I finally got around to watching the Colbert interview on Meet the Press (Part1, Part2) and at one point, Tim Russert asked him about this quote from his new satirical book:
"America used to live by the motto ‘Father knows best’, now we’re lucky if ‘Father knows he has children’…There’s more to being a father than taking kids to Chuck E Cheese and supplying the occasional Y-chromosome. A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role mode, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased." (emphasis added)
First of all, realize that Colbert is a walking, taking tongue-in-the-cheek attack on conservative Republicans. That’s his shtick. His humor comes from taking swipes at common conservative stereotypes – that’s why his fanbase is largely lefty liberals.
And so his book (which I haven’t read) is obviously an extension of his act. I realize all this.
At the same time, political humor is a very effective tool in promoting one’s own ideology while mocking the opponents’. That’s why I found that last highlighted part of the quote to be very telling about the concept of fatherhood being touted by the liberals.
As I understand it, they’re targeting the traditional father figure who was always aloof from his children, busy with work, while restricting his role with the kids to strict disciplinarian.
What the alternative that is being offered I can only guess. Everything opposite. Which isn’t all bad.
In the perfect balance, the father would be intimately involved with raising the children, providing the support to achieve realistic, realizable goals. The father wouldn't be some cold, stoic provider, but an emotional leader in raising the family.
I get that.
My concern is that the western model isn’t trying to balance it out. As with so many other progressive ideas, such as feminism, homosexuality, role of religion in public life, they’ve taken one extreme and countered it with their own extreme.
And in the case of fatherhood, I believe that progressive liberals are (maybe unknowingly) calling for the emasculation of the patriarch.
The new age American father is not an authority in the house – he’s a partner. The father disciplines by joking around with the child – becomes a best friend. The father is leary of setting aggressive standards for the child – mustn’t let the child’s self-esteem take a hit, ever. And never, ever, ever raise your hand to the child.
I was raised in a very traditional Pakistani home. My parents had the good cop-bad cop routine down to a science. My father would discipline. My mother would wipe away the tears.
Being a doctor, he was always working crazy hours (that’s the only way we could sneak in ‘Friday Night Videos’ – precursor to MTV – yes folks, there was a time when MTV didn’t exist).
When it came to personal achievements, he wasn’t one to gush over us, but we could sense his pride, subtle as it was. Instead of worrying about our self-worth or hurting our feelings, his main concern was imbuing us with core principles of honesty, respect, piety, and honor.
When it came to our father, we had a clear understanding of our roles. We were the children. He was the father. Full stop. He wasn’t our mother and he surely wasn’t our buddy.
We loved our father, but we also feared him. Not sure which emotion was greater.
But now, the fear is gone and has been replaced with respect. The love remains.
From my understanding, this is the standard operating procedure when it comes to fathers. Sure, certain aspects can be improved upon and tweaked, but it seems the new age model of fatherhood is unwisely attempting to turn this paradigm on its head and rebrand the image of the father into a very unhealthy hybrid between father, mother, and friend.
And do check out Tariq’s post on the decline of fatherhood.
WAW
4 days ago
8 comments:
These kinds of "questioning traditional gender roles" is what is leading, in a great part to the breakdown of society.
When young children are being taught about families being not just a mom and a dad, but two mommies, two daddies, etc. When children are taught to seperate religion from daily life and keep that home, when women who stay home to raise their family are looked down upon and a woman who is never home with her kids and leaves the daycare workers to raise them is a hero..... and the list goes on.
These ideas are being planted into the youth's mind from day one. That is how they want it. They don't want a society full of moral, responsible, educated people. They want a society that "questions" all the archaeic and repressive doctrinal and moral codes and they want to make way for a wave of accepting and modern people who don't stay boxed within the confines of "traditionalism".
It's quite sickening. But, it's the truth.
I'm 24 and my father is Egyptian and he was traditional. So, growing up I was raised in a manner similar to yours. My father worked all the time and wasn't always around but, when he was he was the authority figure. The only differece is that he was not always stern. He was more of a lighthearted, always joking kind of Dad. But, the enviroment I grew up in and the world around me produced another angry, rebelious, not wanted to be held down teen. Every teen is going to go through their stuff but, what is going to be accepteable as "teen stuff" and what is going to be unacceptable and corrected are now very different. I know this moral decline began before my generation, and is getting worse as the years roll on. That is why it's so important for parents to realize this and work to protect their children from it, not go along with the tide and blind themself to the fact that their children are being programmed into amoral and "untradition" people who will have no boundaries and no ties of belifs or unacceptance to tie them down.
fatima
AA -
So I was thinking... if my husband were to want to be just a "partner" and be as much mother as I am and expecting me to be as much father as he... I'd have a problem I think. *I* want to be *the* mother. Not half a pair of parents, but *the* mother. And let him be *the* father. And that way we both are rewarded by Allah swt. :-)
I'm not Egyptian or Pakistani but my mom was a mom, dad was a dad--they both disciplined when necessary and comforted when appropriate, and they helped each other... but there's a special characteristic of dads which I would hate to see lost, because without good dads the daughters don't have much to look forward to in husbands.
