Dad's in Charge in New TV Ads
They say sex sells in advertising, but apparently, Daddy changing a diaper can also lead to big bucks.
Fathers are watching the little tykes without Mom around in ads for carpeting, department stores, nasal spray, wireless technology, cereal and other products — a move that experts say reflects the modern family.
Or what gender-neutralized, social-engineering experts would LOVE to see more of, which is...little tykes without Mom around...that is their vision of a 'brave new world' order...
Although on the surface harmless, in fact, these ads are part of the larger campaign to disenfranchise mothers in our society. They are an attempt to paint mothers as expendable, out busy shopping or working and not paying attention to our children. As any working mother knows this is a lie. Actually when mothers run these errands, usually we must DRAG OUR CHILDREN along with us. This is the reason many checkout counters sell little products like candy, small toys and other items attractive to children. Since mothers usually have our kids with us as we shop, frequently we pick up some little item for them on the way out of the store.
These ads are just another of the continuing attempts by men in their never-ending campaign to be "IN CHARGE" of everything again (as the title of the article clearly demonstrates) and another example of the male-directed media smear campaigns denigrating women in their role as mothers.
Women must begin to boycott the sponsors of these ads and not buy their products.
Any company that attempts to use our children as the latest fashion accessories for men to strut around with, or to try to get our children to sell products (like men having children around is sexy, sex sells, now our kids will be used like women have been for years to sell consumer goods to men), or to spread propaganda against women in their role as mothers (like the movie Spanglish, which I discussed after its opening), or by attempting to airbrush mothers out of their childrens' lives, any company attempting to do any of these things needs to be boycotted by women.
Then maybe these a@@holes will wake up.
Last month, The Advertising Council and The National Fatherhood Initiative announced they were launching their latest public service announcements encouraging more fatherly involvement with the kids.
The new PSAs, airing soon with actor Tom Selleck (search) doing the voiceover, conclude with the tagline, "It takes a man to be a dad." One features a father dancing with his daughter in the living room and, according to the Advertising Council's Conlon, tries to speak "directly to fathers of the importance of being engaged in their children's lives."
And while fatherhood activists are grumbling about some of the ads they see as daddy mockery, they're also taking note of what they call "father-friendly" commercials.
Yes, it figures...fatherhood activists never-happy, always greedy and grasping, looking for more, in spite of the fact that these ads (which are springing up like poisonous mushrooms everywhere) are clearly just another result of the strong-arm tactics of fathers rights advocates and their simpering, brain-addled pawns.
Yet they still aren't satisfied, still grumbling, still want more...
Don't get me wrong, I love many of these ads...the fathers and children are adorable...I wish one of them had been my father...really...AND I adore Tom Selleck...who wouldn't want him as their dad...Sadly however, we must deal not with the fatherhood 'masks' that the ads portray but with the real-life monsters that are the fathers in our lives...
For instance, the men who urge women to get an abortion until the date of delivery and then spend the rest of the next 18 years dragging them in and out of court to get custody of said children, usually to avoid paying child support.
Actually like what happened with that Bridget Marks situation which many New Yorkers are familiar with.
Well God only knows where her poor little girls will wind up before that one's over...
God only knows...
The recreational sperm donors or 'prodigal fathers' as fatherhood activists and their simpering, brian-addled pawns like to call them...who disappear for years and then get a wild hair up their a@@ and suddenly decide they want to be a father. Turning you and your childrens' lives upside down, NO MATTER THE AGE OF YOUR CHILDREN, with the full support of the state btw, is no problem for them...none whatsoever.
And last but not least, the fathers who eventually DO manage to wrestle custody of a mothers' children from her and then spend most of that child's life busily turning said child against their own mother. A child's mother, the MOST obvious, natural and best guardian of a child being alienated from them...which most likely means that after emancipation, that child won't have ONE person who is in their corner 100% no matter what they do...not one...and for what...for financial gain on the part of men, no other reason, to allow men to avoid paying child support, that's the bottom line here and to help a group of gender-neutralized, social engineering experts experiment with dumping our kids into all kinds of weird custody arrangements. Using our children like a group of little guinea pigs with no idea whatsoever of the final result, no idea.
AND by the way, these alienating custodial fathers is no small group of 'outside of the mainstream' fathers here...but a good portion of them. Richard (died by his own hand) Gardner, their PAS expert (I say theirs since I wouldn't have believed Richard Gardner if he told me the sky was blue, yet he's THEIR EXPERT so I'll use him here) Gardner noted back in the 90s that one-half of his clientele were alienating FATHERS, 50% and considering how few fathers have custody, 50% is a pretty high number...so let's face it, these alienating monsters are a very representational group of fathers overall here.
