Adults Are Useless - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Is every adult in this show a moron?!"

— Timmy Turner, from The Fairly Oddparents, commenting on The Simpsons.

In some shows that revolve around teenagers, preteens, or younger children, adults can't do anything right — if they appear on-screen at all. Teachers tend to be annoying sticks-in-the-mud who do nothing but spoil people's fun. Parents are clueless, and either over- or underprotective.

Usually, this is just plot necessity (especially on comedy shows). After all, a High School Hustler could hardly get anything done if the teachers kept their eyes open, and if the parents were vigilant; being told that You Are Grounded would wreck the plot.

But on a handful of drama shows, there's a real venom to it. Radio Free Roscoe is about a group of heroic teens who defy a tyrannical school administration. On a smaller scale, Degrassi The Next Generation has episodes where it is implied that stealing school property is no big deal, but it's disgraceful to inform on the thief.

Shows where Adults Are Useless can also be shows where you Can't Get Away With Nuthin' — kids who break school rules somehow always get caught, but due to bad luck, not because a teacher was alert.

Also common when adults are told something is happening, but simply don't believe it, resulting in a Cassandra Truth. The logical extreme of this trope is There Are No Adults.

Gives the impression that only teens or younger kids are capable of saving the world and stuff. Can lead to the Family Unfriendly Aesop that there's no point in telling adults about your problems because they'd either disbelieve you or be too useless to help.

This trope can occasionally be used in a more mature fashion to make an Aesop about growing up and realizing that adults are not all-powerful. This is especially common in military or war-themed shows and literature, where the point is that adults are ultimately unable to protect the younger generation. This version is, unfortunately, often Truth In Television.

Parental Obliviousness and Police Are Useless are subtropes.

Not to be confused with Humans Are Bastards, which deals with everybody.

