I Have No Son

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Lisa: We've come to talk to you about your son. Rabbi Krustofski: I have no son! [slams the door] Bart: Rats. We came all this way and it's the wrong guy. Rabbi Krustofski: [opens door] I didn't mean that literally! [slams door again] —The Simpsons, "Like Father, Like Clown"

Sometimes, what parents want for their children differs from what the children want to do, especially if the parent has plans for the child to Follow in My Footsteps. Sometimes the child wants to be himself in a career the parent dislikes. And sometimes, the parent struggles with this, but eventually comes around and supports his child.

And sometimes he doesn't. And if the child (often a son) doesn't step into line quickly, the offending parent quickly disowns him, disavowing all knowledge that this "son" ever even existed.

Cue the sad violin music—it looks like the kid is going to have to learn to make his own way in this harsh, harsh world all alone.

This doesn't mean that reconciliation is impossible further on down the track. But it usually happens years later, when the kid's a success and often when the parent is on their deathbed, and it's a long, bitter road until that happens.

Rest assured, however, that the chances of this happening are far higher than one might expect. The initial I Have No Son sequence typically takes place in flashback—we only learn the story because the now successful disowned son is giving us a sob story about how much he wishes his father would approve, or at least acknowledge his existence. If we see the event unfold in real time, then usually it gets wrapped up much sooner.

Bear in mind that the parent doing the disowning might not be entirely a jerk; sometimes, the kid just crosses a line they shouldn't cross (especially if they've grown up wrong) and deserves being kicked out with all ties severed. Again, reconciliation isn't an impossibility, but since this kid's bitter and twisted anyway don't expect it happening any time soon. And rest assured that the parent is going to have to justify their actions to the audience explicitly anyway, since the act of disowning one's own flesh and blood for any reason is well, pretty harsh. A justification commonly seen in a Crime and Punishment Series is when the parents essentially disown the child due to a crippling drug habit that the child has plunged into; this is often accompanied with a justification about how "there's only so long you can watch or enable them to destroy themselves before you have to sever all ties."

This trope has various roots—most obvious is the tendency of many writers to be of Jewish descent. Orthodox communities could be particularly unforgiving when it came to children (particularly males) who decided to try and make their way outside of the Jewish community.

Of course, overuse of this term has caused the words themselves to be considered a Dead Horse Trope, if not the entire plot itself. As a result most modern examples tend to skew toward the side of comedy.

See also: Changeling Fantasy and Where Did We Go Wrong?. Not to be confused with That Thing Is Not My Child. While it may use the line, a reveal a character is actually the speaker's daughter is another trope entirely.

Examples of I Have No Son include:

Advertising

• One advert for Oak milk uses this.

Downright Weird Guy: I wish I'd given Oak to my son when he was a child...haha, just kidding, I don't have a son, well technically I do, but he's in real estate.

Anime and Manga

• "I have no Daughter" when it comes to Alluka from Hunter X Hunter. The Zoldyeks were notably known for, among many things, having only sons, and Alluka was presumed to be one as well, but she is "not to be thought of as human or as family."
• Ranma ½: Genma has done this to Ranma a few times. However Genma does this for petty reasons, like Ranma stealing his food, or being beaten in a sparring match.
  • Or if, y'know...he's a girl at the moment.
    • This is Genma's default threat and response for all petty grievances, although in something of a subversion, whenever Ranma really is in trouble or needs help Genma is the one that he always turns to and has gone to lengths to help his son.
    • Taking anything in Ranma 1/2 seriously leads directly to Nightmare Fuel, but Genma is a hideously abusive parent, and probably the main reason Ranma relies on him at all is that with the long training trip he's never known anyone else long.
    • He's not abusive. He's so stupid that it's a miracle he can put his pants on in the morning.
    • So that's why he spends so much time as a panda! No pants!
• In Code Geass Lelouch gives up his claim to the Brittanian Imperial Throne in outrage after his father (the Emperor) shows complete indifference to Lelouch's mother and sister, who were killed and crippled, respectively. The Emperor then verbally demolishes his ten-year-old son with a particularly harsh declaration of this trope, before sending Lelouch and his sister to Japan to serve as hostages, meant to be killed if Brittania ever invades. Less than a year later, Brittania does invade, and (as far as the Emperor knows) condemns his children to death.

