Dina’s parents seem okay from what we’ve seen of them, same with Dorothy’s and Mike’s, Hank is pretty cool…I guess Amber’s mom and Joe’s dad are fine (assuming he’s over his womanizing).
But Carol, Linda and Charles (mostly Linda), Danny’s mom (we know her name?), Ruth’s grandfather, Jason’s dad (assuming what we’ve heard of him is correct), and of course the Two Dead Dads all suck,
On one hand, they’re fully supportive of her in every way, shape and form we know, and not a single bad thing has been said of them, even by Carla.
On the other hand, they’re uber-wealthy gig industry capitalists.
So, yeah, still putting them up against the wall when the revolution comes, but they’ll at least get a blindfold.
Rabid Rabbit
And just as you’re about to pull the trigger they’ll mention that they designed and built the gun, and that it includes failsafes preventing it from being used on them.
And then while you’re looking at the gun trying to figure out where the Ruttech logo is and how you missed it, the drones swoop in and carry them off. Then extra drones dance a jig over your head blowing raspberries and saying “Gotcha! It’s not true!!
And a final drone hits you in the face with a pie.
Renshear Blade
that is when i shake my fist at the sky and yell “Ruuutteeeecch!..
(your comment brought the giggles)
Miri
At what point do people realise that Carla built the drones? ❤️ On the fly, out of somebody else’s stuff (possibly Mary’s, after shoving her into a closet)…
Thag Simmons
Carla’s parents are probably bad people but really good parents
Man, Charles gets a shit-ton of benefit of the doubt in these comments. Like, consistently. Because Linda speaks her mind more and Charles is more prone to silence? Hm.
We have never once seen him not actively or implicitly back Linda, except when encouraging Walky to date Amber (and let’s be real, if Linda had pulled Walky aside to say that, y’all would have chalked it up to racism without question, as if Sal didn’t accuse BOTH her parents of racism and Charles has done nothing to dispel that—not to mention if either kid has ever needed a quick “aside” from Linda, it’s been Sal, so it’s pretty clear both parents have a favorite). His biggest virtue is acting excited to see Sal when Linda has historically been stone-faced, but even then he has shown that he has a similarly low opinion of Sal and her choices (lamenting her natural hair and expressing surprise that Danny wasn’t a punk rocker with a cobra).
brute
oh good it’s not just me thinking this.
also, he seems pretty judgmental of crimes when sal or someone she dates is involved but a white girl doing crimes to support walky is admirable? he barely met Lucy and tried to sway walky away from her.
Mark
Do you ever wonder if Charles feels hurt that Sal tends to repress the nappy hair that she got from him?
thejeff
It’s possible there’s something repressed going on there, but since what he actually said when he saw her with natural hair is that he liked it better straight, it’s certainly not a straightforward read.
Mark
Good point. This stuff is too twisty for my brain.
This might stir some shit a little, but I kind of think Dorothy’s parents are some to blame for her issues.
Bash
I’m not ruling this out but I don’t recall any evidence of this. At freshman family weekend they seemed supportive of the president thing, but not a driving force. If anything they were a bit patronizing about it.
Miri
I think they’re mainly supportive people who love and believe in their child’s ability to accomplish a lot? That they appear to have missed the amount of pressure she is putting herself under is unfortunate.
But OTOH, she told them to their faces that she wants more for herself than they ever accomplished, in a “your experiences and observations are irrelevant and do not relate to mine” sense – at this point I think all they can do is love her and be there to pick up the pieces if/when needed ? Anything else would just be rejected out of hand. And she is technically an adult and their respecting that isn’t wrong in any way, and is right in several, but it does sound like they may be missing how hard she is likely to crash… Strip where she puts down her parents pretty rudely but lovingly, as only a young, confident, person who hasn’t yet met with the concept of failure can
Mark
Hear, hear!
PirateTawnee
Maybe they are good parents, but not for Dorothy?
Lanie
My brain sorts most of the parents in this comic into one of two categories- “actively harmful” and “doing their best but aren’t perfect humans”. Dorothy’s parents fall into the second category. Sure, maybe they could have done a better job noticing how far Dorothy was stretching herself past her healthy limit, but at the same time Dorothy purposely puts on a good face to hide that fact. The Keeners were doing their best to know and support their child’s ambitions without stifling them, and that’s a hard line to draw correctly, especially when your child is shifting into a young adult. The Keeners drew the line out a little too far, but I feel like it was clearly out of love and support, not their own ambitions.
