‘AJLT’’s Aidan Gets Parenting A Teen All Wrong

Aidan Shaw loves nothing more than being a big old white knight. Throughout his relationship with our complicated queen Carrie Bradshaw, both in the original Sex and the City series and the more recent Max version And Just Like That, he’s always loved being the good guy. The “aw shucks, ma’am I’m just here to help” guy. Which, as an avid watcher, I loved for the two of them for many years. I was always on his side; I rooted for him and his quaint cabin in the woods and his chunky wood furniture and his plaid shirts. But now Aidan is a dad. Even more crucially, Aidan is a single dad of three teenage boys. And his white knight behavior is just not flying with me. At least not anymore.

Let’s recap a bit. In Season 2 of And Just Like That, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) moved on from the Peloton death of her husband Mr. Big (Chris Noth) by reconnecting with her former longtime love, Mr. Crunchy aka Aidan Shaw (John Corbett). Aidan was divorced, living in Virginia, and co-parenting three sons (aged 14, 16, and 20), all of which sounded sexy because he is, after all, a man. If Aidan were a divorced single mom of three living in Virginia, would those stats have the same woodsy, salt-of-the-earth, gee whiz-ness to them?

I digress.

All was well and perfect for Carrie and Aidan, who split his time between home and New York, until his youngest son Wyatt acted out. He drove his dad’s trunk drunk and was badly injured. Heartbreaking, awful, every parent’s nightmare. And honestly, a rare realistic parenting moment from the writers of And Just Like That. Dating as a single parent sucks. It just does. You always feel like you’re letting someone down or making someone uncomfortable no matter what you’re doing. You always feel a bit like the bad guy.

Unless you’re Aidan Shaw, perpetual good guy. He tells Carrie, a widow in her 50s, to go no contact for five years while he focuses on parenting. Doesn’t he sound like a good guy? Doesn’t he seem like a perfect father, a moral man, a white knight? Who could fault him for putting his life on hold while he stays laser-focused on his teenage son until he becomes an adult, at which point we can assume all bets are off and Wyatt needs to figure things out for himself?

Me. I can fault him.

Because this act is completely self-serving. It is the act of a martyr who is not really thinking about how anyone in this situation might feel, only how he looks to the outside world. Everything in Aidan’s world is on his terms. The way he parents, his relationship with Carrie, all of it comes down to what he wants. Even Carrie’s choice in furniture gets nothing more than a thumbs down emoji, that’s how sure Aidan is of his own decisions.

Aidan does not take notes because he does not think he needs them, and maybe because he’s a single dad who loves to be the good guy. He has decided that the best way to handle his child acting out is to regress completely. To go back to parenting him as though he were six years old and not a teenager. Instead of taking Wyatt as he is now — a young man with complicated feelings who made a mistake, who is struggling with this stage of his life, who still needs to be accountable for his actions — Aidan hides his relationship with Carrie. He puts both of their lives on hold. He allows her weird little postcard communications and awkward phone sex when he’s drunk and cranky and then turns up on her doorstep for real sex when his kids are away.

What exactly does this teach Wyatt? That if he acts out he’ll get his way? He’ll get his dad to himself again, like he did when he was a little boy? Aidan even has Wyatt sleeping in his bed sometimes which feels like a serious regression.

It’s all wrong. Aidan, I’m sorry, I can’t, don’t hate me. But you’re wrong. You just don’t get to be the good guy all the time when you’re parenting a teenager. You need to worry less about how he feels about you and worry more about the person he’s going to become. Wyatt is at the disengage age. It’s a time when it’s okay for kids to start seeing themselves as separate from their parents. As people in their own right instead of just someone’s kid.

Maybe this is what Aidan is afraid of, letting Wyatt become his own person so that he might have to actually look at the next stage of his life. Maybe all Aidan Shaw knows how to do is live in the past, one where he’s forever the white knight swooping in to save the day.

Maybe he’s not the good guy after all.

Jen McGuire is a contributing writer for Romper and Scary Mommy. She lives in Canada with four boys and teaches life writing workshops where someone cries in every class. When she is not traveling as often as possible, she’s trying to organize pie parties and outdoor karaoke with her neighbors. She will sing Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” at least once, but she’s open to requests.