Give Him a Normal Life

• A non-parental example in Ayakashi Triangle: Normally, the ayakashi medium reincarnating is Born-Again Immortality, maintaining the same memories and personality between lives. However, she decided early in Suzu's childhood to split herself off and seal away her Past-Life Memories. Suzu's friendship with Matsuri convinced the ayakashi medium she was better off living as a normal child before her powers manifested in her teens.
• Hinako Aikawa, the lead female from Bitter Virgin, was sexually abused by her stepfather and got pregnant twice. She had a miscarriage and lost her first baby, then when she gave birth to the second one, she preferred to give the baby boy up for adoption, so the kid would have a chance for a normal life.
• City Hunter: In a story Ryo has to protect a weaponsmith wants to quit her job to give her daughter a normal life rather growing up surrounded by guns, the smell of gunpowder and shady people.
• In Code Geass: Nightmare of Nunnally, Marianne expresses the desire that Lelouch and Nunnally can live as humans. Of course, this was before she was gunned down, forced to go into her assassin's body, and had her worldview changed to the point where she needed her children's geass, "The Zero", to open Heaven's Door and achieve her Assimilation Plot.
• In Dragon Ball, Chi-Chi wants Gohan to study hard to make something of himself instead of being a fighter like Goku. She wants a normal life for her family and hates the idea of them being in danger. And when Goku and Gohan go to fight evil, they leave her alone at home and she doesn't know if they ever come back alive to her or not. Sometimes, they don't.
• Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: This is the reason why Kiritsugu Emiya and his wife Irisviel von Einzbern raised their children Shirou and Illya without any knowledge of magic, to give them a normal life away from the often dangerous and cutthroat magical society. Illya ends up getting involved anyway, but Shirou is still oblivious.
• In the backstory of His and Her Circumstances, after Reiji Arima finds his son Souichirou barely alive in the snow after being beaten and abused by his birth mother Ryouko, he invokes the trope via handing the little boy to his older brother Shouji and his wife Shizune so they can raise him better.
• Used in Karin, after the titular character loses her blood-creating powers as a consequence of being kidnapped and almost used as a Barrier Maiden by the Brownlick clan. Her Friendly Neighborhood Vampire relatives, who were planning to do that from a while ago, erase her memories of themselves and the very existence of vampires so she won't be burdened; then, they ask her boyfriend and their Secret-Keeper Kenta Usui to help her rebuild her life from scratch. Kenta thinks it's not fair to Karin, but ultimately accepts, and later they're Happily Married.
• In Lucky Star, Soujirou remembers that his late wife Kanata asked this for Konata. Kanata was hoping their daughter wouldn't inherit her height and Sou's otaku tendencies, but it turns out to be exactly that when she grew up.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • In StrikerS, Fate initially opposed her adopted children Erio and Caro joining the Time-Space Administration Bureau despite their abilities (Caro can summon dragons, and Erio made it to B rank at the age of 10), and notes to herself that she had hoped they would take a more peaceful path in life. Over time, she becomes more at ease about allowing them to serve.
  • Nanoha also thought that it would be better for a normal family to adopt Vivio instead of her despite everyone else pointing out that she was already the perfect candidate. She caved in after Vivio was kidnapped, and officially adopted Vivio at the end of StrikerS.
  • Lindy and Momoko discuss this regarding Nanoha's future in the supplemental manga for Reflection, whether or not she'd inherit the family cafe or pursue a career in Midchilda's military. Notably, it's Lindy who has more reservations about it, which she mentions is a side effect of having recently adopted Fate.
    Lindy: Do I really have the right, to take away the option for her to spend all her days in peace, without any conflict or danger?