The actively harmful category is for parents like Blaine, Carol, Linda, and my personally most disliked parent, Naomi. They’re letting their own bullshit hurt their kids in ways that are openly aggressive or demeaning, and in many cases their kids have actively told them about the hurt and harm but not seen any change. Hank is currently uncategorized.
Walky and Sal are both alive and getting paid rides through college. That requires a bare minimum of parenting competence we know for a fact some still failed to reach. 4/10 although I could be talked down to a 3.5.
Tan
The fact that Sal and Walky survived childhood is a bare minimum of parenting competence that entitles Charles and Linda to a 1/10 instead of a 0/10. Sal and Walky getting paid rides through college has exactly shit-all to do with parenting competence; that’s just wealth.
Sirksome
And yet we know a guy wealthy enough to pay his daughter’s tuition that orchestrated and enacted and entire kidnapping scheme, specifically to not to. I’m open to arguments, but I think they get points for that compared to actions of other parents we’ve seen. They also haven’t shown up to campus with a shotgun cause they don’t like the gender of human their kids like kissing.
Tan
Not actively choosing to commit (those specific) crimes against your children does not earn points. No one earns points just for the fact that worse exists. We are not grading on a curve. Getting every question wrong on the test is still a failure, even if the person next to you got every question wrong and also peed on the test.
HueSatLight
it kind of feels like you are grading on some sort of curve, if you don’t think 4/10 is below average.
Freemage
4/10 is just slightly below average. I don’t think we’ve seen one of those, yet. I’d put the Walkertons at a 2 or 3, myself; they’re not just casually bad at parenting (honestly, I’d have to check the archives to confirm, but I’d almost put Amber’s mom in that category for failing to get her daughter out from Blaine sooner, so yes, I’d stick her at 4), but they are also actively engaging in toxic conduct, with both unconscious racism and encouraging sibling rivalry with their rather blatant favoritism.
Daibhid C
I could have this wrong but as I understand it, if you’re grading on a curve the best parent is at the top of the curve at 10, the worst parent is at the bottom with 0, so yes, 4/10 is, by definition, below average.
If you’re grading on an absolute scale, on the other hand, it’s possible there aren’t any 10/10 parents (even Dorothy’s aren’t perfect, probably), which would ding the average down slightly.
Regret
Their kids are alive. Their kids are fucked up but not in the worst way, they just have issues. The kids learned some form of ethics, the kids are still capable of empathy, social connection, learning, etc.
I don’t know what your 10/10 would look like, but it seems to me that even flawless parenting, i.e. parenting that doesn’t leave any scars could at most score a 6/10 on your scale. I’d give them 3/10.
Daibhid C
“I don’t know what your scale looks like” is the basic problem with the entire concept, really.
Masumi
Not to make the discussion even more complicated for no good reason (jk, I absolutely am), but I think Blaine should get negative parenting points.
Regina phalange
I know real-life parents who make their kids take out loans when they could easily afford to pay their way because they picked a major they didn’t like. While I personally think parents owe it to their children to help all they can with college regardless of their choices (if only because, right or wrong, the government assumes parents will help when assessing kids’ need for aid), this is not a common opinion. As unfairly and prejudiced-ly low of an opinion Linda and Charles have kept of Sal, the fact that they are willing to pay for her tuition with apparently no strings attached (and Walky too), puts them automatically at a 3/10 for me.
tunasammich
I’d probably give them a 2 simply because sending your kid to one of those troubled teen industry schools that are really abuse camps is one of the worst things I can think of doing to your kid
thejeff
My only reason for a bit of leeway there would be if it was what they worked out as the only alternative to prison.
I mean, the Walkertons are arguably the least-evil parents regularly featured in Dumbing of Age, in that they are not actively trying to kill their children
Do you mean 1/10 and 3/10? Because 1/5 and 3/5 combines to 4/5, or 8/10.
Needfuldoer
It was a compromise.
Icarus
They don’t sum, they average. Two 4/5 parents don’t make a 16/10 set, after all.