Examples

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Anime & Manga

Future Boy Conan: Conan is an uber-capable 10~12 year old, capable of running roughshod over all the adults in the series. His female co-star Lanna is similarly, if not as totally, capable.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Kinda mentions this as Edward and Alphonse Elric disobeyed a direct order from Major Armstrong to search the abandoned laboratory 5, refusing to wait for him to look into the matter deeper before going into the lab. Second Lieutenant Maria Ross and Sergeant Denny Brosh slap and berate both of them on that, trying to do everything themselves, being just a child still and ends it with "... it's okay to trust adults sometimes." The slapping part with Al apparently didn't go so well... him being a suit of armour and all.
- Of course, the military personnel are actually far from being incompetent.
- More than that, in the manga and Brotherhood, the adults are highly skilled, extremely intelligent, and almost as central to the plot as Ed and Al. If anything, it's an aversion.
Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Heavily lampshaded in Season 3, usually by Asuka and Kenzan, as the kids easily resign themselves to the fact that the adults have fallen apart and it?s up to them to take charge. Principal Sameshima might also be a Deconstruction, since from the start, having to repeatedly burden teenagers with the responsibility of saving the world truly causes him a great deal of guilt and inner-turmoil.
In Case Closed (Detective Conan), adults aren't necessarily useless — they solve a few cases themselves, albeit with prodding assistance from the main character. It's just that Conan Edogawa/Shinichi Kudo is that much better at crime-solving than they are. However, note that Shinichi's father Yuusaku is just as good a detective as he is, if not even better. He's only useless because he's simply almost never there and he'd rather continue writing about mysteries than solving them.
- Ultimately averted, though, by the fact that Conan is almost an adult himself (he just LOOKS like a kid).
The only competent adult presence in Dennou Coil, other than the main character's manipulative grandmother, turns out to be seventeen and still in high school.
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni subverts this, and it even serves as the solution to one of the arcs.
This Trope is eventually subverted in Bleach when we find out that Ichigo's father, Isshin Kurosaki, who until that point was portrayed as a clueless, bumbling moron, had actually known what was going on with his son the entire time. This may or may not be entirely appropriate for this Trope, as Isshin turns out to be an ex-Soul Reaper like Urahara, and thus isn't a regular parent.
- Further, the latest arc featured the main characters, most of whom are teenagers, getting owned in rapid succession by the Espada until the Shinigami Captains showed up to save their lives.
- And now, Isshin is officially a badass.
The mother of Hinako Aikawa in Bitter Virgin is arguably worse than useless. Not only did she flat-out refuse to believe her new husband was molesting her daughter Hinako until Hinako's second pregnancy, she also made a point of hiding the first pregnancy from him so he wouldn't know "what a horrible kid" Hinako was. In fairness, when she finally did accept the truth, the first thing she did was chase said husband out of the house with a knife, and soon they moved away.
Neon Genesis Evangelion deconstructs the hell out of this. The reason why they're useless is because most of them are at least indirectly on SEELE's payroll, and it would be a Very Bad Idea for them to act as Spanners In The Works regarding Instrumentality.
- Not to mention the fact that the eponymous Eva units are piloted primarily by children. It's alluded to, but not clearly explained that this is linked to the Second Impact. They do state rather clearly, though, that they have to use children, although they seem a little bummed about it at first
  - Having to use children has nothing to do with Second Impact. The neural link that controls the Evangelions specifically requires the emotional bond that exists between mother and child in order to function. Each EVA actually has the soul of its pilot's mother stuck inside its core. This is less 'Adults are Useless' and more Humans Are Bastards
In Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO), the only adult who seems to be competent at anything is Onizuka himself. And even then, he's only lucky.
- Justified Trope. The kids of the manga are actively fighting their teachers and other authority figures. It's hard to be useful to people who will completely ruin you just for trying. And it's not luck that lets Onizuka get through to them, it's the sheer fact that they are incapable of hurting, beating, embarrassing or otherwise driving him away.
In Suzumiya Haruhi, the only character over 20 who actually does anything is Future Mikuru (and it's questionable if she counts, as she's just an aged-up version of an existing teenaged character). This may be due to the fact that God was 13 when she created the universe, and is now 16. Actually 17, if you go by the latest novels.
In Mahou Sensei Negima, After the Nakama went back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, some of them went straight for help from the adults. After being heard, they were told to leave the rest to the grown-ups, to which Weasel Mascot Chamo responded by saying "Tsk, tsk, tsk. You don't get it, principal. History has already proven that it's no good to leave things to you guys. You should leave things to us here." In the end, while they did help, it was the students who saved the day while the adults were useless (mostly because the Big Bad had already developed countermeasures for them).
- There's also a number of aversions, as there were several useful adults around, but they all sat off to the side and watched. Later chapters see the adults actually getting involved a little more.
Mostly averted in Naruto. Throughout the first half of the series, the adults actually do most of the important, high-level fighting. Post-Time Skip, where the "Rookies" begin carrying the majority of the weight, it's portrayed not as this trope, but of the new generation taking up the mantle of their predecessors.
In the manga Bio Meat, nearly every bad decision concerning the outbreaks were made by adults. The only right decisions and almost every heroic act were done by children or the four main characters as adults.
In the manga Cage of Eden, EVERY SINGLE ADULT.
School Days. The only adult that appears is their homeroom teacher. And true to trope, what few interactions he has with the main characters is essentially telling them to shut up so he can get on with class.
In Fruits Basket, virtually every adult is neglectful or outright abusive. As a child, Yuki is forced to stay with a person who verbally abuses him and his mother brushes his complaints off. Kyo is completely hated by his father, who does absolutely nothing to prevent him from being locked up upon graduation. Akito's father is dead and her mother outright hates her. Rin is abandoned by her parents, so they are totally unaware when she is pushed out a window and locked up in a room. All of the older servants in the household allow Akito to act freely, because they feel that the God of the Zodiac has the right to treat the Zodiac any way.
- Also, Kyoko's parents neglected her, and kicked her out of her house after getting in a fight trying to quit her gang. Her father tells Katsuya that he's crazy when he tells him that he hopes to marry her.
Averted in Soul Eater as most of the adult characters are far more powerful than the teenaged main characters and end up saving their lives at some points.
- Even once the kids are shown to have improved significantly, the adults are still around being not-useless. For example they're acting in the background during the Baba Yaga arc, and now during this new storyline; Yumi with Kirikou's group, Tezcatlipoca disrupting Black Star's fight with Crona.
- 'Salvage' has a group of them heading for Noah in the real world, as Spartoi hunt for Kid within the Book. Shinigami's not relying purely on the kids, it seems.
In the manga Bloody Monday it seems that the only heroes capable of doing anything competent are high school students, from the legendary hacker Falcon to the master archer. In fact, evil agent J is actually the twin(?) brother of said archer, and K turns out to be a student from the school's Newspaper Club.
Both subverted in Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple, as Kenichi's master are much stronger than anyone that Kenichi fights, but they will not interfere in his battles unless he's fighting a master class opponent.
Let's Lagoon: There's only one adult, he just washed up on the island and is probably injured, but he's pretty useless (and probably had a thing going on with the female castaway) which irritates the resourceful protagonist to no end.
- Turns out he didn't have a thing going on with the female castaway, but instead her sister.
In Mai-HiME, most of the adults seem to have a very strong Weirdness Censor in play, and the few that aren't are almost all tools of the Ancient Conspiracy.
- On the other hand, Midori is an adult and is arguably the great unsung hero of the series as well as being the most level headed of the Hi ME (despite first impressions to the contrary). Additionally, Natsuki's adult contacts provide her with a lot of useful information and one of them also bales her, Mai, and Mikoto out of some trouble they had managed to get themselves into. Furthermore, while most of the adults have little knowledge of what's going on around them, most of them seem to be quite competent within their own professional spheres (and it's also worth noting that the majority of the younger characters are rather in the dark about what's going on as well).
In the first arc of Round Vernian Vifam we have a bunch of children holed up in an abandoned military installation with some weapons, and elsewhere on the same planet we have the Terran military in a state-of-the-art underground facility. The children manage to beat back several enemy attacks, while the military base gets wiped out along with all personnell after just one.

Comics

In Marvel's Runaways, the teen heroes don't trust any of the adult characters even Captain America. Civil War only cements their "Adults are tools" mentality.
- Cloak and Dagger nearly subvert this, by finding out what's really going on in Los Angeles and telling the kids that they'll get in contact with Captain America and send him to take out the Pride. Unfortunately, they are caught and brainwashed by Molly's parents into forgetting everything.
The Ultimate Spider-Man series by Brian Michael Bendis puts a big emphasis on Peter Parker being a teenager, and hanging out with his teenage friends. The other books of the Ultimate Marvel line also retool just about every other major Marvel hero as an asshole (because that's way edgier). This can lead to plenty of times when Peter risks his neck for his heroes only to find they don't share his ideals or views of responsibility, and are often ungrateful for his efforts. While the Adults aren't exactly useless, Spidey has good reason to be pissed off whenever he deals with them.
- Even Nick Fury can often make stupid decisions that come back to haunt Peter, like building the Spider-Slayers or locking up supervillains without trial. Peter even once got beaten up by Daredevil for attempting to help him in a fight and yelled at for being too young. Really, binging on the Ultimate Spider-Man books really makes you realize just how many people are dicks in the Ultimate Universe.
Barry Ween tends to fall into this pattern. When adults aren't outright antagonists, they're either clueless or helpless. Justified in that since Barry is a "boy genius," he's naturally the smartest person in the room all the time.