• Subverted in Mission: Yozakura Family. Kyoichiro has offered Mutsumi a chance to simply retire from the business and let the Yozakura line end so she can live a normal life on multiple occasions, but Mutsumi refuses every single time because of her feelings of duty to her family.
• Used in the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam movies, when Haman Kahn is shown arranging for her charge Mineva Zabi to live as a normal schoolgirl on Earth after the last battle. Years later, we re-meet the teenaged Mineva... as a young girl named Audrey Burne, the female lead of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn.
  • Whilst Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ is in a different (and more canonical) continuity than the Zeta movies, it shows that the same thing happened there as well. In the last episode, the 'Mineva Zabi' we've seen throughout the show turns out to be a Body Double, and the real Mineva hasn't been seen since the end of the Gryps Conflict.
  • Also in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED's backstory, when Via Hibiki called her younger sister Caridad and handed her and her husband Haruma her twin babies, Kira and Cagalli, asking them to give them normal lives. It was right on time, too, since soon she perished in a fire alongside her husband Ulen (the one who caused her to take said decision, by experimenting on baby!Kira) and Al Di Fraga (who had bankrolled the experiments); Caridad and Haruma raised Kira, and King Uzumi from Orb took Cagalli in.
• In My Hero Academia, Nana Shimura gave up their son to a foster family to protect him from All-For-One after the death of their husband. This ends up Deconstructed as her son Kotaro becomes resentful that his mother seemingly abandoned him, with resentments aimed at heroes in general. Kotaro would later take it out on his son Tomura for liking heroes, leading Tomura's Decay quirk to kill his family and end up in the hands of All-For-One.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Turns out that this is part of the reason that Negi ended up living with his cousin. As a war hero, his father made enemies that still hold a grudge on him for foiling their plans. And when your mother gets wrongfully accused for starting a war, then escapes her execution by faking her death, it's probably best for you that you don't hang around her. Or live in her home world. Just look at his hometown when they found where he lives...
  • Also what Ala Rubra did with Asuna, by erasing her memories and taking her to Mahora Academy so she'd live a normal school life, watched over by Headmaster Konoe and Takahata-sensei, who also sorta got to live a normal life after being one of the two kids from Ala Rubra.
  • A minor case is also Yuuna Akashi who, after finding out the truth about her parents being mages, decides to follow the footsteps of her deceased mother and become a (sort of) magical policewoman. Which is probably what her father tried to prevent by hiding the secret from her.
• One Piece:
  • Luffy's Disappeared Dad was unknown to him until revealed to him by his grandfather. That's probably because his father is Dragon the Revolutionary, the most dangerous criminal in the world. It's strongly hinted that he left Luffy to give him a semblance of a normal life as he'd no doubt be targeted by the World Government if his relation to him had been known. Dragon is even seen in a flashback sharply cutting off a subordinate who guesses about the location of his family. When that relation is ultimately revealed, Luffy has already become a world-famous pirate and his father remarks simply that he's not a child anymore.
  • It turns out Garp did the exact same thing for his rival Gold Roger, by taking in his son when his mother Rouge fell victim to Death by Childbirth.
• In the beginning of the final arc of the Sailor Moon anime series, Sailor Stars, Setsuna (Sailor Pluto) takes baby Hotaru (Sailor Saturn) away from her father to live with her, as well as Haruka (Sailor Uranus) and Michiru (Sailor Neptune), who are concerned at the amount of knowledge that Hotaru takes in. Michiru laments that she wanted Hotaru to grow up like a normal girl.
  • On the other hand, in the manga, Professer Tomoe is killed by Sailor Moon and they raise her through the end of the 3rd arc until the end of the 4th, as a more or less normal girl. She gets her powers back at this point.