We have to deal with the real historic fathers, not the 'fatherhood masks' like that wonderful Tom Selleck or the great dad featured in the carpet commercial...from Augustus (murderer of his OWN daughter, granddaughter and great granddaughter) to Ray Carruth (murdered pregnant mother in an attempt to kill their child, so he could avoid paying child support) and finally the 50% of Richard Gardner's caseload for alienating parents, which is made up of custodial fathers.
THIS is the enduring historical legacy, that women as mothers must wrestle with in our everyday lives. THESE are the monsters behind the fatherhood mask that these ads promote. THIS is the history of motherhood and REALITY still for many mothers today as that very siginficant article in the Washington Post demonstrated. The percentage of pregnant women who get murdered by their child's fathers, so these monsters can avoid paying child support, is roughly about 20% and that's just the numbers from ONE SMALL STATE, Maryland.
We probably should DEMAND that these studies be replicated nationwide so we can see what the real numbers are...but of course, even as we speak, fatherhood activists and their simpering, brain-addled pawns are attempting to sweep the study under the rug so as to obscure the facts of it.
Thus it's important for mothers to NOT let propaganda obscure facts, as IF WE FORGET our history we are dooming, not just ourselves to repeat it, but all the generations of women who follow after us, some our own daughters...ALL OF THEM..
Actually it wouldn't be too strong to say we were dooming ALL women worldwide to repeating this terrible and bloody mother/child history as women in western society are the ONLY women with the the civil and legal rights to speak out against these monstrous attempts to separate mothers and children from one another.
29 comments:
I find it very difficult to respond when you keep attacking my site, implying it's not valid or something. If you disagree with something I wrote say it, but these validity attacks really should be out of bounds.
These issues I write about are extremely important to me; and frankly, I don't care what you or any of your fellow travelers think about me or this site.
But to be charitable and in the interests of continuing a civilized dialogue, I erased my previous comment.
So going forward please refrain from trying to steer the discussion into whether or not this site is valid or people take me seriously or any related territory. This site is just as valid as yours and the other ones you are affiliated with.
i love what you have to say and in some ways think you may be too easy on males. they are primitive creatures that require our guidance to civilize them so that they may be valuable assets to a community.
within all that you have written, one item seems to be glaringly missing. that of the responsibility of mothers to raise our sons so that our sons are NOT the pathetic, insecure, macho, mysogynistic monsters that you so aptly portray.
i know women, who for health reasons, have had to take a testosterone based hormone and had become more irritable, edgy, and argumentative. not a pretty sight. and males are burdened with this their whole life. is it any wonder boys become less manageable as they hit puberty. i am not saying this to excuse their behavior, but only to expound on how necessary it is for us to set firm boundaries for our sons as early as possible.
to be sure to let them know in no uncertain terms when they have crossed said boundaries.
i feel it is important for the mother to be the disciplinarian in the household...so the famous words..."just wait till you father gets home" becomes obsolete. males need to experience their mothers not olnly as loving guardians but also as strong powerful assertive women. and girls should never be disciplined by males...what a ghastly precedent that sets.
our sons need to soak in this image so that when they grow up they know their responsibilites and know how to be respectful of women. imagine how much easier it would be for wives and girlfriends to be with males such as these.
too many mothers allow themselves to be door mats for their children....waiting on them, picking up after them, and with the boys how often do we make excuses for them but uttering those classic words...."boys will be boys!!!
what a crock. what a carte blanche for boys to do whatever they want and be excused for it....and where girls ultimately become indoctrinated by society to be meek and serving (how many two income households do you know where the housework is still the wifes responsibility), males are taught that they are the privileged gender.
anyway, thanks for your blog and keep up the good work
Wow...
Thanks.
Thank you so much for your words of encouragement to me. It is rare for me to get any positive feedback from anyone, especially such profound thoughts as you expressed. Clearly you have been thinking about these issues for some time.
I thought about what you said regarding women and their interactions with their children and felt everything you said sounded like very commonsense proposals, yet I don't think we can fool ourselves that any of these things will happen anytime soon. First of all I don't think that we can look for changes that go too far in the opposite direction and against our essential natures. Women replacing men as being effective disciplinarians for children could be one of these 'essential natures' issues.