Fan Works

Parodied in Episode 3 of Gag Dub Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series by, of all people, Tristan — "Don't our parents even care that we're missing?"
Shining Pretty Cure. The only adult who even suspects something might be going on is Ren, the friendly owner of the neighbourhood cafe.
Possibly lampshaded in Futari Wa Pretty Cure Blue Moon. "Dawn", whoever she really is, notes that she's supposed to leave fighting evil to the thirteen-year-old title characters for some reason, but doesn't seem to be very happy about it.
Stephen Ratliff's Marissa Star Trek universe is notorious for this. In order for Marissa's "kids crew" to be great, every adult they come up against has to be a bumbling imbecile. In one episode, the Maquis even invented a drug that knocked out everyone over the age of 15.
In Kyon: Big Damn Hero, Kyon's parents are like this. Other adults are, fortunately, far more useful.

Films — Animation

The Land Before Time III. Not long after a meteor storm, the Great Valley's main water supply, a river running down from beyond the wall, mysteriously dries up. Rather than say, investigating the river's source (they could have sent fliers if they were worried about carnivores), the adults decide to wait in the valley and hope the water returns. In the meantime, water is running low, tempers are running high and all the food is quickly dying off. In the end, it's the children who accidentally find out that the water was blocked off and even then the adults can't agree on a plan of action and guess what? The children save the day! Again! By accident! Again!
- This is a very common occurrence throughout the series. None of the adults want to risk personal safety going out into the Mysterious Beyond for any reason whatsoever, leaving the children to do everything themselves.
Both used and subverted in Coraline. Coraline's parents didn't do much. But Bobinsky gave Coraline a subtle warning and Spink and Forcible also warned her that she was in terrible danger. And at the end, Spink and Forcible gave Coraline an important item to help her find the eyes of the ghost children.

Films — Live Action

The Lost Boys has a group of 12-year-old vampire hunters attempting (and at one point succeeding) to kill the group of teenage vampires. In fact all the main characters are younger than 20 with the adults being unaware until the big reveal at the end where one character displays he knew what was going on all along.
In the recent Transformers movie, much of the first tier of authority that Sam Witwicky encounters regarding the title being is best summed up by his disbelieving question of a police officer, "Are you on drugs?!" Note that this only applies to the civilian adults. Those involved in the military usually perform rather well considering the circumstances, even if it's not always the best actions to take.
The first Nightmare on Elm Street. Nancy's mother helped start the whole thing, her father doesn't do anything and the rest of the police only hinder her or ignore her frantic cries for help.
- The sequels more or less follow suit with a bizarre subversion in Freddy Vs Jason. It turns out that the more people are aware and afraid of Freddy (these two usually go hand by hand) the more powerful he becomes. Hence when the adults really got down to it they effectively eliminated the threat by erasing all written notions of Freddy, banning his name or any details from mentioning and submitting those kids who still remembered about him to a dream-depriving drug treatment. He did eventually find a loophole but still they did their best.
Every single John Hughes film.
Battle Royale. Not only does the government allow the capture of entire classrooms of children, but they allow putting them on an island, giving them deadly weapons, and telling them to go kill each other, last one alive wins and is free to go. On top of that, the parents never even TRY to save their children from being murdered, and instead the entire country (or possibly even the world) allows it to happen, waiting for the competition to end and see the winner.
- In the original novel, most parents, upon hearing their children have become part of the Program, merely resign themselves. Those who do resist are gunned down.
  - This is true in both the manga and novel; the first chapter of the book hints it, and the manga integrates it into at least one character's back story.
The Fratellis in The Goonies suffer this from time to time in their confrontations with the Goonies. They seem to be able to handle the cops (and Feds) just fine, but they can't quite handle a bunch of teenagers.
The Good Son has the most wall-banging use of this trope ever, from start to finish.
Joshua's only use for adults is to be pawns in his plan.
A minor application, but did anyone else find it a bit odd/absurd/idiotic that Obi-Wan Kenobi had to be told by a six-year-old that someone had erased data from the Jedi Archives?
- That's not what I got. I've always had the impression he knew, he just wanted somebody to say it for him. Either way, it's probably more a subversion than an example, since he (the adult) ''actually

listened'' to the kid.

This troper suspects Obi-Wan was rather desperately hoping Master Yoda would come up with another explanation because implications of the erasure of data was so darned disturbing.

Night of the Hunter: Rachel Cooper, the foster mother who takes in the Harper children, is the only adult in the film who is immune to Harry Powell's charms. Uncle Birdie does put in an effort, but after he discovers the mother's body he apparently doesn't report it because as the town eccentric/drunk he fears people will blame him.
In War Games, two teenagers are the only people who seem to be willing and able to avert nuclear holocaust, while parents, four-star generals and nuclear scientists act befuddled or indifferent.
The three children in Hocus Pocus try to inform adults and enlist their help against the witches. It always fails.
- It doesn't help that the witches turn around Max's attempted warnings to their advantage (they pretend that he's giving them an introduction and give a musical act) or the fact that they enchant a large number of adults to "dance until [they] die".
Matilda is full of this. Not a single student at Crunchem Hall manages to convince their parents that Ms. Trunchbull is abusive towards everyone.
- This is explained in the books, that the Trunchbull uses such extreme punishments that no parent would possibly believe them. It's also mentioned that Trunchbull treats the parents the same way she treats the kids.