• Batman:
  • This is most of the reason why Catwoman/Selina Kyle gave up her daughter Helena for adoption.
  • In Robin, Spoiler gave up her baby at birth because of her own heroic activities and her father's villainous ones; she refuses even to let Robin tell her whether the baby was a boy or a girl.
• In Injustice: Gods Among Us it's revealed in Year Two that Harley Quinn did this with her daughter five years before it's talked about on panel, the child lives with her sister and the child's father The Joker doesn't know about her.
• Wonder Girl Cassie Sandsmark was born the demi-god daughter of Zeus and her mortal mother Helena but had her inherent powers sealed as an infant in an attempt to give her a normal life. This obviously didn't work out long term, and when she finally learned her father's identity and had her powers unsealed years after first becoming a superhero she was incredibly upset at being lied to for her whole life.

Marvel

• Deadpool is an example -while more of an anti-hero. He had his daughter, Ellie, with a fling, who ran away in disgust after seeing his face. At first, he's adamant about staying away from his daughter, feeling he'd only ruin her life. After meeting her again, it's hard for him to stay away. She's adopted by a good friend, SHIELD agent, Emily Preston. Deadpool faces conflict, stating that he wants to stay away from Ellie to keep her safe, but wants to be close enough to jump into action if she needs help. She has been a target numerous times due to her connection with Deadpool.
  • Butler used her as leverage to keep Deadpool in line. Flagsmasher planned to kill her as revenge for Deadpool killing many of his ULTIMATUM agents. After a new Flagsmasher comes along, he also targets Deadpool's family. Then after that's settled, Madcap comes along, and has no problem attacking Ellie to get to Deadpool. He sent them all away to a witness protection program, but they all came back to be with him. Ellie is upset, wondering what Deadpool would say he wants to be with them, then change his mind and send them away. She wonders if he's mad at her, and Deadpool says he's not, but a very bad man wants to hurt her as a way of getting to him.
• An inversion occurs in Fantastic Four where Reed and Sue Richards do not want to give their children up to Child Protective Services. They realize how dangerous their lives are, but they also believe they are the only ones capable of protecting the children. They make a deal with the CPS agent to announce on TV that they had given up the children, but the safehouse location was secret. In less than a few hours, the undisclosed safehouse was destroyed by rockets; the children had never been moved and were allowed to stay with their parents.
  • Oh, and it turns out Reed fired the rockets.
• Ultimate Wolverine: Wolverine gave Jimmy to be adopted by the Hudsons. He had known James Hudson during a war. He knew that if he kept the kid, he would eventually be captured by his enemies, or worse, grow up and turn out to be like him. He wanted something better for him.
• The Punisher MAX: Frank discovers that his brief relationship with Kathryn O'Brien resulted in the birth of an illegitimate daughter (Sarah) who she left with her sister before she died on their final mission together. After saving her from Barracuda, who kidnapped her with the intent of brutally killing her to get the worst possible revenge against him, Frank briefly considers taking her with him and settling down somewhere... only to accept that he's too far gone to ever be able to be a father again. Instead, he returns his daughter to her adoptive family, and walks away, never seeing her again. Not long after, he dies from the injuries he gained while killing Bullseye and The Kingpin.
  Aunt: When she's grown up, if... she asks about you. What should I tell her?
  Frank: Lie.

Other

• Inversion: In one Astro City story arc, Jack-In-The-Box, after visits from evil future versions of his unborn son (they turned evil because he died and wasn't available as a father), semi-retires from super-heroics to raise the child. He recruits a replacement and relegates himself as Mission Control support.
• In Usagi Yojimbo, Usagi gives the son of a lord and his favorite courtesan to Inspector Ishida to raise after the former becomes gravely ill and the latter is killed by an ambitious courtier trying to get at the kid, whom the lord acknowledged as his legit heir. Maple, the courtesan, couldn't even see her own child and just wanted to be normal, and out of respect Usagi doesn't tell Ishida anything about the boy except that he comes from a good samurai family.
  • This is also kind of the reason Usagi doesn't tell Jotaro he's his father, since he doesn't want to disturb Jotaro's relationship with his father, who's also The Rival of Usagi.

• Downplayed in Amazing Fantasy, Peter keeps his daughter Mayday away from his apartment, leaving her with his ex-wife Mary-Jane. He hopes that Mayday won't learn of his superhero activities and won't worry about him over them, or worse still, get involved in them.
• Child of the Storm has Wanda give this as the reason she gave up Hermione to her adoptive parents, and with Lily's help, went to great trouble to cover her tracks, only leaving emergency contact details - she has a lot of baggage, personal and inherited, and her child would inherit yet more (especially since the father was John Constantine). Also, there was the small matter of her many, many enemies.
• one day at a time (Nyame):
  • In the backstory, Selina Kyle went straight, fenced all her remaining goods and left Gotham entirely after she learned she was pregnant with her daughter Helena. It didn't help that Helena's biological father Bruce Wayne was murdered by the Joker less than a month after she was conceived. They managed to live a mostly normal life for ten years — until Black Mask II appeared on their doorstep and demanded Selina start working for him as Catwoman again. Selina said no, and long story short, it ended with her dead and Helena being taken in by her adoptive brother Jason Todd, who would raise her as his own daughter and (reluctantly) train her to be a vigilante like the rest of their family.
  • Zigzagged. Talia al Ghul allows Jason Todd to take her son Damian Wayne away from the League of Assassins so he can be with his father's family. The zigzag part is because said family is made up of crazy (if heroic) vigilantes, a fact that Talia is completely aware of.
• The Second Try: Shinji and Asuka often express this desire about their daughter Aki. In fact, it is hinted that their wish for Aki having friends and a normal life was the cause of their trip back to the past. And in the epilogue and the sequel Aki-chan's Life they often say they want that their daughter have a normal life, and do not even want her finding out that they are time-travelers.
• Warriors Rewrite: Sometimes loners who can't take care of their kits will abandon them by Clans so that the Clan will adopt them. Swiftkit and Ravenpaw were both abandoned by their mothers and adopted into ThunderClan.
• Weight Off Your Shoulder has a non-parental example connected to Time Travel. Future!Alix had become a Time-Traveling Jerkass abusing the power of the Rabbit Miraculous to try twisting the timeline to her own ends. After putting an end to her attempts to Make Wrong What Once Went Right, her memories are erased and she's returned to her proper place in the timeline. With this all resolved, the heroes express their sympathies and hopes that they'll be able to live a normal life now.

