Tony Soprano, the patriarch played so magisterially by James Gandolfini on The Sopranos, is put upon. If you can look past those amazing golf shirts he wears you can't help detecting the weight of the world in those invigilating eyes. The Feds are continually breathing down his neck and his most trusted friend ratted him out. His not-as-smart-as-he-thinks weakling uncle is indicted under RICO statutes. His therapist is as conflicted about him as he is about her. His agita is resistant to his Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. His hothead nephew is giving up mob inside information to worm his way into the movies. His mother may have once put out a contract on him. His sister committed a fairly interesting murder. His wife has eyes for the contractor-and won an Emmy. Even his Russian mistress makes demands in improving idiomatic English.

Yet such difficulties seem to pale in comparison to Tony's being the father of two ordinary, and therefore complicated, teenagers. Like most American parents, he is struggling over his kids, over how much authority to assert, how much independence to grant, and how, despite being the capo of a criminal crew based at the Badda-Bing Club, he can exert influence. Among the other middle-class markers in the show—the SUV's, the suburban homes and schools, the up-scale retirement community—none is more riveting and mundane than pervasive parenting angst.

In most episodes, a crisis involving the kids is just as important, dramatically, as anything in the underworld family. The sixteen-year-old Meadow throws a party without permission at her grandmother's house, with predictable results. The house is trashed, the black-and-whites arrive, Meadow throws up, spent liquor bottles abound—the usual. AJ, Anthony, Jr., "borrows" the car and of course has a minor accident. How ordinary can you get? Did I mention this mob-daughter's name is Meadow? In the family meetings, there's a lot of yelling, recrimination, guilt, go-to-your-room, you-could-have-been-killed, you-disappointed-us.

But here's a surprise. Tony's parenting instincts are—as he along with my own Brooklyn-born Italian-American father might say by way of understated approbation—"not bad." I don't want to renounce my constitutional protection against self-incrimination, and I don't wish to nominate Tony Soprano to make a Public Service Announcement. Still, what comes through consistently is that he grasps that teenagers lead challenging lives. He accompanies his stressed-out daughter on a college trip; he engages in heart-to-heart talks with his inquisitive son. At the very least he shows that they are worth the energy and imagination he invests to understand them. (True, speaking of that college trip, he did finish some unfinished business by taking care of an old nemesis, but leave that aside for a moment.) So when during therapy he vents frustration with his son and his vexing philosophical questionings, Dr. Malfi explains existentialism and reminds her patient that adolescent angst is normal, that life can indeed seem meaningless to the normal teenager. To which, the capo admits, with a painfully recognizable mix of parental pride and puzzlement, AJ could be on to something.

Maybe the most revealing moment, from a parenting point of view, comes when he and his wife discuss how to respond to Meadow's party debacle. "Let's not overplay our hand," Tony reasons. "If she figures out we're powerless, we're"—if I may crudely paraphrase the show's one-syllable Anglo-Saxon expletive of choice—"adversely impacted." As Paulie Walnuts might attest, Tony is adversely-impacting right. Such moments explain, I think, why the audience is drawn to him. Not only does he show wit, strength, and imagination in dealing with his mob and law-enforcement adversaries, but he also struggles to understand his kids' motivations and his parental limitations. In other words, he's one with us.

Television and movie mobsters along with their children have evolved. The Dead-End kids in Jimmy Cagney movies were orphans when not being reared by handsome Irish priests. The Jets and Sharks in West Side Story effectively had no adults in their lives besides the beleaguered Officer Krumpke. Yes, The Godfather did domesticate the mob, did put the family in the Five Families. But significantly, there are no teenagers of note in Francis Ford Coppola's movies, which instead feature an infant and a child in its two most famous scenes: a christening that serves as backdrop to another sort of purification, and Don Corleone dying operatically in his garden while playing with his tiny grandson.

As The Sopranos indicates, however, we live in different times. Teenagers no longer grow up off-stage and parents are now going toe-to-toe with them. They are mutually implicated in their day-to-day lives. Here's where The Sopranos is very sharp. Tony simply refuses to buy into the parallel myths of inscrutable teenage other and helpless adult.

Furthermore, the show has some in-your-face good news and perhaps some wisdom to impart to all the less-than-perfect parents in the audience. Fathers have clay feet? So what? Tony Soprano is flawed, something he knows better than anyone else. That's conceivably why he seems receptive to the criticism of his truth-telling adolescents, both of whom stand up to him.

My favorite image of Tony is his waiting in the auditorium for "Cabaret Night." It was Calvin Trillin who once observed that "school plays were invented partly to give parents an easy opportunity to demonstrate their priorities." When Tony prepares himself for Meadow's solo, there's a nuanced, poignant look on his face. You can see the outlines of suffering mixed with duty and nervous expectation. He conveys (he should win an Emmy every year) that he knows his daughter may not turn out to be Liza Minnelli or Madonna, but that doesn't matter. His world is almost incomprehensibly violent and almost surely beyond redemption, but he's at Cabaret because his teenager's dreams matter for a minute more than his. Hey, he shows up. Tony Soprano—he's got your parenting right here.

Joseph Di Prisco has published poems, essays, and reviews in numerous journals. He taught for over twenty years, middle school, high school, and college, and he is co-author of a book about adolescence and growing up, Field Guide to the American Teenager, published by Perseus Books.

The Sopranos airs weekly on HBO.

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