When I was younger, I never wanted to do anything my twin did, so I never read the Series of Unfortunate Events books. But my husband loves them, and with the upcoming Netflix series, we've been reading them out loud together. So far we've gone through The Bad Beginning and the Reptile Room. I found these to be pretty interesting, though I imagine I will enjoy watching them more than reading them because I like NPH, and all of the trailers i've seen look fantastic (I never saw the Jim Carey movie, btw).
One of the things I thought about when reading them was this is the start of what I call "Disney Parenting." Since about 2000 on, shows on the Disney Channel have featured kids with pretty inept parents, its kind of amazing the kids haven't been taken by child services, really. Sure, the parents are always there to teach a life lesson here and there, but the kids have free rein to go out whenever with whomever, they're always doing dangerous/crazy things, and apparently money isn't a concern for any of them! Disney movies were different, it was about kids defying their parents who were trying to do what was best for them (even though the kids almost always ended up teaching the parent a lesson; like in The Little Mermaid when Triton didn't want Ariel to go up to the human world because she was 16 and while Triton was right about it being dangerous, Ariel showed him they're not so different after all and things with the two worlds together could be great!)
In SoUE, the Baudelaires have to raise themselves because somehow the adults can never see through Olaf's disguises, and while they'll all mean well, they're really not helpful to the children at all. It then made me think about how Dumbledore let Harry do all of these things that no unpracticed wizard kid should be doing!
What do you think of this trend? Is it teaching kids to learn to do things for themselves? Or is it teaching them adults can't be trusted and they HAVE to do everything themselves?