Dumb dads in the media

Friday night I sat up with my husband watching television.

On the show, the child is having a tough time and he was having a heart to heart with his mom when his father comes in. His father is hurt that he didn’t ask for his help.

Instead of apologizing or giving a line about how he had seen his mother first, the child looks guilty and mutters about how mom had it covered and the mother cracked a joke about how incompetent he was.

Now, this was a show that is geared towards adults but this is not saved for adult shows. I have seen shows that my son has watched that makes the father out to be idiots.

As someone who wants her son to respect and love his father for all he does, this is not cool.

I don’t know when on-screen family men began to transition into the “lovable oaf” troupe but just because a character is kind of goofy doesn’t mean that they have to be stupid.

I get that we want to make our daughters feel like they are strong, independent and can do anything, but somewhere in the process we have turned the men into caricatures instead of making both parents out to be capable and a place the main character can go that will help them understand the events that are going on around them.

What kind of example does this give our children?

I know that I want my son to feel that he can rely on his father just as much as he depends on me. What he sees on television will have an impact on how he sees the world around him. I don’t what something that is fiction to determine the way he sees the men in his life.

So what do I do – monitor everything my son watches even more closely than I already do? I already watch everything he watches. It is hard to find a children’s show that has a family unit that doesn’t do this and I can only monitor what he is watching at my own home. Of course, I can ask whoever is watching him to not watch shows with this element but I can’t guarantee that they will.

What really needs to happen, is Hollywood needs to wake up.

You do not have to dumb a man down to raise a woman up. At that point, this is no longer feminism but elitism. Why can’t both roles be smart? Why must we make one of the parents ignorant and blundering?

What does making either of the parents incompetent do to further a plot point? Our children want to

feel safe and loved and the television is discouraging them to rely on one of their parental units. They are using this as comic relief but it’s apparent that they are not considering what it could be doing to the psychological health of their target audience.

Instead of making the fathers in the paternal unit the comic relief, maybe

Hollywood should consider finding someone else like one of the protagonist friends or maybe go back to physical comedy.

Either way, I sincerely hope that Hollywood will leave the “dumb dad” troupe in the dust sooner rather than later.