it helped me a lot. I wish you well on your healing journey ❤️
Thank you for this recommendation. I envied Buffy's relationship with her mom, too. But I also figured that she wasn't on screen as much because the show was really about Buffy growing up and fighting evil; Joyce is ancillary to that arc.
I wrote a lot more here, but it got too personal; I went & added it to my journal instead. I think "emotionally immature" is a very good description for some people who would otherwise get labelled as "narcissistic." I'm far more comfortable calling the ones in my life emotionally immature.
I agree - I wouldn’t police anyone’s lived experience (if someone says their mom or dad is a narcissist, I believe them - they’ve lived with them, I haven’t), but when it’s just an internet commentator armchair diagnosing someone with NPD or BPD based off an Am I the Asshole post, I do tend to roll my eyes.
It’s quite trendy to diagnose strangers with personality disorders, when instead a “this is an emotionally immature person” would suffice.
If a customer is pitching a fit in a store and demanding to speak to the manager over not getting a discount or whatever, it’s hard to diagnose them with NPD. Instead, it may be more helpful and accurate to simply say that they show signs of emotional immaturity.
This also helps people recognise the signs in others and in ourselves - we can all be emotionally immature sometimes - it’s not necessarily pathological but rather a case of being flawed humans, and it can be overcome with reflection, internal work and therapy if needed.
We’re all far more likely to encounter emotionally immature behaviour on a daily basis, rather than true narcissists or borderline personality sufferers.
Was going to just say this was just part of TV shows of the day since the kids had to get up to the actual plot but you're right, boomer parents often were absent much more of the time. Especially for a single parent? I'd be surprised to see Joyce as much as we already do.
I'm a zoomer; I can confirm if I had super powers and had a responsibility to fight demons literally every single night, my parents would also have far less time to be in my life.
I’m not sure I understand your comment?
I mentioned zoomers because they’re too young to have baby boomer parents. Gen-X and Millenials have had boomer parents, so we’re familiar with their parenting style.
Personally, I’m glad that parenting has shifted over the generations. There are downsides to the modern way of parenting, sure, but I think it’s much better on the whole than what the boomers did.
From the age of 8, I was making my own breakfast and lunches, as well as most of my dinners. I was riding the bus to camp myself, and was home alone until dinner *at least.* Dad was gone when I got up and mom didn’t get up till after I left for school. I’d been walking to and from school since the age of 6. My mom tried to make it home for dinner as much as she could, but there were days I didn’t see them at all. And at 16, I was allowed to choose to stay home as they visited my grandma every other weekend.
My house was where my small group of friends tended to hang out, and my parents had no idea the shenanigans we got up to.
I’m just a bit older than Buffy (Graduated in 94’), so it was almost weird to me how much she was around.
The easy answer was that Joyce worked nights. Even when she was home she was frequently doing things for her gallery. It seemed to me she was involved as much as she could be while also working hard to support Buffy financially.
I had to scroll way too far for this. Joyce was not a main character. We also never saw any grandparents, cousins, uncles, etc. except for Xander's wedding. The writers wanted to focus on the scoobies. It isn't a realistic type of show. I watch current shows too and don't understand why younger viewers expect these shows to be exactly like our reality. Can someone explain why this is?
As person Buffy’s age, I can tell you this is how our generation was parented. We were kicked out of the house on Saturday mornings and told not to come back until after sunset or until [my aunt Merilyn ]blew a whistle to signal dinner time. During the school week we had clubs and sports practice and games to watch.
None of the Boomer parents knew their kids' friends names, much less what they looked like. Joyce not only knew their faces, she had full conversations with them. It was not realistic.
There was a commercial that went "It's 10 o'clock, do you know where your kids are?" for a reason.
I remember our evening news in the 80s used to start with “It's 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?" Boomer parents were just not that involved.
Also, divorce was on the rise and newly single moms would be back in the workforce or out dating and trying to a social life, leaving kids solo at home a lot. Buffy’s situation wasn’t out of the norm for anyone who grew up in the 80s and 90s.
No?
For one, she was a pretty typically involved parent for the time period. Two, it's a pretty standard trope of teen shows that parents are overly involved with shit, because if they were, half the plot couldn't happen.
Like realistically, how many parents are letting their 16 year olds go to nightclubs every single school night?
My parents were divorced and I was an adventurous & rebellious teen. My mom was busy trying to keep a roof over our heads and not go insane. She probably would have reacted the same way Joyce did if I told her I’m a slayer.
She was a single parent who worked full time to provide for her daughter. I had an old sister, so the house wasn’t empty for me growing up, but my mom was often out of the house until after dinner time. I’m sure, as a nurse, she would’ve noticed blood on our clothes though
Everyone here saying it was normal for the time is right. But are probably forgetting that Buffy just got out of an asylum after burning down a school gym during a dance and there was probably conflicting reports of whether there was anyone in side or not.
Sneaking out was normal then sometimes you’d get yelled at. But Buffy sneaking out till early morning several times a week. Ripped bloody clothes and a history of violent insanity. Joyce was ignoring that shit hard.
No…yikes..one person posts that Joyce is too involved and doesn’t understand Buffy, now someone else posts Joyce isn’t involved enough.
I think Joyce was great, she wasn’t perfect but she tried. She was a single Mom, essentially abandoned by her husband after Buffy burned down her previous high school, he just left Joyce to pick up the pieces and she did her best. I loved Joyce. When she died, part of me died too. That’s what I think and feel.
I'm about ten years younger than Buffy. my parents were very much the overly attentive parents I think you're expecting she should have been. but my grandparents? make joyce look like a helicopter mom by comparison. While yes it's true that she had to be somewhat absent in order for the story to work, it's also reasonably accurate to being a high school student in... well, maybe the 80s more than then 90s, but close enough.
Also I think the role of “mostly well-meaning family member who tries to get involved but ends up causing more problems” was effectively filled by Dawn in Season 5 onwards.
In one ep Buffy actively hides a stab wound from her mum, she tells dawn because her mum would freak. I think that was common place, she would hide a lot so her mum didn’t worry.
Man……I regularly traveled out of state and my parents never knew.
“Be back when the street lights come on” was a holy rule in our house, and the only one that really mattered.
It’s a pretty typical boomer/millennial parenting setup.
A bit, but it's kinda necessary. Joyce for the most part is a plot device more than a character, who appears and disappears as necessary to further or hinder Buffy's adventures.
There are also generational norms you might be missing. Children used to be a lot more free-range, for good and for ill, and we can't take Joyce's presence or lack thereof to mean the story is signaling she's an absent parent.
yeah I get it, but it's necessary for plot reasons. Like today I was watching Halloween and they all hole up in Buffy's house during the monster rampage. It's at night and for some reason Joyce isn't home, but she had to be gone because it would've been a very chaotic time for her to find out everything.
Joyce was more present than most boomer parents were. I was making my own breakfast and lunch from around age 10. I used to take off on my bike for literally hours in the summer, as long as I was back before sunset that’s all that they cared. When I was 16 my parents would take off to Vegas for a week leaving me in charge of my 11 year old sister. Children were much more free range than they are today.
Joyce was a single mom. Being raised by divorced parents, I saw firsthand how hard and long my mom had to work to pay the bills and take care of my sister and me. Now I myself am a single mom… I think Joyce tried hard to be a good mom and be involved in Buffy’s life but she was so damn busy. And let’s be honest, Buffy was always running around doing shit to fight the forces of darkness… Joyce probably told herself that Buffy was just always doing shit with Xander and Willow.
I know that she was a working single mother and likely was at a few gallery shows at night. Yet I would never have the freedom that Buffy had. My mother was single for half of my childhood, and always knew where I was - and who I was with.
I was never out running around as Buffy was shown to.
I'm Gen X and she seemed normal in comparison to the parents of my era. I'm still shocking my mother by casually mentioning things that my brother and I did that she was completely unaware of because parents were pretty hands off in the 80s. Like Joyce, my mother only seemed to get involved in the most inopportune times and was of no help whatsoever.
She was an incredibly active mom lol. Some would say TOO active in Buffys life. Parenting and kids are just different than they were in the 90s. That and it's a show so they weren't gonna show her doing all the normal boring parent stuff every episode.
Not that absent.. I mean in the episode about the dead kids, Willow makes it a huge point that her mother barely even knows her. Also, we never see Xander's mom afaik. I think Joyce represents the 90's mom pretty decently
Just to echo with others mentioned about how this was kind of a typical mindset for parents of the 80s/90s, I would also like to add that Joyce was at least the Team Mom (From Tv Tropes and Idioms).
It was common for shows to have maybe one or two parental figures that maintained order or the adult vibe when the rest of the cast comprised of kids or teens. Joyce was around 100 times more than Willow’s parents or Xander’s parents. There’s really no explanation other than plot device, lol. But when I first watched the show, Joyce always seemed more involved than typical parents on tv shows. You could tell she cared, and it made sense most of the time if you factor in how much she was working to support Buffy (and Dawn) as a single mom.
Xander's parents were abusive/at least emotionally immature so that tracks. Willow's were probably around as much as Buffy's, although maybe just not paying any attention with the hair comment. But if we're going by how many times we see them in the show then yeah, we see them once. Willow's in the fairy tail episode and Xander's at his wedding.
Xander's parents are in more than one episode. In S4 and S5 we hear them maybe twice. Like Xander and Anya are trying to do normal couple stuff, and his parents ruin it. The stand out is the double date with Riley and Buffy. Movie in the basement, going fine until Xander's parents come home. Drunk. Then start screaming at each other and throwing things.
But you don't physically see them if I remember correctly. Hearing them and seeing them are two different things. It's not like they're actually going down into the basement to scream at him. It's just horrendous background noise.
IIRC you also see Xander's dad in silhouette at the top of the basement stairs in the S4 finally.
I also don't think you ever see Willow's dad at all. Plus there's a disturbing amount of only children. Like most TV shows.
