Celebrate Dad? Not On TV!

Father's Day is this weekend, 6-21-20.  The idea of honoring dear old dad goes back to the early 1500's.

In America, Father's Day was founded and celebrated on the third Sunday of June for the first time in 1910. That makes Father's Day older than our now oldest living dads.

My father passed away more than 10 years ago and he never got to meet my youngest daughter Katelyn which is sad because she is the kind of kid he would have loved.  I miss him more now than then.  His kind of strength, wisdom and character is something we need in society today and is certainly something we don't see on TV.

In the shadow of a pending Father's Day, University of Massachusetts researchers say  the portrayal of dumb dad characters on television sitcoms -like Homer Simpson to Ray Romano-- is getting worse according to a report in The Week.. 

The entertainment examiners looked at  TV dad’s interactions with their kids in 34 sitcoms that aired between 1980 and 2017 and found that the more recent the show, the less likely it was to feature fathers doing much actual parenting.

In addition, when the dads did take on parenting duties they were more likely to be depicted as foolish—“showing poor judgement, being incompetent, or acting childishly.”

Researcher Erica Scharrer says the audiences of these shows are encouraged to laugh at these bumbling dads, but that is comedy at a cost.  Scharrer says it’s not harmless, as “fictional entertainment can shape our views of ourselves and others. Sitcom writers can do better by dads by moving on from the "increasingly outdated foolish father trope.”
So what should you do for Dad this Sunday...watch a dumb sitcom and then do just the opposite!  Happy Father's Day to ALL DADS everwhere!