I’m the single father of 2 young girls. They rely on my judgement, protection, patronage and ‘wisdom’, such as it is, for virtually everything in their lives. I’d like to think they trust and love me, not to say admire me, but feel they can count on me to handle everything from day to day meals to emergencies.
They know I can change a tire, hang a fan, put together a bike or a doll house as well as pay the bills and maintain a stable home life for them. We aren’t rich, by any scale, but they have a playroom full of toys, go to a private Catholic school and have their own computers, tablets and 4 televisions. There’s food on the table and a roof over their heads. Whether or not they appreciate the stress, effort and toil that goes into guaranteeing these necessities and perks, but I think the stability builds self-confidence and a grounded sense of security.
While we are sitting around together watching shows, I’m disturbed by the proliferation of stupid dads on TV. There have always been neurotic, comical dads but there were a majority of capable, mature and wise dads, from the Brady Bunch dad to Father Knows Best to Mr. Cleaver all the way to Claire Huxtable’s husband.
However, more and more I see character couples of competent, hard-working, sensible and stable wives against cowardly, psychologically damaged, ineffectual, incompetent and a lot of times out of work dads. I was watching Daria with my daughter and disturbed by the cool collected professional mom off-set by an unemployed, foolish, insensitive, selfish and self-centered dad who constantly complained she paid more attention to her job than him. He’s almost identical to the dad on Rick & Morty, where the wife is an accomplished vet and her husband as a stupid, gullible fool who is constantly endangering the family with his ridiculous sense of self-worth.
The Simpsons is famous for stable, sensible Marge and selfish, stupid, drunken, profligate, lazy, fat, gluttonous, dishonest Homer. They even codified the smart, ambitious and conscientious Lisa with delinquent, under-achiever and proud of it Bart although he is not really portrayed as an underachiever, he’s portrayed as so stupid he seems mildly retarded. It was finally established that the Simpson men had a gene that condemned them to life-long stupidity. Can you imagine the roles reversed?
All these are animated, and while not necessarily aimed at kids (Rick & Morty, especially) being animated means that kids invariably watch them. The message that moms are coolly competent, organized and sharp while dads are befuddled dunces is harmful. Especially since its not even realistic. Men supply the lion’s share of work and financial security in most families. They bear the brunt of long hours and hard work. All those leftist harridans who claim they don’t need men should work one day on an oil derrick, or as an electrical lineman, or on a construction site, or driving a truck cross-country, or digging a ditch. They physically couldn’t do it.
I won’t deny this new crop of ‘men’, the millenials, don’t seem capable of changing a tire or putting up a curtain rods or shelves without screwing it up. But we have a large military of mostly men, most policemen, firemen (virtually all wild fire firemen) engineers, scientists, contruction workers etc. etc. who are intelligent, capable and accomplished. All these coiffed, sleek professional women would be helpless if not for men doing hard infrastructural work. This has never been appreciated.
I’m not denying there are drunken, abusive, idiot fathers. But it stands to reason, most of them are good people, sharp and competent. The country couldn’t function if there were not a lot of men who know wtf they are doing, because men are the ones keeping the lights on and the oil flowing and the buildings and roads and bridges going up, not women.
And there are a helluva lot of dads who take care of kids as well or even better than women. There’s a lot of physicality to raising a kid, and dads just have more strength. But that’s not all: women don’t have a monopoly on empathy or caring about children. In fact, due to the fact that men sacrifice their bodies and finances for thier family, in my experience men are a lot less self-centered and selfish in their outlook. Their entire lives are sacrifice. It’s women I hear constantly ‘needing a break from the kids’ or advocating a vacation for themselves without the kids. Clothes, hair, nails, shoes come before the kids. There is no analogous black hole of neediness in most men.
Also, due to this physical advantage, I think the act of actually protecting the kids largely falls to the dad. That’s why I was disturbed by the main focus of the Scandinavian movie “Force Majeure”, where the father, by what is shown, is loving and attentive to his kids, taking the family on a ski vacation. However, when it seems like an avalanche will engulf the family, the father grabs his gloves and phone and runs instead of grabbing his son or daughter and making sure they were safe. I guess it would be unremarkable if a woman had done this, so the real drama is that a man chickened out, I guess that’s a positive, cowardice is still not the norm.
However, in the rush to make womn ‘equal’ to men pop culture today seems to feel the need to tear men down. Men are the clowns, the buffoons, the lazy, cowardly, stupid jerks. And especially, or course, white men.
The main reason this pisses me off personally is my life-experience is taking care of my daughters, not just willingly, but enthusiastically and I wouldn’t have it any other way with an ex-wife who saw them as a burden, who constantly needed a ‘break’ from the kids, who refused to do the day to day things like dress them for school and deliver them there and help with homework and cook dinner that are the really heroic things about raising kids, the steady stablity. As well as sacrificing financially and virtually all time goes for them.
I’m certain my daughters see through this smearing of dads, but I hope other daughters being fed this feminist misandry are smart enough to see through it. The thing men-hating feminists miss is that while they are demonizing men, most women have fathers, brothers, husbands and sons they admire, love, respect and even revere. It’s a good thing the majority of men are worthy of this respect or the world feminists rely on to platform their hate would cease to function.