The Emperor: You are dead. You have always been dead to me, dead from the moment you were born. Who gave you the fine clothes you wear, a comfortable home, the food you eat, and your very life? All of those, I have given to you. In short, you are nothing to me because you have never existed!

• • This trope is more directly inverted when Lelouch accidentally forces princess Euphemia to commit genocide against the Japanese population, an act which causes the Japanese people to rise up in open revolt, giving Lelouch the chance to drive Brittania out of Japan once and for all. His father's reaction to this? Ha! Finally, an act which proves him worthy to be my son!
• In AIR, Minagi's mother does this, although to be completely fair this was after the dream she had about the time she miscarried Michiru caused her to ever forget she had a daughter, and they make up later.
• Uptown Girl Nadeshiko Kinomoto was cut off from her highly wealthy family after she married a poor, humble student-teacher (and protagonist's father) in Cardcaptor Sakura; more hatred was directed at the husband (both for being of a lower class and because she was a school student when she married him), but she was disowned anyway. Interestingly, she wasn't upset with this, and her living family, especially her cousin, talk of her as if she were a saint.
• Inverted in One Piece with Portgas D. Ace and his father. Ace disavows his father so completely that he uses his mother's surname, Portgas, and says that "my only dad is Whitebeard."
  • Also played straight in chapter 576. Whitebeard considers every member of his crew, past and present, to be his son. For the crime of killing another member of Whitebeard's crew, Blackbeard is the only one to ever be disowned.
• Played straight and just a bit literally in Wandering Son. Cool Big Sis Yuki is shown to have a tough time with her mother, whose visits are just stressful, and her father, who's more or less told Yuki not to come home, because she's transgender. The fact that she's "Mama" of a gay bar probably doesn't help, either.
• Sibling version in Saki: Teru constantly denies that she has a sister (Saki).
• Godchild from The Cain Saga has one played for both comedy and drama during the Red Ram arc, when Oscar is introduced initially as one of Emmeline's suitors. He takes Mary off on a trip fairly late in the story, when it's become pretty clear Jack the Ripper is one of the people in the story, and when Cain telephones the baron Oscar said was his father to ask if he knows where his son is right now he gets "there's no one called Oscar in this household." Cain understandably freaks.
  • After everything is sorted out with the real culprit and Cain has lost another Love Interest, Oscar's line when confronted is the spectacularly unclear "Aargh! That old bastard denied I was his son?"
  • Turns out Oscar was pretty-much-disowned for being useless and dissolute and getting kicked out of college repeatedly after his fiancee died. No reconciliation is ever shown, but then apart from coming under suspicion over the Rose Scar thing Oscar is a comic relief character for the rest of the series.
• Gendo Ikari of Neon Genesis Evangelion is the unholy godfather of this trope. He never flat-out says this line, but it's pretty clear that he sees his son as a tool, and refuses to acknowledge the fact they're related. In the end, it becomes pretty clear that he actually feared his son, making it a simultaneous subversion.
• Happens in Girls und Panzer:
  • When it becomes obvious to her mother that Hana is not going to follow the family style, she's told by her mother to never darken the family's door again. They reconcile, with her mother admitting Hana has started a new form.
  • Also implied in the backstory for Miho, with her mother stating near the end of the series she's only showing up to formally disown her daughter. She doesn't, but The Movie shows she doesn't relent, either; Miho is still not welcome at home.

