Afterword

This chapter discusses the tension between intergenerational solidarity and intergenerational conflict in children's and young adult fiction from two theoretical perspectives: bio-psychological and aesthetic. The former approach employs the framework of evolutionary literary studies to explore intergenerational relationships in a broad evolutionary perspective, that is, considering why child/adult hierarchies are portrayed the way they are, in arts in general and in children’s literature in particular. The main reason is that children and adults have different evolutionary goals, which is duly reflected in fiction. From the aesthetic point of view, the whole premise of children's literature is a generation conflict. In plot construction, the primary role of parents in children’s literature is to be absent, preferably dead, which allows child protagonists agency generally unavailable to real children. The primary role of parents in young adult fiction is to be the target of parental revolt. Between these two categories, there is not much room for intergenerational solidarity on the structural level, and intergenerational solidarity is a contradiction in terms.