• In a flashback in the movie Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, her mother is shown dropping the infant Elvira off at a convent to protect her from the convoluted magical politics in their family.
• In The Master of Disguise, Pistachio's father gets himself out of the crime-fighting business and opens a restaurant so that his son won't know a life of danger. This, of course, fails when he and his wife are kidnapped, and Pistachio's grandfather shows up to teach him about the family legacy and train him to save his parents.
• Possibly Alessa's intention with her good half, Sharon, in the Silent Hill movie, but if it was, it didn't work.
• In Wanted, this is the reason that Wesley's father left the family when Wes was a week old. He was trying to save the kid from growing up to be an assassin. Unfortunately for him, Wesley later Jumped at the Call.

• The Calling: This tie-in novel to the Dragon Age franchise reveals that Breakout Character Alistair's parents both gave him up for this. His mother, an elven mage, asked that he be told his mother was a human who died giving birth to him so he wouldn't live with the fantastic racism she had to face as an elf. His father, King of Ferelden, didn't acknowledge him as his bastard because he wanted to spare Alistair from the gilded cage of royal life. Depending on the Warden's actions in Dragon Age: Origins, Maric's attempt might turn out to be for naught.
• The Devourers: Inverted by a human woman who gives her half-werebeast son up to be raised as a Fully-Embraced Fiend by rakshasas rather than burden him with Half-Breed Angst.
  "She spared me the misery of a human life. She spared me the misery of being torn between two worlds, trying to claw my way back to my so-called roots, like Fenrir and his pathetic scrabbling to be human..."
• The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden, unbeknownst to him, had a daughter with Susan. Susan gave up the girl in order to protect her from the ongoing vampire war. When Maggie is attacked anyway and Harry saves her, he also gives her up for her safety when he arranges his own death. Luckily, Death Is Cheap and he comes back and chooses to stay with her after that.
  • It is revealed that this was Ebeneezer McCoy's reasoning for abandoning Harry as a child, rather than adopting him after the death of his father.
• Ferals Series: Lydia's mother Velma concealed her feral abilities from her daughter so that she could live the normal childhood that Velma was denied in her youth.
• Happens to Adam in Good Omens. Both Heaven and Hell are poised to use Adam as a tool to bring about the armageddon they've been preparing thousands of years for. As a result of a baby-switching error (read: a very subtle act of Divine Intervention), he instead gets raised in the English countryside wanting nothing more than to be a normal kid with a normal life.
• Harry Potter:
  • Parent figure Dumbledore leaves infant Harry to the Muggle world so that he has a chance of growing up relatively normal and level-headed. We later learn another part of the reason Dumbledore had Harry live with the Dursleys was so that he could be protected until his 17th birthday from Voldemort by the charm Lily had unintentionally put on him when she died protecting him. The only way this charm could work was if he called the place where Petunia (Lily's only living blood relative) lived home. This is also the reason that Harry is not allowed to spend entire summer breaks with the Weasleys and must go home each summer.
  • Memory!Lupin actually says this to Harry:
    "...I am sorry I will never get to know him... but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life."
• In The Ruby Red Trilogy, Gwen's mother lies about her birthdate so that no one will suspect that she inherited the family time travelling gene; she hopes that Gwen won't inherit it after all and can live as a normal kid. For sixteen years, Gwen's cousin Charlotte (who has the same birthday) is believed to be the heir of the gene, and she was groomed to survive in the past. But then Gwen starts time travelling. In the third book, it is revealed that Gwen's actual parents fled from the villians to the past but left her in the present so she would be safe (or at least a little safer).
• This trope (specifically the desire to avoid the influence of magic) is the reason Richard was raised in the Westlands in The Sword of Truth series.