Comic Books

• The Marvel Comics character Cable once had an evil clone named Stryfe. This evil clone captured Cable's wife Aliya and raped her, leading to her having a son that, while genetically the same as if it had been Cable's, was not his son. Cable had a lot of issues with the boy; it got so bad that Professor X (who was halfway into his Manipulative Bastard turn then) called Cable on it when Cable referred to him as "Aliya's son" at one point.
• In X-Statix, Vivisector's father insists that the fact that Myles is his son is "a matter of opinion". Why? Simple - Vivisector is a gay mutant. Joining the X-Force was evidently the last straw, because by becoming a celebrity daddy couldn't pretend he didn't exist anymore.
  • Supporting character Lacuna actively tries to get this reaction from her parents after discovering she's a mutant. When they accept her mutation with open arms, she tries to join the X-Force... and they're supportive of that, as well. Finally, she becomes a talk show host, squandering her incredible gift by chatting up celebrities. All she ever wanted was for her parents to be disappointed in her. Because how else do you know you're doing the right thing?
• In Magneto Rex, Quicksilver is captured by a rival faction and Rogue asks Magneto to organize a rescue. Magneto flatly tells her that since Pietro keeps refusing to join him in ruling by his side, he has no son.
• Renee Montoya's parents disowned her when Two-Face outed her as a lesbian and she admitted it to them in the Gotham Central arc "Half A Life."
• In the initial "Moon Knight" series, Marc Spector (Moon Knight) has this in his background. It happened after he one-punched his father, which should count as some sort of justification.
• In V for Vendetta, Valerie brings her girlfriend and tells her parents she's a lesbian. The parents were furious and scream at their daughter to leave the house. Then, the father, in tears, grabs a picture of her daughter when she was young and throws it in the trash.
• Iron Man: Tony Stark's verbally and emotionally abusive father, Howard Stark, is brought back in spirit while Tony is trapped in Mephisto's Realm in the Iron Man: Legacy of Doom run. After cruelly and viciously castigating Tony, Howard sneers, "You're no son of mine."
  • Made worse when Tony's inner monologue includes the thought "I'd heard it before." Yes. Even hell couldn't conjure up a father more emotionally cruel than Tony's actual father. And Tony still couldn't bring himself to attack his own father. Until "Howard" tells Tony that he was a disappointment to his mother as well.

Fan Works

• In Nine Months, April's father disowns her after he finds out that she's pregnant.
• Brilliantly subverted in the Evangelion fanfic Father by "Lord Talon", in which someone takes advantage of Asuka in a party and she gets pregnant. Upon hearing this, her father immediately comes over from Germany with intentions of taking her back with him and performing an abortion to restore family honor, entirely without her consent. Her resistance results in the man flipping out and hitting her, causing Shinji (who proposed to her shortly before) to go berserk on his ass and almost kill him. Sohryu disowns Asuka and proceeds to take the family property for himself... only for Gendo to inform him that not only Asuka and Shinji are under NERV jurisdiction and therefore untouchable but she's also the sole inheritor of the entire family fortune, as per her mother's will. By disowning her, Sohryu forfeited his beneficiary rights. Oops! And that's even before Gendo threatens Sohryu that with Asuka and Shinji engaged, he considers her family so Sohryu will better back off or face the consequences.
• Endrin practically says he's given up on Trian and Bhelen in Dragon Age: The Crown of Thorns, only it's the dwarven noble protagonist that he tells it to, just before the whole kinslaying happens (or does it?) and he sweeps the second son under the rug while passively watching Bhelen get things going his way. It's no wonder the DN takes matters into his own hands and manipulates the entire city-state, including Endrin, Trian, Bhelen, you name it, the way he does.
  • Later, it is revealed that Endrin played it straight with Bhelen, although the fact he didn't do it publicly allowed the guy to take control of House Aeducan after the king died.
• At the end of A Matter of Romantic Chemistry, the third part of the Ranma ½ fanfic series Tales of Ranma and Ranko, in the moments after the fathers' long-standing plans to swindle Ranma of his inheritance are revealed and foiled, Genma tries this tactic in an effort to guilt-trip Ranma one last time -- only for Ranma to turn it back on him:

"You ingrate of a boy!" Genma yelled. "You're no son of mine!" "You're right about that," Ranma agreed. "I'm the son of Ichiro Hibiki, a traveling salesman Mom's been having an affair with for almost eighteen years."

Film

• Famously done in the 1980 version of The Jazz Singer, with that very line delivered by Laurence Olivier in full-on Large Ham mode.
  • Slightly more underplayed in the 1927 version, with the title card "My son was to stand at my side and sing tonight - but now I Have No Son."
• Justified in There Will Be Blood: As it turns out, the father in this case has a very valid reason to make such a claim.

"You're a bastard in a basket!"

