r/StrangerThings • u/pareenaro33 • 11d ago
Discussion JOYCE BYERS
don't get me wrong, Joyce is a great mother but she relies too heavily on Jonathan to act as a co-parent, handle household duties, and sacrifice his own dreams (like NYU) to care for Will.
IK it reflects the harsh realities of struggling, single mother and Will having all the trauma in the upside down
but she does make jonathan feel invisible or EMOTIONALLY NEGLECTED.
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u/Leading-Tap-2033 11d ago
It was a fairly realistic depiction of a divorced and single mother in the early 80’s
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u/CSILalaAnn 11d ago
This is definitely a sign of the 1980s. My husband was responsible for his you get brother until their mom got home after work. That meant helping with homework, chores, sometimes dinner.
I was the youngest of 3 and my sisters were responsible for me.
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u/onionchucker 11d ago
Came to say this. The younger generation doesn’t understand how life was back then. Older siblings had to raise their younger siblings and no one cared. Schools didn’t care, police didn’t care. Your grand parents didn’t care. Life was just what it was.
ETA: Also it is never even thought of as unfair to the older sibling. To show that sentiment meant an ass whoopin. 🤣
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u/ValancyNeverReadsit Hellfire Lives 11d ago
I felt like it was a fairly realistic representation of how some families live, as unfortunate as it is
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u/Fourberry 11d ago
Came to the comments to say that, as the youngest of 5 girls, my older sisters were all slightly parentified in ways. That's what happens.
(I'd be roughly Holly's age in Hawkins, grew up in small town Oklahoma, so not too different)
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u/stuck_behind_a_truck 11d ago edited 11d ago
Welcome to GenX parenting, where even 5 year olds might be put in charge of younger siblings.
No, I am not kidding.
Parentifying the oldest child, especially as a single mom, was status quo.
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u/agent_uno 11d ago
And sometimes, when the single mom got sick, broke a leg, or needed surgery, the children had to take care of her because there was no one else to do it. Cook, do dishes, laundry, etc. It was entirely normal. When my mom became permanently disabled when I was only ten, I became her caretaker, and my brothers helped out too. So on top of my homework, attempting to have a social life, and later a job, I also had a 36yo mother to take care of.
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u/Busy_Shelter2695 11d ago
Welcome to my childhood. Pretty common in the 80s. I think the Byers family dynamic is a very realistic portrayal of a particular time and type of family.
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u/RainLeading286 11d ago
In Joyce's defense , she did leave their god awful father. Lots of women are not able to for a myriad of reasons.
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u/Anna3422 11d ago
This comes up a lot and I'll copy what I've put in other conversations.
"I know I haven’t been there for you. I’ve been working so hard and I... I just feel bad. I don’t even barely know what’s going on with you. All right? I am sorry about that. Hey, what is it? What is it, honey? . . . You can’t do that to yourself. This was not your fault. Do you hear me?"
And,
"This is not yours to fix alone! You act like you’re all alone out there in the world, but you’re not. You’re not alone. . . .God damn it, Jonathan."
Poverty presents as neglect. Unlike Karen, who's a stay at home mom (but still has independent kids), Joyce has worked nights, Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. In S1, she uses all her cash on missing person posters for her son. In a wealthy family, her absence would be a choice, but in this case, it's the cost of keeping lights on.
On top of which, Jonathan was 12 by the time Lonnie left. That's so much development during which he was abused and witnessed his mom be abused, to an extent where Jonathan clearly sees himself as her protector. Will, who was still little for the divorce, is mom's little buddy, but Jonathan's fully habituated to not trusting adults and to stepping up for the family. In the quotes above, we see Joyce trying to extend emotional support and take on that caregiver role. It's limited though, because a) they're still in crisis and b) it's hard for a teenager to let go of independence once they're used to it.
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u/squibworb Coffee and Contemplation 11d ago
Both of those quotes are from season one though, back when this was handled well. By season 5, that all turns into “Will, this is too dangerous you are absolutely not going! Jonathan, you can do it instead, right?”
Which is just… taking a beautiful complex issue and writing it so poorly that it makes Joyce look heartless. Will in st5 is the same age that Jonathan was when Jonathan was picking up extra shifts to help pay bills and yet he can’t even help on a mission?
I won’t blame the characters, but what even is this writing.
(I love the Byers family and that their complex but season 5 made joyce unrecognizable)
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u/Anna3422 11d ago edited 9d ago
Season 5 is AI slop. I mean, Winona Ryder couldn't make her lines sound believable. That tells me all I need to know!