I know it is popular today to paint women as abusive to children and, I think statistics might bear this out to some limited extent...Nevertheless that pool of abusive mothers is really quite small when you estimate how many children are in the US. I'd say the larger, more common problem is just the opposite, it's not abusive mothers; but overly indulgent mothers not properly disciplining children, especially male children, which is the larger problem.
In the urban areas I've always lived in this scenario is much more common, then the abusive mothers one usually painted...as from about the age of 10 or 11, many of the male children I inevitably run into fall under the category of potential male thug, not adequately disciplined at home by single mothers.
I think women simply invest too much in having children and the imperative once they have them always appears to be to grab and hold as many resources for them as possible. This makes sense in a world of scarce resources, which before our consumers' paradise came into existence, everything was scarce. Thus a mothers' singular focus on getting as much as she could for her own offspring was offset by everyone else pulling in the opposite direction. I think this was the disciplinary norm imposed on most people; however, in a world where EVERYTHING is focused on the child, I think that these normal mothering instincts could be more problematic and, in fact, often are...
Again, as I said, I don't want to be unrealistic about the changes mothers can or will make in the way they interact with their children and maybe this is good...I think children need one person in their lives who will always support them, right or wrong, no matter what and how can you function as an effective disciplinarian if you're playing that role as well...
Nor do I wish to criticize the single mothers who struggle to raise male children in, what is for many of them, a hostile world. Considering what they've faced in our historic past here, as many of them are minorities at least where I live, they are doing an admirable job. Their world is a different place then the one I inhabit as it is full of potential violence and other future hardships, so I guess I'm conflicted about being too critical of them. My feeling is that if their mothers overindulge them in childhood how can we deny them that, as their adult life could be so full of just the opposite.
As more single mothers proliferate on the social landscape however, I guess the question is, then what happens. I mean, like I said, I'm not sure that people should go, or even can go if they wish, or even if we should try to make them go against their essential natures, so mothers probably are NOT going to change too much...in the same token I'm not sure if it will be such a good world with so many men in it resembling Eminem and Fifty Cents...whom I basically dislike as people, as much as I might admire the fact that they became successful in spite of their deprived backgrounds...
Oh well...one more contradiction...
my dear nymom,
you write:
First of all I don't think that we can look for changes that go too far in the opposite direction and against our essential natures. Women replacing men as being effective disciplinarians for children could be one of these 'essential natures' issues.
i submit to you the fallacy of thinking that women being disciplinarians goes against our 'essential natures'. first of all let me be clear that i am not equating disciplinarian with abuser, nor do i equate disciplinarian as one who administers corporal punishment (although my mother regularly administered spankings to my brother and he is a fine example of all that can be positive in males....good father, husband, hard worker, good listener, respectful...he doesnt help his wife with the housework...the housework is BOTH of their responibilities...she doesnt have to ask him to help,often he asks her...lol). But i digress.
i am fully aware in this day and age corporal punishment is frowned upon but that doesn't mean that discipline is not necessary. as a matter of fact since spankings are not appropriate (so we are told), firm boundaries are even more necessary.
The reality is children, all children, need and want discipline. they need boundaries. they need to know when they are right or wrong. the 'essential natures' of women is to raise, nurture and protect our children. just consider how much we are damaging them, how much of a disservice we are doing to them by NOT disciplining them.
Do not confuse our 'essential nature' with our societal indoctrination. women are not weak soft creatures designed to kiss boo-boos and provide comfort. yes we excel at that but we are also forces of nature...wild and tempestuous, loving and cruel. men are but flotsam tossed about upon the waves of our primal energy.
our 'essential nature' as you put it is to create. we carry within us the ability to bring life into this world and creation is not a clean, sterile, antiseptic, rarified experience. it is raw and boundless and unpredictable and gritty and cruel and dirty and wonderful and painful and ecstatic. WE ARE CREATORS.
and men simply cant stand it. we terrify them because they want everything to be so orderly and organized, neat and predictible. so they have spent eons making us believe that we are only nurturers and mothers and virgins. and now even with so called women's lib, this belief system is so ingrained upon society that we absorb it almost at a cellular level becaue it permeates the very air we breath and water we drink.
I agree with you...it is necessary for us to love and support our children...right or wrong....but it is perhaps even more critical to teach them right or wrong. we are not supporting our children, our males, if we do not discipline them. by not disciplining them we are then truly failing them.
Hi NYMOM.
"They are an attempt to paint mothers as expendable, out busy shopping or working and not paying attention to our children. As any working mother knows this is a lie."
