We need better TV fathers

How's good old dad doing on TV these days? He's never done very well. Pops have usually been poops on television.

In an interview in the June issue of St. Anthony's Messenger, actress Jane Wyatt says that her series in the 1950s, "Father Knows Best," was a rare salute to daddies.

Listing the virtues of the sitcom, Ms. Wyatt, a Catholic, ticks off "honesty, charity, family cooperation, respect for Dad." She tells Franciscan Father Jack Wintz: "At the time, most other TV shows were making fun of Dad, but not ours....In many TV shows at that time,...Dad was just a funny guy you made fun of. That was not so with us."

Ozzie asleep

If you're not old enough to remember those days, check with someone who is around 50; he or she can corroborate Ms. Wyatt's opinion:

* On "Ozzie and Harriet," Dad was a befuddled guy who spent an awful lot of time snoozing in the hammock out back.

* On "Make Room for Daddy," Danny Thomas's portrait of a father captured someone with a hair-trigger temper who seemed ever ready to swat junior across the room and who had to be constantly soothed by his dutiful wife.

* On "Hazel" and "The Stu Irwin Show," papa was barely in touch with the semi-reality around him.

Neither Ms. Wyatt nor I am saying the shows weren't funny; we're saying they didn't do much for the image of fathers.

Homer's parenting

Has that changed in recent years? Homer on "The Simpsons" is a parody of a dad who can't remember his children's names and would prefer watching football to playing with them. "King of the Hill" shows a pop who's more interested in how engines run than in how his son is doing and seems to be mighty nervous about parenting.

Often on dramas, fathers are alcoholic losers who show up at inconvenient moments to demand love from the now-adult children they abandoned years before.

Would you want to be a child raised by the fathers on "Roseanne" or "Seinfeld"? Even Bill Cosby, on his new show, is a rather cranky "old man."

Better examples

Maybe the best dads on TV nowadays are the ones played by Tim Allen on "Home Improvement" and by John Mahoney, who is Martin Crane on "Frasier." The former, while fascinated by things that go "rurr," has time for his children. The latter -- well, if he can put up with Frasier and Niles, I know he could tolerate me.

If there are so few good daddies on TV, a follow-up question naturally arises: Is television warping the reality of fatherhood or only reflecting it? Surveys have found that too many real-life fathers spend too little time with their children. They are so wound up in their jobs, hobbies, sports and other interests that kids come in dead last on the "to-do" list.

If we want better dads on the tube tomorrow, maybe we've got to start being better pops today. The children that result will grow up to be well-adjusted screenwriters (if that's not an oxymoron) who pen dramas and comedies featuring swell fathers.

(06-12-97) [[In-content Ad]]