(I’d argue that parenthood is more nuanced than a single dimension and 4/5 parents may make a couple that’s worse or maybe even better than 8/10, but I don’t have much experience in this regard.)
I think 4/10 is fair, but “they suck” is still applicable. They are toxic in small, insidious ways rather than abusive. There isn’t an objective measure for parenting so if we’re going to give someone points out of ten, I do think we have to look at the best and worst possible examples.
They are not (to our knowledge at least) physically abusive. The whole “golden child/scapegoat” setup they’ve got with Sal and Walky is 110% a form of emotional abuse.
I love Danny and Sal’s dynamic. I sometimes miss Danny/Amazi-Girl, in truth, but I mean, this is far from chopped liver, and I am really glad these two got together.
129 thoughts on “Itemize”
Doctor_Who
Despite the old adage, sometimes comedy comes in ones.
Jeff K!
It’s still in threes. The two silent panels are part of the joke ?
BarerMender
Your conjecture founders on the observation there are three silent panels.
Dara
The joke is three panels. The reaction starts with Sal’s look in the third panel.
Dara
The reaction starts with the fourth panel.
I am an greatest commenters.
Dara
Y’know I know what I meant but clearly I’m too tired to write. G’night everybody xD
ktbear
Nye nyes Dara, hope you slept well.
Decidedly Orthogonal
This all read brilliantly to me, and I hope you’ve slept well. ??
Makkabee
There are FOUR reaction panels!
Vukodlak
He’s not wrong
Opus the Poet
What I came to say, now there’s nothing for me to say so I’ll just be quiet.
ktbear
This ^^
clif
I want to agree and say same, but empirical evidence indicates that’s never stopped me before.
Chaucer59
Point for style if not substance.
shadowcell
Dumbing of Age Book 13: Your Parents Suck
bonus: this could also be the title of the entire complete collection of Dumbing of Age comics
Doctor_Who
Dina’s parents seem okay from what we’ve seen of them, same with Dorothy’s and Mike’s, Hank is pretty cool…I guess Amber’s mom and Joe’s dad are fine (assuming he’s over his womanizing).
But Carol, Linda and Charles (mostly Linda), Danny’s mom (we know her name?), Ruth’s grandfather, Jason’s dad (assuming what we’ve heard of him is correct), and of course the Two Dead Dads all suck,
Sirksome
Meh, Hank gets a most improved medal but he was still pretty cringe early game. Anyone remember freshman family weekend?
Roborat
Vaguely, that was 13 years ago.
Wraithy2773
There’s also Carla’s parents.
On one hand, they’re fully supportive of her in every way, shape and form we know, and not a single bad thing has been said of them, even by Carla.
On the other hand, they’re uber-wealthy gig industry capitalists.
So, yeah, still putting them up against the wall when the revolution comes, but they’ll at least get a blindfold.
Rabid Rabbit
And just as you’re about to pull the trigger they’ll mention that they designed and built the gun, and that it includes failsafes preventing it from being used on them.
And then while you’re looking at the gun trying to figure out where the Ruttech logo is and how you missed it, the drones swoop in and carry them off. Then extra drones dance a jig over your head blowing raspberries and saying “Gotcha! It’s not true!!
And a final drone hits you in the face with a pie.
Renshear Blade
that is when i shake my fist at the sky and yell “Ruuutteeeecch!..
(your comment brought the giggles)
Miri
At what point do people realise that Carla built the drones? ❤️ On the fly, out of somebody else’s stuff (possibly Mary’s, after shoving her into a closet)…
Thag Simmons
Carla’s parents are probably bad people but really good parents
Regina phalange
Man, Charles gets a shit-ton of benefit of the doubt in these comments. Like, consistently. Because Linda speaks her mind more and Charles is more prone to silence? Hm.
We have never once seen him not actively or implicitly back Linda, except when encouraging Walky to date Amber (and let’s be real, if Linda had pulled Walky aside to say that, y’all would have chalked it up to racism without question, as if Sal didn’t accuse BOTH her parents of racism and Charles has done nothing to dispel that—not to mention if either kid has ever needed a quick “aside” from Linda, it’s been Sal, so it’s pretty clear both parents have a favorite). His biggest virtue is acting excited to see Sal when Linda has historically been stone-faced, but even then he has shown that he has a similarly low opinion of Sal and her choices (lamenting her natural hair and expressing surprise that Danny wasn’t a punk rocker with a cobra).
brute
oh good it’s not just me thinking this.
also, he seems pretty judgmental of crimes when sal or someone she dates is involved but a white girl doing crimes to support walky is admirable? he barely met Lucy and tried to sway walky away from her.
