Mysteries of Sesame Street or Where Are All the Parents?

Elmo’s sister Daisy: Lost in Space

In the five years that I have been a parent I have mainlined Sesame Street in myriad forms. I’ve watched new episodes on HBO and PBS and old ones on Youtube. I went to Sesame Street Live. I’ve watched and written about both of the film’s spin-offs, 1985’s bracingly dark Follow That Bird and 1999’s The Adventures of Elmo in Grouch Land and read countless Sesame Street books to my two sons at nighttime. 

I’ve experienced a whole lot of Sesame Street, happily, and certain questions have popped up repeatedly, most notably, “Where are all the parents?” 

Some of the Sesame Street monsters have parents, of course. Elmo, of course, has a father who has scored a fair amount of screen time on the show, and is a sunny fixture of Sesame Street literature. 

The only known image of Big Bird’s dad.

Even there it’s a little tricky, however, as, for the sake of one book I have read to my son repeatedly, I Want To Be An Astronaut, Elmo has a six year old older sister named Daisy who wants to be an astronaut. Daisy appears in two other books but otherwise does not seem to exist in the show’s multi-media universe any meaningful way. 

But Daisy is a ubiquitous fixture of Sesame Street compared to Grover’s father. In Super-Grover’s origin story his father is the source of the helmet for his costume but otherwise he is conspicuous in his absence, being mentioned in passing on television and in literature less than a handful of times. 

I can’t help but wonder if Grover’s fragile, easily dented ego is rooted in growing up without a father, just as my own fragile, easily dented ego is rooted, in no small part, in growing up without a mother. 

Bert’s mom

The Muppets of Sesame Street have been without parents for so long that it would be very awkward to establish, a half century in, that Cookie Monster has a cranky dad who loves sports radio. For fifty years Bert and Ernie have gone to bed each night without a mother or father to tuck them in. There’s something sad about that but something sweet as well, since Bert seems to be the only family his roommate will ever need, and vice versa. 

The people behind the current incarnation of Sesame Street seem to have asked themselves, “Where the hell are the parents?” Julia, the first Muppet with Autism, for example, has a mother, father, brother and dog while the character of Rudy, Abby Cadabby’s stepbrother, was introduced specifically for the purpose of teaching children about blended families. 

I suppose one of the reasons I think way too often about the absence of mothers and fathers on Sesame Street is because one of the defining characteristics of my own upbringing was my own lack of parents. My mother abandoned me as a baby and due to his Multiple Sclerosis my father was unable to take care of me after a certain point so I spent my teenage years in a group home on the north side of Chicago alongside other lost children and teenagers whose parents were conspicuously absent as well. 

Even before I moved into the group home I felt the absence of my mother acutely. I remember watching TV shows and movies with tight-knit nuclear families loving and supporting and hugging each other and feeling incredibly jealous, like my own motherless existence was inherently inferior and I was the only person in the world without an idyllic home life. . 

Perhaps the reason the monsters of Sesame Street don’t have mothers and fathers in the picture is to give some small solace to kids like my younger self, to assure them that, despite what television and movies suggest not everybody has a mother or a father or both and that doesn’t mean you matter less than children who do. 

I suspect that knowing that many of the Muppets of Sesame Street were in the same position as me would have made me feel less alone. That might just be the whole point. 

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