• • The son, by the way, is glad to learn that there's no genetic connection between him and Daniel.
• In The Karate Kid Part II, Shozen refuses to help Daniel rescue a girl from a hurricane, and when his uncle Sato helps Daniel instead, Sato declares Shozen dead to him...thus setting up the final climactic battle between Shozen, Daniel, and uncle issues.
• In Shanghai Knights, Chon Wang's father has disowned him for staying in America and abandoning his family.
• Happens in any number of Bollywood films. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is a good example.
  • Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham adds a twist since the disowned son is actually adopted and states that if his father had not specifically said "You're not my son", he may have actually tried to mend bridges sooner.
• In How to Train Your Dragon, Hiccup is told this by his father Stoick. Fairly predictable though, given Stoick's personality and Hiccup's actions. Leads to a incredibly beautiful moment later.
  • Also notable because, unlike many other examples of this trope, Stoick is hurt by his words as badly as Hiccup is—he physically staggers when he leaves the room and realizes what he's said.
• The Lord of the Rings- In a marvelously hammy yet tragic scene, Denethor tells this to Faramir.
• Lord of War - An unusual example, in that it happens towards the end and isn't reconciled. The main character's brother is killed after being dragged back into an illicit business for "One last time," and the main character is arrested. He calls his parents from jail to tell them what happened to him and his brother, to which the mother's only response is "Both my sons are dead."

Literature

• The first murder victim in Catherine Aird's The Religious Body is a nun in her forties who converted to Catholicism and entered the convent at eighteen-and-a-half. The police have to visit her mother in person to inform her of her daughter's death, because they can't get her to acknowledge that she had a daughter long enough to get to her via telephone.
• This is the main character aspect of Barty Crouch in Harry Potter. Though in this case it's less "went into a career his father didn't like" and more "joined a fascist dark wizard cult and helped torture two dark-wizard catchers (who were also parents) into incurable insanity".
  • Also Sirius Black, who was disowned by his parents and burnt off the family tree after he ran away.
• In Arrows Of The Queen by Mercedes Lackey, a traditional note is sent to Talia's home after she arrives in the capital and discovers she is to be one of the Heralds of Valdemar. Talia ran away after hearing she would be married off at thirteen, dishonoring her family. The letter receives the reply, "Sensholding has no daughter Talia," triggering an opportunity for some angst and subsequent Character Development.
• In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Han Solo says this to his son Jacen after the latter turns to the Dark Side.
• The Dragonlance series does this twice with the elven king. First he disowns his daughter, (and declares he has no daughter when someone tries to talk to him about it), and later he does the same with his younger son. (This time there's a line that goes along the lines of "He made a gesture as if to indicate that he had only one child now").
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, Tywin tells his son Tyrion: "You are not my son," while dying, murdered by Tyrion.
  • Earlier, Tywin disowns his other son Jaime when he refuses to go along with Tywin's plans and quit the Kingsguard. Tywin's not exactly Father of the Year material.
    • Ironically enough, another character states that Tyrion is Tywin's only true son, due to their extremely manipulative natures.
      • Tywin refuses to speak with her for a very long time after she makes this observation.
• This was actually the title of an early-1970s-vintage Doonesbury paperback; it quoted the punchline of one of the included strips, an exclamation by "Marvelous Mark" Slackmeyer's father.
• This happened to Courtney Thane in Quills Window. It is not until late in the book, however, that we find out what the cause of estrangement was.
• In the Vorkosigan Saga, General Count Piotr Vorkosigan has no grandson, because Miles was born handicapped. Physical deformities are reviled on Barrayar, and Piotr sees Miles as a mutant. He refuses to allow a deformed boy to become Count Vorkosigan, tried to kill the boy at least once (three times if you count when he attempted to have the Uterine Replicator dumped), and forbids Aral and Cordelia from using his name as Miles's given name, as is Barrayaran tradition. Miles (who would have been Piotr Miles) is renamed Miles Naismith, and gets the last laugh - growing up to become not only Lord Vorkosigan, but a soldier, spy, and the first Imperial Auditor in the Vorkosigan family.
  • The only reason Piotr did not try to disown his son Aral over the matter was because doing so to a confirmed heir to a Countship requires permission from the Emperor or Lord Regent (the former was four, the latter was Aral). As it stood he threw Aral and Cordelia out of his homes and stripped Aral of his incomes from Vorkosigan district; they did not even begin to reconcile until Miles was five.
    • Although Aral said that if Piotr had petitioned him for permission to disown him, Aral would have granted his request.
• In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Mrs. Ferrars first disowns her eldest son Edward when he refuses to break off his engagement to the eminently unsuitable Lucy Steele; later she disowns her younger son Robert when he steals Lucy's affections away from Edward and marries her himself! She eventually is persuaded to accept them both back into the family, but never restores to Edward the inheritance that she took from him and conferred upon Robert.
• Played with in Eoin Colfer's Airman. The villain arranges for the protagonist, Conor, to hear his father declaring "I no longer have a son". Conor believes that his father has disowned him, but his father said it because he believed Conor to be dead.
• The sibling variant occurs in New Frontier, soon after Captain Calhoun discovers that his Manipulative Bastard little brother has contrived to get him into a Duel to the Death. All the more powerful for its calm, flat delivery.
• In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero Lost, when Miranda appeals to Theo on the grounds his brother is poisoned and dying, Theo says he has no brother.
• In Gone with the Wind, middle daughter Suellen has been brow-beating her dementia-stricken father into signing a document proclaiming his loyalty to the Union, thus enabling the family to receive restitution for loss of property. This would be a major affront to any hard-core Southerner, but Suellen is taking advantage of her father's weak mind in order to accomplish this. However, just as he's about to sign the papers, she slips up, revealing what they are. This is enough to snap her father out of his dementia, confront her over what she's done and declare, "You're no daughter of mine!" before storming out.
• Legacy of the Force: after Jacen tortured to death Boba Fett's daughter, Han Solo tells him he is no longer his son. Later, he will state that Dath Caedus is not Jacen Solo, in the "That Man Is Dead" sense.
• Done twice in Warrior Cats:
  • Rainflower renames her son Crookedkit and disowns him after he badly breaks his jaw, because she can't see past his disfigured face.
  • When it is revealed to Crowfeather that Lionblaze, Hollyleaf, and Jayfeather are his (illegitamite) kits, he refuses to believe it, saying in front of the whole Gathering that his only son is Breezepelt.
• In Gene Stratton Porter's Freckles, his grandfather's attitude. When he gets a letter telling him that his disobedient son and his wife are dead, leaving an infant grandson, he files the letter away. Nothing is done until he dies and his other son finds the letter.
• Inverted in the Horus Heresy novel Know No Fear, when the primarch Lorgar responds to an invocation of his father, the Emperor, with a whisper of "I am an orphan".