• In All My Children, a fourteen-year-old Erica Kane is raped and ends up pregnant with her eldest daughter, Kendall. Since she can't get an abortion, Erica and her mother Mona give Erica's baby to the Hart family to protect Kendall from learning she's a Child by Rape and so Kendall can be raised in a good environment with suitable parents old enough to look after her.
• Angel had the extremely rare usage of this trope when the child in question wasn't a baby. In "Home", Angel sold himself to Wolfram and Hart so that his teenaged son Connor could be placed with a new family and new memories, to be safe and happy. It doesn't quite last - the kid's memories are restored a few months later - but while he gets the memories back, he keeps his new, much more stable, personality, so it's still an improvement.
• In Castle, this turns out to be the reason for Castle's dad being a complete unknown. He was a CIA operative who had a one-night stand with Castle's mom, and then didn't want to endanger them with his enemies.
• On Charmed, this is the explanation for why the Halliwell Sisters grew up not being able to use their powers or knowing about them: Their mother and grandmother "bound their powers" in order to let them live a safe and normal life. This was never quite as much of an option with baby Wyatt, who is an even greater Chosen One than the Charmed Sisters themselves, but the Halliwell Sisters still had a tendency to wish that they could give Wyatt a normal life.
• In Chinese Paladin, the hero tries to do this towards his Love Interest, having time-traveled back to her childhood. He asks her granny to not tell her about her heritage and keep her secluded from danger. It backfires on him nastily, resulting in Ling'er having no clue how to use her Chosen One powers when she needs them.
• This pretty much sums up why Papa Bartowski left his children on Chuck - a case when the children in question weren't infants.
• When General Hospital's Luke confronts his long lost niece Carly about her abhorrent behavior—seducing her mother Bobbie's husband—she rants about how Bobbie deserved it for "throwing her away", as she put it. Luke tells her that she had a "good, clean life" because Bobbie didn't "throw her away"—she was an 18-year old prostitute who couldn't have possibly provided for a child and gave her up for adoption so that she could live out this trope, blasting her for her ingratitude and cruelty to both her biological and adoptive mothers.
• In the second Kamen Rider Den-O movie, the heroes work with a police investigator who's trying to live up to the image of his father, a great cop who was killed in the line of duty. At the end of the movie, as a "thank you" for his help, the team takes him back to 1986 so he can see his father at least once. At one point the father's partner asks if he wants his son to become a cop too, to which he responds, "No, I don't want him having to do this for a living."
• Occurs in an unusual way on Lost: Claire disappears into the jungle on her way to the beach camp, leaving baby Aaron behind; Kate then takes Aaron with her to the real world and poses as his mother, presumably justifying this to herself by the fact that she's giving Aaron a normal life off the island.
• In the ''Masterpiece Mini Series "The Long Song", a slave who has just given birth attempts to run away. Unfortunately, with her owners catching up with her, she abandons her newborn son on the steps of a local church, not wanting him to be brought up in that cruel environment and hoping that he can live out this trope. Decades later, her son, now a prominent lawyer, tracks down his now elderly mother and takes her home with him to give her the pampered life she'd always deserved.
• In one episode of Monk this sort of occurs; Monk bonds with an orphan who found a severed finger while investigating the case, and starts to want to adopt him. Eventually, Monk delivers The Summation in the form of telling a story to the boy about the boy being a prince with all the standard fairy tale trappings, and at the end delivers the very poignant line "and something wonderful had happened. Mr. Monk realized that he loved the little prince, but he also realized that they couldn't stay together. Because Mr. Monk can barely take care of himself". When a family arrives to adopt the kid, Monk tells them "let him get dirty. Kids should get dirty", indicating that he doesn't want Tommy developing all the phobias he has.
• In the third and final season of Roswell, Max gives his son, Zan, up for adoption to protect the boy from the life of secrecy and persecution Max has had to live with for the entire series.
• Sharpe: Richard Sharpe gives up his baby daughter to her uncle after her mother dies so she'll have a proper family.
• Supernatural: Dean bonds with/grows to love his surrogate son Ben, who wants to be a hunter like Dean. At the end of Season 6, after Crowley kidnaps them, Dean has Castiel wipe Ben and his mother's memories of Dean so that they can live a normal life, free of danger.
• Voyagers!, Near the end of the episode "Merry Christmas, Bogg", Jeffrey's great-grandfather talks to Bogg about leaving Jeffrey with him and his wife, saying it's obvious he wants to be part of a real family. Bogg also knows that being with a Voyager is a very uncertain and discombobulated existence. The attempt is thwarted when Jeffrey sees Bogg is gone and suspects what he's trying to do.
• In a flashback of Xena: Warrior Princess, Xena is shown giving up her son Solan. She places the boy with a centaur foster father so that he can grow up in peace and safety (and away from his mother's violent influence).
• On The X-Files, Scully gives her infant son up for adoption to protect him from the villains hunting him down.

