"Misguided" I think is a good word to use about Jack's parenting. And that may also be the word to use about Matt's grandmother too, because I doubt she had any way of knowing what the impact of what she said would be and we only hear Matt's context surrounding how and why it was said, to be fair.
As a person who writes the majority of my fics delving into complex parental-child relationships (probably to exorcise demons about my own), let me say this though:
Too many fans and writers like to get out their torches and pitchforks about "evil" bad parents who abused their little woobies, even to the point of extremes.
Howard Stark is my go-to example of this. It's rare to find a fic about him being a bad dad that doesn't a) let Tony off the hook for all of his awful behaviours as an adult and b) feel the need to take his bad parenting beyond what you saw in canon and mischaracterize Howard as an alcoholic child abuser. I dislike that fans don't seem to think it's possible for Howard to have been, yes, a bad dad, but not an intentional one or that it's possible that Tony exaggerates his dad's worst qualities in his mind because their relationship was complicated. Or that fans NEVER want to acknowledge that his mom might even exist in that dynamic.
It's not just Marvel who loves to go to the abused parent well, it's fans too. Parents need to be either saints or totally evil. There's a weird "These things are ALWAYS awful and these things are ALWAYS good" approach to how fandom looks at parents.
Which is crazy, because I'm sure most of us here know that you can have parents who make terrible mistakes raising their kids but still love the hell out of them. And kids who rebel and think their parents are the worst when the parents only did their best. And situations that involve both. People have all kinds of failings as human beings that they accidentally pass along to their kids without meaning to that can really screw them the fuck up - they work long hours and are inattentive, they smother them, they try to make them their best friend because they're lonely, they teach them and pass along terrible habits like substance abuse or anger issues. And in all of those cases, it doesn't mean that the parents don't love their kids and deserve some sympathy for trying. Or that the kids don't love their parents anyway.
Even when kids try to break the cycle - guess what? They create new cycles. A kid who grew up in abject poverty and viewed it as being because their parent was deeply lazy is going to grow up and be the parent who works such long hours that they never see their kid and spoils them with a Lamborghini on their 16th birthday, because that's how these things tend to go.
So I just really don't understand the "Jack is the worst dad ever" arguments. I'm glad that we seem to be having a conversation about him here that's more complex.
I just wish, in general, that fans would keep in mind the following (applying to Jack, Stick, Matt's mom and Foggy's parents too):
There's way more ways to screw a person up than just beating the shit out of them. You can still absolutely adore a parent and want to please a parent who is deeply abusive to you. MOTHERS also raise (or in Matt's case, don't raise) kids too and dad's don't deserve some weird pedestal our culture likes to put them on when it comes to little boys. Mothers can often be just as abusive, if not more abusive, than fathers and are not always saintly either. Kids have personalities and things that drive them as adults that have nothing to do with their parents - parents are not the be all and end all for why a person is screwed up as an adult. Parenting is not an absolute. You can have the fucking Brady Bunch for parents and there can be things wrong with it and terrible lessons you learned from it. Parents are human beings who make all manner of mistakes that can end up accidentally creating the next President or the next Ted Bundy. There's no template to follow to end up with either of those things at the end of the day.
So can we all just try to be a little less judgmental about how the characters we love are raised sometimes? Or try and examine our assumptions about their childhood and think about why particular parental headcanons are so common and what they say about us collectively? There are a million great headcanons for parents in fandom, and I feel like they're rarely explored because fanon immediately coalesces and says "No. This."
Sorry. Rant over. Just had to get that one off my chest.
Re: Jack Murdock's father abusive?
As a person who writes the majority of my fics delving into complex parental-child relationships (probably to exorcise demons about my own), let me say this though:
Too many fans and writers like to get out their torches and pitchforks about "evil" bad parents who abused their little woobies, even to the point of extremes.
Howard Stark is my go-to example of this. It's rare to find a fic about him being a bad dad that doesn't a) let Tony off the hook for all of his awful behaviours as an adult and b) feel the need to take his bad parenting beyond what you saw in canon and mischaracterize Howard as an alcoholic child abuser. I dislike that fans don't seem to think it's possible for Howard to have been, yes, a bad dad, but not an intentional one or that it's possible that Tony exaggerates his dad's worst qualities in his mind because their relationship was complicated. Or that fans NEVER want to acknowledge that his mom might even exist in that dynamic.
It's not just Marvel who loves to go to the abused parent well, it's fans too. Parents need to be either saints or totally evil. There's a weird "These things are ALWAYS awful and these things are ALWAYS good" approach to how fandom looks at parents.
Which is crazy, because I'm sure most of us here know that you can have parents who make terrible mistakes raising their kids but still love the hell out of them. And kids who rebel and think their parents are the worst when the parents only did their best. And situations that involve both. People have all kinds of failings as human beings that they accidentally pass along to their kids without meaning to that can really screw them the fuck up - they work long hours and are inattentive, they smother them, they try to make them their best friend because they're lonely, they teach them and pass along terrible habits like substance abuse or anger issues. And in all of those cases, it doesn't mean that the parents don't love their kids and deserve some sympathy for trying. Or that the kids don't love their parents anyway.
Even when kids try to break the cycle - guess what? They create new cycles. A kid who grew up in abject poverty and viewed it as being because their parent was deeply lazy is going to grow up and be the parent who works such long hours that they never see their kid and spoils them with a Lamborghini on their 16th birthday, because that's how these things tend to go.
So I just really don't understand the "Jack is the worst dad ever" arguments. I'm glad that we seem to be having a conversation about him here that's more complex.
I just wish, in general, that fans would keep in mind the following (applying to Jack, Stick, Matt's mom and Foggy's parents too):
There's way more ways to screw a person up than just beating the shit out of them.
You can still absolutely adore a parent and want to please a parent who is deeply abusive to you.
MOTHERS also raise (or in Matt's case, don't raise) kids too and dad's don't deserve some weird pedestal our culture likes to put them on when it comes to little boys.
Mothers can often be just as abusive, if not more abusive, than fathers and are not always saintly either.
Kids have personalities and things that drive them as adults that have nothing to do with their parents - parents are not the be all and end all for why a person is screwed up as an adult.
Parenting is not an absolute. You can have the fucking Brady Bunch for parents and there can be things wrong with it and terrible lessons you learned from it. Parents are human beings who make all manner of mistakes that can end up accidentally creating the next President or the next Ted Bundy. There's no template to follow to end up with either of those things at the end of the day.
So can we all just try to be a little less judgmental about how the characters we love are raised sometimes? Or try and examine our assumptions about their childhood and think about why particular parental headcanons are so common and what they say about us collectively? There are a million great headcanons for parents in fandom, and I feel like they're rarely explored because fanon immediately coalesces and says "No. This."
Sorry. Rant over. Just had to get that one off my chest.