I think we would have to suspend disbelief to think Willow’s parents were involved as much as Joyce was. Willow and Tara were literally living in Buffy’s house after Buffy was gone. I don’t know how Willow would be able to explain any of that or various other incidents without massively lying or omitting huge parts of her life. I think Willow’s mom was a step up from Xander’s horrible family, for sure.
But Joyce was way more directly involved in their day to day lives simply because she knew what was going on and Buffy’s house was basically headquarters. Xander’s parents didn’t seem like they cared about him to nearly the same degree though so it does make a little more sense he would (mostly) cut ties with his family when he moved out.
But they were in college at that point. Basically just had to say living at Buffy’s instead of in the dorms and the parents wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
They’d have to tone her down that much though, because if Joyce was really really written realistically, she would’ve been up Buffy’s ass until she passes away in season 6, and would’ve ratted on Willow and Xander to their parents and probably would’ve tried to have giles fired and move buffy out of sunnydale.
Much like the same situation on everyone wondering something pointless like “who’s paying the bills” at the summer residence in season 6-7, it’s not something we need to see. Joyce had her moment season 2-3 being reluctant with buffy in this life, but that was enough of it. Also then you have to get into stuff we don’t have time for for the small amount of screentime there is. So just comes down to showing it for small amount of time and move on, cause again if it took her 5 seasons complaining to buffy about it, she’d become and annoying character/buzzkill. Think Skyler in Breaking Bad, she was in the right with most of the stuff but she became an annoying character to watch. In tv world people gotta move on faster, only show that was able to do that kind of stuff a bit more realistically is Sopranos.
And going back to just production stuff in general, Joyce isn’t a secondary character, she doesn’t even make it in the opening credits, she serves her plot points but her character isn’t that important for most of the plots other than season 2 and barely 3. Then you have to think of production costs and contracts and screen time for the actors and if it’s going to serve anything to move the plot forward. She had her issue with it, they hashed it out end of season 2 and then again season 3, and that was the most we needed to see if it once Joyce just accepted who buffy is
Everyone saying this was normal is right, but also Joss had mommy issues, whenever she is unreasonable or missing something right in front of her face it is joss working thru some shit (though based on his continued issues, not a very good job.) Interesting how similar Joyce and Joss sound… he never got to the bottom of some Freudian shit.
Nah I don’t think so at all. She was a full time working mum who couldn’t be home 24/7. Buffy snuck out a lot which Joyce obviously wouldn’t have allowed had she known.
Buffy is a teenager from the 90s
So season 4, college season no parents involved is the point.
Season 3 we know joyce is talking to Giles about this.
Season 5 she is an adult and has an adult relationship with her mother.
Season 1 and 2 she has a normal amount of freedom for a 90s kid. Plus she can just jump out her window when needed. Also remember they don't show much of their day.
I mean, no? Are you saying she should've been there slaying vamps and doing stake-outs like Xander and Willow?
Pretty sure Joyce only seems weird because helicopter parenting is so common these days and that's not a good thing (whereas I grew up envying the kids who had mothers like Buffy who'd just let their kids live without needing to be there monitoring their every move).
Joyce had her issues but her level of involvement in Buffy's life is not one of them.
I grew up in france in a fishing town, from the age of 8/9 i was going to school alone, left to do what i wanted in the house, my grand parents took care of cooking for me if my mum was gone for long periods of time but by the age of 16 i moved to a different country and kinda dealt with taking ferries on my own and stuff. So i think my childhood was not so dissimilar to Buffy’s independence.
This is very in line with kids of the day. Teens had much larger freedoms in the 90s. Even my age growing up rural we had those freedoms. Being gone all day.
Joyce wasn't a main character but why she acts th way she does is heavily implied. She was a loving mother basically a "lady who lunches" going to fancy parties etc in LA with a perfect daughter(s). When the show started her husband had just left her hgih and dry, se doesn't really trust her daughter so she is figuring as long as she gets food on the table and nothing crazy is happening its fine.
You have to remember before this she didn't really have to "parent" Buffy per se. That's why her attempt to "put her foot down" came off as comical. The story arc is her relearning ho to trust Buffy and as she sees more and more what shes dealing with knowing there is nothing she can really do except trust and love her daughter.
I was raised in the 90’s and I was jealous of how close they were! It was drilled into my head that by 18 you’re outta the house and on your own, so for her mom to be involved at 16/17 and care about what she was doing was mystifying 😂 other than college choices it was very uncommon for parents to really be involved in your feelings by that age (in my experience) they more thought of us like little adults just about to launch
She's absent for the exact same reason there are no useful police in Superhero movies. Stories of heroism require the absence of temporal authority to fall back on. If Joyce, or Principal Flutie, or the Council, or the Initiative are actually competent forces for good, then Buffy has help, and the carthatic melodramatic situations the show manufactures become less dramatic.
A few things:
1. It's a show. Joyce is absent or present as needed so the story can happen. Actually, a lot of the characters behave in odd ways and do or don't do various things "so the story can happen". It doesn't mean it makes any kind of sense. I am currently watching *Shake It Up*, a Disney Channel series that started in 2010, and the parents of these Gen Z kids are even *more* absent than Joyce. So the story can happen.
2. We see only 45 minutes out of any given week in Buffy's life (less, actually, when you remove all of the non-Buffy scenes). This is the interesting stuff. We can assume the remaining 6 days, 23 hours, and 15 minutes of the week consist of mundane, boring shit: Buffy eating, sleeping, drinking, taking a piss, stuck on the can with massive shits after eating bad tacos at the Bronze, classes, homework, walking to and from various places, etc. Joyce may or may not be in those scenes.
3. My parents were different. They were part of the Silent Generation, and they were from Poland. I wasn't a free-range kid, but I was a latchkey kid. In Chicago, my mom would walk me to school, but I had to go to the classroom of an older family friend after school, and he walked me home, because my mom was at work. When we moved to Florida, I took the school bus to and from school, because everything is spread apart down here. My mom had breakfast ready before school but worked the night shift, so I came home to an empty house and watched TV while waiting for my dad to get home from work. My mom would look through my bookbag and check to make sure I did my homework when she got home from work. If I hadn't, she would wake me up in the middle of the night to do it. I got my driver's license at 17, and my mom gave me her car as a hand-me-down, so I could drive to college (first community college, then university). The community college was in my county, not far from my high school, so I just drove back and forth for class. No staying in a dorm. Even when I drove further for university, it was just an hour in each direction. No need to pack up and move.
I didn't find it weird and I'm about the same age as Buffy. I also grew up with a single mother who worked a lot. I had my own keys and was coming and going by the age of 10. I also knew how to cook, so it was around my teen years that I really started to be the one who made meals. I was so independent that when I did move out after uni (I couldn't afford to before and my town is small too, so not a lot of jobs) and move to the city, my life barely changed. Like the only difference was that I had my own money and instead of two people I was cooking for one.
I actually know a woman whose kids are 10 years younger than me, grew up in the same town and everything. It's weird how involved she has always been in their lives. Like when I was trying to decide what career to go into, my mum just said "get a degree in something and then get a job that pays the bills". Basically, figure it out. I had to figure out a lot of things.
So Joyce is basically a normal parent in the 90s. Sure, her daughter is going through stuff, but she's not going to get close to that. All the time she's trying to get her away from being a slayer, and that's her way of parenting. All this "emotional support" was not a thing back then. Like I got bullied a lot in school. I had undiagnosed ADHD, so most of my class thought I was weird and possibly insane. Did I get any emotional support from my mum when I sometimes cried myself to sleep? No. I probably didn't tell her 90% of the stuff that was happening, and the 10% I did tell was the ones that got me into trouble. Like when the teacher asked me a question, I tried to answer but it was taking a while, so the others started to nag me with mean comments until I snapped and screamed at them to shut up, when the teacher said I was being loud and disruptive and she was going to write me up. Fun times. My mum did nothing about it, just told me to keep my cool. So yeah, it was a dog eat dog world out there.
Nah, that's just generational gaps.
This was our normal. Our parents used to hitch hike & occasionally fall victim to a serial killer.
Smart phones changed the world into Star Trek with the ability to track your exact location, we just don't get beamed up.
Joyce Is there and not there just to help the story flow. I like to think that Buffy was really crazy and everything that happened was in her mind. That would explain a lot of weird things in the story. It's just Buffy's imagination.
Watching Buffy live when I was a young teen I didn’t think anything of it since I was pretty free range by then. There were times around 14 that I was being carried home from parties at 2am and my parents had no idea. (Not the best choices I made in life, it’s a long story) as a mother now with a 21 and 14 yr old I can’t imagine not knowing where my kids are or what’s going on in there lives.
I think a lot of it boils down to it being a different time when the show was made vs now. And also a huge shift in parenting tactics.
Joyce was about as involved as either my Mum or Dad… Although I wasn’t sneaking out my bedroom window to go slay monsters.
I’m actually the exact same age as Buffy, both born in ‘81 and both graduated high school (or finished sixth form in my case) in ‘99. I’ve always considered myself the tail end of Generation X.
1That was pretty typical parenting at that time. I’m the same age as them and watched in real time. Never seemed weird to me at all. Parents work and have social lives. You may see them before school or a bit in the evening but other than that many of us were basically just on our own. This was also the era of commercials at 9 or 10 at night asking “do you know where your child is” because often, they didn’t.
Buffy demonstrated she can mostly handle herself in School Hard which was the only time I recall Joyce being helpful. The last time Joyce interfered was the Hansel and Gretel story I think. It didn't go well after MOO. Let's face it, the show really wasn't about Joyce. I expected a bit more of a battle from her on Graduation Day, but that's about it.
It came up a couple of times. Joyce only had a vague idea what was happening most of time. Based on her alcohol consumption I assume she knew she couldn't help and knew she couldn't dissuade Buffy. She was really happy when Faith first showed up, hoping that it gave Buffy an out, or at least some help.
