To think that the parents in The Parent Trap are...

[BaldricksTrousers]

...horrible, selfish people?

Seriously, they decide they don't want to see eachother again so each of them just takes one of the twins? And they never tell their kids they have a sibling?

Sorry if it's a strange topic but DD is watching it again for the 100th time and I'm always agog at the premise.

I agree. Even as a kid watching the original I thought it was very strange behaviour.

It was the 60's

TBF so many films have shit parents.

Home Alone another example. And Stuart Little, when the parents presented their precocious oddball child with a mouse as a brother

The book was originally written in 1940s Nazi Germany, so just very different times and values. (I remember reading for example that when the evacuation of children from places at risk of bombing raids was being carried out in Germany, any children who wet the bed weren't allowed to go)

Fair enough Double, but that context definitely isn't present in the Lindsey Lohan version!

Or the Hayley Mills version. That's a fact I did not know. Disturbing.

Not to suggest that the author was a Nazi or anything, by the way! - he was critical of the regime.

The older version I can understand. People used to have very different views on parents. But the updated version with Lindsey Lohan made no sense. Their parents must have been total sociopaths to know they had another child out there and not see them for years! I can’t really remember the finer details of the film. Did they just lie and say the other parent was dead?

Its a totally messed up situation. A great film though!

The author of the original book also wrote Emil and the Dectectives. Hitler burnt his books because they were 'anti German' or something and apparently the author (while name I can't think of right now) stood and watched the bonfire.
Anyway the films have always made me snigger. No one questions why a teenage girl who lives in California has an English accent!

Erich Kastner. That's the guy. Lottie and Lisa is the original book although I think it's often published by the name of The Parent Trap these days.
Now I have the urge to
1 - track down a copy of the book and read it because I never have
2 - watch the Hayley Mills version and laugh at it's daft ness
3 - watch the Lindsey version on sigh and go "oh Lindsey love you were so sweet what went wrong with you"

Also the cartoon credits at the beginning of the Hayley Mills one always bugged me because the twins had different coloured hair in it!!

I know a divorced couple who have two children, they have one each permanently and see the other occasionally. I think it's an awful situation and is sad for the children who only see each other occasionally.

User I know of a couple (I actually know one set of Grandparents), where they each took one sibling, and basically didn't see the other. Even worse the father basically dropped his child whenever he got in a relationship. So she was either cared for by her Grandparents or once went to her mother but was excluded by her mother and sister.
As an adult she has minimal contact with either parent and has had a lot of issues.

As an aside:- I read the book of Stuart Little when I was young. In the book Mrs Little goes into hospital pregnant and surprises everyone (and herself) by giving birth to a mouse.

Funny that they changed that bit for the film.

That must of been an easy labour for Mrs Little!

The original book is lovely. Same bonkers plot though and the parents really don't come across well!

I find it genuinely astonishing that this happens in real life. Do parents pick straws on who has which?!

@DoubleLottchen and @bookmum08 thanks for that background info. I'm going to dive headfirst into a Wikipedia blackhole now: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottie_and_Lisa.

I loved the Hayley Mills one as a child.

Did they just lie and say the other parent was dead?

Well, that's what one of my grandparents did to one of my parents, yes.

Got found out about 45 years later.

I had a pair of identical twins in my family who were about my grandparents age who were separated as young girls- one went to live with doting relatives where she was treated as their own and the other went to another set of relatives who treated her like a skivvy. It was a case where you could compare nature to nurture with, perhaps predictably, devastating results...

I just tried to amaze my 13 year old with the interesting trivia that The Parent Trap is based on an old German novel and she casually replied "I know, double Lotta or something" I had no idea!

It was common to separate twins who were adopted. Not sure whether they thought new parents wouldn't cope with two at once. A lot went through convents and maybe the nuns were more ignorant of cold psychology then

My friend had this, parents divorced in the early 80s each parent took a daughter . Not as drastic as the film but similar premis.

Disastrous obviously, one dd was fine as with the mum who remarried and the stepdad saw that dd as his, my friend alloted her dad who quickly remarried and had lots of little kids so she was pushed out there, went to join mum and step dad, who had totally bonded with the sister but my friend didn't fit in to that family either.