The life of an orogene from start to finish is a gauntlet of rejection, abuse and exploitation, and it all starts as many things do, in the beginning. That is, the personal beginning of every orogene, their childhood. Orogeny develops very early and as Jija shows us no orogene is safe from violent persecution, regardless of their age. The Fulcrum also separates orogene parents from their children to raise apart from them as part of their breeding program. Childhood is undeniably a crucial part of any person’s development and I believe that the depictions of parental figures in the novel speaks to how Jemisin feels about parents and the effects they have on their children.
The most obvious model for a parent that exists in all three books is Shaffa. He acts as a guardian and a Guardian to two characters and much of his methods of raising Essun can be seen in how Nassun is raised in turn. Part of his job as a Guardian is to at least partially raise the orogene children he finds and brings to the Fulcrum. This is for the express purpose of raising them to be more manageable and less likely to use their abilities for their own reasons. We can look towards how Shaffa initially treats a young Damaya for the Guardian model of parenting. After a prolonged period of being shunned by her parents, kept separate from her brother and almost killed by her grandparents, its clear even to her that the family she once had is no longer hers. However Shaffa is already there and sending some signals that he may be taking that place. Kids are more resilient than many would think and after her isolation is ready for some type of affection from anyone. She learns the real nature of their relationship through two lessons, one a story about two heroes and a, orogene villain that uses their power recklessly. Shaffa makes it absolutely clear to her that her place is not as a hero to save the day, but as a possible villain that must be controlled to prevent her from causing harm. The next lesson is one of pain, to show Damaya that Guardians can and will hurt them, but supposedly do it out of love. This is to establish to her that it is okay if Guardians physically abuse orogenes including herself and that they are always in the right for doing so. Shaffa in this situation can hardly be called a parent, more aptly a warden minding his prisoner, yet his situation becomes more clear the later the books progress. Yes, he subjects his charges to physical, emotional and psychological abuse, but later it is explained that he truly does do this out of love. For Shaffa, the only realistic way to protect his children is to bend them to the world that would otherwise destroy them. To make them suffer a bit earlier, so that when they suffer more greatly later it does not break them as harshly, similarly to how a drill instructor is saving a soldier’s life by pushing them to the brink before war. Also Shaffa was being mind-enslaved by a hypermagical planet-god and only was able to truly care about the kids he helped raise through the power of love so I’m willing to give him some slack on the whole sub-par parenting thing.
When Shaffa truly shines as a parental figure is in his time with Nassun. What he does, the actions he takes are what I interpret to be what Jemisin thinks a parent should really do. He helps her. He doesn’t ask for anything in return, nor does he expect her to change or conform to his ideals. He unconditionally loves and supports her as best he can. He says that he sees her as his redemption, as a chance to pay back all the wrongs he’s done to the kids that have trusted him over his long life, but I think that what he does for Nassun is what he’s wanted to do for every child he’s ever minded.
Jija is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. He can only be a adequate parent when the situation favors him, when things are as he wants them to be. He is completely unwilling to adapt to a changing situation, unwilling to change for the sake of his daughter. He stays with her, tolerates her only on the promise that she will change, that she will be the way he wants her to be. By the time he realizes bringing her to Found Moon had the opposite effect by bringing Nassun into contact with someone who will accept Nassun as she is and support her, he can only respond with denial. If he couldn’t have the daughter he wanted, he would kill her so she couldn’t be anything else. This is monstrous as it denies Nassun any sort of will of her own and completely dismisses her as a person. Jija was less of a father, and more of a selfish coward.
Essun takes an interesting place in parenting. The way she raises Nassun is similar to how Shaffa raised her, as most people tend to take parenting techniques from how their parents raised them do. In this way she drives Nassun away in the same manner that she was driven from Shaffa before, this treatment is controlling and abusive and Nassun was old enough to understand that she didn’t want it anymore. However, Essun did truly love her daughter and like Shaffa before her tried to prepare her for a harsh world but drove her away in the process. Only by unconditionally loving and supporting her does she regain her daughter’s trust in the end, at the last minute. Even a split second of real, clear love is enough to save the world.
Jemisin does not have many of her characters have a great deal of time spent with their birth parents, with only Nassun as the exception. Prejudice and oppression break families, and in the wake of that ruin, as societies rise from the rubble of a season, so must children find parents to care for them and parents find children to care for. Shaffa made mistakes, treated those who depended on him poorly. By caring and supporting a younger generation unconditionally unto the point of death did he redeem himself for his many mistakes. He proved that he could be a good parent, and Essun follows in turn, as she always does.