Hippie Parents

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Seventies are far back enough now that a lot of those people who were living the hippie lifestyle are now parents or even grandparents, so you can bet that they show up a lot in fiction. They are pretty easy to spot, they usually live in a house with an astonishingly orange and brown decor ripped directly from the 70s even though it's the 2000s, enjoy cannabis, still wear seventies clothes, and sport seventies hair styles, say things like 'groovy' and name their kids embarrassing things like 'Flower' or 'Rainbow'. They often double as Amazingly Embarrassing Parents, and engage in Hands-Off Parenting. May or may not have once lived in a Hippie Commune, but they probably have some crazy stories that are bound to scar their children for life.

Compare Hippie Teacher. A subtrope of New Age Retro Hippie and Bourgeois Bohemian. Contrast The Vietnam Vet Father, who usually grew up in a similar time period but went completely the other way about it.

Examples of Hippie Parents include:


Comic Book

  • Archie once had kid that was in very business clothes style... Apparently it was teenager rebellion from hippie parents.
  • In Ultimate Spider-Man, Uncle Ben has been shown as hippie.
  • Possible Ur Example: A 1950s Mad Magazine feature had hipster/greaser parents trying to deal with their straight-laced children. However, their grandkids are exactly like them.

Fan Works

  • Terra from "Convergent Paths", while being a really good and caring mother, still has moments of this, such as coloring her gym in "Mother Earth" theme, almost never wearing shoes and her love for meditating, up to the point of switching between normal state and meditative state (in which she speaks "like a wise elder of a village").
  • In Captainkodak1's fanfic "Aftermath of Camp WannaWeep", Tara's parents are understanding and bit more laidback. Their house is decorated with 60's and 70's stuff. Tara's father doesn't approve of violence, but accepts in Ron's decision to use the Lotus Blade when he has no other choice.

Film

  • The elder Fockers of Meet the Fockers are very hippie.
  • Carter from In Good Company had hippie parents and felt deprived as a child, leading him to become what was, essentially, a Straw Capitalist.
  • In Joe Wright's Hanna the family she befriends has hippie parents.
  • Rhiannon's parents in Easy A were hippies. The reason the whole plot gets set into motion is because Olive, Rhiannon's best friend, is uncomfortable around them and declined a weekend camping with them.
  • In the Dennis Hopper/Kiefer Sutherland vehicle, Flashback, it is revealed that hippie-hating FBI agent John Buckner (Sutherland) was raised by extremely hippie parents on a commune.
  • Alvin from Alvin and The Chipmunks explains to Dave that their parents were hippies so they abandoned them to join a commune.
  • Harold Ramis's character in Knocked Up is Seth Rogen's father and an apparent older hippy. He seems to have a permissive attitude toward his son, and his advice on drugs is "anything that comes from the earth is probably okay."

Literature

  • Pepper's mother in Good Omens, hence Pepper's real name being Pippin Galadriel Moonchild.
  • There's actually a children's picture book out there called My Hippie Grandmother, which, as you might guess, is about the narrator's hippie grandmother.
  • In Anita Blake, Peter and Becca's mom (Edward/Ted's girlfriend) is a New Age hippy witch-wannabe.
  • In the Keys to the Kingdom series, Leaf and Ed's parents are these. Ed's legal name is 'Branch', just to give you an idea.
  • Thomas "Stoner" Stone from 1632 is a last-generation hippie, and the father of three boys named Faramir, Elrond and Gwaihir.
  • In The Chronicles of Narnia, the parents of Eustace Clarence Scrubb (who almost deserved it) might be considered proto-hippie parents; they're slightly too early to actually be hippies, but they act in some ways consistent with this trope. C. S. Lewis seemed to not be a fan, as Eustace Clarence Scrubb turned out rather badly.
    • Eustace's parents don't seem to have much in the way of humour or sense of aesthetics. In fact, they come off more like as proto-Yuppies.
  • In How NOT to Be Popular by Jennifer Ziegler, Maggie's parents are hippies who move her around every few months.

Live Action TV

  • Dharma's parents in Dharma and Greg.
  • On Family Ties the parents tried to keep the spirit of the hippie movement alive while still living their upper middle class lifestyle.
  • In JPod, John Doe (nee "crow well mountain juniper") has a lesbian hippie mother who lives on a commune. He is so embarrassed by this that he has spent his adult life attempting to become as statistically average as possible.
  • Garcia of Criminal Minds opened up about her deceased hippie parents in the episode "Penelope". They were killed by a drunk driver when Garcia was 18. After that, Garcia went underground and taught herself code. When she was busted hacking into an FBI database, she had a choice of either going to jail or being recruited by the FBI.
  • In Charmed, the sisters's grandmother was a Granola Girl during her youth, until her husband died and she turned into a remorseless demon-killing machine.
  • Sara Side on CSI, and there are indications this may be the case with DB too.

Western Animation

  • Mandy's mother from Totally Spies!.
  • Ned Flanders' parents from The Simpsons. Though they are more Beatniks, The Fifties, rather than the Sixties or Seventies version of this trope.
    • Homer's mom was also a hippie. (Well, she started out as a political activist opposing biological weapons testing, but she eventually fell under the hippie spell.)
  • Dexter's Laboratory: Turns out Mandark's parents are hippies, and his real name is Susan.
  • Jane's family in Daria, although that might just be Hands-Off Parenting (for which it used to be the trope namer).
  • Ben's little seen parents from Ben 10.
    • Although in Ben 10 Alien Force, Ben's father is the city engineer and seems to a solidly respectable middle-class type.
  • My Dad the Rock Star: Rock's wife is a hippie of the New Age aromatherapy type His mother is the right age to have been a real hippie, and she's sort of closeted because of her snooty husband.
  • In Futurama, there are several generations of hippies in a family, all called Free Waterfall.
  • Vana from Sidekick is frustrated to no end by her Hippie Mom.
  • Mikey's parents from Recess

Webcomics

  • Rayne Ambrose from Dracula Everlasting
  • Penny and Aggie: the author noted once that Aggie's mom (dead before the beginning of the story) was a hippie long after it was cool.
  • Haruna's parents in Tsunami Channel were hippies, as Japan did have a variation of them. Though she was raised by her traditionalist grandmother.
  • Protagonist Mike Smith's mother Wisteria 'Teri' Smith is one in Mahou Shounen Fight! she renamed herself Wisteria when she was six and does things like wake Mike in the middle of the night because the moon is giving off 'radiant love energy' or makes him meals comprised solely of dandelion. Her character points out however she's rather business minded in selling her 'interestingly scented yoga mats' and has quite the desire to crush her competition.
  • Graev's parents in the LGBT slice-of-life comic Bridges are a fairly classic hippie couple. They're also Pagan.