Unsettled Chapter 24-B "Timing is Everything"

It was a patriarchal world we lived in. What I am about to say may be hard for some to hear because in the decades to follow the 60's it became less and less true. But in my elementary classes from kindergarten through sixth grade, I only met one boy who was being raised by a single mom. Of the dozens and dozens of families I knew in my neighborhood, not one of them did not have what we now call an “in tact” family: Dad, Mom, and four or five kids. Of the fifty-two houses on our Detroit News route, I don’t recall one where there was not a Dad, and it was typically the Dad who opened his wallet and paid when we knocked on the door and said, “Collect.”

Family sit-coms at the time, were parent-centered. The writers portrayed moms and dads not as perfect but as exemplary “in charge” parents. (No, my mom was not like June Cleaver in "costuming," but yes, she was like her in the "dealing with kids" department... though she did it in more of a Lucile Ball sort of way.)

Whether it was Robert Young in “Father Knows Best” Or Ward Cleaver in “Leave it to Beaver” or Oz Nelson in “Ozzie and Harriet” or Fred MacMurray in “My Three Sons” or Andy Griffith in his own title show, families who watched these shows could learn a lot about functional relationships, and we weren't missing anything by not witnessing every aspect of marriage (adult bedrooms were not seen or they were showed in separate beds e.g. Dick Van Dyke).

I’ll leave it to the historians and sociologists to sort out what happened in the wake of the turbulent 60’s, but I will say that the first stake driven through the heart of the traditional patriarch came when Norman Lear lampooned the "father" role in Archie Bunker. It seems that from then on (with the possible exception of historical shows like “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie” and, perhaps, Bill Cosby in the 80s), television fathers became “second fiddle” oafs falling somewhere in a spectrum between drunken buffoons like Homer Simpson and lovable mamma’s boys like Raymond Barone.

Do I exaggerate? Think of every family-centered sit-com in the past thirty years and see how many of them portray the father as a likeable but not-so-bright man-child (e.g.Tim the toolman Taylor) while the wife/mother basically runs the show with aplomb. (It's not the positive portrayal of moms that I mind, but the belittling of dads that is the issue.)

What harm is there in laughing at our foibles?

Okay, I'll admit I've had many laughs watching nearly every show I've mentioned, but it goes deeper than that. The “harm,” if that is the right word, comes in an entire generation of young men who have not seen what male leadership, problem solving, and “others first” hard work looks like while in the same formative years they are watching professional athletes and hip-hop artists behaving like video-game thugs whenever they don’t get their way. To whatever extent we learn by example, it is to that extent that we may someday see the harm done by making television fathers invisible, insipid, or inane—especially when more and more young men do not have an in-home father from which to pattern good fatherly behavior.

As I said, my point here is not to discuss the causes or effects of this cultural shift or whether TV reflects or determines social norms. I mean only to point out that the conditions that were true for my family and every family I knew in our neighborhood in 1970 are simply no longer statistically-supported assumptions.

In most families back then, the father was the “bread winner” and the mother was a “housewife,” and both were generally content with their roles.

In addition to all of Mom's daily duties, having supper on the table when the father came home was one of the most important. It was this fact that made it very important for mom, on the day she blew up grandma’s table, to place a saucer over the proof until Dad had come home, spent his time in the bathroom, changed his clothes, and eaten a good hot meal followed by some ice cream and cookies for dessert.

As she was clearing the table, Mom called Dad back into the kitchen and said nonchalantly, “Oh, yes, I wanted to show you this. I’ve already fixed it, but the funniest thing happened today...” And then she moved the saucer.

Timing is everything, and Mom's slightly postponed confession somehow worked. Dad was not mad. It was he who explained the physics involved… how the extreme heat caused the expansion and “explosion” as the laminate separated. Sometimes men can dissipate the emotional or adrenal reaction to “bad news” by quickly converting it to mere “fact.” This was not always the case with my father, but it seems like the older he got and the more practice Mom and us kids gave him, the better he got at it—especially when we understood that “timing is everything” and delivered the bad news after supper.
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Note: Julie and I are with a fine group of seniors in Florida. If any of our senior parents are reading here, all is well. You can be very proud of these young adults. As is true every year that we bring seniors down here for their annual trip, it would not be possible were it not for the good job you've done in raising them. They're getting along fine. All doing their share of cooking and cleaning up, and so far we're all in good health. We've been swimming in the ocean and pool, but at this moment, the girls are shopping and the guys are watching the Detroit Red Wings beat the Chicago Blackhawks.
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Chapter 24-C is in the works.