^Very good question. I've contemplated on this a few times myself... Basically, they can hinder or resolve your story. If you have a character who has this goal of his, which may seem unimportant to his mom or dad, they'll try to convince him not to go through with it. They'll try to teach him, rather speed teach him, the lessons in life they've learned already. And really, this character needs to learn it for himself. That's why it's a story. It's a journey. Having a more intelligent person in it would just disrupt the delicate process you, yourself, are trying to write.
Since you're old enough to think you're trying to assert your personality. If you observe little kids they'll frequently say "I wanna do it" or "I'm a big girl/boy" a lot. That's because they get the message from everyone that they can't do it and are inferior. The average kid does not want to feel that way and is compelled to learn things. However, the adults tend to win out and you become dependent on them for most of your childhood. The danger here that you personality will be "stolen" by your mom or dad and you will become like an extension of them. In psych this is called "enmeshment" which just means your personalities are meshed not distinct. For instance, it may not be the best for a guy to "be his mother" in 99% of his behavior. Since real life contains little adventure stories where characters "come of age" and develop their own unique character provide vicarious experience for the reader. There you go!
Science Fiction: This style tends to be "speculative" meaning that it looks at the way things might be and how we as humans will deal with it. So, based on my last post, there's no focus on dealing with family issues of the past because the adult future is the subject. Fantasy: It's a romantic nostalgia setting of times and places that never where and never can be. So, fantasy novels are about how we would like things to be based on our world now. A lot of stories are based on warriors who have skill and courage and they get ahead, and that doesn't happen in our world. You can be smart and brave as hell but if you don't have the right connections no one cares. There's easy answer royalty while we have messy democratic systems. The different species are somewhat like the different races and so on. So, I view fantasy as being about "now" but the nostalgia helps dealing with that. Thus, the fantasy setting is great for dealing with family issues and SF isn't.
Wow, this thread generated a lot more responses than I expected. Thanks for all the input! I think that generalizing gets too much of a bad rap, undeservedly so in many cases. In all things, there's going to be a general trend, and then some exceptions to the rule. The fact that Paul's mother, Lady Jessica, played a pivotal, positive role and wasn't killed off is an exception to the rule - and a great one at that. I'm surprised more authors weren't inspired to give parents a bigger part in their books after Frank Herbert's precedent.
Generalizing a perfectly fine thing to do. People that criticize it seek to hamstring a person from having any opinions at all. The world isn't filled with such unique situations that we need to sift through every single case of everything in the world.
I could never see this happening to Conan. A younger Cohen the Barbarian, on the other hand, now that is plausible.
That's usually seen in young adult novels, and then it's due to the fact that teenagers are in their identity crisis mode. The intrusive and overbearing parent gives the story more angst that the average young adult can relate to, most having dealt with this themselves.
