Behind the Camera: The Crucial Role of Parents on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette

The Bachelor and Bachelorette accelerate not just dating, but other romantic milestones such as falling in love, achieving physical intimacy, and — though rarely discussed — meeting a potential partner's parents. Adult contestants deserve the sovereignty to date without oversight from their parents. However, because the show rarely deviates from its normal structure, parents aren't introduced until hometown dates. By then, many contestants are already in love (or think they are), are confused, have made serious mistakes, and are desperate for parental guidance. The long absence from parents during a pivotal time in life is sometimes detrimental to the bachelors and bachelorettes as well as those vying for their hearts, not to mention the very parental relationships put on hold during the filming of the show.

My intent here is not to psychoanalyze parents on the show, or to criticize or commend how parents might have raised their children when they were younger or what impact that parenting might have had on the now-grown children as contestants on a dating show. I was already a mother when the franchise began in 2002, but my children were preschoolers at the time; now they are the same ages as many of the contestants. Over the years, I have watched with fascination how parents integrate themselves into a season before the hometown dates or after the final rose is given out, how parenting through childhood and the teens influences a contestant's views on dating, how parents deal with the show's structure and goal of marriage, and ultimately how their interactions with their grown children on television might resemble or differ from their authentic, off-camera relationships.

I didn't get far into my examination of parents on the franchise before I realized that my own style and views on parenting would color my interpretations and opinions, so I researched some common theories of parenting. Some of these theories clarified my connections to or contrasts from the methods of some of the parents on the show. I found that many family psychologists subscribe to Diana Baumrind's three styles of parenting: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive.1 Stanford researchers Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin expand on Baumrind's ideas by adding degrees of "demanding and permissive," so that parents range from assertive to overbearing and from merely lenient to downright neglectful.2 This literature shows that authoritative parenting, which combines assertive guidance with empathy, support, and acceptance, is associated with positive development in children. Adults raised in authoritative homes score higher than their peers raised in authoritarian, indulgent/permissive, or neglectful homes on a variety of measures of "competence, social development, self-perceptions, and mental health."3 Adult contestants on The Bachelor franchise who come from backgrounds of authoritative parenting generally seem to be presented as the best-equipped to deal with the challenges of the show.

Before delving any further into the methods of specific parents, I asked myself what kind of parent I was. How would psychologists categorize me? I concluded that I consider myself an authoritative parent — stern but not overbearing, assertive but supportive — through my sons' teenage years, hoping to set them up to make their own hard decisions but simultaneously feel welcome to seek parental advice. One characteristic of authoritative parenting is the interplay between parental warmth and acceptance with parental control.4 We can take authority without over-exerting power, and then extend autonomy to our grown children with the understanding of acceptance and love regardless of the outcome. That said, I recognize that, as one child nears 30 years old and the other navigates dating as part of the LGBTQ+ community, my parenting has at times morphed into less flattering styles such as helicopter parenting. Therefore, I can empathize and identify with several of the parents on the show.

In The Bachelor Season Twenty-Six (2022), for example, contestant Rachel Recchia's dad, dubbed "Big Tony" by viewers, is shown waffling between coming across as an overbearing and intimidating parent to a parent is driven by love and concern for his daughter. When Big Tony meets the season's lead, Clayton Echard, he interrogates Clayton, sarcastically calling him "just another face" until Rachel tells him differently. It's not long before Clayton devastates both Rachel and Gabby Windey (the other contestant on the two-bachelorette season). But In episode 12, "After the Final Rose," Rachel takes control and confronts Clayton while her parents, Big Tony and Mary Anne, sit stone-faced in the audience, seething, with Big Tony's arms crossed in front of his chest. This time, Big Tony refuses to risk embarrassing his daughter and says only, "I have plenty of things that I want to say, but I'm not gonna say anything." Later in that episode, when Rachel and Gabby are announced as the next Bachelorettes in The Bachelorette Season Nineteen (2022), host Jesse Palmer directly addresses Big Tony to ask his advice for the men preparing to date Rachel and Gabby. Big Tony replies, "Be good, I'm watching" with a light-hearted smile.5 I can empathize with Tony's evolution from an overbearing (perhaps Baumrind's authoritarian) parent who allowed his emotions to govern his responses to a stern but nurturing parent who supports his grown daughter's decisions. A parent's first instinct is often to speak up on behalf of their children, and it can be difficult to recognize that grown children need to speak for themselves.

I was annoyed, and I'm sure other viewers were as well, that Big Tony did not trash Clayton on national television, but we got some degree of satisfaction out of seeing Clayton get his own dose of authoritative parenting when his dad, Brian, defends both Rachel and Gabby, saying, "they don't want to be second or third. They want to be first . . . You screwed the pooch, in my opinion" and "Don't blame anybody but yourself."6 We see how parents operate as sounding boards through both Rachel's and Clayton's fathers, who offer parenting with formidable but honest opinions. Their children might not have immediately appreciated — or even understood — their parents' perspectives, but both did benefit from their parents' firm but reassuring parenting.

