It's no secret that there are a lot of Twilight haters right now.  As Anne Rice stated in a recent Facebook status, it's a "blood sport" for Americans to attack their most popular authors (as well as actors and whomever else is getting a lot of attention currently).  Anytime anything becomes popular, dissenters start coming out of the woodwork.

Recently I've heard a lot of arguments against Twilight that have to do with the dysfunctional nature of Bella and Edward's relationship.  Basically, they say, Twilight sets up a poor example of what a relationship should be like, not to mention makes it seem like a girl has to have a boyfriend in order to be complete.

It's a good point, or at least it would be if the people making it weren't just parroting what they've already heard or read -- and if dysfunctional relationships weren't already so common in our popular fiction.  I mean, hello, romance makes up a large percentage of total book publishing and sales (I once read it was about 40 percent), and those relationships are often anything but functional -- but is anyone going after Johanna Lindsey, Nora Roberts, or Debbie Macomber with pitchforks?  They are just as responsible for maintaining the idea that relationships are necessary for women's happiness as Stephanie Meyer is -- and yes, 13-year-old girls read adult romance.  They do.  Trust me.

So let's not get into whether teenage girls should be reading adult romance -- that isn't for you and me to decide, first of all, and starting down that path leads to lighting bonfires.  Besides, challenging books doesn't work -- Twilight, Harry Potter, and many others are perfect examples of that.  The more negative attention a book gets, the more people want to read it to see what the fuss is all about.

But anyway, back to my original rant.  I personally think it's hypocritical to accuse Stephanie Meyer of teaching our daughters bad ideas about relationships when at least 40 percent of the books on the market already do just that.  (And I say at least because romance is hardly the only genre that does this.  Bad relationships show up in books in virtually every genre, from chick lit to mystery.)  Furthermore, most of us don't read books for their outstanding morals -- most of us would, in fact, view books like that as preachy and not very much fun.  We read books to forget about real life for a little while.  Well, newsflash: So do our daughters.

No, I wouldn't want a daughter of mine thinking that possessiveness in a boyfriend is okay, or feeling like she had to be with someone to be happy.  But I firmly believe it is the parents' job to instill a sense of self-worth in their daughters, and to teach them how to think about books like Twilight.  Meyer's books are first and foremost escapist fiction, but they are also an opportunity for a girl's parents to talk to her about reality vs. fiction, and Edward and Bella vs. real life relationships.  Instead of blaming Twilight for something thousands of other books are guilty of, we should be turning it to our advantage!