Barouche Mothers

On Monday, I volunteered to assist on a school field trip. We visited the Children's Museum on a yellow school bus. I may have permanent hearing loss as a result; I have never heard such a din in a confined space before. To say that the kids were excited would be like stating that the sun rises in the east. This was my first such outing, and I was sideswiped by the intense, hyper-competitive parenting of the mothers who'd accompanied the kids.

(Meh. Let your children live a little, explore, invent, discover for themselves, or learn from each other. They'll learn resiliency and flexibility—good life skills.)

This got me thinking. Stepping back 200 years, Barouche Mamas™ would be the Regency equivalent of these modern-day helicopter moms. However, since most of us write about the aristocratic classes, nurses, nannies, and governesses abound. Children were to be only seen between the hours of three and four and never heard. There're stories about neglect rather than coddling, fear and anger rather than spoiling and pampering.

Have you ever read of an alpha hero who, over the course of the novel, breaks free of the silken web of maternal smothering to find himself? To grow from a gamma to an alpha?

How about a heroine who's brought up to a cushy life, but decides to make a bid for independence, not because of circumstances, but rather a realization of her own shallowness?

We read of external impetus for internal change, but no epiphanies through observation, conversation, reading, etc. Where were the self-help gurus of yesteryear?

Romanistas, if you have any recommendations for books that have self-motivated heroes and heroines, I'm all ears.