While I understand Big Tony's actions, it's sometimes easier for me to identify with mothers or other women on the show. I would never consider myself an authoritarian parent, who by Baumrind's definition are harsh disciplinarians and demand blind obedience from their children. But I can see glimpses in myself of what researchers distinguish as overbearing but loving parents, who are characterized by "over-involvement and intrusiveness, coupled with high levels of parental warmth and responsiveness."7 While purely authoritarian parents offer low degrees of warmth and high degrees of psychological control, these "helicopter parents" hover over their grown children and try to micromanage their personal and professional lives out of their perception of love.8 Perhaps this is why I so clearly recall Peter Weber's mother Barbara, who was vocal during The Bachelor's 24th season in 2020. A trailer for an upcoming episode featured a tearful Barbara telling Peter, "Bring her home. Don't let her go . . . that's what love stories are made of." While viewers didn't know it yet, Barbara was referring to the woman Peter did not choose — dramatically enough, however, it was the woman who did "win" the season. During the season's "After the Final Rose" episode, Barbara told host Chris Harrison that she prefers the erstwhile winner and sudden runner-up, Hannah Ann Sluss, saying that "only one gave her heart to him, and that was Hannah Ann. So to me, of course, my heart went to Hannah Ann," making her preference clear even at the expense of Madison Prewett's feelings. Madison is bold enough to interrupt and say that the show was not just Peter's journey to find love but hers as well. But, to the gasps of the audience, Barbara simply squints at her and instead addresses Harrison, "Chris, he's going to have to fail to succeed. That's it." Peter finally speaks up to tell his mother, "I'm telling you, I love Madison and that should be enough. Listen to me. Please."

Barbara does not exhibit the worst tendencies of authoritarian parenting — control without love — but better fits the description of a helicopter parent as she attempts to persuade Peter that she knows what is best for him and her preference must also be his preference. But to me, her tears and drama also indicate a high degree of warmth for her child. She is not trying to tell him what to do, but rather to get him to believe that she knows what is best for him, and that is a reaction with which most parents struggle at some point.

Sometimes, a parent's actions or inactions shift my attention from parents to the contestants, particularly those who endure parents who, according to Maccoby and Martin's definition, appear to be absent or neglectful. A striking example of the impact of both absence and neglect is The Bachelorette Season Nineteen's (2022) Gabby Windey and her estranged mother, Rosemary. Gabby first mentions her absent mother when she competes for Clayton's rose on Season Twenty-Six (2022) of The Bachelor, saying, "If my mom could stop loving me, why can't anyone else?" She later references their strained relationship several times on her own season of The Bachelorette, saying "I deserve to be loved. But do I deserve to be loved by the person I want to be loved by?" in episode 3; "My mom and I are estranged. She didn't have the capacity to kind of, like, love me as a kid," in episode 4; and later in that episode, "I've kind of had to learn how to allow people to love me because I never had an example of receiving it as a child." Gabby even sends home an apparent front-runner, Nate, in episode 6 because he is already a father, saying she's terrified not just of motherhood but of "being bad at it." In scenes from both her season and Clayton's, the show represents absent and neglectful parents as a negative impact on their grown children through Gabby. The question might arise, why does the show even comment on parents who never appear on the season? Fortunately for Gabby, she also has Grandpa John, who while somewhat more permissive (as you would expect from a grandparent), counteracts the neglectful relationship that Gabby has with her mother. But showing the impact of Gabby's absent and neglectful mother is an important part of framing Gabby's responses to the men on the show as well as her decision-making process. Her mother's absence even causes Gabby to exhibit symptoms of what psychologists call imposter syndrome, which refers to people who feel phony or fraudulent about their characteristics and "endure the chronic fear that they might be found out."9 Atypical family relationships — people who grow up with limited praise from one parent, for example — can factor significantly in imposter syndrome. These symptoms manifest themselves in Gabby when she breaks down in tears, becomes overly anxious, or expresses her skepticism that anyone will fall in love with her. Limited praise from and then absence of her mother has a significant impact on her adult life, making Gabby feel insecure and that she is unlovable, as she often wonders if she is too broken to love and deserves to be the Bachelorette.

Worth noting is the stark contrast between Gabby's family dynamic and Katie Thurston's female-centric family structure on The Bachelorette Season Seventeen (2021). When Katie's mother Rhonda meets Katie's final choices during hometown dates on episode 9, she reassures Katie, "It's super important not to need someone. You can survive on your own. We don't put ourselves in a position where we have to rely on a male." Katie further benefits from a strong female relationship with her Aunt Lindsey, who famously tells Blake Moynes in episode 10: "At the end of the day, you're here because we want you here, not because we need you here." Heidi Venable has noted that while Aunt Lindsey sounded harsh, "her love and concern for Katie Thurston were obviously the driving factors. We knew that Thurston was a strong woman, and it makes sense, since she's the product of these unassailable females."10 On the other hand, the sheer absence of a maternal influence scarred Gabby so badly that she later tells Us Weekly, "our parents really influence who we are as adults and how we act in relationships and our attachment styles and things like that."11 In the end, though both Katie and Gabby come from nontraditional family structures, it's Katie who benefits most from more stern but loving, female-centric parenting.