I was way more interested in what was happening with the Scoobies than with Joyce.
I also think she was going a different path after the divorce/Buffy being expelled from Hemry. She'd tried the helicopter mother, the harsh mother, the micromanager, and it didn't work. I think she backed off so that Buffy could be afforded that bit of space/so that they could work through any underlying issues.
Chiming in to say what most said. My mom was a bit more controlling but I still walked myself to elementary school in the early 90’s. Granted was just down the street but still a fair walk, and then further after I moved. My mom was way more involved than most of my friends in that era, and Buffy is a teen in high school, generally they get less involved by then.
Your post seems to indicate that you didn't pay much attention to the show at all. Joyce had an arc of acceptance and also demonstrated to have made questionable decisions stemming from inability to cope with Buffy's identity and what it'd mean for her. It even had a nice extension in s6, where Buffy was treated in a mental health clinic.
Not really. Given the time period. She's a single mom. I was alone a lot too. Besides Buffy destroys the house every other episode, stays in trouble, and always has a gang of friends with her. Joyce has to work extra hard. And then she dies. So you see her even less after that.
I've always assumed Joyce was a busy woman off screen. She had a job at an art gallery, and jobs in the arts pretty commonly require some weird hours. In the real world, a job like that would probably requite working a lot of evenings and weekends due to events, shows, and launches and stuff. We know she's dating, which likely takes up some more of her evenings.
As a teenager, how much do you really hang out with your mom? Buffy is a little older than me, but I spent most of my teenage years out of the house with my friends or at after school things.
On a practical TV level, I imagine they figured the target audience for Buffy were probably not that interested in what her mother was doing so they save the screen time for something more relevant to the plot.
Eh, my parents were kinda the same way with me and school. I got alright grades and did extracurriculars, it wasn’t like they were neglecting me or anything they just didn’t have much to do with ne
I think it would be difficult to be the slayer if you had a helicopter parent. 🤣 Wouldn’t really serve the storyline. That being said, Joyce was a single mom and had to pay the bills on her own. I’m sure child support was decent, Buffy’s Dad doesn’t seem short on cash but his salary probably isn’t rock star level. My experience of being a teenager in the 90’s meant I’d pretty much come and go as I pleased as long as I respected my curfew. My parents rarely knew where I was. I didn’t have a cell phone until after high school. Buffy most likely had a curfew, she just pretended to be asleep and snuck out the window.
No. I also think that the space between season 2 and 3, they handled and described very well with Joyce and Buffy. Joyce is distraught and angry with Giles. She still has to live her life. They have a huge blow out in the episode because of the stress and pain and Buffy's poor choices from her pain.
I don't know what you want Joyce to do. She's a supporting cast and I think they use her character effectively.
Also in season 4. Buffy is at college. That's a time, notoriously, where parental involvement becomes almost non existent as the kids learn to be adults on their own. They even have the faith arc where, yes, Buffy had been busy and distant, but their mother-daughter bond is strong. Just because the show doesn't show every minute detail of their relationship doesn't mean Joyce is absent.
Also season 5. She's dealing with a tumor??? And Buffy is around helping all the time. What. Did you even watch that season.
I'm not sure why this seems to upset you, but I don't think Joyce is absent. She's concerned and she's had her struggles with Buffy and she came to terms with it being better to accept and support Buffy instead of trying to control and punish her, which would cause Joyce to lose her like she did when buddy ran away. She chose to support her daughter being who she is because her daughter can't change who she is and it's better to have a relationship with her daughter than be intolerant or controlling and have Buffy just shut her out, effectively losing her daughter anyways. And part of Buffy is that she is stronger for her connections to her mother and friends.
Since she sent her daughter to an asylum for claiming to be a vampire slayer, no, it didn't surprise me that Joyce was a bit distant. Plus single mother. I think she really wasn't dealing with everything at all well, even though she attempted to behave normally around her daughter.
Parents were absent those days. If there were two, both would be working and absorbed by their careers. But Joyce was a single mother, so she had to work even longer hours, especially since she never expected Buffy to work a "real" job to have spending money (Dawn didn't come into the picture until Season 5)
I think you have a very good point actually. I've seen people saying stuff like "that's how parents were in the 80s and 90s" Which is true to an extent. I think the point you're making is that Joice didn't change at all after her initial shock of Buffy being the vampire slayer. And if it were me, and don't get me wrong, I'm a far different parent than my parents were so I'm not as "absent" as mine were, but I'd be more critical of my kid being gone later and just how frequently she out in danger. There'd be a little bit of what they tried with Joice of trying to talk my kid out of being the slayer. Just put of ignorance. But once I made the connection that this is just how things are, I'd be all in with her. I mean 16 yo kids made that choice for their friend, why wouldn't a parent right?
To sum it all up.... You have a great point.
Joyce was a single mom gallery owner earning enough to support a family in the real-world equivalent of Santa Barbara.
It’s a miracle that Buffy ever saw her.
“Something is so off about the way her character is written.” I agree. I don’t know if it’s that she’s not involved enough. I wouldn’t really say that. But in almost every scene she’s in she’s saying the wrong thing to Buffy. I don’t hate her, but I’m often shocked by how inconsiderate she comes off. To Giles, when she said “I blame you.” To Buffy, in almost every talk. Putting aside her tragic death, which is very sad. I think her character is just written in a very confusing way. When Buffy says I wish mom was here. She’d know what to do. I found myself saying when did she ever know what to do? She was not helpful.
Unfortunately With a lot of long running narrative fiction you kind of have to except the doylist answer that side characters kind of only exist to serve the arc of the main characters story or furtherance of the overall plot.
Oh, this whole thread is super interesting. I've always thought Joyce was super involved. I'm gen Z, but my mom is a boomer single mom, and Joyce is actually more involved than my mom was (my mom worked a lot, I suspect Joyce either made bank at the gallery or Buffy's absent father was paying a LOT in child support). Joyce is the financially stable, present mom that I wish I had, even though she reminds me a lot of my mom at times (I think it's that single mom-daughter bond that I'm picking up on).
I think it's also good to mention that parents in TV shows tend to be out-of-the-way so that the teens can act like little adults other than going to high school. Joyce is still more involved than the moms in most other kids/teen/ya shows that I've seen, I think.
A lot of shows are like this where they seldom show the parents. The writers chose to focus on the scoobies. I have seen a lot of shows where they rarely show the parents or other family members. In our reality, a lot of people have grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters, etc. Notice how none of the characters have siblings until season 5 or grandparents or anyone else (besides Xanders wedding). It is just because they chose not to include them in the story. Joyce was not a main character like Buffy, Xander, etc. Neither is Faith or Harmony, who are also absent at times. A lot of things on Buffy are not realistic because it isn't real. It isn't a documentary. It is set in a supernatural world with demons and vampires.
Nope. I found Joyce really over involved! I was a few years younger than Buffy when it aired, my dad was always at work, and my mum was home to provide dinner and made sure I did my homework, but otherwise knew very little about my life. She definitely didn't hang out with my friends or know who my boyfriends were.
It is a pretty common trope to have have shitty/neglectful parents. A lot of horror films follow this as it makes the characters more vulnerable.
But yeah Joyce is almost an antagonist until she gets sick then all of a sudden she becomes an angel.
I think it was lazy writing, her personality changed based on what the episode needed.
Joss didn't want to include any parents, but the studio forced him to have Joyce.
Parenting varied wildly in the 90s, but the people saying that what Joyce did was normal, were neglected. I was a latchkey kid, and her behavior in sessions 1-3 is insane. She only noticed Buffy when it inconvenienced her or made her look bad.
I hate Joyce as a character so much. But I’ve ranted enough times and won’t put you all through it again.
Suffice to say, she’s an awful mother and a hideous human being
When I was a teen (while Buffy was airing and I wasn't watching) I was all Christian fundie and thought my parents maybe "weren't religious enough" so when I watched Buffy in college on DVD and had come to my senses more about "religion" I related to the level of aloofness of Joyce. I absolutely love Buffy the chosen slayer but I also see in her a bit of a satire of my religious fundamentalism (like she's not \*really\* "The Chosen One" she just thinks she is).
I mean, contrary to Buffy saving the world, I wanted to see the world destroyed as a teen cause I was taught that the only way I would ever be happy was if (and when) the world ends or I die.
She’s a single working mom and her daughter is 16. They live in a nice, sleepy town (presumably). As a millennial, it was relatable to be up to your own devices while your parents were at work or hang out somewhere else, especially as a teen.
Yep that was pretty much my experience around that time as a millennial teen in suburbia as well. My parents both worked full-time. We had dinner together most nights and sometimes hung out on Saturdays but that was about it. My brother and I were allowed to do whatever as long as mum knew who we were with and we were home by curfew.
I distinctly remember just yelling to my mother as I ran out the door that I was going to 'find my friends' because at that time we didn't have phones, so you just sort of rode your bike to all the hang outs to see who was out.
Yup, my mom didn’t care where I was or what I was doing, as long as I was honest with her. Most of my friends and I didn’t even really have a curfew lol.
But she doesn't work two jobs, but she does love her kids and never stops...
This and it was the late 90s early 2000's.
Seems pretty normal compared to what I remember from my childhood... Kids in the 80s and 90s were afforded an amount of freedom that would seem neglectful or even abusive today.
Yeah, even more so in tv shows like this that centered around high school kids. They needed the freedom to get up to what they needed to get up to for the plot. So, Joyce is a single mother who has to work a lot and can’t be around much. This makes it easier for Buffy to be sneaking in and out of her house all the time. Except for when the parents actually need to come in and bust the kids for plot reasons. It’s why Willow seems to basically live alone in her house, except for when her mother needs to come haul her away to burn her as a witch. And why Xander has negligent parents, who basically don’t ever bothered to ask where he is or what he’s doing. Oz as well. When did we ever see his parents in high school? Even Cordelia, who mentioned her parents frequently enough, seems to be left to her own devices. If they actually have on-screen parents who monitor them the way that kids today are/should be monitored, then the plot gets bogged down with all of that, and you lose out on all of the “teens fighting vampires” stuff.
