The Baby-Sitters Club: The Trouble With Dawn

The Baby-Sitters Club is my favorite children’s literature series for so many reasons — the first 6 books were written and edited so thoroughly that I willingly parted with pocket money to buy anything else ever published under Ann M. Martin’s name. If you asked who my favorite was (Claudia), you were probably missing a key question — which character did I relate to the most — and my answer would have been simply Dawn.

Dawn, bi-coastal baby-sitter, with a really complicated family set up, has plagued endless podcast hosts. What’s the point of Dawn’s character? She doesn’t even have a defined role (her title in the club is ‘alternate officer’ which is so rarely required that it’s barely mentioned), and her only good friend in the group is Mary Anne, who becomes her step-sister.

I related to Dawn as a child because she was always a bit muddled up about where she wanted to live. As much as Dawn wanted to be with her mom, who she was closest to, she also missed California’s lifestyle and her pesky brother. She flew coast to coast endlessly, lived there for six months, and then, finally, returned to Cali for good in book 88#.

What is missing in the narrative — ‘the WTF is Dawn for’ narrative, that is — is the simple fact that Dawn fails constantly while living in Connecticut:

• her sitting charge is abducted in book 5#
• from books 7#ish onwards she tries to stop her brother’s poor behavioral choices, the last of which leads to him returning to California, splitting the family in half
• she cannot reconcile being part of a blended family and has extended conflict with Mary Anne in books 31#, 50# and 64#
• she literally ruins almost her entire wardrobe in 50# while trying to get her crush to like her
• she sets up a recycling program at her school but isolates everyone within a five mile radius and loses out on the chance to co-ordinate the program she initiated in 57#
• she outs Stacey for wanting friendship groups outside of the BSC and causes more unnecessary conflict for the groups in 83#
• in the Super Specials she causes further drama: being too frightened to explore NYC, gets stranded on an island with children after the boat she was sailing is adrift after a storm, is unnecessarily dramatic about spooky creatures at Shadow Lake, campaigns for Peter Pan to have a more progressive and feminist approach (without consultation), and insists Mary Anne is bridesmaid at her dad’s wedding (?!)
• meanwhile in California her dad starts dating a younger woman who Dawn hates and her best friend’s mom gets cancer.

In the BSC books the girls cycle through eighth grade many times, but with the lack of time continuity we can assume that all of these things happen to Dawn from the end of seventh grade until the middle of eighth. In less than a year she has experienced significant traumatic events (the storm and Buddy being taken), her parents have both re-partnered and she has been separated from her dad and her brother. Dawn and Jeff’s experience of sibling life is the most realistic and portrayed as the closest (other than Jessi’s fam). Despite all of this, her parents continue to complain about the cost of phone bills and plane tickets, the two things which really connect Dawn with the other half of her family.

Nothing comes to Dawn easily. The ghost-writers don’t exactly do her dirty, but they do press into all of the snarky elements of Dawn. Kristy is always given a reprieve — she’s harsh, but she’s a leader. Dawn escapes the niceties and excuses. Dawn is blunt, but she doesn’t get shit done. She’s the opposite of Kristy. She voices her concerns, and like Lisa Simpson’s objections, is often ignored. Other than Mary Anne, Dawn’s often linked to Stacey but only because they both have blond hair and love a sugar-free snack. She is teased about her own personal code of ethics — her diet is a source of comedy to everyone (except her mom) and she remains the outsider, the only girl with long blond hair who dresses in ‘California casual’.

Of course, eleven-year-old me never saw Dawn’s failures — I was always outraged on her behalf — and instead I took on that angst myself. Dawn’s life was needlessly unfair. It’s not that I believed that her parents should have stayed together (obvs scatter-brained Sharon needed stuffed-shirt Richard), in fact it was the opposite — she needed someone on her team. When Jeff is campaigning to leave the East Coast he explains that his dad is all alone and needs someone with him. Dawn sees Jeff successfully move back to California (her dad gets a housekeeper to help watch Jeff and cook dinners) and is inspired by this, whether she admits to it or not. For a while Dawn and her mom are on her own, but when she is married, Dawn no longer worries about her mom’s loneliness. She wants what she wants, and advocates to relocate.

When her wish is finally granted, her mother’s parting words to her are this: ‘let Daddy love you as much as I do’.

Dawn, with all of her complicated feelings and teenage angst, who parents her own mother, is given that final request, to allow herself to be loved.

That was really the trouble all along — that she never quite fit in as a California transplant — and that she deserves all of the love in the world.

The trouble Dawn caused for ghostwriters is that they never quite understood what to do with her; that her outrage and anger was her power. She never quite fit in; she wasn’t supposed to.

Dawn, you really are the best of the BSC. I’m glad you got out, but I miss you.