Lyndsey Young
Mr. Bryden
Individual Family Dynamics 120 (2)
3 February 2014
Untraditional Rebel Couple

It is much more beneficial to the increasing number of young families that we start looking at them as something more than hopeless, and a tragic mistake and misunderstanding of responsibility, and much better than creating a MTV television show about them. Tod and Julie are perfect examples of a young couple who faced all the stereotypical problems a quickly paced couple who seem to have no idea of responsibility might have. From the very beginning we see that Tod and Julie are supposedly irresponsible, by continuing their relationship in secret and neither of them, especially Tod seemed to be thinking about much at all. But somehow within the short span on weeks, this blissfully in love couple breaks up, makes up, moves out, breaks up, but not before getting married to each other first, and getting Julie pregnant. Which is seen as a travesty due to their age, and assumed immaturity about responsibility and especially children. When we look at Julie and Tod’s individual family relationships, or lack of, we can see that maybe they are not as damned and doomed as other may worry.
We see Julie’s family the most; a home of just Julie, the mother she is constantly feuding with and her younger brother who hardly speaks to either of them. We learn that her father is still alive and easily communicated when her younger brother calls him up on the phone, but with that same call we understand that their father has no interest in getting to know either of his children, ones he had never met. Julie does not seem to carry around the stereotypical “daddy issues” we always see in movies, where she dates lots of boys just to feel wanted, like her first male figure never made her feel. In fact she only has eyes for Tod, and is willing to fight for him against her mother, and even leave her home if it means being able to stay with him happily.
Whether it be saying some idiotic comment, or thinking he was able to become a racer with no experience, Tod is not a very serious character, until he talks about his male figure growing up. We are never told whether this was his father, or a step father or someone else but we know that he treated Tod with disrespect, and was uncaring towards his and considered him more of something that can help him rather than a responsibility he had to take care of. The most intelligent thing Tod says in the entire movie is when he is talking to Julie’s mother about fathers, “... You need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell you can get