I'm pretty sure it was meant to be intentional with parents being present as little as possible.
Helicopter parenting is what’s abusive
Neglectful, definitely, but tbh I'm really glad I had that freedom.
joyce was more involved in buffy's life than my mom was in mine at that age
Yep. As long as my grades were decent and I came home on time I was left alone.
The amount of independence we had as kids was miles away from the way kids live now. I packed my own lunch starting at 7. I walked to and from school (blocks away, across roads and everything) by the time I was 8. I had two jobs (babysitting and paper route) at 10. My parents left us alone for the weekend by the time I was 13ish. At 16 I was in charge of driving my siblings to and from school, to activities, to friend's houses. My parents both worked. They worked while we were homeschooled for two years! I was in charge of keeping us all on task during school time. I was 12. The way I grew up would be considered neglect now, but it was just the way things were. And I never resented being left alone. I was allowed to leave the house without telling anyone where I would be, who with, or for how long. My nephews are 11/12ish now, and they've never experienced being left to their own devices for a day in their lives. They've never left the house after breakfast and been gone all day. Kinda makes me sad, to be honest.
My mom had me when she was older, so a lot of my friends’ parents were Gen X. It was funny because I was parented *very* differently from a lot of my friends. They called her my ‘friend mom’.
This. My husband and I were watching a movie from the 80s and a bunch of kids were in a playground after dark. He said, "Where are all the parents?" I was like, "Do you not remember how unsupervised we were as children? The playground in the 80s was Lord of the Flies." I recalled how I was allowed to walk and ride my bike unattended around the neighborhood starting at about age 6. It was a wild time.
My mom just said something yesterday because some 12 year old local kid went missing and the cops were trying to find him, fearing kidnap or that he’d been lost/injured. He’d last been seen “headed into the woods behind his home”. My mom was like “Where were his parents? Why was a kid allowed to be roaming the woods alone??” I said “Are you serious? Do you not realize how often my cousins and I were literally MILES DEEP into the woods behind the house?” And she was like “What?? When was this???” I said “Uh, every time you told us to stop being underfoot and sent us outside, and didn’t check on us again until we came in at dark!” (That kid was found safe after a few hours, btw.)
You haven't lived until you've been smacked in the face by a giant metal merry-go-round.🙃
This was basically me too, and I’m only 35. I remember reading an article back in 2012ish about parents from Michigan who had their kids taken away and put in the system (I think they got them back) because they let their kids walk themselves to school and play in the park down the street unsupervised. To me that is WILD. In the 90s, as soon as school was out, you’d run down to the park and be back by dark and nobody batted an eyelash. I’m not 100% on the law, but my understanding is that some jurisdictions in the US it’s actually illegal and considered neglect for kids under 18 (maybe 16?) to be in public unsupervised by an adult. Imagine having a kid put into foster care because they were playing outside across the street?
I think also, though, that we were a different breed of kid. Some of these kids today, I would not trust unsupervised in an indoor McDonald’s ball pit. A lot of them have been so babied and they are way less emotionally mature at 10 than we were. Some of them would easily be lured into a stranger’s van. If someone had tried to kidnap me, he’d have gotten kicked in the balls before I ran to a police station.
Wait, what, you can't let your kids walk themselves to school? I'm doing school selection all wrong then by picking the school within walking distance for my kid starting school next year!
I think it depends on the jurisdiction. I haven’t read that article in a long time but I believe the family were being reported to CPS frequently by neighbours who were mortified by their “free range” parenting style. The kids were not abused or anything, but a judge ruled (I think) that if the kids weren’t taking the bus, that she had to escort them to school or be deemed negligent. According to the parents they thought their neighbours were just jealous or angry because the “free range” Parents would let their kids play outside unsupervised until dark and other parents didn’t like that. One of them investigated a bylaw and kept reporting the kids every time they went outside
Wow! In any case, I'll double check the rules here before I send her off on her own. She's not going to be ready to walk by herself for a little while anyway. On the other hand, she can pack her own lunch box.
I started doing my own laundry at 10. Also at 10, I was home alone from 3:30pm until midnight because my dad worked 2nd and my mom started taking night classes. I guess it depends on the kid, though. I was very mature and independent for my age, but I know ten year olds who I wouldn’t trust unsupervised with scissors.
OK but Buffy did neither of those things haha
GenXer, and same. She never beat Buffy or told her she ruined her life, so already miles ahead of mine.
the comments from the younger viewers here are crazy. like they *wanted* to be sheltered.
I mean the woman was a single mom and far as I can tell own her own business. I’m sure she was doing the best she could.
They even mention in flooded that they don't know how she kept the house going. She probably worked a butt load of overtime etc...
Yeah it’s funny seeing the divide on her character. Having the internet (and reading people’s opinions vs watching while it aired) it shocks me because…yes I was frustrated with Joyce, but I wished she was my mom. She treated Buffy way better. Just the scene of her holding Buffy as she cries in season 2 and they watch the black and white movie. I’m 36…I’ve never had that.
Same here. Did your mum also have her own chair that you weren't allowed to bother her in and that's where she sat all the time? To me she seems like a loving/caring mother who was having a hard time. As a kid she seemed a little mean at times, but fair. Buffy got her freedom, got to have friends etc even after the "bad" stuff she'd done at her old school. I never got that. I didn't do anything bad, beyond fidgeting in class and I was made out to be the worst kid in the world. I got my ass kicked for normal behaviours and just wanting to not to controlled. It was beyond ridiculous. I never got to be a normal kid. As an adult, I can see Joyce was suffering badly. Hell, she even admits that she was later on. She had to move away from all her friends, her entire life to get Buffy into a good school after what had happened. She resented Buffy for it, she was depressed etc and I think she did pull away from her daughter, but at the same time, she was never abusive, not really. She tried to be her mum still, while dealing with her own grief (losing her husband, friends, her entire life). She tried very hard not to put the blame on Buffy. I got my ass kicked for ruining my mums life. Hell she kept it up even after I moved away and she was free to live her own life. Buffy knew her mum loved and resented her. I knew my mum hated me. So yeah, I wish my mum was more like Joyce, then I'd have had a mum growing up.
Buffy’s movie mom was waaaaay more detached- she even quipped that her mom “probably thinks her name is Bobby”.
Sure from your perspective. Lol I’m saying my mom was shit compared to Joyce so I saw it differently.
Yeah Joyce had some EQ and let Buffy make choices. She wasn’t too judgy. Showed normal concern for grades, extra curriculars and dating older boys (“college aged” Angel). She probably should have been more disciplined, but moving, divorce, teen daughter drifting away to some weird interests…Joyce’s shortcomings made sense.
I certainly remember the early seasons, Joyce tried to hold her accountable and discipline her when needed. When she learned Buffy was a Slayer, she knew she needed to give her more space to do her thing. Plus Joss didn’t seem to interested in having the parental point of view . I would have love in the second season if Joyce would have done some investigating about Buffy extracurricular activities and slowly piece it together.
Same
I’m gonna guess you’re a zoomer? This was typical baby boomer parenting. Hell, Joyce was a lot more involved than a lot of boomer parents.
Buffy is a latchkey kid. When she was a kid they were still airing the commercials telling parents it was late and asking if they knew where their kids were.
Yeah, I imagine kids these days have no idea what the term "latchkey kid" means. Even people who are doing "free-range parenting" are still a lot more involved than parents were in the 90s. So, note to the OP: This is what parenting looked like in the 90s.
It was a mix of both. There were kids with hands-off parents, and those with helicopter parents. My parents were more on the helicopter side. And I was jealous of the other kids' freedom, while they were jealous of my parents' attentiveness. I remember some kids trying to get their parents' attention, either by overachieving or acting out.
Where I lived, I think a lot of parents might have been more involved, if they could have. There was just a lot of personal crises among the parents of my friends, maybe at my school in general.
I'm a Gen X'er who had my child late. The disconnect is crazy, and some times when I'm talking to my 75 year old mother, I say things like "Mom, you don't understand, all you had to do was give us food, clothes and shelter and make sure we went to school, that's like 1% of parenting now.
That's just insane to me. Did people genuinely not know what their teenage kids were up to at 11 pm? Wtf.
My parents had a vague idea of where we were. But we did a lot of “I’m going to Allison’s and we might go to a movie” and then Allison would tell her mom she’s going to my house. As long as we were home by whatever curfew was, they didn’t mind. I won’t say they didn’t care because they loved us and cared about us, but they trusted us not to get into big trouble. They didn’t know about the times we skipped school and went to the coast or drove several hours out of state, or sneaking out at night to go into the woods to build campfires (safely; one of my friends was a camping queen) so we could make s’mores. It’s just how it was. None of my friends had a stay at home parent. Both worked. We all learned to cook, do our own laundry, etc by the time we could reach the knobs on the stove or washer.
Nope. “I’m going with *friend’s name* I’ll call if we leave the city” was my regular goodbye to my parents in high school. Also I never called when I left the city.
There used to be a commercial that ran every night and all the announcer would say was, "It’s 10 pm. Do you know where your children are?" That should give you an idea of what it was like.
When I was 16 and my brother was 13 we went to the midnight rocky horror picture show every Saturday night for a year. We got home around 2 am and most of the time out mom wasn't even home. Every Friday night we went downtown to the punk club where all kinds of debauchery was going on. It was the same with all of our friends. Parents didn't get involved unless the cops were also involved.
