Good Childhoods Need Not Apply

There is one romance novel cliche that rarely gets talked about, but, once you notice it, is completely all-pervasive. It drives me nuts.

Every hero, it seems - and most heroines - has to have a bad childhood. It comes out at just over the 100-page mark, when the two have gotten over their initial aversion and are getting to know each other. Like as not, you'll find a five-page conversation in which one draws out the awful details of the other's childhood, and feels the appropriate pity mixed with heroic admiration.

I read a lot of historicals, so the sob story is usually parents who died early (dead parents are legion in romance), parents who abandoned or were cold, insulting parents who undermined their kids, and kids having to raise their siblings. Sometimes the author goes overboard and gives a hero a family that was slaughtered by enemies or something. I read a lot of history, and everyone had a bad childhood - the poor people worked and died of disease, and the rich people were politely miserable and died of disease. I would think the person with the happy childhood would be the exception, so I can't summon too much pity for one lone guy.

It's boring and it's bad writing, and even the best writers do it. Why?

Characters come from somewhere, of course. It's helpful to have background as you get to know someone. But a dumped-on lousy childhood just doesn't work, especially when it's never mentioned again. In The Shadow and the Star, the hero's childhood is so integral to the man he becomes that not to know of it is not to understand him - it's one of the few examples I can think of that makes it work. (The other is the first Stephanie Plum book in which she plays doctor with Joe Morelli. Ha.)

Just once, I'd like to see a hero talk about how great his childhood was, as the heroine looks on in admiration. But I'm not holding my breath.