Recently, my boyfriend called mother’s day a “Hallmark holiday”, I’m sure that he and many other like him would say the same of Father’s Day. Well, if my arguments didn’t convince him that these days are not merely “Hallmark Holidays” like “Administrative Professionals Day” or “National Teachers Day,” I hope that Carrie Lukas’ column in National Review Online today will. As Lukas explains,
Father’s Day tends to get treated as just another “Hallmark Holiday.” And we have so many: Grandparents Day, Secretary’s (now the more politically correct “Administrative Professional’s”) Day, National Teacher’s Day, Take Your Daughter to Work Day — the list goes on. Yet if ever there was a need for a Hallmark Holiday, Father’s Day is it.
The last few decades have been rough for fathers. If dads once were idealized in popular culture as all-knowing patriarchs, today they’re usually the butt of the joke. The Simpsons, comedy classic though it is, probably is the best known example. Marge is a relatively positive role model; a caring, generally sensible figure (in spite of the hair). Homer is stupid, childish, undisciplined, and completely incompetent. From Malcolm in the Middle to The Family Guy, the modern TV dad is more idiot than ideal. Just as any fictional battle-of-the-sexes today is invariably won by women, positive images of dads in entertainment are rare.
Lukas concludes,
Put simply, children need their fathers. Anyone familiar with social policy today knows the litany of ills caused by their absence: Children raised outside of marriage are more likely to drink to excess, smoke, use drugs, drop out of school, be victims of abuse, have mental problems, and commit crimes. Reformers of the Left and Right increasingly agree that reducing the number of children growing up outside of marriage is an important goal. So a national debate will continue to rage about how government can bring back fathers, either by scrapping programs that subsidize single parenthood or by encouraging marriage.
The hard truth is that no program or policy will fix America’s broken homes until society gets back to valuing dads as indispensable role models. Father’s Day is a good time to start.
So, I hope that we all can see Father’s Day as more than a time to give our fathers a card or a gift, but a time to appreciate their influence on our lives.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad!