Literature often has a missing or cruel father or father figure. Dickens comes to mind. The dads of Shakespeare are not normally great. There are always exceptions.
A reflection of reality or a promotion of an agenda? I think at least sometimes the former.
A good dad is such a powerful thing. We need more of them.
We didn’t have a dad so we paid more attention to the TV version than most kids of the era might have, and while the TV dads were all nice and sweet, they were also clumsy, stupid, and simple, they lacked the seriousness, decisiveness, and even masculinity that we saw in grown men of the time.