Literature

Justified in Animorphs as many of the protagonists don't want to risk the lives of others and they also know there are few they can actually trust due to alien infestations. This is occasionally subverted however.
Justified in Orson Scott Card's Earthfall, in which one of the teenagers asks the oversoul why no one in the older generation is standing up to Elemak's tyranny, and it explains that they don't dare while he's holding their children hostage. The children being held, of course, are free to act (apart from being locked up).
Also Justified in Ender's Game, where the adults don't intervene when several students conspire to attack Ender, so he'll be forced to deal with it himself and not rely on anybody helping him.
With the exception of the Snicket siblings, every adult in A Series of Unfortunate Events is usually outrageously stupid, and often cruel. Even the adults who genuinely want to help the Baudelaires fail them at a crucial moment due to a fear or strange philosophy. (This is referenced, at least, in Lemony Snicket — The Unauthorized Autobiography, in which it is revealed that the supposedly volunteer organization V.F.D. kidnaps small children to join its ranks.)
- Hector manages to overcome his fear of stuffed crows (it makes sense in the book) just in time to tell them off for their treatment of the children. Still a bit too late though.
Stephen King's IT, the children in the Loser's Club are the only ones who know what's really going on in Derry. The adults are ineffectual and many of the Losers have troubled home lives: Beverly Marsh's father is physically abusive, Eddie Kaspbrak's mother is neurotic and smothering and Bill Denbrough's parents spend all of their time grieving for their younger son George and ignoring Bill.
- The book lampshades this at one point, when a character comments that the adults who do care become (however vaguely) aware that Derry is a Town With A Dark Secret and move away.
This happens constantly in Harry Potter. On the other hand, it is also occasionally averted and subverted, particularly in the massive battle near the end of the last book:
"We shall secure the school against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named while you search for this — this object."
"Is that possible?"
"I think so," said Professor McGonagall dryly, "we teachers are rather good at magic, you know."
Subverted in the Grey Griffins series. Adults save the kids' asses a lot. Adults are pretty powerful, in fact, on both the hero and villain side of things. The number of important adult characters looking out for the Kid Heroes is in fact a plot point, as the main character is rich and has a bodyguard with some magical friends.
In the build up to the Author Filibuster that was the fourth book, during the third book in the YA Maximum Ride series, one of the characters starts a child uprising against adults. Naturally, there's no such thing as a web-faring adult to also support/argue the issues, and the adults really are responsible for it all. After all, every adult so far in the series is evil, no matter how long they spend being friendly to begin with.
- Except Valencia Martinez, who is fairly useful and kind. (Although admittedly, she did apparently allow her daughter to be made into an avian-human hybrid, but she does say that she was locked out of the project against her will. Possibly if she hadn't been, things might have turned out a little better.)
In Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, there is a rather surprising lack of adult half-bloods. In fact, only one has been seen so far. Granted, this is somewhat subverted in that there ARE useful adults, they just don't have mystical magical powers.
- The implication being that most of the half-bloods are killed off by various monsters before they reach full adulthood, as Quintus pointed out.
  - However, there have been some mentions of a few historical figures (who reached adulthood) being half-blood as well. Such as Harriet Tubman, daughter of Hermes.
  - A few?
The Tomorrow Series: Those few adults that the teenagers do have contact with are either unable to offer help, or are completely incompetent.
Aimee by Mary Beth Miller: Almost all of the adults in the book are/were useless.The most egregious example is Aimee's family: Her dad was a crazy Fundamentalist preacher, her real mom was a drunk and a player, and her step mom was abusive in more ways than just hitting. You get the picture.
In the Circle of Magic series, adults tend to be useful, excepting Street Magic- when Briar attempts to get stone mage Jebilu Stoneslicer to teach Evvy, Stoneslicer proves himself to be selfish and useless- he tells Briar to take Evvy away from Chammur and to send her to Winding Circle. He then proceeds to make a number of assumptions about Evvy based solely on the fact that she is a poor orphan, and tells Briar that she will never get anywhere because of that. He does agree to teach her only after Rosethorn talks to him, and is later revealed to be the worst possible teacher for Evvy. Not to mention the scene when Briar is questioned by the mutabir, or leader of Chammur- Briar repeatedly suggests possible crimes to charge Lady Zenadia with, only to be informed that she is too high in rank to be bothered with such charges, and like Stoneslicer, the mutabir dismisses the teenage gang, the Vipers, and Evvy as poor people of no real value, and not worth helping.
In Robin McKinley's Deerskin, a novel in which a king takes a rather unhealthy interest in his daughter, several adults notice this but neither do or say a thing to help her even when he announces he plans to marry her, because their king is above reproach. This does not end well.
Averted in the Young Wizards series, where the adult wizards actually listen to and believe the child wizards^*
^{"So, a talking speck of light told you that the book which describes the entirety of reality has gone missing? Okay, thanks for telling us."}
, and the adult wizards, although having less raw power than the child wizards, have a lot more skill and knowledge. The child wizards still get to go on (dangerous) adventures, though, since fighting evil is the job of every wizard, regardless of age, and the adult wizards have their hands full with their own battles against evil.
Just about every Goosebumps book. Yes, some arguably have the excuse of magic hiding what's going on, but some cases are just silly. For example, in Say Cheese and Die...Again, the narrator is cursed to continually gain weight, putting on more than three hundred pounds in one day, and his parents chalk it up to an allergy attack and leave him to just go to school as normal the next day. Even though he can't fit in their car. Meanwhile, his friend was cursed to continue to lose weight until she looks like "a stick with a lemon on the top", and again is just sent to school as normal. The site Blogger Beware even has a "Questionable Parenting" section for each story.
Did any of the adults (i.e. Ned and Alice Wakefield and/or the Sweet Valley Police) in SweetValleyHigh ever do anything to prevent the insanity that coalesced around those "perfect size six" twins? Kidnappings, Murders, Rapes, all somehow involving the same two girls, the perpetrators constantly getting away only to cause 3-4 books worth of harassment. Parents who apparently allowed their 7 year old children the range of teenagers (if you think I'm kidding, go read some Sweet Valley Twins books where the kids go adventuring at night.)

