Most of the examples seem to be cruft.: Adult Fear

But it isn't just Parental Fears. We can split that one off from this one; I'd be in favor of that. But, as Madrugada said, this trope is (supposed to be) about things in general that will worry adults but not children, or worry adults a lot more than children. Losing your job, watching your parents grow old and unable to take care of themselves, becoming unable to take care of yourself because of old age or illness, having to experience your friends dying of old age (er, sorry if I'm being horribly depressing here - I'm thinking of examples from recent books), hell, unwanted pregnancy - those are all things that you probably won't worry about as a child (of course, there may be exceptions), and which you don't have to be a parent to worry about as an adult.

There is a valid trope in here, and it doesn't even have to be YMMV. If we work a bit on the description, and perhaps include a bullet-point list of likely subjects (the kind of list that's been really useful when we've fixed other tropes, such as Byronic Hero recently), we should be able to salvage this trope.

We could break off Parental Fears pretty easily.

I do think that splitting Parental Fears off as a subtrope will benefit this trope. It's not that this trope is about children, it's that it's easier to write a story with children threatened, so there will always be more examples that do involve children than other threats.

The Doctor Who example I stated is written up as being about a child, but Rory has just discovered that his wife has been replaced with a replica while the real person has been kidnapped for most of nine months and is about to give birth to their baby in captivity. That is a very different kind of Adult Fear I'd say.

edited 9th Sep '11 12:42:58 AM by Michael

The name isn't the problem.

I think one of the first places I encountered this trope was in a description of a Calvin And Hobbes storyline where Calvin's parents are shaken when their house was broken into. Calvin was mostly worried about Hobbes and started thinking it was awesome that "Hobbes" "scared them off" when he was found safe and sound, but even if Calvin were legitimately shaken by the whole thing beyond that one thing he cared about I think it would still encapsulate how I see the trope: something that strikes fear into people's hearts in a particularly adult way.

That said, it is possible that to avoid every horror movie being an example, the presence of children (not the Creepy Child) may be needed for contrast.

Most scary scenes from horror movies would scare children too, which make them not this trope.*

edited 9th Sep '11 6:56:42 AM by Antheia

I'm still surprised parental fears hasn't been broken off yet. Consider that an estimated 80% of the examples are about children, and you just might think a rename is more appropriate. Besides, I see no proof that this trope can be anything other than that or that any real examples will be contributed after a split.

I think making Parental Fear a subtrope would be a good idea. It's by far the most obvious category of things which can scare adults worse than kids, hence the above claim of it accounting for 80% of the page examples.

Even with all the Parental Fear examples moved off onto a subtrope, that's still going to leave a sizeable number of examples of things to scare adults which will slip under the radar of the kids.

Tweedly Dee: If 80 % of the examples are about children, then the remaining 20 % should be sufficient proof that the trope can indeed be about other things than children.

Adult Fear: The fear that you as a responsible adult will be unable to protect, provide, care, or just be there when needed.

Or that's a succinctly as I can define it. The fear that you will not be up to the weight of responsibilities that come from being a full adult, IE someone others rely on. Doesn't have to be children, could be a spouse or elderly parents one has to care for. However it would cover children well too. And its "Adult" fear because kids and teens while they have concerns are not (generally) providers, which here is an integral part of the idea.

While Parental Fear is vaguely similar Adult Fear is still the same thing just doesn't have to be about children but about any of the very Truth in Television concerns that come with your life "settling down" and all that. Probably noting that since Most Tropers Are Young Nerds if we are legally adults we probably aren't used to these concerns.

Also there needs to be a purge of a few extraneous items in the description. Right now "the environment, or the government turning into a police state" which are in no way similar to the Primal Fear well evoked by the child-in-front-truck picture. It should read something like: "the safety of their children, having a place to live, or being able to pay the bills." Although mine there lacks pizzazz as a description. As this is a trope of realism and real concerns though we should be emphasizing that.

That's narrower than it needs to be. They don't need to revolve around, or even involve, children. That's where the problem came in in the first place — the assumption that it had to be a fear about something to do with children. Adult fears can also involve politics, war, taxes and finances, marriage or divorce.

This was intended to be fears that adults have that children generally don't. That's all.

edited 26th Nov '11 1:52:28 PM by Madrugada

Sounds like Parental Fear should be a subtrope of Adult Fear.

How exactly is that tropable, then?

I've been confused all along as to what this is supposed to be, and if that's all it is, I'm not sure how we would go about listing examples.

@Madrugada, I wasn't narrowing entirely to children I more concerned with narrowing it to basic real life concerns that have deep personal fear evoked. Fearing that you won't be able to pay bills or buy food for example is more Adult Fear. People don't "fear" politics or global issues like that which is what I wish to separate.

You aren't kept up at night by "OMG the American Government isn't going to help global warming" people aren't like that, its too big for the majority of people to relate too at that instinctive level, the fear level. Something like not being able pay your bills and loosing your home, much deeper and more personal level of concern there.

Note we see this in politics, its why the economy being bad is always the issue because people are concerned about their personal livelihoods over other more esoteric concerns.

I'd agree with splitting this into Parental Fear ("what if something terrible happened to my child?") and Adult Fear ("a character getting robbed is more terrifying than any Zombie Apocalypse, because the first could actually happen").

"a character getting robbed is more terrifying than any Zombie Apocalypse, because the first could actually happen"

That's a great way of summing up the concept. I feel like it may open the door to child fears that can really happen, but I don't mind.