I’m interested in hearing about books or movies about adults who suddenly and unexpectedly find themselves to be parents or parent figures. Not about adapting to parenthood when you or your SO gives birth or adopts an infant, but about a child (particularly a non-infant) who you suddenly have to care for for whatever reason. Seems like it should be a common theme, but I’m coming up short. There’s “Three Men and a Baby” and “The Three Godfathers” (though those are both about infants); I can’t remember if the Hugh Grant character in “About A Boy” actually takes care of the kid(?); “Kramer vs. Kramer” is kind of in that vein since it’s about a parent who suddenly has to take on all the parenting duties… I’m sure I’m missing a lot, but what?
In Raising Helen, Kate Hudson’s character becomes guardians to her sister’s children.
I’ll likely think of more later.
Major Dad and Trophy Wife are two TV series about a person getting married and become a parent to stepchildren.
Curly Sue and Paper Moon.
On TV, The Bernie Mac Show.
I may think of more later.
Two more movies: Big Daddy and Life as We Know It.
Raising Arizona.
Really?? I watched Major Dad as a kid and had no memory that those were his stepkids. Though I guess it makes more sense that way, since the kids always called him “the major” instead of “dad.”
Kolya: it’s in Czech with English subtitles, but it’s one of the best of the genre. Won Oscar for Best foreign-language film in 1996.
Sparrows: silent film with Mary Pickford about a teenager who cares for a bunch of younger children under the fist of an evil overseer. She finally attempts a rescue when she realizes that one of the children is not a street urchin, but a kidnap victim, and there’s a horrific scene over an alligator infested river. I know it sounds like a “Perils of Pauline” silent melodrama, but it’s really a great film.
Big Daddy: a watchable Adam Sandler film. Irresponsible, typical Sandler character takes care of kid left for his roommate (who is the kid’s father) but is out of town.
Overboard: Goldie Hawn has amnesia, and Kurt Russell convinces her she is the mother of his three boys (their real mother is dead). Offensive, if you think too much about it, but Hawn plays it straight, and if you just watch those moments, they are pretty good.
Bachelor Father. (He takes custody of his niece after her parents die in an accident.)
Does Heidi count? The Alm-Uncle is her grandfather, and raised her father, but he had to become a parent again to the 5-year-old granddaughter he never knew (or knew only as a baby) when her aunt dropped her off with him.
Do foster parents (if they’ve never fostered before) count? If so, there’s A Try at Tumbling, by Dorothy French, in which Eva Evansby becomes the foster mom to Mardi Williamson.
I hate movies like this. They are almost always cloyingly sentimental. Of course, I hate kids to start with.
The only good (i.e., I liked it) example I can think of is Shoot Em Up, where Clive Owen, whilst in the middle of a gun battle for his life, suddenly has a baby dropped in his lap. He just totes it along while continuing his regularly planned shoot outs and car chases.
Gloria: Sharon Stone as Mob Moll who takes in street urchin.
The Grand HighwayA kid from Paris is dumped on his childless aunt and uncle in the country, while his mother has a second baby.
Jack & Sarah: This is a British film about a man whose wife dies unexpectedly in childbirth. Initially, he rejects the baby, who survived, but his mother and mother-in-law are persistent, and he eventually becomes very good at the role of single parent. There a good scene where he marches into the women’s bathroom, because it has a changing table, and the men’s doesn’t, and when they try to kick him out, he dresses down the manager for not having a changing table in the men’s room. “Sarah” is the baby, who is named after his late wife.
Does* The Sound of Music *count?
I haven’t seen that, but it sounds awesome.
Oh, and the original Yours, Mine and Ours, from 1968 (not that blasphemous 200-something remake) has a lot of the same dynamics, and emotionality of the kind of films you are looking for.
So, come to think of it, does a Disney film with Jodie Foster called Candleshoe, which is a fun puzzle-mystery if you are under 13.
That movie does a great job of straddling the line of being stupid and being funny. Certainly not even close to a great movie, but fun to watch.
Diff’rent Strokes
Webster
Punky Brewster
Silver Spoons
Done with a nasty twist in Very Bad Things.
Hours before their wedding, Kyle and Laura learn that they’ve been named in the will of another couple, both of whom were killed days earlier in an escalating series of revenge-murders. They’ve inherited custody of the couple’s two bratty children but, thanks to poor financial planning, almost no money to raise them. Shortly after the wedding, Kyle and his best friend are permanently disabled in a car crash, leaving Laura to look after both them and the brats for the rest of her life.