Live Action TV

In 3-2-1-Contact's "The Bloodhound Gang" segments, the adults who are the targets of con artists are typically complete idiots to the point where one easy mark has his own child have control of his own finances.
The Australian kids' show Mirror Mirror managed an odd variant, where, aside from the Old Man, who was managing what has to be one of the most epic Xanatos Roulettes ever, all the adults were at least plausibly incompetent (if not outright evil), mainly because only a few of them had any idea of exactly what the hell was going on.
Arguably Arrested Development, as while all of the adults in the show constantly make terrible decisions and ruin any good thing that they get, George-Michael is running a relatively successful business and Maeby cons her way into a job as a movie studio executive. This is further highlighted by the fact that one of Maeby's better ideas as an executive is ruined by Michael.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a curious take on this. While Giles and Jenny Calendar are undeniably useful, and Buffy's mother proves quite smart and sensible once she finds out the truth about her daughter, adult society is thoroughly useless. There is no adult organization which is not either evil (the Mayor and his administration), staggeringly incompetent (the Watchers), or both (the Initiative). The only possible exception is the coven which sends Giles to stop Willow at the end of season six; but they didn't get much, or indeed any, screen time. If they had, no doubt they'd have turned out to be a front organization for some kind of demonic cult.
- Snyder. And how.
  - Did anyone else watch all those kids dying all the time on the show and ask themselves 'Don't these people have parents?!'
- The one. time. the parents decided they should do something about the way at least one of their children dies every week it was because a demon was influencing them.
Beverly Hills 90210, for some extent, with the obvious exception of Brandon and Brenda's parents (who were originally part of the main cast). As the series progressed, teens got into, or were affected by, much more serious troubles (guns, paedophilia, addiction, mafia, rape) and their parents were either oblivious or useless. The '90210' sequel also has that a bit: drugs, a hit-and-run death, stalking... and only Annie's and Dixon's folks actually do something (and only occasionally).
In Gossip Girl almost every significant adult, one way or another, is irresponsible, clueless, idiotic, indifferent about the whereabouts of the teen characters, or those adults are incapable of controlling the teen actions.
- To break this down a little: Lily Van Der Woodsen is shown to care more about the family's status than her children and is constantly shown as clueless to the point where her son and youngest child often has to spell things out to her. Bart Bass is a womanizing hard-ass who serves mostly to remind Chuck of all the ways in which he isn't good enough when he's not getting in the way of Lily and Rufus' feelings for one another. Eleanor Waldorf is rarely home and when she is seems only to be able of criticizing Blair and Nate's parents are a drug-addicted man arrested for embezzlement and his wife who blindly persists in the view that everything will be okay even when all their assets are seized. Even Rufus Humphrey, who compared to the others is something of a model parent, is often shown as stubborn to the point of pig-headed and unable to accept that his children are capable of making their own choices and dealing with the subsequent consequences. And let's not forget how his ex-wife disappeared to Hudson and only came back when her teenage daughter showed up on her doorstep and demanded she did so.
- On the other hand, certain of the more minor adults fare better. The prime example being Cyrus Rose who, although constantly berated by Blair as being annoying, constantly shows himself to be supportive and even useful on occasion.
Are You Afraid Of The Dark of the Cassandra Truth variety. Your parents will never believe your neighbors are vampires.
Parents in Spellbinder nurture inexplicable reluctance to believe in their teenage children's stories about parralel words and intruders therefrom. However, once presented with undeniable proofs, they become much more competent.
iCarly: Heavily lampshaded in multiple episodes. Each adult has his or her own brand of eccentricity.
- Subverted by Principal Franklin, who's competent, if overly lenient, and occasionally by Spencer.
The extent that the adults in the Japanese drama Shokojo Sera simply lets the bullying and torment happen to poor Seira can be extremely frustrating to watch. They could be downright evil and cruel, like Mimura Chieko who runs the school. Or they could be clueless and utterly incompetent, like Mimura Emiko, sister of Chieko. Or sometimes they gleefully take advantage of Seira and Kaito and bully them around, like the chef and his wife. Or perhaps they could be like Aran Yukio, a French teacher, who does want to help Seira, but lacks the power to really change anything. Not to mention he isn't around all the time at the school to help Seira.

Puppet Shows

I was shocked to discuss with my 7-year-old cousin that Sesame Street's Mr. Snuffleupagus was real, when I clearly remembered him being a figment of Big Bird's imagination. It turns out the guys in charge decided to make him real in an attempt to avert children thinking that telling an adult about bad things happening would result in disbelief, since most of Mr. Snuffleupagus' episodes revolved around him breaking things, and big bird getting in trouble for it. He'd try to explain that his giant hairy ear-less elephant friend did it, and get blown off, or worse punished for lying.
- You're recollection is faulty. Mr. Snuffleupagus was always real, it's just that he was never around at the same time as the rest of the cast so they didn't believe he existed. There was one episode where one of the human cast members actually did see Mr. Snuffleupagus late at night. However Snuffy was wearing pajamas at the time so when Big Bird asked him to describe what he saw the description didn't match up. As result, Big Bird told him what he saw couldn't have been Mr. Snuffleupagus.
- Subverted hard by The Children's Television Workshop. Snuffy was originally created as a way for children to relate to having an imaginary friend who adults didn't believe in. The problem though was the Snuffy was undeniably real, it was just the adults bad luck that they never ran into him. Critics pointed out children could interpret the situation another way: Adults would never believe you even when you're telling the truth - a dangerous moral when trying to get kids to report child abuse to an authority like a teacher or the police. As a result, Snuffy was revealed to the adults, and to drive the point home, the adults even apologize to Big Bird for not believing him.

Theater

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The teenage protagonists are halted at every turn by their parents and other authority figures. Friar Lawrence tries to help, but he decides the best way to do this is marry the pair and hope for the best. It didn't end well.
- This really isn't a case of Adults are Useless so much as it is a severe case of Lust Makes You a fucking MORON, as the adults try and offer fairly decent advice, but the protagonists are too blinded, deafend, and otherwise rendered Too Dumb To Live by love to bother listening to it, or even think more than five minutes ahead.
At the end of West Side Story, the few adults who have appeared in the story are left alone on stage after the youth gangs carry Tony away, emphasizing how little the supposed authority figures have done.
In the musical 13, the only kid whose parents are mentioned is Evan, when his parents get divorced and when Archie guilts Evan's mom into buying tickets to the R- rated movie "The Bloodmaster"
This is probably the fourth strongest theme in Spring Awakening. The first three being sex, sex and sex.

