Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You in Literature.
- In Animorphs Tobias's father left before finding out that his wife was pregnant, because said dad was Elfangor, who decided to rejoin the war against the Yeerks to hopefully save the Earth from their imminent invasion and didn't even know he had a child until after it was too late.
- His mother, too: she was in a car accident that left her blind and gave her amnesia of the non-laser-guided variety (i.e., it took her years to learn to take care of herself, let alone a child). She put off tracking him down because she thought, wrongly, that by this point he was Happily Adopted and that she would just disrupt his life.
- There's a variation in A Brother's Price. Halley was the natural leader of the surviving princesses, but she wasn't the eldest — and by the traditions of this world, the eldest has to rule the family; especially this family, which will come to the thrones and has a recent tradition of turning into a Civil War over this point. Halley disappeared Because You Can Cope and to try and force her eldest to step up and take more responsibility.
- The father of Demon Princess's protagonist was first in line for the throne, which also carried the responsibility of making sure nothing bad gets through portals to the human world. The way, when the current demon king/queen dies, the heir is immediately transported to the castle and can never leave. While he was with the protagonist's mother, his father died and he was called back, giving him no time to explain or say good-bye. He decided that she wouldn't even believe the explanation, so he never made contact with his family until he learns about his daughter and her latent powers.
- In Dinoverse, the rebellious graffiti artist Janine resents how her mother is often not at home, forcing her to miss school in order to prepare her mother's motel for guests herself. As it turns out, her mother is keeping Janine from getting in trouble over the graffiti — she never confronted her daughter because she feared Janine would run away.
- Dragon Queen: The old man claims Trava's mother had a good reason for abandoning her, but seems reluctant to give the reason.
- In the Earth's Children series, Ayla has this is regards to her son, Durc. At the end of The Clan of the Cave Bear, she is forced to leave the clan by Broud, who curses her with death, meaning she is literally seen as dead by the clan. Ayla cannot take Durc with her because travelling to locations unknown in the wilderness is difficult enough without a young child to look after and he would likely be considered dead as well, cutting him off from the Clan permanently. Ayla knows he'll be alright because Uba and Brun will care for him, though they're both still devastated. A few years later, in The Mammoth Hunters, Ayla seriously considers trying to find Durc and bringing him to live with her at the Lion Camp. However, in the end she decides against this, partly out of practicality (she has no idea where his clan is living now or how to find them) and partly because she realizes it would be unfair to Durc - he has spent his whole life with the Clan and has a place amongst them, whilst he would be discriminated against amongst Cro-Magnon and have a much more difficult life.
- In Everworld, Senna's mother characterizes things this way—she says that there were forces (presumably Loki) trying to find them, but that their magical powers would be harder to sense if they were separated. This isn't wrong, really, but given how flighty her mothering already was and how unforgiving Senna generally is, she takes this as more of an excuse than a justification. (Senna's father could also count for the first seven years of her life—he didn't know about her at all until Senna's mom dropped her off and literally vanished.)
- In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fall of Númenor, prince Aldarion leaves his native island for several years, many times. The last of these times, his wife (who thought he would have just settled down, by now) spent the years of his absence teaching their 4-to-7-year-old daughter Ancalimë to hate her father, and men in general. Turns out Aldarion was helping the elves and men of Middle Earth prepare against a new, vague, rising threat, which (despite not telling Aldarion) the elf king had correctly identified as Morgoth's former servant: Sauron. It doesn't help that Aldarion is so annoyed at getting flak for coming home late that he pridefully refuses to give the reason.
- Ferals Series: Caw's parents cast him out to be protected by the crows in order to save him from being killed by the Spinning Man during the Dark Summer.
- Susan Cooper's The Grey King. Bran Davies is in truth the son of King Arthur — he was brought forward in time and left in the 20th century by his mother Guinevere after she betrayed his father. She had to leave him because she was going to find sanctuary in a convent.
- The Heir Chronicles: Played with in the second book, The Wizard Heir. Because Seph's mother, Linda Downey, was fighting the system of the Wizard Guilds at the time he was born, she knew he would be in danger if anyone ever found out his parentage, and thus leaves him to a foster mother to keep him safe. Seph's father, Leander Hastings, didn't even know Linda had Seph because she disappeared on him after finding out she was pregnant.
