The Issues of a Post-DH Hermione

[silburygirl]

Lately, I've been struggling with wrapping my head around how to write a post-DH Hermione, and not only because of the canon-rape in the book. I can work with what JKR did to the character, as long as we close our eyes and imagine that she was going through some sort of prolonged PMS... and some delusions regarding Ron. Now that we've got the

Comments

[thehalflie]

Can you work around the names Hugo and Rose to begin with?

I can see Hermione attempting to be supermother, because she is the control freak type A who would never admit defeat or hire a nanny...btb, Nanny Diaries was surprisingly good...

I do wonder how maternity leave would affect her career, and the stress the working-mother relationship would have with her extended family relationships. I cannot believe she would become Molly Weasley, but at the same time I cannot see Molly "allowing/approving" of her daughter-in-law's decision to work. Not to mention the Ministry effects, harm to career prospects, etc. No matter what anyone says, having kids does fuck you over at work. Of course, not having kids can do the same.

I'm going to go before this turns into my feminism rant.

[silburygirl]

Mrs Weasley would be the mother-in-law from hell, I think. Especially since she isn't warm to her in the initial books, particularly compared to how she treats Harry.

On a somewhat related topic, I think that I could only contemplate having children with someone who would be equally willing to take parental leave - it's bullshit about that being the special 'mother-child' bonding time. It really is.

Sigh.

[thehalflie]

Shouldn't nine months in the womb count as bonding time? The father should then spend extensive time making up for it...

[silburygirl]

That's what I say! Someday that thinking shall be the norm.

(I enjoy my private, happy little idealistic world...)

[melusin_79]

Let me first just say that I have never thought Hermione would make a particularly good mother. Look at her own experiences - only child with professional parents - no doubt she was sent out to childminders when she was little. At eleven she goes to boarding school and thereafter sees little of her parents before mind raping them and sending them to Australia 'for their own good

[silburygirl]

Incidentally, I'm the only child of a Virgo perfectionist professional woman and never lived up to my mother's expectations. I pity those kids, I really do.

Me too, more or less (except for the bit where she's a Pisces - I'm the family Virgo), which is where the thought grew out of.

I hadn't thought of the pre-Hogwarts schooling at all, which raises the interesting point that home-schooling tends be looked on as a bad idea, taken on by controlling, and generally religiously zealous parents (that's the North American stereotype, anyway-correct me if I'm wrong), and I've met few to no socially well-adjusted home-schooled children.

Not to mention that working in addition to educating one's children would be a self-created pocket of hell.

[melusin_79]

Home schooling isn't really done by religious types over here - more well meaning, hippy types disaffected by the state system. I think it can work if there are a number of kids in the family, but the only example I know of personally is where a couple adopted a child quite late in life (they were unable to have children of their own) and then proceeded to act as though the sun shone out of his arse. He's growing into the most peculiar, socially inept young man I've ever met.

[silburygirl]

Good to know. Perhaps motive plays a role in the effects of home-schooling?

Any child that has been raised to believe that 'the sun shone out of his arse' is going to grow up a bit... socially impaired.

I don't think even a large family helps - I know of a family of eight children, all home-schooled... and every last one of them is horribly, painfully awkward (especially the parents).