What’s happened to men? What’s happened to Dads?...
Well... That really quite simple. No matter what we say or what we do and what sort of example we set... We’re wrong.
Where did it start? I’m not really sure, feminism maybe? A big point was no-fault divorce and the family court system. Dad’s are evil and never good parents. Yes that’s a stereotype but it’s actually pretty accurate.
Then there’s TV, Dad’s are the most common butt of jokes on a sitcom. Commercials, Oh dear lord when was the last one made that showed an intelligent Father in a family setting. (I really don’t know, I quit watching TV for my blood pressure in the late 90’s.)
So when I go to the school as part of my grand-daughter’s activities when parents are invited I am not surprised to see that Dad’s are in the minority.
If a man is alone in a forest and his wife isn't around to hear him, is he still wrong?
This trend began far earlier. A major transitional stage in moving from ‘Father Knows Best’ to ‘Father Molests’ which appears to be the ‘new normal’ for TV was “Father id a Fool’. This was a big part of late 50’s and 60’s sitcoms with the Bill Ewell's Show being the most egregious example. We have become so accustomed to the routine disparagement and even vilification of white middle age , middle class father figures we don't even notice the trope any more. One has to go back to the early 60’s to find cultural critics noticing this pattern. Two card carrying liberals, the Hechingers, who were the NYT ‘Education Columnists’ for a long time, wrote a book published about 1963 titled ‘Teenage Tyranny’. What it described was the opening and middle stages of the infantilizing of American culture by advertisers wand businesses who understood how much discretionary income spending adolescents in the consumerist 50’s and 60’s impacted. The result was to influence programming to use themes for TV shows that adolescents would supposedly identify with. One sure fire target of attraction ws denigrating father figures. This is a fascinating book to read today. Later in the 60’s and 70’s real cultural radicals began being hired as various types of TV scripters and idea persons. The assault of father figures and authority in general and the general normative structure of U.S. society moved on apace until we have the combination of PC, cultural marxism and smut that form the basis of most television ‘drams’ or sitcoms.