Video Games

Pretty much any RPG where the main characters are almost always under 20, often around 14-18. Normally there is one or two older characters to act as a sage or adviser.
Every single Legend of Zelda game portrays Link as either a pre-teen child, or a mid-late teenager. An entire kingdom of guards, warriors, military, wizards, and sages, and it takes a kid (albeit one with a very special destiny) to save the day. Multiple times. And most times there's at least one NPC who dismisses him as a stupid kid who doesn't understand.
- Slightly averted in that several games, Link (occasionally with Zelda's or others' help) is actually a contributor to or cause of releasing Ganon back into the world by taking the Master Sword. He always fixes it by the end, so it's not quite the aversion it could be.
- Zelda gets in on the action too, her standout example being Ocarina. While her plan isn't exactly golden, at least she knew an obvious Big Bad when she saw him.
- This was at least justified in Minish Cap, in which the Picori/Minish would only willingly appear to a child.
A major theme in Final Fantasy VIII: Adults start wars that get out of hand or lock the super-dictator in a box and throw their hands in the air when she inevitably gets out, and it's all left to the super-capable SeeDs to clean up the mess.
Most of the adults in Earthbound are incompetent. The police force of Onett fights Ness for whatever reason, and loses. Some of the Happy Happy cultists are too busy painting cows blue to care for their children back in Twoson. The Runaway Five is continually in debt everywhere they go. Pokey's dad in Fourside is seen riding off of his son's success, and later in the game he's lost everything.
Strongly featured in the Touch Detective series. The most competent ones often turn out to be psychopaths.
Oddly inverted in Persona 2. The high schoolers that star in Innocent Sin mess everything up, and the adults in Eternal Punishment have to fix things.
Put to obnoxiously Anvilicious use in Wild Arms 4. You'll be sick of seeing it played out by the time you clear the first dungeon.

Web Comics

Deconstructed in Gunnerkrigg Court. Antimony treats the teachers at the Court like they're useless, even those who have proved themselves competent and far more knowledgeable about the ongoing weirdness than she is. As a result, she nearly dies several times. (Annie's distrust appears to stem from the fact she had no shortage of Useless Adults in her life prior to enrollment at the Court: She could see The Guides; none of the staff at Good Hope could.)
- Note that she is still sort of justified, given that they exhibited inferior judgment in the case of Reynardine, seeing as how he's done nothing to warrant their distrust since transferring to Antimony's toy and seems to be being built up to be a sort of Anti Hero / Noble Demon. They shows a complete lack of caring about things that fall outside the scope of their experience (when Mr. Eglamore isn't even aware that the fate of Robot could be important to anyone) and a bad case of trying to hide every single aspect of the Awful Truth from her.
- This is adressed in the chapter 28, where Jones finally calls out Antimony on this, pointing out that the situation with Jack could have been solved more quickly and with fewer problems if she had spoken to someone about it. Given that she gave Antimony crucial help twice in that chapter, releasing Reynardine and dispelling Zimmy's hallucinations with a rain shower, her words have weight.
Penny and Aggie has slipped into this. While adults used to be shown as being reasonably aware of things you'd expect them to know about their kids, the most recent plotline has had a student widely publicize a video in which she accuses another student of lesbian rape, to the point where even all the students at a completely different school know about it within a few hours... and not a single adult has appeared, not even the administrators you'd expect to be concerned about a student rapist in their population.
In Suicide for Hire, nobody seems to bother to investigate what their teenage offspring are up to, nor get suspicious at the rash of teen suicides (despite their utter lack of subtlety). Two adults so far have found out about SFH, but only in order to request its services.
Precocious sometimes subverts and sometimes plays straight this trope. Most of the parents are just as smart as their kids but the stuff those kids can get away with is astonishing sometimes.
Yuki's father in Menage A 3 doesn't seem to be intentionally abusive, but he paid so little attention to his daughter that she was repeatedly exposed to the hentai rape artwork he drew, which traumatised her so much she now has an intense fear of penises.
Subverted in Homestuck. At first the adults seem like simple foils for the kids. Then John's dad is seemingly easily captured by the imps, and you expect the parents to be simple plot devices. Then it turns out that he and the other kids' guardians are immensely powerful and important to the game.

Web Original

In lonelygirl15, all of the TAAG's parents who aren't dead (or evil) are this.
- Bree's dad does display competence, for a while.
Adults, at least in the Pregame of Survival of the Fittest, are almost always unable to stop any fights, bullying, drug use, stealing, etc. The main reason of this is that if handlers want to establish their characters as "bad", they don't want to have them be caught by adults, as that would ruin the reputation.
- Subverted to an extent in the v4 pre-game, where players were warned that inappropriate behaviour, if caught, would result in exclusion from the school trip.
In KIKEN, this is a Deconstructed Trope. That's because adults aren't entirely useless — some want to change the world, but are trying to balance their careers (i.e. Emiri, Juuri, Yukari and Yamato) and some are too cynical or apathetic to even believe in a changing Earth (i.e. Takeo).