Live-Action TV

• Mystery Science Theater 3000 used this line when they riffed on the educational short film "A Date With Your Family". To hear Mike and the bots describe it, all three kids were disowned by the end of the meal.
  • Really, they use it all the time, especially in the shorts (one boy got disowned for driving before his license came in).
• Parodied on The Daily Show with the "Jew-o-meter". The lowest score is "I have no son!", the highest is "My son, the doctor."
  • Another episode had an Even Stevphen segment deteriorating, as they so often did, into a highly emotional revelation about one of the Stevphens' personal lives. The question is whether Elian Gonzalez should be sent back to Cuba to live with his father, and they start out agreeing that he shouldn't, which obviously won't do as the basis for a shouting match. While Stephen's argument is the typical anti-communist one, it soon becomes clear that Steve's "reasoning" is based on his fraught relationship with his own father. Stephen immediately engages him in therapeutic role-playing to "work through these feelings," until Steve breaks down in his arms sobbing, "I love you, Daddy!"

Stephen: Shhh. [strokes Steve's hair] Hush, little baby, don't say a word... Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird. Steve: He should go back with his daddy! Elian should be with his daddy! [beat] Stephen: What? Steve: Elian should be with his daddy! Stephen: [pushes him away] I raise some kind of commie pinko? Steve: But... Papa! Stephen: You're weak! [slaps him] Like your mother! Why don't I get you a bra and some panties, and you can dance around, you fairy? Steve: Not again! [begins to rock back and forth] Jon: Guys... Stephen: Not now, Jon, I'm making a breakthrough here! [turns back to Steve] "Ohhh, my daddy doesn't love me! Ohhh, boo-hoo-hoo!" Well, MY SON IS DEAD! [turns brightly to camera] I'm Stephen Colbert... [pause where Steve would normally say, "I'm Steve Carell"; this time it's filled only with wordless keening] ...and this has been Even Stevphen!

