Do you know where your child is? Picoult and Child-In-Peril LIt

The computers are really slow at work, so what I end up doing is reading while waiting for a page to load. (Tangent: I wonder if it's a personal tic or a generational one, to have zero patience when it comes to the internet). Since I check-in magazines and newspapers, this provides me with a lot of reading material.

Today I came across this interesting article in the New York Times about our society's obsession with children-in-danger stories, whether they be fact or fiction. However, this article centered on Jodi Picoult, whose novels primarily focus on children who are all victims in one way or another. I think it's true that this popular genre of media is a expression of our fear that no matter how a child is raised s/he can do something terrible or have something terrible happen to him/her.

Whenever the subject of children comes up, it's extremely polarized. Children are either complete innocents, the victims, or fledgling psychopaths who can be tried as adults for their crimes.

I don't think we have been able to reach a middle ground, partly because there's this murky confusion surrounding the transition between children and adults. When does a child become an adult? When should society view a person as an adult? If a child murders someone, in the eyes of society, should the child be considered an adult?

Picoult poses these questions in her books, but I'm not convinced they are much different from the news coverage of missing, victimized children. Both seem to derive from and feed fear. The article ended, "If Picoult’s fiction means to say anything, it is that parenting undoes us perhaps more than it fulfills, and it makes a thousand little promises it can never keep." So, is Picoult's fiction helping us find a solution by identifying the many perils that kids and their parents face? Or are her books making us more afraid?

Of course, is it even fair to ask these questions?

As for Picoult as an author, I have mixed feelings. Her books always deal with knotty moral problems, which are usually fascinating. But they tend to be formulaic and have a hollow "ripped from the headlines" feeling. Honestly, I don't think I ever forgave her for the ending of My Sister's Keeper.