Dads Can’t Do Anything Right – 3 Sterotypes

How many of these have you heard lately?

It’s the 21st century, and there are still dad stereotypes that are not only anti-feminist, but also downright backwards thinking. And they need to stop. But you can’t stop something until you know what it is, so here is a list:

1. Dads care more about having fun than actually parenting. A lot of the images in memes show fathers either riding their children’s bikes while the kids run after them, or the father playing his kids’ video games without giving the kids a chance. Or worse, the father enjoying himself while his kids stand around waiting to be showered and put to bed. Not only is this a gross stereotype, but also an incredibly harmful one because it implies that a father’s authority is not on par with the mother’s.

2. Dads are perpetually bad cooks. Despite the fact that some of the greatest living chefs are men and that more and more men openly admit to loving to spend their days in the kitchen whipping up something for themselves or their loved ones, there continues to be this implication that the kitchen in inherently a “woman’s place.” Not only does it devalue the effort a father — and any man, really — puts into feeding his family, it also strengthens the sexist idea that women are no good unless they can cook.

3. Dads care more about maintaining appearances than their child. We’ve all seen that episode of that family sitcom where the male kid wants to do something traditionally “girly,” and the dad goes out of his way to try to convince the kid that he should do something “manly” instead. It’s often played as a joke to make the father seem out of touch with modernity and something to laugh at, but laughing at someone who has been raised with harmful patriarchal ideas is never a solution. Education is. I always see the father succumbing to his son’s wishes instead — never have I seen the episode end with the father realizing that there’s nothing wrong with his son dressing up as a fairy.

You can read the rest of this list on Scary Mommy. When you're finished, add your own dad stereotype that needs to die.