Western Animation

A source of much of the humor on South Park, where it is always up to the kids to save the day while the adults run around either clueless, panicking, or distracted. Stan Marsh's father Randy in particular is wonderfully stupid and easily led.
- A particular example is in "Cripple Fight," where a crowd of adults allows the title event to occur until both children are basically beaten and worn to exhaustion... and THEN an adult comes forward, saying, "Alright, boys, break it up..."
Recess has been known to go in and out of this trope. Adults in the show tend to vary between the primary antagonist (at least for the episode) to recurring obstacle to often siding with the children. And nevertheless, they are frequently portrayed as being worthless. In a startling realistic scenario, Ms. Finster actually tells a bully to leave Gus alone only for him to flat out ignore it and she is nowhere to be seen for the rest of the episode. (And neither is Randall, who you would think would find prime tattling material except for that he is afraid of them too)
- Really; we can add a lot of things done by some of the kids on that playground to this list. Half the stuff people do in Recess on a regular basis seem to be ignored by adults. Doesn't help that Ms. Finster is more keen on looking for kids chewing bubble gum or bringing outside toys in.
In Storm Hawks, the entire free world is at risk of being overrun by a teenage supervillain... and the only people who can save the day are a bunch of plucky teen heroes. The only adults seen are either tiny eldery folk or cannon fodder.
- Although this is also averted - Stork is arguably an adult, albeit a young one (24 years old, I believe), and he is among the best pilots in the series and gets his fair share of saving the day.
WITCH averts this trope by having many adult characters, most villains, constantly outsmarting and one-upping the heroes. Especially in the second season when some of the villains are the previous Guardians, who have the same power-set as the heroes, but years more experience in using them, as well as being more powerful. The heroes must rely on their wits to even stand a chance.
In Rugrats the adults are criminally unaware, social services level unaware! Then again, who would imagine that babies would be the main characters?
- Taken to an extreme in "Chuckie's Wonderful Life", where Chuckie is the only one preventing Angelica and other babies from turning the town into a Dystopia.
- In one one episode the parents visit a plant nursery, put the kids down in the MIDDLE OF THE STORE, and walk away like it's normal, proceeding with their shopping.
  - The babies were also wandering around the entire store riding/pushing a shopping cart along, often threatened by falling plants and mean looking dogs. Did none of the other customers or employees take notice of this?
- The PBS show Arthur does a Take That to the Rugrats in one episode, where baby Kate is watching something similar to it, and questions where the parents are at. She switches the show to one like the Teletubbies, which she approves of.
- CRACKED Magazine parodied it with the kids doing things like smoking and sticking scissors in their eyes, while their parents left for Mexico. The parody ended with them being taken to court for criminal negligence, but getting pardoned because the judge thought the kids were so ugly, no sane person would want them.
Avatar: The Last Airbender half-averts this trope. The amount of times the main characters have encountered useless, ineffectual or just plain stupid adults (Lao Bei Fong, General Fong) is about equal to the amount of encounters with scarily competent and powerful adults (Iroh, King Bumi). Some are marginally useful, but rarely affect the plot directly (Hakoda, Piandao).
- In the third season, there are a number of useful adults, particularly during the Invasion. Most notably Sokka and Katara's father Hakoda, although Teo's Mad Scientist dad is also right behind him. The Boulder and the Hippo, along with Hugh and the Swamp Benders, also rank high. Naturally, All of them are captured by the end of the episode to prevent them from stealing the spotlight any further
- And then the Grand Finale has the old masters, a whole squad of Badass Grandpas and some of the most powerful benders in the world, both taking back Ba Sing Se themselves and making the plan to defeat that finally defeated the Fire Nation.
- In all, it's more like Adults Are Useless until they become an Old Master, and then they get the appropriate degree of competence. So it's more like Avatar has an Incompetence zone.
- Really, the adults are less useless on average than the children- it's more a problem of "next to Aang, Iroh, and Azula, no-one with significant screen time seems consequential."
SpongeBob SquarePants: SpongeBob tells Ms. Puff to protect him from a threatening bully. That SpongeBob has to spell it out for her after the bully's drawn pictures of himself beating up the sponge is already dumb enough, but then he hears that she specifically used his name while talking to the bully about it. Said bully even threatens his own father when SpongeBob tries to use him for help.
- Ms. Puff is doing this deliberately - she really dislikes SpongeBob and his antics and is getting sadistic joy out of watching him squirm.
- SpongeBob himself too, since he is supposedly an adult in the show yet acts like a child who really has no business living on his own. Really the only competent character in that show seems to be Sandy.
Averted in Kim Possible, where all the main characters' parents (well, except Ron's mother, who appears to be completely oblivious to her son or what he does) help save the day at least once.
Codename: Kids Next Door, of course. In it, almost all the characters over thirteen (including teenagers) are either malicious, ignorant, or incompetent. This is of course excusable since as the title implies, it's a show for young children.
- However one of the Operatives' father (namely Niegel aka Numbah 1's) turns out to be The KND's greatest agent, Numbuh Zero, and was briefly recommissioned to help the KND fight against Grandfather and his legion of Senior Citizombies.
- There's also Numbuh Two's mother in her first appearance, when she defeats the Common Cold after the Kids have been unable to do so. Of course this was fairly early in the series and Mrs. Gilligan has a completely different personality in all subsequent appearances.
Pick any adult on Moral Orel and you'll find some degree of uselessness or Jerkassery. Topping the list, however, are Orel's parents. His dad Clay injured Orel on a hunting trip and got so madly drunk that even Cheerful Child Orel was forced to see his father for what he was; Orel's mother, Bloberta, took over 10 episodes to realize their younger son Shapey got switched with Block, the younger son of their Distaff Counterparts the Posabules. Then there's the overall neglect of Shapey and Block, which consists of doing nothing while they play with any dangerous device you can imagine (and some you can't).
- The episode "Innocent" Lampshades this by having the adults realize their careless advice is often what causes Orel (who takes things literally) to do the crazy things that he does. They're forced to acknowledge that maybe they don't actually know what they're talking about * gasp!* . Their "solution" isn't much better. The adults, including Orel's dad, try to avoid Orel entirely and, failing that, try to avoid giving advice and passes him off on someone else. The end result: Orel tries to prove to God he is "innocent" by bathing in his friends' blood.
- Later on in the show, however, Reverend Rod Putty and Coach Daniel Stopframe subvert this, actually doing their part to help Orel.
Subverted in The Venture Bros., where the title characters are accident-prone morons. True, their dad isn't very useful, but that's more because he doesn't care rather than any real incompetence. And of course Brock Samson more than makes up for anything Doc Venture is lacking in.
Partially averted with Helen Morgendorfer in Daria who shows in at least one episode that it's good to have a high powered lawyer in the family and, very occasionally, shows signs of genuine wisdom. Played straight with all the other adults in the series except one of Daria's aunts (naturally, she's a lot like Daria).
Adults are so useless in Peanuts that they never appear onscreen or have any lines. Their voices are simulated by a muted trombone.
- That is taken from the comic strip, which was done that way to keep eye-level with the kids. Taller adults would have not worked in that format.
Every adult in The Fairly Oddparents is either incompetent (Mr. Turner, the Mayor), clueless (Mrs. Turner, Principal Waxaplax), indifferent (the Dinklebergs, the Buxaplentys), cowardly (Vicky's parents), or flat out evil (Crocker, Doug Dimmadome). Even on Yugopotamia, Mark's parents are utterly useless in an emergency (such as the Gigglepie invasion or the attempted assassination of Grippulon). Fairy adults seem fairly competent, if not eccentric.
- Everyone above 10, actually.
Code Lyoko subverts, plays straight and generally runs all over the place with this trope. At first, the middle-school heroes won't tell any adults about their virtual battles with XANA because they think (probably correctly) that the first thing the adults would do is shut down the Supercomputer that's causing all the trouble, which in turn might kill Aelita. Yumi later lampshades and tries to subvert this trope when XANA threatens to cause a nuclear meltdown, saying that they're in way over their heads and need to tell somebody what's going on. The group narrowly decides to do so, but the adults are too distracted to do anything more than dismiss her with "you're Just A Kid". Still later, some of the teachers, particularly their P.E. teacher Jim, prove to be resourceful and heroic once they're pulled into the fight, but the show's Reset Button premise ensures that the Masquerade's always back in place by the end of each episode. Meanwhile, the middle-aged creator of Lyoko would probably be tremendously useful, if he weren't the The Ghost; as it is, he appears only through flashbacks, impostors, or by triggering the occasional Deus Ex Machina from off-screen.
While not every adult is useless, most adults on The Simpsons are fairly incompetent. Especially if they're a member of the police department.
- The Simpsons creator Matt Groening talks about many of the adult characters as morons. He said in an interview that authority isn't always quite as smart as it should be, and people like teachers and doctors all have flaws.
In A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, the kids end up chasing a lot of people in costumes committing a number of illegal acts. Yet adults never seem to step in on any of the cases, even if minors risk getting injured and will sometimes actually hire the kids themselves. This was lampshaded in at least one episode when Fred asks a client why they aren't going to the police instead.
Subverted in King of the Hill where Hank and Peggy are always willing and able to get Bobby out of any trouble he might find himself in, and can even handle any problems that they themselves start. The other adults on the show however, particularly Bill and Dale...
Somewhat the case in the 80's Nickelodeon cartoon The Mysterious Cities of Gold. The three child protagonists repeatedly outsmart, escape, or defeat in combat entire groups of Spanish soldiers. Even in times where they had adult help, either the children were treated as leaders and guiders, or they ultimately ended up not being very helpful at all. Along the way they manage to solve several Incan mysteries the rest of the adults were incapable of figuring out.
Invader Zim. Every single adult (and most of the children, for that matter) is completely oblivious to the fact that Zim is an alien, despite being, as Dib points out, green, with no ears. Mrs. Bitters in particular isn't just useless, she's downright sadistic.
In the Futurama episode Teenage Mutant Leela Hurdles, when the cast is reverted back to being teenagers, Leela requests that her parents ground her, arguing that she never had such an experience. She then sneaks off by the window.
- Her dad also tried to get her to drink tequila out of a silly straw.
Pretty much all of the adults in FamilyGuy have become complete idiots in recent years who will follow anything anyone with a microphone or megaphone says even if it's really dangerous or completely idiotic.
Adults in Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius are either never around (most of the parents), completely stupid (Jimmy's dad) or don't get onto the kids until the end.
The action in every episode of InspectorGadget revolves around the comically inept title character unknowingly putting himself in grave danger while his ten year old niece and canine sidekick have to protect him from himself and solve the case all by themselves.

