I get the sense that Watterson is sharing his own childhood relationships with adults and author figures. And by and large they aren’t happy, healthy relationships.
His parents regularly debate whose choice it was to have a kid, and despite the exceptional strip shared by another reply to me, for the most part his dad seems happier working than being with Calvin. I definitely didn’t notice or care about this dynamic when I read these as a kid. And I don’t think my daughter will notice or care. But she’s only 3, and I’m cool with sheltering her a bit.
Watterson stated many times that he was nothing like Calvin and his parents were nothing like that either. He just built the characters and then progressively explored their relationships as a way of reflecting on the pressures of modern society. It just so happened that he was exceedingly good at building realistic personalities.
Personally, C&H probably kept me alive as a teenager. When I was questioning the point of it all, Calvin’s sense of wonder and fearlessness injected some happiness into me, and I wished so hard that I could have been more like him growing up. I read a lot of it with my kids when they were very small, and then let them alone with it as they started reading on their own. They embraced the methods of Calvinball, which melts my heart when I watch them play. To them Calvin’s parents are silly in their worrying about worthless stuff like “washing”. If you didn’t notice certain things while reading it as a kid, chances are your child won’t either; that’s one of the marvels of this strip, like the best art it speaks in different ways to different people at different stages of their lives.
Thanks. Yes, I definitely agree that my daughter will likewise not notice what I didn’t notice. And I continue to read it a lot because we both love it.
In the Anniversary collection, Watterson notes things like “this is basically an exact quote from my dad.” (For example, in the strip where good dad says they should put the Christmas tree in the garage and not decorate it.) So I don’t think they are totally divorced from each other.
His parents regularly debate whose choice it was to have a kid, and despite the exceptional strip shared by another reply to me, for the most part his dad seems happier working than being with Calvin. I definitely didn’t notice or care about this dynamic when I read these as a kid. And I don’t think my daughter will notice or care. But she’s only 3, and I’m cool with sheltering her a bit.