Parenting

Test yourself on Parenting

After reading these notes, test your knowledge with free interactive questions on Seneca — used by over 10 million students.

Theme of Parenting - Judy, Ed and Separation

The play explores how difficult being a parent can be and, while Christopher’s autism presents Judy and Ed with specific challenges, it dramatizes some of the issues that all parents face.

Ed and Judy - empathise?

It is easy to criticise both Ed and Judy for some of their decisions and behaviours, but Stephens also takes care to show us the love and determination that each of them displays, particularly towards the end of the play as both fight for a second chance with their son.

Judy and Ed's separation

Judy and Ed separate two years before the play begins because of the strain of bringing up Christopher.
Judy’s letters to Christopher are a form of confession in which she tells her son that she feels she failed as a parent: “I was not a very good mother Christopher”.

Judy's insecurities

Judy compares herself unfavourably to Ed who “is a much more patient person” and describes how she ultimately decided that “it would be better for all of us if I went”.
Judy seems to suffer a form of breakdown, with her lack of self-worth at least partly caused by her feelings that she has let her son down and that Christopher deserves better.

Resilience - Judy

Stephens shows how both Ed and Judy show great resilience in Part Two of the play, determined to make up for their previous shortcomings and fight for Christopher’s future.
- Judy’s life is presented as particularly difficult, working all day before returning to a tiny, one-roomed flat with a shared toilet which she must clean before Christopher will use it, demonstrating just how much she is willing to sacrifice for Christopher’s happiness.

Resilience - Ed

Ed shows great persistence at the end of the play, refusing to allow his relationship with Christopher to become cold and distant. The gift of the puppy and the vegetable patch planted in the garden are symbols of his desire to make a fresh start.

Theme of Parenting - Ed and Christopher

The play explores how difficult being a parent can be and, while Christopher’s condition obviously presents Judy and Ed with specific challenges, it dramatizes some of the issues that all parents face.

Caring and skilled parent

In Part One, Ed is presented as a skilled and caring parent.
He is introduced to the audience through the intimate gesture of he and Christopher spreading their fingers in a fan and gently touching their fingers and thumbs together, a ritual which has presumably taken years to establish with someone who is so averse to physical contact.

Standing up for Christopher

We also see Ed ‘s determination in standing up for Christopher, bluntly telling Mrs Gascoyne to “get the facilities” for Christopher to be able to sit the A-level Maths exam early.

Ed's breakdown

Ed suffers his own breakdown.
He is left distraught after Judy runs off with Mr Shears and, in a misguided attempt to protect his son (and perhaps to suppress his own feelings of loss and rejection) he lies to Christopher, telling him that Judy has died.

Breaking Christopher's trust

A stormy and short-lived relationship with Mrs Shears leads to him killing Wellington, something he describes as the result of “everything I’d been bottling up for two years”.
Christopher’s discovery of both of these acts leads to a complete breakdown in trust with his father.

Learning and reconciliation

Christopher runs away from home because he feels unsafe living alone with his father.
But in Part Two of the novel, Ed ‘appears’ at the Tube station to reassure and guide Christopher.
The scene helps to demonstrate just how much Christopher has learned from Ed and foreshadows their eventual reconciliation.