I rewatched Him the other day (not a popular episode in fandom but very funny, and it has a lot of callbacks to all the previous seasons), and Buffy is EXTREMELY protective of Dawn - as of course she was in all the other seasons - but watching Buffy pull Dawn off the dance floor, I wondered if perhaps Buffy didn't wish that her mother had been stricter?

I don't think stricter, but I believed that Buffy wanted to be protected and cuddled. Her mother's attentions were all about Dawn, while Buffy was the "grown up", the brave one, the indipendent. But Buffy was just a girl and she also needed to be protected and cheerished by her mother.



I'm not particularly interested in Buffy as a literal mother (although the fic I mentioned was very good), as Buffy as metaphorical mother, including mother or sire of all the Slayers (including Kendra and Faith). It's interesting that they explore the issues of single motherhood through Buffy in S6, although I wish they had bothered to deal with some of those realities in earlier seasons with Joyce. So they had a lot of ground to cover in S6 and didn't quite cover it all realistically (did Hank pay child support for Dawn, for instance? Or was he a deadbeat dad by that point? I'd rather doubt it - I think he'd pay the checks and satisfy himself that he was doing his duty.) And also as a daughter of a divorced mom who had to help raise my three younger siblings (including my sister) I can identify with Buffy on that level.

I'm a very maternal person, very Tara-like, that's maybe the reason I'm so focused on the topic. Anyway, in my fic which I had already posted on LJ, *infamous self-spam* Buffy's daughter is born in a peculiar way? Let's just say that, and she's crucial to the story development. And Buffy's also the leader of the Slayers, so.
I have really no clue about Hank.