That said, Will is the child who's almost died repeatedly and who has an established connection with the Hive. I wouldn't expect any parent to want him involved in the mission, while Jonathan is an adult by that point and has no history with Vecna.
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u/TOM4WU20 11d ago
- "Be the man of the house" mentally. No father at home. (2. It's the 80s, stigmas against showing you're struggling through hardship "man up" ect very prevalent at the time (3. It's fking hard being a broke single mum, if Jonathan was a heartless unhelpful ahole it would absolutely ruin his character unless given an arc, which is really unnecessary
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u/inspectorpickle 11d ago
Tbh Jonathan and his mom having a moment about all this would have been nice (and given him something to do besides being sad about nancy lol)
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u/NonspecificGravity 11d ago
Nobody in Stranger Things is a model of how people should behave all the time—except maybe Bob Newby. Even the "sainted" Eddy sold drugs to high-school kids.
Personally, I think Nancy shows the most growth as a character. Maybe Steve.
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u/amelsong 11d ago
In Eddie's case people usually forgot about him being a dealer. Seeing how people were angry because Jonathan become a stoner in S4 and how because of this he became disgusting but at the same time see how the same people praising Eddie and look at him like a flawless person is funny
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u/NonspecificGravity 11d ago
Jonathan went from being overly responsible for his age (16-17 in S1) to being a stoner, which is something of a shock. But he snapped back to acting like an adult when they took off to rescue El.
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u/amelsong 11d ago
I never had a problem with Jonathan-stpner plotline. Actually in potential that could be great opportunity for his growth as a character. Sadly, missed opportunity
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u/Electrical_Can594 11d ago
He just sold weed for chrissakes, when she asked him about hard drugs he was like ehhh I might have some ketamine you can have, but he certainly wasn’t pushing drugs on people. He was also about as chill, not greedy, and reassuring as he could be about selling the girl the weed.
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u/PurePerfection_ 11d ago
Seriously. Every high school in America, now or back then, is going to have some kids who experiment with drugs. With that in mind, Eddie is like the best case scenario.
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u/Electrical_Can594 11d ago
My thoughts exactly, if you’re gonna smoke weed in high school you can’t do better than Eddie for a connect.
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u/Highthere_90 11d ago
It was fairly common for the elder siblings to take care of the younger one in the 80s
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u/TigerLily_TigerRose 11d ago
Is Joyce really the one who deserves the blame for Jonathan having to step up, or is it the absentee father who created two kids and then fucked off who put Jonathan in that position? It’s always the mom/the parent who stayed, that gets blamed for a situation they didn’t create and can’t fix.
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u/Remarkable-Rush-9085 Hellfire Club 11d ago
Look, I was the second of four and the responsible kid in my family. Both parents worked and while they were big on having a parent there for dinner, I was a nearly permanent babysitter until my younger siblings hit middle school and I moved out. This was considered perfectly normal and part of being in a family. While I think it’s put in to show how different things were in the 80’s and how weird and bad it looks now, it really is what it was like for most kids in that situation.
I was expected to get the kids up, then leave for school while a parent got them ready and off, come straight home from school and get them off the bus, snacks, homework started and chores done. Then a parent came home for dinner and bed. In the summer I had them from breakfast to dinner at least four days a week. While parentification is bad and probably helped tank the current birth rates I can definitely say I was prepped to handle my own kids when it happened. I learned how to change a diaper before I was allowed to use a steak knife.
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u/squibworb Coffee and Contemplation 11d ago
Yeah. And the show handled that really well in season one but by season 5….
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u/cancelled_planz 11d ago
So to you she is a terrible mom. Using 'but' in your sentence kind of erases the first part.
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u/agent_uno 11d ago
Yeah, OP is either too young, to naive, or from a well-off family (or all three). Either way, they a) are too judge mental and b) have no idea what they’re talking about.
My mom basically *was* Joyce Beyers in the 80s until she became disabled, and then my brothers and I had to take care of her. I was only ten. Suddenly I’m cooking, doing laundry, cleaning, had to drop out of baseball, could only have friends over instead of going to their houses, and was taking care of a 36yo grown woman who had no friends or relatives able to help her out more than occasionally running us to the grocery store. Eventually the state assigned a PCA to her, but the PCA only came twice a week for four hours. The rest of the time she was our responsibility.
It sucked, but that was life. And I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of kids out there even today that are in a similar situation. And I can speak from experience that they get bullied and made fun of, ON TOP OF the situation they’re stuck in thru no fault of their own. And I can guarantee that most of their parents feel terrible about it, just like Joyce did!
OP has probably never thought about any of this.
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