- Heralds of Valdemar: Both Daddy and Mommy, in a highly Justified example. In Beyond, Kordas and Ilsa Valdemar have three sons, but less than a handful of people know that; not even the boys themselves, who are told they are the children of Kordas' illegitimate cousin/right hand man Hakkon. By Imperial decree, all heirs to a title must be sent to court at age 13 to be 'properly educated' - in reality held hostage to keep their parents in line. The Court is horrifically abusive and neglectful of it's young hostages; Ilsa's twin brother died of illness, along with his personal attendant, and no one even noticed until Kordas managed a visit to come check on him. Kordas and Ilsa both vowed their children would never be put through that, which means never announcing their existence. Once everyone's safely out of the Empire's reach at the end of the book, Ilsa and Kordas tell their sons who they really are. Turns out their eldest (who will later become one of the first three Heralds) has already figured it out and told his next-youngest brother.
- Heretical Edge: Flick Chambers is thrown out of whack upon learning that her Missing Mom used to be a heretic and realizes there's a very real chance she had a good reason for abandoning their family. At this point, the readers know that Flick's mother (Joselyn) probably did have a good reason, considering that her younger child Ammon has mind control powers. As it turns out, Joselyn traded her own freedom to Ammon's father in exchange for a promise to leave Flick alone (as long as she's a child).
- In The Historian the primary narrator, a young woman in the 1970s, was raised by her diplomat father because her mother died when she was an infant. You find out that her mother only faked her death to escape getting bitten — and therefore turned into a vampire — by Vlad "The Impaler" Tepes a.k.a. Dracula himself. The mother then spent the entirety of the narrator's childhood researching when and where Vlad would next appear so that she could kill him without endangering her family.
- A Hole in the Fence: Saura left her baby kids in the care of adoptive families because she did not want them to grow up in Metropolis' super-populated and super-polluted environment. Saura intended to return for them when they reached school age, but she was presumed dead in an earthquake two years later. And she then spent one decade fighting over moving to Courquetaines with her children with her own father, the Metropolis' governor, who does not like the idea of his daughter becoming a farmer and living off the land.
- I Do Not Want To Do This has a heartbreaking example with Joanna, a girl cursed with a "succubus aura" that causes every man nearby to intensely desire her. It began to manifest at puberty, and her father, who she had loved deeply up until then, walked out because the temptation it caused was too strong and he didn't want to end up molesting his daughter.
- In the Inheritance Cycle, it turns out Selena left her son Eragon with his aunt and uncle because she needed to return home to be with her other son Murtagh and to prevent her abusive husband Morzan from growing suspicious of her whereabouts, especially as Eragon wasn't his child. She presumably intended to come back for Eragon, but she fell deathly ill on the road home and died a few weeks later.
- In Knights of the Borrowed Dark, Vivian left her young son Denizen in an orphanage in order to take revenge on the three Tenebrous who killed her husband and friends. She decided to stay away at least until his thirteenth birthday (when his powers, if present, will manifest) partly to avoid having her enemies seek him out and partly because she had become a full-blown Death Seeker. Denizen, on finding this out, is unimpressed.
- Leia Organa, in Leia, Princess of Alderaan, is emotionally abandoned by Bail and Breha, who go from very close to increasingly withdrawn and furtive, no longer willing to spend time with her, seeming mentally absent even when physically near. She soon finds out that on top of their existing duties in the Senate and ruling Alderaan respectively, they're both up to their necks in the forming Rebel Alliance. This takes a lot of their time and energy and on top of that they hope that if they're caught and executed, The Empire will question her - maybe even torture her - but allow her to live if she's truly innocent and ignorant. Leia immediately thinks that there's no way the Empire will be that reasonable and starts searching for ways to contribute and find out more anyway.
- Olga Dies Dreaming: Not Daddy, Mami; Blanca, Olga and Prieto's mom, was affiliated to the Young Lords and later she joined Los Macheteros, a Puerto Rican nationalist group. As far as she is concerned, working towards achieving independence for Puerto Rico justified not just leaving her family but sending them sporadic letters with no return address.
- In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, Bull is a supervillain who is separated from his wife because he doesn't want his daughter to have to deal with having a villain for a father. Penny tries to convince him it's better than having no father, and he admits he'll consider it.
- In Piece of My Heart, Michelle opted to give up her son for a closed adoption and not be involved in his life because she was only 22 when she had him, wasn't in a relationship with the father (she claimed she didn't even know his last name), couldn't financially support a child and had a judgemental mother. She did suffer from depression after giving her son up, but insisted she never regretted her decision and was happy he grew up with a loving family. Her decision makes even more sense when it turns out her baby was the result of an affair with an older married man; Michelle initially didn't know she was the 'other woman' and couldn't bring herself to raise the child alone in these circumstances, but she didn't want to potentially break up her ex's family, either. The majority of the characters, including the family who adopted her son, are very sympathetic about her reasoning.
