“I don’t get no respect.” Comedian Rodney Dangerfield made that catchphrase the heart of his act.
Sometimes these days it’s fathers who get no respect. Father’s Day has come and gone, and many of us celebrated our dads or our memories of them, but our culture for years has failed to honor or even shore up the institution of
fatherhood itself.
The Diminished Dad
In the last 50 years, we’ve gone from “The Waltons” to “The Simpsons,” from hardworking and loving father and husband John Walton to Homer Simpson, who is often more a child than his children. Advertisers give us the doofus dad who couldn’t boil an egg. Some female celebrities cheer for single motherhood. For many women, the welfare state, a sort of institutional sugar daddy, has replaced the father.