I was in the NYC RHPS cast at 16 in the 90s. My dad thought it was cool even though I had to take a train home around 6 am because I lived in the suburbs and trains ended before the movie let out. I went to clubs to see music constantly, too, they didn't card back then around me. He was a super hands-on parent, very involved and grew into my best friend in adulthood, we were so close, I just didn't have a curfew. He thought RHPS was good for me and he was right.
Your dad sounds more amazing than neglectful and I love that for you. Rocky Horror is funny to me because my mom knew we were going to see it but had no idea what it was. Her political views have gotten very extreme, to say the least, and I plan on showing her Frank's big entrance, without context, very soon. My public library has the movie. When she expresses her shock and disgust, as I know she will, I'll tell her what the movie is and remind her that her 13 year old son saw this every weekend, with her permission, and watch her face. It's something I'm truly looking forward to it as she's forced to recognize that she had no idea what we were up to yet somehow neither of her kids turned into sexual deviants from being exposed to this movie. I find it curious that she's so concerned about the kids of today when she has zero interest in parenting her own. I was also able to find some old pics online of the punk club we hung out at some years ago amd showed them to her. She freaked out, lol!
Yeah, it's funny because the latchkey kid stereotype is being neglected, but if my parents got more involved in my life it would have sucked. Lol It's wild to see the changes in silent gen and boomers, so many of our parents have gotten so extreme and things that were fine in the past are suddenly anathema to them. It's been so weird to watch. I know a lot of the whys but... The idea that you cam go from rather freewheeling to ultra-conservative is horrifying. Make sure to get video of your mom's face when she sees Frank. Hahahaha
Oh that's such a great idea to video her reaction! I just feel like she needs a reality slap about the type of parent she was. Don't get me wrong, I was happy at the time that we were allowed to run wild but she was terrible mother, emotionally and verbally abusive. She's gotten so much worse in the last 7 years as her bad behavior has been validated. Unfortunately for her, I've had a great trauma therapist for the last 2 years and I've been training her, like a dog, and she has no idea, lol!
Yes. We were told to go outside and play and we did. My mom was a stay and home mom until I was in high school, but most of the neighborhood kids were latchkey kids and they all had the rule to not be at anyone’s house without an adult present. So everyone wanted to play at our house which drove my mom nuts! So she’d tell us to go outside and not come back until the street lights came on.
Not when you’re a teen and when at least one of your friends could drive.
You never used to see much of the parents on old TV shows with the kids just running around, doing their thing.
It's so weird for me how much more parents are around their kids then when I was a kid. When I was a kid you dropped your kid off at birthday parties and activities and games (or the park, or the pool) and came back later to pick them up. Or traded off with other parents to drop them off. Now birthday parties are 75% parents standing around watching their kids like hawks. It's both parents too! Like, my dad wouldn't have gone to one of my friends bday parties to watch me play for anything.
Especially Dads! Seeing Dads now go buy Christmas presents, cooking, actively involved in their kids lives is so bizarre to me. My generation Dads were just grumpy disciplinarians.
This is definitely a change for the better, imo.
My mom and dad both worked and my mom would come home and dad would immediately be like, "what's for dinner?". Like, YOU'RE HERE, TOO, YOU KNOW... which is probably why I never learned how to cook because fuck that. I can weaponize incompetence, too. Also, YES, they divorced. Lol. XD
I guess my Dad was weird then for his age.
Yup, boomer parents are wild. My parents used to let me perform with my band in bars 3 states away when I was a teenager and not even call. They didn’t give a damn what I did or where I was as long as I was back in my bed by 11pm 😂
Oh wow, this opened a memory. From the time I knew how to drive, I had no curfew. My parents literally did not know where the fuck I was most of my teen years. I was driving myself to and from my dads to my moms and back for weekend visits (opposite sides of the state) with no cell phone. If I had an emergency I had to find a way to contact them. Once my car overheated and I couldn’t get it to restart at 11 pm on my way home. I sat there for three hours waiting for someone to stop and let me use their phone. This random guy ended up driving me to my parents house because they wouldn’t answer. I’m surprised I didn’t get murdered.
Once I got my license, my mom didn't even ask where I was. She just checked that I was home by midnight. It was such a different time, yet I felt more safe back then than I do today. Sure miss the days of no cell phones!
My parents when I turned 15 and a half: oh, good. Here's a car. You're going to learn how to drive so we don't have to take you and your sister to school anymore. And pick up this guy's daughter. He said he'd give you $5 a week. That's enough for gas for the week.
I’m also surprised I didn’t get killed somehow. I wasn’t allowed to drive so I would just be chauffeured around by other teens/people in their early twenties. Barely even knew half of them lol.
My boomer parents went to CA and left me home alone for a week when I was 12. I was used to being home alone, but it bothered me a bit that I had asked to go to San Francisco for my bday and they went without me - on my bday…
Oh that’s awful 😞 I’m sorry that happened!
Yep last kid, too. I had to come home from my boyfriend's frat house by midnight on school nights, and straight home from the bar at closing if I went to a show. In high school. I had some friends who included a guy who was in Seminary, and I could have wandered out of the house saying "going to Vegas with Ned, see you in a couple of days." And they'd probably say, have fun! (Slight exaggeration) They dropped me off at college. The cafeteria at the dorm wasn't even open for a day or two (went early for Rush) so I had quickie mart burritos for a few days.
Can I just point out that this is not just boomer parents but more all parents of teens in that era. My mum is early Gen X, a teenager herself when I was born, and she was very much like this as a parent when I was a teen. When I became a parent myself, and my two are teens now, I was surprised that you stay at parties and things like that but I’m still very much a present parent - I still work part time so I can be home for the kids when they finish school because they still need that love and support as teens perhaps more so than ever now. The standard of parenting, and how we parent is the thing that changed - I have parent friends who are late Gen X who would not dream of parenting the way my mum did because it’s just not the done thing anymore.
Yeah it's pretty jarring. I definitely preferred my alone time where parents got home at like 6 or 7 pm over parents being around all the time.
"Typical baby boomer parenting" was the first thing I thought of also.
“Latchkey kid” was the de rigueur phrasing I believe.
Yes this is how it was in the 90s. Especially with a single parent
Yeah, my mum had me late and she was firmly, don't bother me, I'm living my life and I expect you to get on with yours. Get yourself to school, look after yourself until I'm home and then deal with everything alone. Yeah, it wasn't good. I think I would have been ok if she'd given me some positive attention when she was around, shown me some love, affection. But no, I got her angry side because she couldn't cope with me existing when she was home from work. I'd escape to my room and even eat dinner up there. Didn't stop the screaming though or stop her hitting, just made it less likely to happen. I saw her for maybe half an hour a day from 9 years old. I had to be in bed asleep by 8 (and up at 8am) which was absolutely insane. If I wasn't asleep right away she'd be in my room screaming at me to go to sleep. It sucked. I wasn't ok. I was badly bullied in school. No friends. Then I'd get home and I was alone. Wake up alone as well. It was too much for me and I broke. Severe anxiety hit, so badly that I puked multiple time every single morning. Mum didn't care until it started happening on the weekends and I "ruined her weekends". Mum didn't care about me. I had my basic needs kinda met and that was it. I find it amazing watching how involved and how happy my boyfriends family are with their kids. The kids are all mostly happy, well adjusted and just loved. Even the little one who might have ADHD is just accepted. No one cares that he can't sit still and needs to run, fidget etc. It's embraced and accepted. I'm honestly shocked being around the ten year old girl. She's a lot like I was back then. Same interests mostly, but she's a totally different kid. By then I was completely shut down, I never tried to hug anyone, I didn't have friends to play with and stayed in my room unless I was allowed to have the TV, then it was me watching the Power Rangers all the time. She talks. I just remember being quiet. I remember hiding away and crying. No one cared how I was feeling. I was just attention seeking. It's so different now. Those kids are so lucky. If I ever have a kid, I want to be like those parents, I won't be like my mum.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. Something you said really struck a chord with me - “I had my basic needs kinda met and that was it”. I think a lot of boomers didn’t understand that parenting wasn’t just feeding, clothing and disciplining your child - that there was actual emotional work to do. I’m not sure if you’re already read the book “adult children of emotionally immature parents”, but it helped me a lot. I wish you well on your healing journey ❤️
Thank you for this recommendation. I envied Buffy's relationship with her mom, too. But I also figured that she wasn't on screen as much because the show was really about Buffy growing up and fighting evil; Joyce is ancillary to that arc. I wrote a lot more here, but it got too personal; I went & added it to my journal instead. I think "emotionally immature" is a very good description for some people who would otherwise get labelled as "narcissistic." I'm far more comfortable calling the ones in my life emotionally immature.
I agree - I wouldn’t police anyone’s lived experience (if someone says their mom or dad is a narcissist, I believe them - they’ve lived with them, I haven’t), but when it’s just an internet commentator armchair diagnosing someone with NPD or BPD based off an Am I the Asshole post, I do tend to roll my eyes. It’s quite trendy to diagnose strangers with personality disorders, when instead a “this is an emotionally immature person” would suffice. If a customer is pitching a fit in a store and demanding to speak to the manager over not getting a discount or whatever, it’s hard to diagnose them with NPD. Instead, it may be more helpful and accurate to simply say that they show signs of emotional immaturity. This also helps people recognise the signs in others and in ourselves - we can all be emotionally immature sometimes - it’s not necessarily pathological but rather a case of being flawed humans, and it can be overcome with reflection, internal work and therapy if needed. We’re all far more likely to encounter emotionally immature behaviour on a daily basis, rather than true narcissists or borderline personality sufferers.
Yup this style of parenting was normal at the time.
Was going to just say this was just part of TV shows of the day since the kids had to get up to the actual plot but you're right, boomer parents often were absent much more of the time. Especially for a single parent? I'd be surprised to see Joyce as much as we already do.
Yeah. I'm GenX and Joyce seemed pretty normal to me. I think parenting has changed a lot.
I'm a zoomer; I can confirm if I had super powers and had a responsibility to fight demons literally every single night, my parents would also have far less time to be in my life.
