Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 2,7, University of Mannheim (Anglistisches Seminar), course: Anglophone Short Fiction, language: English, abstract: Parents are the most important factor in the upbringing of a child. They lay the emotional foundation and basis for their children, especially when it comes to basic trust, love, appreciation and the right way of dealing with problems. Whether a child was raised by its biological/foster parents, adopted or in an orphanage, parents always play an immense role in the life of a child. The physical or emotional absence of one parent or both parents inevitably influences a child as well as the background its parents come from and the role their parents played in their lives. In his short stories "With Your Tongue down My Throat", "My Son the Fanatic" and "Goodbye, Mother" Hanif Kureishi illustrates the major influence, which parents and their way of upbringing have on their children, which will be analyzed in this paper.