Mark
Do you ever wonder if Charles feels hurt that Sal tends to repress the nappy hair that she got from him?
thejeff
It’s possible there’s something repressed going on there, but since what he actually said when he saw her with natural hair is that he liked it better straight, it’s certainly not a straightforward read.
Mark
Good point. This stuff is too twisty for my brain.
HueSatLight
This might stir some shit a little, but I kind of think Dorothy’s parents are some to blame for her issues.
Bash
I’m not ruling this out but I don’t recall any evidence of this. At freshman family weekend they seemed supportive of the president thing, but not a driving force. If anything they were a bit patronizing about it.
Miri
I think they’re mainly supportive people who love and believe in their child’s ability to accomplish a lot? That they appear to have missed the amount of pressure she is putting herself under is unfortunate.
But OTOH, she told them to their faces that she wants more for herself than they ever accomplished, in a “your experiences and observations are irrelevant and do not relate to mine” sense – at this point I think all they can do is love her and be there to pick up the pieces if/when needed ? Anything else would just be rejected out of hand. And she is technically an adult and their respecting that isn’t wrong in any way, and is right in several, but it does sound like they may be missing how hard she is likely to crash… Strip where she puts down her parents pretty rudely but lovingly, as only a young, confident, person who hasn’t yet met with the concept of failure can
Mark
Hear, hear!
PirateTawnee
Maybe they are good parents, but not for Dorothy?
Lanie
My brain sorts most of the parents in this comic into one of two categories- “actively harmful” and “doing their best but aren’t perfect humans”. Dorothy’s parents fall into the second category. Sure, maybe they could have done a better job noticing how far Dorothy was stretching herself past her healthy limit, but at the same time Dorothy purposely puts on a good face to hide that fact. The Keeners were doing their best to know and support their child’s ambitions without stifling them, and that’s a hard line to draw correctly, especially when your child is shifting into a young adult. The Keeners drew the line out a little too far, but I feel like it was clearly out of love and support, not their own ambitions.
The actively harmful category is for parents like Blaine, Carol, Linda, and my personally most disliked parent, Naomi. They’re letting their own bullshit hurt their kids in ways that are openly aggressive or demeaning, and in many cases their kids have actively told them about the hurt and harm but not seen any change. Hank is currently uncategorized.
Jo_cubstar
It really could.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Save that title for the omnibus volumes.
BMG
That avatar was a blast from the past, memory unlocked xD
Slartibeast Button, BIA
I still haven’t adopted any comatose teenagers, however.
Abdomino
Danny’s a good egg. Spiraling Sal averted for the moment.
NGPZ
Aaaaawwwweeee Danny’s so supportive!!! ?
Great birthday strip!!! ? ? ? ? ? ?
Jo_cubstar
Happy birthday!
True Survivor
Happy Birthday to you!
Laura
Hoppy bird, d’eh? Two ewes!
? ? ???? ??
a/snow/mous/e
happy birthday ngpz <3
Sirksome
They don’t suck. The Walkertons are easily a strong 4/10. That’s almost half way to a decent set of parents right there. You could do much worse.
butts
i feel like your standards are very low
Sirksome
Walky and Sal are both alive and getting paid rides through college. That requires a bare minimum of parenting competence we know for a fact some still failed to reach. 4/10 although I could be talked down to a 3.5.
Tan
The fact that Sal and Walky survived childhood is a bare minimum of parenting competence that entitles Charles and Linda to a 1/10 instead of a 0/10. Sal and Walky getting paid rides through college has exactly shit-all to do with parenting competence; that’s just wealth.
Sirksome
And yet we know a guy wealthy enough to pay his daughter’s tuition that orchestrated and enacted and entire kidnapping scheme, specifically to not to. I’m open to arguments, but I think they get points for that compared to actions of other parents we’ve seen. They also haven’t shown up to campus with a shotgun cause they don’t like the gender of human their kids like kissing.