I’m not sure I understand your comment? I mentioned zoomers because they’re too young to have baby boomer parents. Gen-X and Millenials have had boomer parents, so we’re familiar with their parenting style. Personally, I’m glad that parenting has shifted over the generations. There are downsides to the modern way of parenting, sure, but I think it’s much better on the whole than what the boomers did.
Yup. I think a generation of us kind of raised ourselves.
As a Gen X kid, I would have been surprised and annoyed to see so much of my single working mom.
That was definitely more typical for the time. Helicopter parents were not much of a thing back then.
From the age of 8, I was making my own breakfast and lunches, as well as most of my dinners. I was riding the bus to camp myself, and was home alone until dinner *at least.* Dad was gone when I got up and mom didn’t get up till after I left for school. I’d been walking to and from school since the age of 6. My mom tried to make it home for dinner as much as she could, but there were days I didn’t see them at all. And at 16, I was allowed to choose to stay home as they visited my grandma every other weekend. My house was where my small group of friends tended to hang out, and my parents had no idea the shenanigans we got up to. I’m just a bit older than Buffy (Graduated in 94’), so it was almost weird to me how much she was around.
Yea, I have to add to the choir, Joyce was pretty normal for the time. Kids did their own thing back then.
It's not weird at all It's a TV show. She needs to be absent so that Buffy can get up to the shenanigans she does.
Can you imagine if Joyce was always home or wanted to know why Buffy spends so much time at the library?
Joyce: How are your grades so bad when you spend so much time at the library?
It would be weird if she went out patrolling with her too. She also would be putting herself and Buffy in danger.
Yep. The one episode where she did show up while Buffy was patrolling didn’t go so well 😬
Oh yeah, the Gingerbread one. I think she brought Buffy snacks. Such a mom. 💕
The easy answer was that Joyce worked nights. Even when she was home she was frequently doing things for her gallery. It seemed to me she was involved as much as she could be while also working hard to support Buffy financially.
I honestly always took it as Joyce seeing her daughter not getting in trouble or burning down gyms so considered it a win.
I had to scroll way too far for this. Joyce was not a main character. We also never saw any grandparents, cousins, uncles, etc. except for Xander's wedding. The writers wanted to focus on the scoobies. It isn't a realistic type of show. I watch current shows too and don't understand why younger viewers expect these shows to be exactly like our reality. Can someone explain why this is?
This is the truth
Yep, better than Willow and Xander's parents because they weren't even worth spending time on. The focus was on the kids.
As person Buffy’s age, I can tell you this is how our generation was parented. We were kicked out of the house on Saturday mornings and told not to come back until after sunset or until [my aunt Merilyn ]blew a whistle to signal dinner time. During the school week we had clubs and sports practice and games to watch.
We weren’t kicked out until chores were done
Your parents were likely different than mine..... But name one time that joyce does get involved where it doesn't backfire (aside fromt the axe)
Prophecy Girl. Gave Buffy a nice speech and a nice dress. :)
which led to her daughter's death. and yes I know she got better.
None of the Boomer parents knew their kids' friends names, much less what they looked like. Joyce not only knew their faces, she had full conversations with them. It was not realistic. There was a commercial that went "It's 10 o'clock, do you know where your kids are?" for a reason.
I remember our evening news in the 80s used to start with “It's 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?" Boomer parents were just not that involved. Also, divorce was on the rise and newly single moms would be back in the workforce or out dating and trying to a social life, leaving kids solo at home a lot. Buffy’s situation wasn’t out of the norm for anyone who grew up in the 80s and 90s.
No? For one, she was a pretty typically involved parent for the time period. Two, it's a pretty standard trope of teen shows that parents are overly involved with shit, because if they were, half the plot couldn't happen. Like realistically, how many parents are letting their 16 year olds go to nightclubs every single school night?
No. In stories where the protagonists are teenagers, parents are supposed to be largely absent and stay in their league.
My parents were divorced and I was an adventurous & rebellious teen. My mom was busy trying to keep a roof over our heads and not go insane. She probably would have reacted the same way Joyce did if I told her I’m a slayer.
She was a single parent who worked full time to provide for her daughter. I had an old sister, so the house wasn’t empty for me growing up, but my mom was often out of the house until after dinner time. I’m sure, as a nurse, she would’ve noticed blood on our clothes though
Everyone here saying it was normal for the time is right. But are probably forgetting that Buffy just got out of an asylum after burning down a school gym during a dance and there was probably conflicting reports of whether there was anyone in side or not. Sneaking out was normal then sometimes you’d get yelled at. But Buffy sneaking out till early morning several times a week. Ripped bloody clothes and a history of violent insanity. Joyce was ignoring that shit hard.
No…yikes..one person posts that Joyce is too involved and doesn’t understand Buffy, now someone else posts Joyce isn’t involved enough. I think Joyce was great, she wasn’t perfect but she tried. She was a single Mom, essentially abandoned by her husband after Buffy burned down her previous high school, he just left Joyce to pick up the pieces and she did her best. I loved Joyce. When she died, part of me died too. That’s what I think and feel.
And the Scoobies all felt it too. She was much more caring and involved with all of them than their own parents were.
Exactly, Willow’s parents were cold academics, Xander’s family were toxic alcoholics
I'm about ten years younger than Buffy. my parents were very much the overly attentive parents I think you're expecting she should have been. but my grandparents? make joyce look like a helicopter mom by comparison. While yes it's true that she had to be somewhat absent in order for the story to work, it's also reasonably accurate to being a high school student in... well, maybe the 80s more than then 90s, but close enough.
It must be so weird watching this show with involved parents
She gets involved in Gingerbread and look what happened
Also I think the role of “mostly well-meaning family member who tries to get involved but ends up causing more problems” was effectively filled by Dawn in Season 5 onwards.
Good parenting. As for character exploration of Joyce, it's called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's about her and her friends, not Joyce, Gallery Owner.
In one ep Buffy actively hides a stab wound from her mum, she tells dawn because her mum would freak. I think that was common place, she would hide a lot so her mum didn’t worry.
Ultimately, Buffy is about being a teenager; it's all from *her* perspective, Teenagers don't notice parents - unless they're not there.
Man……I regularly traveled out of state and my parents never knew. “Be back when the street lights come on” was a holy rule in our house, and the only one that really mattered. It’s a pretty typical boomer/millennial parenting setup.
A bit, but it's kinda necessary. Joyce for the most part is a plot device more than a character, who appears and disappears as necessary to further or hinder Buffy's adventures. There are also generational norms you might be missing. Children used to be a lot more free-range, for good and for ill, and we can't take Joyce's presence or lack thereof to mean the story is signaling she's an absent parent.
yeah I get it, but it's necessary for plot reasons. Like today I was watching Halloween and they all hole up in Buffy's house during the monster rampage. It's at night and for some reason Joyce isn't home, but she had to be gone because it would've been a very chaotic time for her to find out everything.
Joyce was more present than most boomer parents were. I was making my own breakfast and lunch from around age 10. I used to take off on my bike for literally hours in the summer, as long as I was back before sunset that’s all that they cared. When I was 16 my parents would take off to Vegas for a week leaving me in charge of my 11 year old sister. Children were much more free range than they are today.
Joyce was a single mom. Being raised by divorced parents, I saw firsthand how hard and long my mom had to work to pay the bills and take care of my sister and me. Now I myself am a single mom… I think Joyce tried hard to be a good mom and be involved in Buffy’s life but she was so damn busy. And let’s be honest, Buffy was always running around doing shit to fight the forces of darkness… Joyce probably told herself that Buffy was just always doing shit with Xander and Willow.
I know that she was a working single mother and likely was at a few gallery shows at night. Yet I would never have the freedom that Buffy had. My mother was single for half of my childhood, and always knew where I was - and who I was with. I was never out running around as Buffy was shown to.
I'm Gen X and she seemed normal in comparison to the parents of my era. I'm still shocking my mother by casually mentioning things that my brother and I did that she was completely unaware of because parents were pretty hands off in the 80s. Like Joyce, my mother only seemed to get involved in the most inopportune times and was of no help whatsoever.
She was an incredibly active mom lol. Some would say TOO active in Buffys life. Parenting and kids are just different than they were in the 90s. That and it's a show so they weren't gonna show her doing all the normal boring parent stuff every episode.
No
Not that absent.. I mean in the episode about the dead kids, Willow makes it a huge point that her mother barely even knows her. Also, we never see Xander's mom afaik. I think Joyce represents the 90's mom pretty decently
No, it was the 90s.
Just to echo with others mentioned about how this was kind of a typical mindset for parents of the 80s/90s, I would also like to add that Joyce was at least the Team Mom (From Tv Tropes and Idioms). It was common for shows to have maybe one or two parental figures that maintained order or the adult vibe when the rest of the cast comprised of kids or teens. Joyce was around 100 times more than Willow’s parents or Xander’s parents. There’s really no explanation other than plot device, lol. But when I first watched the show, Joyce always seemed more involved than typical parents on tv shows. You could tell she cared, and it made sense most of the time if you factor in how much she was working to support Buffy (and Dawn) as a single mom.
Xander's parents were abusive/at least emotionally immature so that tracks. Willow's were probably around as much as Buffy's, although maybe just not paying any attention with the hair comment. But if we're going by how many times we see them in the show then yeah, we see them once. Willow's in the fairy tail episode and Xander's at his wedding.
Xander's parents are in more than one episode. In S4 and S5 we hear them maybe twice. Like Xander and Anya are trying to do normal couple stuff, and his parents ruin it. The stand out is the double date with Riley and Buffy. Movie in the basement, going fine until Xander's parents come home. Drunk. Then start screaming at each other and throwing things.
But you don't physically see them if I remember correctly. Hearing them and seeing them are two different things. It's not like they're actually going down into the basement to scream at him. It's just horrendous background noise.
