Worst parents on film?

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Most of the parents in The Breakfast Club. What scumbags. The parents of Matilda are a contender as well. Don't get me started on the Weiners.

Walter and Skyler White need a mention here, if we can mention TV.

Carrie White's mother.

There are a lot of absentee parents in children's films, which I think is definitely bad parenting.

Aside from the movies that are specifically about child abuse - and of course Home Alone, the premise of which I think is child abandonment as humour - I think Darth Vader was a pretty crappy parent.

Even though it's a documentary-ish film, the parents in American Teen can be rather irritating, hypocritical, and unsympathetic.

If we can mention TV, Betty and Don Draper of Mad Men. More so Betty than Don - I mean she threatened to cut off her daughter's fingers off - but neither are great.

Darth Vader
A great villain and character but his parenting skills raises a few questions such as slicing off his son's hand and sentencing his daughter to death, though you could forgive him for that one since he didn't know she was his daughter at the time.

Lady Tremaine
Though she wasn't Cinderella's actual mother her stepparenting also raises a few questions, especially since she was a total nightmare of a witch who one and only goal was to ruin the life of this poor sweet and innocent girl. Sadly bullets will not harm her as the Nostalgia Critic will tell you.

Denethor: Steward of Gondor
Saying to his son that he wished he had died instead of his other son isn't exactly good parenting, not to mention trying to burn him while he was still alive.

Frollo
So he may not have been Quasimodo's real father but he raised him and well need I say more.

I'm bored now so I'll stop and probably continue next time.

The parents in the transformers movies. And the Parents in the starship troopers movies.

Well, that's just it, Vader was never given the chance to do any parenting at all. When he met Luke, it was as mortal enemies, Luke was a Jedi, Vader was a Sith. And Luke was full-grown. Do you really think it mattered to Vader at that point how Luke would end up? As far as he was concerned, Luke was done, unless he could turn him to the Dark Side, which he attempted (but Luke refused). So Vader, being the tool of fate he always allowed himself to be, thought "Luke is the last thorn in the side of the Empire, kill kill kill!! !!"

Also I thought it was implied in the final prequel, Revenge of the Sith, that Vader now thought teh babies were killed when he, as Sidious misinformed him, "killed Amidala in a fit of rage".

So surely he only found out about Luke at a later date, when Sidious mentions 'the son of Anakin Skywalker' to him in the original movies. If he had known before, he would most certainly have searched for young Luke to take him in and turn him to the Dark Side. Whether or not he would have made a good parent in that situation is beyond our imagination, as we may assume that Sidious would have taken care of most of Luke's formal training as a Sith (if only to prevent the Skywalker bloodline from leaning more to the Light considering Vader's volatility).

I was waiting for someone to mention them! In the G1 incarnation of Transformers, Sparkplug Witwicky really isn't a bad dad. What's more, he's a SINGLE dad, so that's deserving of a lot of respect in my book.

Technically it was a book first, but - the Dursleys from Harry Potter. They spoil their biological child rotten and treat their nephew Harry (who they had to raise as their own child) like crap just because he's a wizard. They made him live in a cupboard for crying out loud!

Yes that made me hate them.

How about AL and Peggy Bundy

So true or the mother from what's eating gilbert grape.

That (Gilbert Grape) made me think of the mother from Precious.

All the parents in the X Men films were bad. They disowned their children just because they were mutants.