Real Life

In this elaborate prank played on three children aged eight, six and five, the entire neighbourhood bands together to make the siblings believe they're all under attack from zombies. The kids rig their house with a variety of traps, and when the zombie attacks their home, they fight back with tabasco sauce, plastic dinosaurs, wet sponges, cling-wrap, and finally their own tiny, ineffectual fists. Holed up in the bedroom, the children are told by the show presenter that if they don't work together, the zombie will eat them, at which point one of the boys explodes: "Don't you dare say that the zombie will get me! You haven't helped us at all!!"
Bullying. Good luck getting most adults to help with it.
- Precisely, this trope is occasionally truth in television, and was the mantra of mine and quite a few others' childhoods. but, admittedly, it could have been worse...
- That's because a lot of parents believe that it's a Riteof Passage and that kids will get over it.
  - To be fair, most do. But there's always one or two kids in a class that are getting it much worse, and have the adults assuming they're just oversensitive/overdramatic and are likewise fed the stock "remove yourself from the situation" or "Just ignore them" responses. (Again, ignoring how often "Remove yourself from the situation"-would result in truancy)
  - This troper's parents always touted the idiotic pacifist mantra of "Turn The Other Cheek" which DOES. NOT. WORK. Disproportionate Retribution is the only way to shut a bully down for good.
  - This is especially worse when someone who honestly can't take it anymore and does something rash and the adults start trying to point fingers at something (or someone) else. When it's not often the kid's favourite TV shows, video games, or rock music being the cause, either the teachers or the parents are being blamed for not helping when they could have.
Personal examples in the Troper Tales section.