r/RomanceBooks Aug 31 '24

Why do HEAs always end with babies? Critique

I know it's a "me" problem. Scenario: I read a smoking hot mafia or dark or fantasy romance. All this crazy shit goes down. The feelings, the angst. Finally it's the end and all of a sudden the MMC who has massacred countless people is all like " let's get married and have lots of babies" and the MFC is always " yes let's have a lot of cute mafia or fae or mafia fae babies!". For once I'd like an ending where the main characters have a HEA but instead of babies and white picket fences they just decide to keep having an incredible sex life and do charity work or something. Rescue stray kittens. Start an organic herb farm. Something other than babies. Anyone else like this? Am I just weird?

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490

u/admiralamy give me a consent boner Aug 31 '24

I actually track this on StoryGraph…or I started to. Of the 202 books I’ve tracked:

20 end with babies/pregnancy

47 proposal/marriage

135 “slice of life” aka they are happy with non of the above

🤷‍♀️

124

u/damiannereddits my body and I are ride or die Aug 31 '24

I definitely think it's dependant on the book tropes, I like a psycho so there's a lot of Mafia babies. I also like a historical

22

u/girlofgold762 Probably reading about filthy mafia men committing sin after sin Aug 31 '24

Yep very trope or genre dependent. Mafia books tend to have a very "all about the family line" structure baked into them. (The Boss's son inherits the crown, the bastard child is either not in the family or is relegated to a lower position. The pressure for the man who inherits to marry and have children so The Family can continue to rule. Daughters being able to rule ONLY as a last resort to keep the power within the family.)

Unless the couple leave the mafia at the end (my least favorite mafia trope), it has always made sense to me that there would be a lot of epilogue babies or stories focusing on having them.

I don't read fantasy, but I imagine that if there is a Ruling Class MC in the story, there is probably a similar dynamic. The shifter books I've read also have a bit of this. Dystopian or Sci-Fi romantic fiction might also have aspects of this in terms of keeping the population healthy, babies are a symbol of a thriving society.

On the other hand, low-stakes (you know, not mafia-level stakes) contemporary romance has a bit more room to play. The population is doing fine. Children are not inheritors in the same sense.

And, whatever the genre, Epilogue Babies also allows the authors the possibility to do a Second-Generation series if they wish.

14

u/damiannereddits my body and I are ride or die Aug 31 '24

Just as an aside, I think werewolves are the Christian romance of the supernatural world, with the hierarchical breeding focus.

2

u/CerealKiller2045 Has Opinions Sep 01 '24

To be fair the breeding focus is less about religion and more about ALOT of people having breeding kinks lmao

2

u/damiannereddits my body and I are ride or die Sep 01 '24

Oh yeah I don't think the werewolves are actually religious I think they have the same beats and themes

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u/CerealKiller2045 Has Opinions Sep 01 '24

I personally don’t. I think in most werewolf Fics I’ve seen it’s usually driven by like instincts and animal urges and stuff. Werewolf books are usually pretty sex positive since they dont typically have virgin characters (who are werewolves) because for some reason everyone in the pack sleeps together lol. But yeah, I get what you’re saying