Kerby Anderson

On various television sitcoms, a Dad acts like a buffoon every 3.24 minutes. That was the conclusion of a small study with the title Daddies or Dummies done by Savannah Keenan at Brigham Young University after watching popular TV programs.

Don’t dismiss this study merely because a student conducted it. Her study was the winner of the college’s Fulton Conference. And Naomi Schaefer Riley, writing in the New York Post, reminds us that the student’s research matches other academic studies. For example, a study by Erica Scharrer in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media found that the number of times a mother told a joke at the father’s expense increased dramatically from the 1950s to 1990.

Savannah Keenan’s study also looked at the reaction of the children onscreen to their father’s stupidity or cluelessness. At least half the time, children reacted negatively by rolling their eyes, making fun of Dad, criticizing him, or walking away while he was talking to them.

We should be concerned about the message this is sending to children. America is already facing a crisis because of its fatherlessness. Fathers are often seen as insignificant and unimportant. These programs are reinforcing the negative stereotype that fathers are incompetent and uninformed.

I realize that on past television sitcoms Dads were sometimes the butt of jokes. Their mistakes made them human. Sometimes they even had to apologize to their kids. Sometimes the children were able to trick them and sneak out of the house undetected.

But in these past sitcoms, it was still obvious that Dad was in control. He was an authority figure in the home. There were consequences to disobedience. Now, Dad is someone to ignore. He isn’t very competent and certainly isn’t someone to obey and respect. We aren’t helping families when TV sitcoms turn Daddies into Dummies.