Salaam good folk! Yes, Iblis has been hard at work. He has figured out the true key to moral and societal decay....get rid of the men. Not in a physical since, like Pharoah with the Bani Israael, but in the degradation of the mind of men, the degradation of the character of men, the degradation of the essential quality of men...yes, manliness - that ability to temper authority with kindness, sterness with gentleness, expectation with understanding, . The single most disturbing thing in Western Culture are all these feminine males. I don't men homosexual men only, I mean your every day heterosexual males whose only concern is how they look and where they are going to hang out or find the best looking chicks. Barf! It's the single driving force for me wanting to leave Western life. In my opinion it is the reason for the downfall of every other aspect of this society (morally speaking). And it's just plain irritating. Who wants a man who acts more female than a woman? Apparently, alot of people! HOW DO WE FIGHT THIS? I pray Allah swt saves the believers from this, ameen!
ps: Just to clarify, I don't mean to knock brothers who take care to dress neatly, I refer to men who are obsessed with it to the degree that it is just all too important and they obsess over it - like some star struck teen-aged girl!
As-Salaamu 'alaikum,
Well I'm not sure where Sahra lives but all these feminine males aren't where I live in Kingston. The problem we have here in the UK is not feminisation of men but the rising culture of thuggishness in popular culture - you only have to be out on a Friday night in some towns to know what I mean. If anything, it is the defeminisation of women, who turn into louts and thugs just like the boys, rather than the demasculinisation of men, which is a problem here.
I also suspect that the decline of the stern father among the middle classes is not what has produced this decline anyway. The decline has come from the working classes where there has been a falling off of the family generally, and however "together" the family is, they cannot compete with the malign influences of popular culture and the neighbourhood, so you get boys from struggling working-class families getting drawn into gangs or shot dead when they refuse to get involved.
I think it is all to easy to blame "girly men" for everything that's wrong in society today, but these men are mostly middle-class and that is the class best equipped to deal with this sort of thing (and with the occasional birth out of wedlock, for example). It is further down where the disintegration has happened.
AA-
Thank you all for the insightful comments,
Yusuf, the culture of thuggishness also exists in the US. But the phenomenon of the weakened father is a separate issue. The two aren't inter-related. While the former is found moreso in the lower class, the latter is more a middle/upper class trend.
You also referenced the middle-class demographic when you said "but these men are mostly middle-class and that is the class best equipped to deal with this sort of thing"
So, lemme ask you, how is the middle class better equipped to deal with this 'girly men' phenomenon?
As-Salaamu 'alaikum,
Sorry for the delay in responding.
To be honest, apart from the fact that we might find their behaviour reprehensible or ridiculous, I don't know what the problem with these so-called girly men is. If we're talking about middle-class straight men who preen themselves a bit more than we think normal, I think it is just a middle-class excess. Wealthy men may well wear more ornate or expensive clothes than us, or spend more on body maintenance than us.
I don't believe that these people are responsible for family breakdown, or that it is happening, mostly, in their class. It is happening among the working classes and on the council estates (housing projects). I don't think it is their children who are going round shooting people for looking at them the wrong way, or "jacking" people's mobile phones just to prove that they're men (when they're 14), or siring children out of wedlock all over the place. I don't know about the USA, but in this country a lot of Black families (of Carribean origin) are very disciplinarian and will hit or belt their kids if they misbehave, but the worst drug and gang problems are still among them, not among the white middle classes where the well-groomed "girly men" are.
If you don't like them, fine. If you're a woman and they're not man enough for you, no problem, but I don't believe they are to blame for the breakdown of society or the family.
AA- Yusuf,
While I agree with you fully, I wasn't claiming that this new hybrid father is responsible for the widespread family breakdown. Surely there are soo many reasons for this unfortunate trend.
However, my premise was that this newer phenomenon of the hybrid father is something that we haven't seen until recent. And I would opine that the results of it have yet to be seen.
The first step is to open our eyes to it and discuss the affects that it can have on the next generation.
As you said, the demographic of whom you are commenting (working class, council estates) have their own mix of problems (drugs, education, single parenthood, etc.).
I wonder how this other demographic (middle class, upper class) will react to the hybrid father and other associated problems.
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