Who’s your (television) daddy?

In some ways, I think that Father’s Day is totally more important than Mother’s Day.

This isn’t because I think fathers are more important or do more than mothers, or that I’m anti-feminist or whatever, but it’s because I feel that dads just don’t get as much recognition as mothers do. It’s probably some sort of collective psychological thing that has sociological studies behind our view of gender roles and the father’s place in his children’s life, that someone smarter than me has actual facts and knowledge can talk about.

All I know is this: dads need some love, too. And generally, they do not have a lot of places to turn to for it. My father personally has a black list of books and cartoons — The Berenstain Bears being the chief offenders, though I believe he also may have had a vendetta against The Flintstones — that portray fathers solely as bumbling idiots who were completely lost without the sanity and wisdom the mother provided. (Though he’s a big fan of Family Guy. I don’t think it’s worth figuring out.) Heaven forbid I ask him to read a Berenstain Bears book to me (okay, I could read it myself, but my dad did voices) or he would not only refuse but launch into a rant on the stereotypical role of the father and how it was corrupting my brain and wildly incorrect and blah blah blah. Which I knew, Daddy, geez. It’s just a book. It wasn’t until I started watching TV that wasn’t on PBS that I really started understanding where my dad was coming from with his whole vendetta.Television is mostly like a fatherly black hole. I’m just going to come out and say it. The Berenstain Bears model of fatherhood (which is roughly analogous to the Jon and Kate Plus 8 model, though more functional and with better hair) is everywhere, from the aforementioned Peter Griffin to Ray Romano on Everybody Loves Raymond. If the father isn’t an idiot, he’s often absent and unfeeling like Red Foreman on That ’70s Show or, very often as a plot device, a non-entity, like Jack’s father in 30 Rock.

Mothers, on the other hand, are ubiquitous and universal. Every type of mother possible seems to be represented somehow. There are scripted mommy characters, reality mommy characters (good and bad), mothers that are caring or distant, funny or hardworking or sometimes even just crazy.  It’s sort of easy to see where that stick up my dad’s butt came from, if TV represents the greater cultural perception of fathers.

There are a few slots that dads can fit into in the grand old world of television. Take, for instance, what I call the Classic Dad. This is the wise patriarch of yore, your Ward Cleaver or Mike Brady (and, more recently, Seventh Heaven‘s Eric Camden). There’s the Protective Dad, like Noah Bennett or Keith Mars (my favorite TV dad probably ever). There’s the Questionable Dad, like Psych‘s Henry Spencer  or Jack Bristow, who’s good but also, well, not-so-good. And there’s the Lovable Goof  — the guy who makes mistakes but means well (similar to the oft-hated idiot model, but less annoying because he’s so wonderfully human), like Full House‘s Danny Tanner or Michael Bluth of Arrested Development.

I’m not saying that these dads are bad examples of fatherhood. In fact, I think a lot of them are good fathers. That’s what this post started as: a list of good television fathers, but the list got so long and out-of-hand that the more I Googled and asked around, the more confused I became. To some people, the characters I listed as bad fathers are good, or my “good” fathers were bad.

Would I have as much trouble defining what a good mother is? Personally, I don’t think so. We as a society know what a good mother is or looks like. Watch any commercial on a show aimed towards woman and you see her — the blandly pretty do-it-all mom with a job, two kids, a perfect house (that’s always so clean. How do these fake women keep it so clean?), and an aw-shucks hubby.  You know, the one who always makes dinner and feeds her family. She’s an impossible ideal, but she exists. And is it better that she exists, even though she’s unattainable? Or would mothers do better to be more like fathers, with no clear path about what to strive for?

There is no way I am smart enough or educated enough on this subject to answer that question, and even if I were, 75% of the people reading this would disagree with me anyways, though probably none of that 75% would agree with each other. I doubt there even is a right answer, and I don’t plan on finding one. But what I am saying is, I think it’s good that we have a day where we look at this. Where we turn to wherever we turn to to get a view of the world (for me, erroneously or not, that happens to be television), and appreciate both where we are as a whole and what that means to you, individually. And whatever answer you find, I hope it involves appreciating the father in your life, whoever he is or whatever role he plays.

And above all, I hope, after reading this post, if you find yourself angry you blame this entirely on my father for making me think. I’m just saying, Dad. If you read Berenstain Bears to me, this never would have happened.

Clacked by Julia Hass
on Jun 21, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT