It’s approaching the holiday season and we shift from celebrating moms to celebrating dads. I overhead a dad saying he was taking his annual guys trip away with other dad’s and it got me thinking that as a mom, usually I wanted to spend my mother’s day with my kids. Not necessarily a dress up fancy brunch but I did want to spend time with them since they were the reason I had the title of what I call “the best job/worst job”.
Parenting is no joke. It comes with duties and responsibilities and a 24/7 obligation that if you haven’t done it you have no idea what exactly it feels like. I’m not complaining, just observing it’s a lot of effort to feed, cloth, educate, love and care for a small creature from zero to 18. Now my kids are over that numerical range and I still feel the same sense of duty for them! Today, I feel sandwiched between these young adults and my aging parents. (There’s a sitcom in this experience, IYKYK.)
When I was growing up I watched a lot of TV before there was the ability to binge-watch. I knew the TV schedule as it came out in the newspaper, not online and the schedule also came in a weekly magazine. I learned that the later I stayed up the more chance I had to see real drama, Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Occassionally the daytime soap operas had real-life drama but those seemed really fake to me. I watched a lot of TV.
The show I reference in the headling, Father Knows Best, was a family where the roles of who did what were very traditional and the kids all knew their roles. Maybe I’m confusing this show with Leave it to Beaver as I watched a lot of those episodes too.
Does the Father really know best? I know sometimes they get asked the hard questions or make the decisions, but in my household we are a team. We talk to each other and we do our best to align on what is important. It’s one of the many things I appreciate about my husband is we discuss, we disagree and we generally come together on key points and parenting strategies.
The TV show portrayed the Father coming home from work and the Mother making meals in the kitchen. I’m sure if I rewatched it now I would have a strong feminist reaction to the stereo-types. I would also probably realize where my shame of not wearing an apron when I cook comes from. Times are changing and while I respect the roles and duties of parents my goal is to raise children who can make decisions on their own. I’m happy to be consulted on life issues and day to day decisions but at the end of the day it’s their life and their goals.
I think the TV show even showed slippers and a pipe. That might have been the Dick Van Dyke show as I watched that one too.
Cheers to all the Fathers out there who are raising kids to do their own thing.
Rock on,
Cathy Paper