Finally, it is important to come back to the role of parents regarding a common criticism of the show: its rigid insistence on marriage proposals. Because hometown dates are so late in the season, the meeting between parents and potential life partners is often fraught. I do not recall ever meeting one of my sons' potential life partners when marriage or even long-term commitment was already under discussion between the two of them. I realize that some parent-child relationships are difficult, making the introductions of dates complicated. But most of the parental relationships I have observed on the franchise seem healthy enough that contestants would likely introduce their dates to their parents long before a marriage proposal in a setting other than a TV show. Due to the show's structure, however, it is not until the bachelor or bachelorette might have already made a decision that parents suddenly show up on the season and become part of the equation.

Some contestants and parents have resisted the show's end goal. For example, Hannah Brown, lead of The Bachelorette, Season Fifteen (2019), narrowed her choices to Tyler Cameron and Jed Wyatt. Both met her father, Robert, but neither asked the traditional question of whether they could propose to his daughter. In the two-part finale beginning with episode 12, Robert tells Hannah, "I don't want you to settle for anything" and suggests that she might not get engaged to anyone. Hannah did choose Jed; Jed broke her heart. Hannah remained single, but that season is credited with a change in the way proposals are blessed (or not). TV blogger Elena Nicolaou calls Hannah's season a "more modern and empowering show about a woman making one of the most major decisions of her adult life," arguing that "the show gave the choice back to Hannah."12 But was it the show itself that accomplished this? Instead, I would suggest that Robert's parenting style allows him to both assert his disagreement with the marriage proposal but also support Hannah's decision. In this way, Robert's parenting also played a role in modernizing the show.

In a similar situation, Cassie Randolph's father Matt became the first parent to appear at the site of an upcoming fantasy suite date when he flies to Portugal to deny Colton Underwood his blessing of a marriage proposal on The Bachelor Season 23 (2019), episode 9. Cassie credits her parents' input (especially her father's) when she tells the camera: "The fact that they weren't sold on Colton and I together freaks me out and makes me confused about if [sic] he's the right person." Indeed, Colton was not the right person for Cassie; he later came out as gay with the full support of his own parents. Nicolaou claims, and I agree, that Colton's escape from the marriage proposal was not just about his relationship with Cassie, but "it was also inadvertently a critique of the show, and the pressures it puts on contestants to keep up with an accelerated racetrack toward heteronormative bliss."13 In these instances, Hannah's, Cassie's, and Colton's parents' actions result in their children feeling that they are not only free to make their own decisions but can do so with the knowledge that they have their parents' support. 

No doubt parents' roles have evolved in this franchise. Defined parenting styles have been around for years. What hasn't? Social media, reality television, and hoping your son or daughter "can get there" (as they say on the show) or fall in love in time to meet the constraints of what is essentially a marriage competition. The show's nontraditional dating route poses a challenge to parents who have likely raised their children to find love in a more traditional dating structure (without the pressure of knowing that marriage is looming in a matter of months, in particular), and who dated in a different world and often at younger ages with more direct parental guidance.

As my own sons grew up, as I developed as a parent, and as I remained a fan of the show, I found my feelings toward parents changing. Where I may have been appalled or dismayed I found myself more often empathetic and understanding. In a sense: how would I respond in front of a camera? As my sons matured into teenagers and then men, I sometimes thought to myself, "Have I equipped them to date in this crazy world of dating apps and TV shows?" Just as importantly: "Have I equipped myself to support them in any dating situation?" The franchise has been part of my Monday-night ritual since my kids were very young, and that won't change. (Though I must admit that I am not thrilled to watch people my age date on The Golden Bachelor.) I am far more excited to watch the antics, the drama, the love stories, and yes — the parents — on the next iterations of The Bachelor with Joey and Bachelor in Paradise.

---

Lisa Beckelhimer (@ProfBeckelhimer) is a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She often writes about issues of popular culture. Her recent writing and presentations include hetero normalization of queer characters in Hallmark Christmas movies; digital fandom during the pandemic; social justice movements in the NFL and NBA; and masculinity, femininity, and heteronormativity on Dancing with the Stars. Despite her connection to parents on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette as kindred spirits (she has two grown and single sons), her favorite series in the franchise is Bachelor in Paradise; she once witnessed fireworks during a BIP date while on a beach in Mexico with her husband and friends.

---

References