• Greek Mythology:
  • Inspiring the Xena reference above, Zeus's mother Rhea lovingly palmed her youngest son off on a centaur to raise on a beautiful island (so her husband wouldn't swallow him like the rest). This was somewhat more of a "keep him alive" stratagem than a "normal life" one — there hadn't even really been enough people in the history of the world at this point for "normal" to have many benchmarks.
  • However, since Zeus' older siblings came out of Kronos' stomach fully grown and ready for war, having presumably matured in there, there is a normal life element. Since a major factor in both wars was the question of whether Gaia's ugly children would be immured forever underground where the current lord of the universe didn't have to look at them, growing up in your father's stomach counts as "abnormal" even then.

• This is what happened to Jessie from Pokémon: The Series according to Pokémon: The Birth of Mewtwo. Her mother Miyamoto loved her. However she was a member of Team Rocket, so Miyamoto put her daughter in a foster home to live a life away from crime. She tried to capture Mew to make a profit to take care of Jessie however she became lost in a blizzard. It ends up being a moot point because Jessie ends up becoming a member of Team Rocket when she grew up.

• In Puccini's Madame Butterfly, Butterfly gives her son to Pinkerton and his wife to raise before killing herself.
• Next to Normal quotes this almost verbatim in one song. However, it's in reference to Diana staying and trying to be a responsible mother even though she's struggling with severe bipolar disorder. The trope is then played straight (sort of) when Diana leaves the family to seek help elsewhere, leaving her daughter with her considerably more stable father. And the ending mentions that Diana and her daughter are in contact, so it's not like Diana just up and left.

• Dragon Age Origins: The Calling reveals that Alistair's parents gave him up for this. His mother, an elven mage, asked that Alistair be told his mother was a human who died giving birth to him so he wouldn't live with the fantastic racism she had to face as an elf. His father, King of Ferelden, gave him to his brother-in-law to raise and didn't acknowledge him as his bastard because he wanted to spare Alistair from the gilded cage of royal life. Depending on the Warden's actions in Dragon Age: Origins, Maric's attempt might turn out to be for naught.
• Fallout 3 has the main character's Father, a scientist who wants you to stay in the Vault, while he goes out and about in the Capital Wasteland. It backfires horribly.
• Fallout 4 has a more complicated situation involving the player character's now elderly and villainous son, who after the final mission sends a child Synth version of himself to his parent, leaving you a message where he pleads with you to raise the other Shaun as your own.
• In Mass Effect 2, Miranda Lawson is the genetically-engineered offpring of a powerful business tycoon who wanted her to be his "heir." To do this, he was extremely obsessively controlling of her life, to the point that when she decided that she wanted to live her own life, the resulting argument turned into a running gun battle. As a result, when Miranda learned of her genetic twin sister, she swore to herself that her twin sister would live a normal life without their father controlling her. Completing this mission forms the basis of Miranda's personal mission in the game.
• John Marston in Red Dead Redemption wanted his family to have a normal life, particularly his son Jack who wanted to be like his Father. Thus, he gives himself up to be shot to death by Edgar Ross and his army, giving Edgar no more reason to go after his family. However, this would only backfire and make Jack follow in his father's footsteps.

• In the sequel to Demonbane, Kuzaku goes through a huge amount of rage and angst over the fact that his parents left him when he was a baby, leaving someone else to raise him (though there's no indication that his foster mother was anything but kind and loving to him). Eventually, he discovers that this was the reason: he was born to the Elder God versions of Kurou and Al Azif, who decided that they couldn't raise a child when they're constantly at war with Eldritch Abominations, and sent him to Earth so he could live life as a normal human being. Unfortunately, they did not think to inform him of this in any way, which really could have saved a lot of trouble.
• In the epilogue true ending of The Devil on G-String, knowing Haru might get imprisoned for attempted murder of 'Maou' through illegal possession of a firearm, Kyousuke intentionally twisted his story during his confession to the police to ensure his lover Haru will not be branded a criminal so that her violinist career won't be ruined. Kyousuke also behaved like a jerk towards Tsubaki, Kanon & Mizuha during their prison visits in order not to soil their reputation for associating with a murderer. When Kyousuke is finally released from prison, his reunion with Haru is the missing piece that will provide their daughter the normal life that they both lack.
• Tsugumi tried to do this with Hokuto and Sara in Ever17 to prevent them from being captured by Leiblich. Oddly enough, while this failed, they did actually get somewhat normal lives out of it. Emphasis on somewhat.