Tan
Not actively choosing to commit (those specific) crimes against your children does not earn points. No one earns points just for the fact that worse exists. We are not grading on a curve. Getting every question wrong on the test is still a failure, even if the person next to you got every question wrong and also peed on the test.
HueSatLight
it kind of feels like you are grading on some sort of curve, if you don’t think 4/10 is below average.
Freemage
4/10 is just slightly below average. I don’t think we’ve seen one of those, yet. I’d put the Walkertons at a 2 or 3, myself; they’re not just casually bad at parenting (honestly, I’d have to check the archives to confirm, but I’d almost put Amber’s mom in that category for failing to get her daughter out from Blaine sooner, so yes, I’d stick her at 4), but they are also actively engaging in toxic conduct, with both unconscious racism and encouraging sibling rivalry with their rather blatant favoritism.
Daibhid C
I could have this wrong but as I understand it, if you’re grading on a curve the best parent is at the top of the curve at 10, the worst parent is at the bottom with 0, so yes, 4/10 is, by definition, below average.
If you’re grading on an absolute scale, on the other hand, it’s possible there aren’t any 10/10 parents (even Dorothy’s aren’t perfect, probably), which would ding the average down slightly.
Regret
Their kids are alive. Their kids are fucked up but not in the worst way, they just have issues. The kids learned some form of ethics, the kids are still capable of empathy, social connection, learning, etc.
I don’t know what your 10/10 would look like, but it seems to me that even flawless parenting, i.e. parenting that doesn’t leave any scars could at most score a 6/10 on your scale. I’d give them 3/10.
Daibhid C
“I don’t know what your scale looks like” is the basic problem with the entire concept, really.
Masumi
Not to make the discussion even more complicated for no good reason (jk, I absolutely am), but I think Blaine should get negative parenting points.
Regina phalange
I know real-life parents who make their kids take out loans when they could easily afford to pay their way because they picked a major they didn’t like. While I personally think parents owe it to their children to help all they can with college regardless of their choices (if only because, right or wrong, the government assumes parents will help when assessing kids’ need for aid), this is not a common opinion. As unfairly and prejudiced-ly low of an opinion Linda and Charles have kept of Sal, the fact that they are willing to pay for her tuition with apparently no strings attached (and Walky too), puts them automatically at a 3/10 for me.
tunasammich
I’d probably give them a 2 simply because sending your kid to one of those troubled teen industry schools that are really abuse camps is one of the worst things I can think of doing to your kid
thejeff
My only reason for a bit of leeway there would be if it was what they worked out as the only alternative to prison.
ESM
I mean, the Walkertons are arguably the least-evil parents regularly featured in Dumbing of Age, in that they are not actively trying to kill their children
Nono
Combined from Linda being a 1/5 and Charles being a 3/5?
Proxiehunter
Came in about ten minutes to late to make this joke.
Sirksome
It’s actually pretty accurate though. `
Schpoonman
Do you mean 1/10 and 3/10? Because 1/5 and 3/5 combines to 4/5, or 8/10.
Needfuldoer
It was a compromise.
Icarus
They don’t sum, they average. Two 4/5 parents don’t make a 16/10 set, after all.
(I’d argue that parenthood is more nuanced than a single dimension and 4/5 parents may make a couple that’s worse or maybe even better than 8/10, but I don’t have much experience in this regard.)
Thag Simmons
That’s not a passing grade
Bash
I think 4/10 is fair, but “they suck” is still applicable. They are toxic in small, insidious ways rather than abusive. There isn’t an objective measure for parenting so if we’re going to give someone points out of ten, I do think we have to look at the best and worst possible examples.
Proxiehunter
They are not (to our knowledge at least) physically abusive. The whole “golden child/scapegoat” setup they’ve got with Sal and Walky is 110% a form of emotional abuse.
Dsr667
Danny showing a lil bit of comedic genius right there
DailyBrad
I love Danny and Sal’s dynamic. I sometimes miss Danny/Amazi-Girl, in truth, but I mean, this is far from chopped liver, and I am really glad these two got together.
Puppeteer Nessus
Agreed. I want them to travel the world, solving murders and trading quips
Freemage