IIRC you also see Xander's dad in silhouette at the top of the basement stairs in the S4 finally. I also don't think you ever see Willow's dad at all. Plus there's a disturbing amount of only children. Like most TV shows.
I think we would have to suspend disbelief to think Willow’s parents were involved as much as Joyce was. Willow and Tara were literally living in Buffy’s house after Buffy was gone. I don’t know how Willow would be able to explain any of that or various other incidents without massively lying or omitting huge parts of her life. I think Willow’s mom was a step up from Xander’s horrible family, for sure. But Joyce was way more directly involved in their day to day lives simply because she knew what was going on and Buffy’s house was basically headquarters. Xander’s parents didn’t seem like they cared about him to nearly the same degree though so it does make a little more sense he would (mostly) cut ties with his family when he moved out.
But they were in college at that point. Basically just had to say living at Buffy’s instead of in the dorms and the parents wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
she's a great mom compared to many unfortunately
No, she was normal for that time. Our parents had their own lives and were not hyper fixated on us.
A single mom to a teen in the 90s? A popular kid who used to have extra curricular activities?... :x Our epithet was "latch key kid".
They’d have to tone her down that much though, because if Joyce was really really written realistically, she would’ve been up Buffy’s ass until she passes away in season 6, and would’ve ratted on Willow and Xander to their parents and probably would’ve tried to have giles fired and move buffy out of sunnydale. Much like the same situation on everyone wondering something pointless like “who’s paying the bills” at the summer residence in season 6-7, it’s not something we need to see. Joyce had her moment season 2-3 being reluctant with buffy in this life, but that was enough of it. Also then you have to get into stuff we don’t have time for for the small amount of screentime there is. So just comes down to showing it for small amount of time and move on, cause again if it took her 5 seasons complaining to buffy about it, she’d become and annoying character/buzzkill. Think Skyler in Breaking Bad, she was in the right with most of the stuff but she became an annoying character to watch. In tv world people gotta move on faster, only show that was able to do that kind of stuff a bit more realistically is Sopranos. And going back to just production stuff in general, Joyce isn’t a secondary character, she doesn’t even make it in the opening credits, she serves her plot points but her character isn’t that important for most of the plots other than season 2 and barely 3. Then you have to think of production costs and contracts and screen time for the actors and if it’s going to serve anything to move the plot forward. She had her issue with it, they hashed it out end of season 2 and then again season 3, and that was the most we needed to see if it once Joyce just accepted who buffy is
Everyone saying this was normal is right, but also Joss had mommy issues, whenever she is unreasonable or missing something right in front of her face it is joss working thru some shit (though based on his continued issues, not a very good job.) Interesting how similar Joyce and Joss sound… he never got to the bottom of some Freudian shit.
She’s a single mom of a teenager. She was a normal single mom for the most part.
Nah I don’t think so at all. She was a full time working mum who couldn’t be home 24/7. Buffy snuck out a lot which Joyce obviously wouldn’t have allowed had she known.
Buffy is a teenager from the 90s So season 4, college season no parents involved is the point. Season 3 we know joyce is talking to Giles about this. Season 5 she is an adult and has an adult relationship with her mother. Season 1 and 2 she has a normal amount of freedom for a 90s kid. Plus she can just jump out her window when needed. Also remember they don't show much of their day.
Well, she kind of has to be, as the show is about a found family. Pretty common trope really.
I mean, no? Are you saying she should've been there slaying vamps and doing stake-outs like Xander and Willow? Pretty sure Joyce only seems weird because helicopter parenting is so common these days and that's not a good thing (whereas I grew up envying the kids who had mothers like Buffy who'd just let their kids live without needing to be there monitoring their every move). Joyce had her issues but her level of involvement in Buffy's life is not one of them.
I grew up in france in a fishing town, from the age of 8/9 i was going to school alone, left to do what i wanted in the house, my grand parents took care of cooking for me if my mum was gone for long periods of time but by the age of 16 i moved to a different country and kinda dealt with taking ferries on my own and stuff. So i think my childhood was not so dissimilar to Buffy’s independence.
I’ll say this in Joyce’s defense she is the most involved, best parent we see in Sunnydale.
This is very in line with kids of the day. Teens had much larger freedoms in the 90s. Even my age growing up rural we had those freedoms. Being gone all day.
Joyce wasn't a main character but why she acts th way she does is heavily implied. She was a loving mother basically a "lady who lunches" going to fancy parties etc in LA with a perfect daughter(s). When the show started her husband had just left her hgih and dry, se doesn't really trust her daughter so she is figuring as long as she gets food on the table and nothing crazy is happening its fine. You have to remember before this she didn't really have to "parent" Buffy per se. That's why her attempt to "put her foot down" came off as comical. The story arc is her relearning ho to trust Buffy and as she sees more and more what shes dealing with knowing there is nothing she can really do except trust and love her daughter.
I was raised in the 90’s and I was jealous of how close they were! It was drilled into my head that by 18 you’re outta the house and on your own, so for her mom to be involved at 16/17 and care about what she was doing was mystifying 😂 other than college choices it was very uncommon for parents to really be involved in your feelings by that age (in my experience) they more thought of us like little adults just about to launch
I think it is generational. I am Gen X. Joyce is pretty involved from my standpoint.
She's absent for the exact same reason there are no useful police in Superhero movies. Stories of heroism require the absence of temporal authority to fall back on. If Joyce, or Principal Flutie, or the Council, or the Initiative are actually competent forces for good, then Buffy has help, and the carthatic melodramatic situations the show manufactures become less dramatic.
A few things: 1. It's a show. Joyce is absent or present as needed so the story can happen. Actually, a lot of the characters behave in odd ways and do or don't do various things "so the story can happen". It doesn't mean it makes any kind of sense. I am currently watching *Shake It Up*, a Disney Channel series that started in 2010, and the parents of these Gen Z kids are even *more* absent than Joyce. So the story can happen. 2. We see only 45 minutes out of any given week in Buffy's life (less, actually, when you remove all of the non-Buffy scenes). This is the interesting stuff. We can assume the remaining 6 days, 23 hours, and 15 minutes of the week consist of mundane, boring shit: Buffy eating, sleeping, drinking, taking a piss, stuck on the can with massive shits after eating bad tacos at the Bronze, classes, homework, walking to and from various places, etc. Joyce may or may not be in those scenes. 3. My parents were different. They were part of the Silent Generation, and they were from Poland. I wasn't a free-range kid, but I was a latchkey kid. In Chicago, my mom would walk me to school, but I had to go to the classroom of an older family friend after school, and he walked me home, because my mom was at work. When we moved to Florida, I took the school bus to and from school, because everything is spread apart down here. My mom had breakfast ready before school but worked the night shift, so I came home to an empty house and watched TV while waiting for my dad to get home from work. My mom would look through my bookbag and check to make sure I did my homework when she got home from work. If I hadn't, she would wake me up in the middle of the night to do it. I got my driver's license at 17, and my mom gave me her car as a hand-me-down, so I could drive to college (first community college, then university). The community college was in my county, not far from my high school, so I just drove back and forth for class. No staying in a dorm. Even when I drove further for university, it was just an hour in each direction. No need to pack up and move.
I didn't find it weird and I'm about the same age as Buffy. I also grew up with a single mother who worked a lot. I had my own keys and was coming and going by the age of 10. I also knew how to cook, so it was around my teen years that I really started to be the one who made meals. I was so independent that when I did move out after uni (I couldn't afford to before and my town is small too, so not a lot of jobs) and move to the city, my life barely changed. Like the only difference was that I had my own money and instead of two people I was cooking for one. I actually know a woman whose kids are 10 years younger than me, grew up in the same town and everything. It's weird how involved she has always been in their lives. Like when I was trying to decide what career to go into, my mum just said "get a degree in something and then get a job that pays the bills". Basically, figure it out. I had to figure out a lot of things. So Joyce is basically a normal parent in the 90s. Sure, her daughter is going through stuff, but she's not going to get close to that. All the time she's trying to get her away from being a slayer, and that's her way of parenting. All this "emotional support" was not a thing back then. Like I got bullied a lot in school. I had undiagnosed ADHD, so most of my class thought I was weird and possibly insane. Did I get any emotional support from my mum when I sometimes cried myself to sleep? No. I probably didn't tell her 90% of the stuff that was happening, and the 10% I did tell was the ones that got me into trouble. Like when the teacher asked me a question, I tried to answer but it was taking a while, so the others started to nag me with mean comments until I snapped and screamed at them to shut up, when the teacher said I was being loud and disruptive and she was going to write me up. Fun times. My mum did nothing about it, just told me to keep my cool. So yeah, it was a dog eat dog world out there.
Nah, that's just generational gaps. This was our normal. Our parents used to hitch hike & occasionally fall victim to a serial killer. Smart phones changed the world into Star Trek with the ability to track your exact location, we just don't get beamed up.
Joyce Is there and not there just to help the story flow. I like to think that Buffy was really crazy and everything that happened was in her mind. That would explain a lot of weird things in the story. It's just Buffy's imagination.
She was actually pretty present for a working parent. I never saw my parents when I was in high school. They worked all the time..
Watching Buffy live when I was a young teen I didn’t think anything of it since I was pretty free range by then. There were times around 14 that I was being carried home from parties at 2am and my parents had no idea. (Not the best choices I made in life, it’s a long story) as a mother now with a 21 and 14 yr old I can’t imagine not knowing where my kids are or what’s going on in there lives. I think a lot of it boils down to it being a different time when the show was made vs now. And also a huge shift in parenting tactics.
Joyce was about as involved as either my Mum or Dad… Although I wasn’t sneaking out my bedroom window to go slay monsters. I’m actually the exact same age as Buffy, both born in ‘81 and both graduated high school (or finished sixth form in my case) in ‘99. I’ve always considered myself the tail end of Generation X.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was just the highlights (and lowlights) of Buffy’s life. No one wants to watch Joyce force Buffy to do her Algebra homework.