• Batman and Sons plays with this—Terry's mother, Catwoman, leaves him with Batman because he'll be safer that way, but of course there's no illusion that he'll have a normal life.
• The Order of the Stick: Vaarsuvius chooses not to contest his/her mate's divorce so that their children can have "the normal life of a baker's family." This was shortly after an Ancient Black Dragon tried to kill them and ensnare their souls for eternity.
• Unsounded: Both Vienne and Mathis considered giving their son Matty up to be raised in the Childrens’ House like many other children of their caste. Mathis because he'd never wanted to complicate his short life with children and Vienne because she knows Mathis didn't want a kid, worries he'd be more supportive of her without the kid, and she knows her subversive work puts Matty in danger. They kept him, and he ended up blinded and traumatized when the government tortured Vienne to death in front of him for her work and growing up on the run with his father.
• In WTF Comics, Straha left his daughter, Katis, with her mother so she would never have to deal with being an Ironscale. Katis did, however, eventually display Ironscale abilities when her father (who she had previously believed to be her uncle) was wounded.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Yin suggests that Mao can go back to a normal life with his real mother and "leave all of this behind", after having lived most of his childhood under the protection of his apparent kidnapper Betelgeuse. He opts to work on breaking his curse and finding Kalliv's home instead.

• Deconstructed in the Batman Beyond episode "Inqueling". The episode reveals that, before her mutation, Inque gave birth to a daughter she subsequently gave up for adoption. When the two reunite in the show Inque explains that she had grown up poor and let herself become Inque all for the money, and she wanted to give her daughter an easier life with normal parents and a large trust fund. When Inque reveals just how much money she has, however, her daughter tries to kill her in order to get control of her bank accounts. She points out that Inque never gave her anything except money, so why is Inque surprised that she is just taking more of it?
• Happens in Futurama. For a few seasons, Leela, who grew up in an orphanage with no knowledge of her origins, always believed herself to be an alien. It turns out that her parents are really mutants. On the Futurama Earth, mutants are forced to live in the sewers. When Leela was born, her parents realized that she was the least mutated mutant ever born. They left her on the doorstep of an orphanage with a note written in an alien-language, with the reasoning that she could have a normal life if her origins were unknown.
• In the Christmas Episode of Hey Arnold!, Mr. Hyunh reveals that a couple of decades back during the Vietnam War, his village was attacked, but some soldiers were evacuating civilians. However, they only had room on the helicopter for one, so Mr. Hyunh gave up his then two-year-old daughter Mai to the soldiers, so she could have a better life. The soldiers apparently found a home for her in America, and she is reunited with her father as an adult thanks to help from Arnold and Helga.
• In the Invincible (2021) "Atom Eve" special, Brandyworth was hired by a government organization to create a superbeing. When it came time for the girl to be born, the mother begs him to give the baby a normal life, before dying. Brandyworth gives the baby to a couple who had just lost their own baby in childbirth, then, years later, when the girl's powers start to manifest, implores her not to use them, lest she attract attention from the government.
• In The Legend of Korra Korra grows resentful of the fact she was shut away in a compound for most of her life thanks to her parents and Tenzin. She lets it go however after the pressure of being the Avatar gets to her and her parents reveal their reasoning: after Tonraq's banishment, they only ever wanted to have a family and live a normal life, but that plan got nixed after it was revealed she was the next Avatar. The compound was an attempt to give her as normal a life as her role would allow her. Ironically enough, all Korra has ever wanted to be is the Avatar and be as not normal as possible.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: It was for this reason that Krolia left behind her son Keith on Earth with his father as an infant. She originally planned to stay on Earth and raise him, but after an attack nearly killed the father of her child, she decided the best way to keep her family safe was to leave them behind and fight elsewhere to prevent the Empire from finding the Earth again.