The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character who practices a certain profession fails to notice that their family members need assistance in that field.

  • Straight: Bob is a therapist specializing in child psychology, but his relationship with his own children is distant and dysfunctional.
  • Exaggerated: Bob is a doctor, yet does nothing when his own children get sick.
  • Justified: Bob is able to recognize and diagnose his patients because he is unrelated to them. It's not so easy with his kids.
  • Inverted: Bob is excellent at diagnosing and helping his children - not so much with his patients.
  • Subverted: It seems like Bob is going to be set up as an ineffectual father to his children, but that turns out to be a Red Herring of sorts - he's a good, attentive father.
  • Double Subverted: ...to one child, at least. The others get a mix of emotionlessness and apathy from him.
  • Parodied: Bob is a mechanic, yet refuses to fix his own car when it breaks down.
    • Bob is a cobbler, but everyone else in his family Does Not Like Shoes, and they all refuse to wear them despite his insistence.
  • Deconstructed: Bob's troubling home life takes a huge toll on his ability to relate to others. As a result, he fails as both a therapist and a father.
  • Zig Zagged: He's a good father some days. Others, he's just not very good at all.
  • Averted: He's competent as both a father and therapist.
  • Enforced: "Those blue-collar idiots watching at home won't sympathize with this highly-paid therapist unless his home life is in a shambles."
  • Lampshaded: "My son's in trouble at school? Why didn't I see this coming?"
  • Invoked: "Can't talk to you now, son, daddy has to go to work."
  • Defied: "Huh, you know, if I remember my schooling, some of that could probably be applied to my home life."
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
  • Played For Laughs: Bob's a great therapist, but when he applies his skills to his dysfunctional family, Hilarity Ensues (as well as screwball hijinks and wacky antics).

Please go back to The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes and edit it - my father, despite being a Troper, refuses to do so himself.

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