- In Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels, Jade learns that Bridget, the owner of Bridget's Diner, is a mermaid living as a human. She has a teenage son named Reese who lives in the ocean. Jade thinks Bridget must have been a terrible parent for abandoning her son, until she learns that Bridget was born with a tail defect called scaliosis, which by the time Reese was born made it impossible for her to swim. Being unable to swim is a death sentence for a mer, so the Mermish Council gave her permission to go on land and take a human form, but they didn't grant that permission to Reese. Bridget was forced to either leave Reese or die.
- Retired Witches Mysteries: Olivia Dunst gave up her daughter for adoption when she was born to hide her from her father Drago Rasmun, who was an evil witch and whom she feared would try to take and raise the girl to be like him if he knew about her.
- Siren Novels: Vanessa's biological mother is the siren Charlotte Bleu, who seduced Vanessa's married father. After she got pregnant, she let him go without killing him, which no siren is supposed to do. When the other sirens started to get suspicious that she hadn't actually killed him, Charlotte fled to Canada with baby Vanessa. When Vanessa's dad tracked them down, Charlotte realized how much he loved Vanessa and let him take her, figuring that Vanessa would be safest if she had no connection with Charlotte. She was right - Vanessa had a safe childhood in Boston and never learned about her siren heritage until she was seventeen.
- King Robert Baratheon from A Song of Ice and Fire has played almost no role in the upbringing of his illegitimate children. The reason why is that when he once broached the subject of bringing his natural (bastard) daughter Mya to court, his wife Queen Cersei implied she would have her killed. Indeed once Robert dies, Cersei orders the massacre of Robert's bastards.
- Several of the dogs in Survivor Dogs think that their owners selfishly abandoned them during the "Big Growl". This causes them no small amount of angst and only makes Lucky (who's a stray) dislike being a pet all the more. According to Word of God, their owners didn't want to leave them but they were forced to due to short notice of upcoming natural disasters. The dogs eventually realize this in the fourth book after they come across the corpses of several humans who couldn't escape the earthquakes.
- Tinkers: Although apparently George never learned it. Howard was an epileptic given to grand mal seizures. His wife eventually decided to have him committed to an asylum, whereupon Howard immediately left town, changed his name, and had no contact with George for some 25 years.
- In Michael Flynn's Up Jim River, the harper, having heard the story in The January Dancer, knows that her father had an excellent reason — but points out that her mother didn't know it.
- Tales of Kolmar has Lanen's mother leaving her with her uncaring father when Lanen was tiny. Turns out this happened after a demon attack. Maren thought her Farseer was attracting them. By the time it turned out this wasn't true, years had passed, and she was afraid to go back.
- Tempest (2011): When the titular half-mermaid was ten, Tiamat tried to lure her into the ocean and abduct her. That was how Tempest's mermaid mother Cecily learned that Tiamat, who spent 500 years as a Sealed Evil in a Can, was at large again. Two weeks later, Cecily returned to the ocean to fight Tiamat. She didn't contact her family for the next six years for fear that they would become targets.
- At the start of They Cage the Animals at Night, Jennings' mother abandons him an orphanage without explaining why. He didn't understand it at the time, but it turns out she was temporarily unable to take care of him due to an injury.
- Waggit Trilogy: Waggit's Tale ends with Waggit being adopted by a singer and living happily with her, but Waggit Again starts with Waggit being abandoned at a farm, causing him to hate the woman. When his human friend Felicia talks to the woman (named Ruth), she mentions that she was called to sing at a cruise since the previous singer couldn't make it, but she couldn't take Waggit with her. Since she was sure that he hated being in the kennels, she decided to leave him at her brother's farm until the cruise is over, but she was shocked when she heard that Waggit had run away. Waggit feels horrible for thinking negatively of her because of this, and he silently makes it up to her by letting her adopt two orphaned puppies.
- In the Warchild Series, Captain Azarcon isn't around to raise his son Ryan (boy do people in fiction have tough parental issues with that name) because he's busy fighting a war against pirates and aliens.
- In Warrior Cats, Bluestar gave her kits up to RiverClan because the Clan deputy position was about to open up, and she'd be ineligible for the post while nursing kits; she knew that if she wasn't chosen, Thistleclaw would be, and that due to Sunstar's age Thistleclaw was likely to go on to become Clan leader and lead the Clan into unnecessary wars.
- In A Wrinkle in Time, the Man with the Red Eyes comments that Meg's father hasn't been behaving in a very fatherly way. Meg defends him saying that he was working for the government. He was on a top-secret mission — learning about applied tessering. Of course, the real reason he wasn't with Meg's family was that he was trapped on Camazotz, and trying to avoid being swallowed up mentally by IT.