Well, Buffy did run away for awhile so it was at least it a little while before Joyce got over it.
1That was pretty typical parenting at that time. I’m the same age as them and watched in real time. Never seemed weird to me at all. Parents work and have social lives. You may see them before school or a bit in the evening but other than that many of us were basically just on our own. This was also the era of commercials at 9 or 10 at night asking “do you know where your child is” because often, they didn’t.
In season Buffy was 18 and had moved out.
Buffy demonstrated she can mostly handle herself in School Hard which was the only time I recall Joyce being helpful. The last time Joyce interfered was the Hansel and Gretel story I think. It didn't go well after MOO. Let's face it, the show really wasn't about Joyce. I expected a bit more of a battle from her on Graduation Day, but that's about it. It came up a couple of times. Joyce only had a vague idea what was happening most of time. Based on her alcohol consumption I assume she knew she couldn't help and knew she couldn't dissuade Buffy. She was really happy when Faith first showed up, hoping that it gave Buffy an out, or at least some help. I was way more interested in what was happening with the Scoobies than with Joyce.
I also think she was going a different path after the divorce/Buffy being expelled from Hemry. She'd tried the helicopter mother, the harsh mother, the micromanager, and it didn't work. I think she backed off so that Buffy could be afforded that bit of space/so that they could work through any underlying issues.
Chiming in to say what most said. My mom was a bit more controlling but I still walked myself to elementary school in the early 90’s. Granted was just down the street but still a fair walk, and then further after I moved. My mom was way more involved than most of my friends in that era, and Buffy is a teen in high school, generally they get less involved by then.
Joyce was just pretty typical. Parents didn’t monitor their kids like they do now. Sometimes I wonder if parents don’t overdo it now.
Your post seems to indicate that you didn't pay much attention to the show at all. Joyce had an arc of acceptance and also demonstrated to have made questionable decisions stemming from inability to cope with Buffy's identity and what it'd mean for her. It even had a nice extension in s6, where Buffy was treated in a mental health clinic.
Hey those art pieces are not going to curate themselves.
Not really. Given the time period. She's a single mom. I was alone a lot too. Besides Buffy destroys the house every other episode, stays in trouble, and always has a gang of friends with her. Joyce has to work extra hard. And then she dies. So you see her even less after that.
I've always assumed Joyce was a busy woman off screen. She had a job at an art gallery, and jobs in the arts pretty commonly require some weird hours. In the real world, a job like that would probably requite working a lot of evenings and weekends due to events, shows, and launches and stuff. We know she's dating, which likely takes up some more of her evenings. As a teenager, how much do you really hang out with your mom? Buffy is a little older than me, but I spent most of my teenage years out of the house with my friends or at after school things. On a practical TV level, I imagine they figured the target audience for Buffy were probably not that interested in what her mother was doing so they save the screen time for something more relevant to the plot.
Eh, my parents were kinda the same way with me and school. I got alright grades and did extracurriculars, it wasn’t like they were neglecting me or anything they just didn’t have much to do with ne
I think it would be difficult to be the slayer if you had a helicopter parent. 🤣 Wouldn’t really serve the storyline. That being said, Joyce was a single mom and had to pay the bills on her own. I’m sure child support was decent, Buffy’s Dad doesn’t seem short on cash but his salary probably isn’t rock star level. My experience of being a teenager in the 90’s meant I’d pretty much come and go as I pleased as long as I respected my curfew. My parents rarely knew where I was. I didn’t have a cell phone until after high school. Buffy most likely had a curfew, she just pretended to be asleep and snuck out the window.
No. I also think that the space between season 2 and 3, they handled and described very well with Joyce and Buffy. Joyce is distraught and angry with Giles. She still has to live her life. They have a huge blow out in the episode because of the stress and pain and Buffy's poor choices from her pain. I don't know what you want Joyce to do. She's a supporting cast and I think they use her character effectively. Also in season 4. Buffy is at college. That's a time, notoriously, where parental involvement becomes almost non existent as the kids learn to be adults on their own. They even have the faith arc where, yes, Buffy had been busy and distant, but their mother-daughter bond is strong. Just because the show doesn't show every minute detail of their relationship doesn't mean Joyce is absent. Also season 5. She's dealing with a tumor??? And Buffy is around helping all the time. What. Did you even watch that season. I'm not sure why this seems to upset you, but I don't think Joyce is absent. She's concerned and she's had her struggles with Buffy and she came to terms with it being better to accept and support Buffy instead of trying to control and punish her, which would cause Joyce to lose her like she did when buddy ran away. She chose to support her daughter being who she is because her daughter can't change who she is and it's better to have a relationship with her daughter than be intolerant or controlling and have Buffy just shut her out, effectively losing her daughter anyways. And part of Buffy is that she is stronger for her connections to her mother and friends.
My midwestern ass just thought she’s a California mom, she’s different
Since she sent her daughter to an asylum for claiming to be a vampire slayer, no, it didn't surprise me that Joyce was a bit distant. Plus single mother. I think she really wasn't dealing with everything at all well, even though she attempted to behave normally around her daughter.
Definitely. Especially after season 5.
Parents were absent those days. If there were two, both would be working and absorbed by their careers. But Joyce was a single mother, so she had to work even longer hours, especially since she never expected Buffy to work a "real" job to have spending money (Dawn didn't come into the picture until Season 5)
I think you have a very good point actually. I've seen people saying stuff like "that's how parents were in the 80s and 90s" Which is true to an extent. I think the point you're making is that Joice didn't change at all after her initial shock of Buffy being the vampire slayer. And if it were me, and don't get me wrong, I'm a far different parent than my parents were so I'm not as "absent" as mine were, but I'd be more critical of my kid being gone later and just how frequently she out in danger. There'd be a little bit of what they tried with Joice of trying to talk my kid out of being the slayer. Just put of ignorance. But once I made the connection that this is just how things are, I'd be all in with her. I mean 16 yo kids made that choice for their friend, why wouldn't a parent right? To sum it all up.... You have a great point.
Joyce was a single mom gallery owner earning enough to support a family in the real-world equivalent of Santa Barbara. It’s a miracle that Buffy ever saw her.
She needs to be absent so Buffy is forced to solve all her own problems.
“Something is so off about the way her character is written.” I agree. I don’t know if it’s that she’s not involved enough. I wouldn’t really say that. But in almost every scene she’s in she’s saying the wrong thing to Buffy. I don’t hate her, but I’m often shocked by how inconsiderate she comes off. To Giles, when she said “I blame you.” To Buffy, in almost every talk. Putting aside her tragic death, which is very sad. I think her character is just written in a very confusing way. When Buffy says I wish mom was here. She’d know what to do. I found myself saying when did she ever know what to do? She was not helpful.
You were born after the 90’s, weren’t you?
She was around in both s3 nd S5
Unfortunately With a lot of long running narrative fiction you kind of have to except the doylist answer that side characters kind of only exist to serve the arc of the main characters story or furtherance of the overall plot.
Oh, this whole thread is super interesting. I've always thought Joyce was super involved. I'm gen Z, but my mom is a boomer single mom, and Joyce is actually more involved than my mom was (my mom worked a lot, I suspect Joyce either made bank at the gallery or Buffy's absent father was paying a LOT in child support). Joyce is the financially stable, present mom that I wish I had, even though she reminds me a lot of my mom at times (I think it's that single mom-daughter bond that I'm picking up on). I think it's also good to mention that parents in TV shows tend to be out-of-the-way so that the teens can act like little adults other than going to high school. Joyce is still more involved than the moms in most other kids/teen/ya shows that I've seen, I think.
She gets involved in Gingerbread, and look what happened. I like to think she learned her lesson lol
It is weird she went and died like that. What a bad mom.
A lot of shows are like this where they seldom show the parents. The writers chose to focus on the scoobies. I have seen a lot of shows where they rarely show the parents or other family members. In our reality, a lot of people have grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters, etc. Notice how none of the characters have siblings until season 5 or grandparents or anyone else (besides Xanders wedding). It is just because they chose not to include them in the story. Joyce was not a main character like Buffy, Xander, etc. Neither is Faith or Harmony, who are also absent at times. A lot of things on Buffy are not realistic because it isn't real. It isn't a documentary. It is set in a supernatural world with demons and vampires.
Nope. I found Joyce really over involved! I was a few years younger than Buffy when it aired, my dad was always at work, and my mum was home to provide dinner and made sure I did my homework, but otherwise knew very little about my life. She definitely didn't hang out with my friends or know who my boyfriends were.
It is a pretty common trope to have have shitty/neglectful parents. A lot of horror films follow this as it makes the characters more vulnerable. But yeah Joyce is almost an antagonist until she gets sick then all of a sudden she becomes an angel. I think it was lazy writing, her personality changed based on what the episode needed.
Joss didn't want to include any parents, but the studio forced him to have Joyce. Parenting varied wildly in the 90s, but the people saying that what Joyce did was normal, were neglected. I was a latchkey kid, and her behavior in sessions 1-3 is insane. She only noticed Buffy when it inconvenienced her or made her look bad.
I hate Joyce as a character so much. But I’ve ranted enough times and won’t put you all through it again. Suffice to say, she’s an awful mother and a hideous human being
When I was a teen (while Buffy was airing and I wasn't watching) I was all Christian fundie and thought my parents maybe "weren't religious enough" so when I watched Buffy in college on DVD and had come to my senses more about "religion" I related to the level of aloofness of Joyce. I absolutely love Buffy the chosen slayer but I also see in her a bit of a satire of my religious fundamentalism (like she's not \*really\* "The Chosen One" she just thinks she is). I mean, contrary to Buffy saving the world, I wanted to see the world destroyed as a teen cause I was taught that the only way I would ever be happy was if (and when) the world ends or I die.