• An episode of Head of the Class had Arvid Engen's father come to teach the class. He's a genius but, even though he makes an effort, he's a lousy teacher. Arvid tells him this, and concludes with, "But I still am your son." To which his father stands up and says, "Son? I have no son!" Arvid is taken aback, and then his father laughs and says, "Sorry, I Always Wanted to Say That."
• Parodied on How I Met Your Mother where Robin's father utters this line with full pathos after he sees Robin kissing a boy. It would be a perfectly straight example if not for the fact that Robin is a girl, and her dad literally has no son. He just spent most of her childhood trying to pretend that wasn't the case.
• On Glee, after Finn (awkwardly) announces to Quinn's parents that she's pregnant, her father disowns her. The line is never said, but it's obvious what happened.
  • Happens again in season three when Mike's dad finds out he wants to be a dancer instead of going to medical school.
  • Santana's grandmother pulls an I Have No Granddaughter when Santana comes out as a lesbian.
• The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Journey to Babel" reveals that Spock has one of these in his past, thanks to Ambassador Sarek's disapproval of Starfleet as a career.
• In House, the father of a Chinese girl with a mysterious brain aneurysm claims to have no daughter when told of her condition, while the mother just looks confused; Wilson assumes that the father has just disowned her, but House deduces that the girl's biological parents literally attempted to murder her so they could try having a son without being penalized by China's one child law.
• Subverted at the end of Fresno. When Charlotte disowns her son, she says this, but then amends it because she has another son.
• In one episode of The League of Gentlemen, sleazy newsstand owner Pop berates his younger son for failing to prevent a handful of chocolates from being stolen. He then leads away his other son, saying "You are my son. My only son."
  • "Pop will have a daughter, as well as sons! ...I mean, a son." *spits on the floor*
• Firefly: Simon Tam was disowned for his (correct, as it turns out,) belief that the "academy" River was sent to was actually performing horrific experiments on her. In this case it was fortunate as it cut away any further leverage the Alliance had on him.
  • Not so much disowned as on the run.
• Variant used in a Narm way on 7th Heaven. When the entire family reveals to matriarch Annie that they won't be home for Thanksgiving, she announces, "You are not my family"—her minor-aged children included, no less.
• Happens to the traitor Daniel in V: The Final Battle. One of the few cases where the claim is made and the audience accepts it without even blinking.
• Subverted in Law and Order: Criminal Intent, when a man initially suspected of being an infamous serial killer testifies to Goren and Eames that his father is actually the one guilty. In fact, the son's life has been made hell, growing up in fear that he's a sadist like Dad. When his father declares, "You're no son of mine!" as he is being dragged away in handcuffs, Eames comments, "That's the nicest thing he could have said to him."
• Atia to Octavia in the second season of Rome: "I have no son."
• King Henry VIII throws one of these against his sister in The Tudors when he learns that she has betrayed him by marrying without his permission.

"How dare you look at me? I am your Lord and Master; not your brother! You are both banished from court. You will relinquish your London houses. You will remove yourself from my sight. [...] And Margaret! I have yet to decide whatever to make your bed-mate a head shorter."

• • Of course, he forgives them later. (In real life, it was his sister Mary who pulled this stunt, not Margaret.)
• Rickie on My So-Called Life comes out to his uncle, his adoptive parent. Said uncle immediately kicks him out of the house. Onto the street. At Christmastime. Then his uncle moves away without him. Bear in mind that this is a 15-year-old kid we're talking about; this is Kick the Dog at its worst.
• Anybody remember this story from an old TV Western series (or possibly movie)? Setup: A young son is intrigued when a native policeman from an Indian Reservation rides into town looking for some outlaws from that reservation. It turns out that he is actually his half-brother; their mother was abducted by Indians in her youth and lived as part of the tribe for a few years before being rescued and returned to "Western Civilization", in the meantime having given birth to a boy. But to her white husband and later children she pretended that she had been rescued mere days after her abduction. When confronted with the Indian lawman, she tells him that she may have given birth to him, but that he is not her son. Only when he comes close to being killed by the outlaws does she acknowledge and show that she cares for him.^{[please verify]}