‘Dumb Dad’ Stereotype

I was reading through some articles on CNN today and was very pleased to come across Josh Levs’ article “No more dumb old dad: Changing the bumbling father stereotype”.  Levs’ states in the article that the stereotypical dad one sees on television, whether that be on shows or in the commercials, are almost always ‘dumb’ dads that can hardly take care of themselves.

I have noticed this for a while now.  Every cartoon I have watched with my daughter with great consistency always seems to have a dad that is either a child himself or always needs help doing something.  A perfect example of this is in the clip below:

If you have time to read the article you should.  It tracks the progression of the stereotype as well as naming some companies, including Huggies, that are working to fix the stereotype by putting out commercial’s that show that dads taking care of their kids:

The irony in all of this is that the commercials have received back lashing saying that it makes Dads look dumb.  I guess in this case you can’t win or losing.

I’m glad that someone is addressing this on a larger scale.  I personally am sick of seeing dad after dad on television look like an idiot.  It setup a standard of what a dad looks like within a child’s mind.  It also lets us dads off to easy.  If we assume the bar is so low then, some of us, will just try hard enough.  I have seen men, because no one challenges them, simply do what they ‘have to do’ in order to be considered a good dad or husband.

If all that is expected of me is to go to work and fix things the the bar isn’t very high.  It there is an expectation for me to not remember birthdays or anniversaries then I don’t really fill bad when I do.  I’ll just play the dumb man card and get off the hook.

Women, raise that bar a bit for your husband.

Husbands, stop being ok with ‘good enough’ and be the man you where meant to be.

“You not a leader cause they follow you on twitter
And you not a man based up on your age and your gender
If you die tonight you’ll die a boy
Chasing toys objectifying these women thinking they going bring you joy
Don’t you want more than last night’s braggin rights
What’s yo life?” – Song: No Regrets Artist: Lecrae Moore