Is it really? You know, I never ever take my kids shopping with me on Saturdays, as I can not shop quickly or wisely while distracted. They always stay with their dad. Likewise I was always left with my dad on Saturdays so my mother could shop. Does that really make moms seem expendable??? If a few dads are portrayed in ads as being involved in child care, I wouldn't call it mere propaganda--I see increasing evidence of it all over the place. Nowadays I see dads bringing kids into the pediatrician's office, trying shoes on them at the discount store. When I grocery shop on Saturday yes I see moms shopping alone with the kids, and I see an almost equal number of dads shopping right along with their wives and kids. I also see a smaller but still considerable number of dads shopping alone with the kids, probably divorced dads on weekend visitation. But does acknowledging these changes really make mothers expendable, justifying something as extreme as a boycott? Don't you think anytime dads get the message that it's OK to do a fair share of the parenting and take part of the load off mom that it's a positive thing? After all, it was women who originally wanted men to do more of the childcare in the first place--why get upset when they do, or when they're encouraged to?
Anne
Caution All: your response was magnificant...
I'll have to read and analyze it in depth before responding...
Anne: your response, as always, followed the standard party line, which it does on every site I encounter you on...
The issue is not JUST the ads or JUST men trying to help out as you well know...it is that, along with all the other things I mentioned many many times to you in the past...like the threat of losing custody of her children now being used as a club against women...it's the fact that many mothers lose custody due to financial issues since money has been allowed to corrupt our family court system, it's the fact that mens/fathers rights advocates AND THEIR SIMPERING BRAIN-ADDLED PAWNS are attempting to undermine the legal protection that victims of domestic violence currently have (and yes, most of those victims are and will be women and most of the perpetrators will be men since the male is the more aggressive and violent in every species, including our own) and it's the legal rights given to never married recreational sperm donors, who after a one-night stand or booty call suddenly think they should have rights to children conceived during these encounters...
When in fact, they should NOT...
It's the rights these non-entities have been given by our legal system to show up at ANY time, ANY time and disrupt a mother and her childrens' life, like the case of Bridget Marks (4 years after the fact), or Evan S. (3 years after the fact)...or even this Michael Newdow (10 years after the fact)...do you realize that idiot cost (or could have cost, but the Judge just ruled he has to pay his childs mother's legal fees) this mother he is harrassing, $300,000 over his bs...
AND these are not isolated individuals, far outside the mainstream of fathers, but very ordinary fathers today who use the power of the state to harrass mothers through the courts. Actually those three I mentioned were never even married to these women, so should be entitled to NO RIGHTS... NOTHING... ZIP...
So that's another issue giving never-married men, who commit to nothing, rights to children...Marriage is the legal framework our society has created to give men "rights" within and for very good reason as their link to children is minimal, practically non-existent, a product of the imagination ONLY, easily created in their minds and just as easily dissolved when they 'feel like it'...as witness the many many paterity fraud cases that men instigate after they've been 'fathers' for years....
So the issues, as you already know, are much more complicated then JUST the ads...if it was JUST the ads...I would not have mentioned it...The ads are just a symptom for what is wrong...
"and men simply cant stand it. we terrify them because they want everything to be so orderly and organized, neat and predictible. so they have spent eons making us believe that we are only nurturers and mothers and virgins. and now even with so called women's lib, this belief system is so ingrained upon society that we absorb it almost at a cellular level becaue it permeates the very air we breath and water we drink."
I'll agree with you in that men cannot stand the essence of women, they are truly jealous of everything we stand for, of that I am truly convinced.
I do NOT agree that men have made us nuturers however...even if they frame the whole motherhood issue around virgin births or human incubators in attempts to control or denigrate our closer natural bond with children. We are not mothers due to men largess, but due to evolutionary and biological forces over which they have no control, although they would love it if they had...
This is why they HATE every natural act that goes on between mother and child that they cannot be a part of or control in some way...Their historic response has been to ridicule or forbid these acts and even now frequently attorneys and fathers rights advocates will speak mockingly of mothers' only breast-feeding infants to interfere with mens' visitation...Yeah, right, it's all about them 27/7, 365 days a year...
Following this pattern, there have been many historic instances where breast-feeding was discouraged, mocked or forbidden for a mother to do...In Rome actually, slave women were forced into breast feeding other womens' children and Roman women who wanted to breast feed were taunted as being low class.
Frederick Douglass, whose owner/father, farmed him out as an infant to a old woman (who had many other infants there in the same situation as him) he said his mother was strictly forbidden from any contact with him... sometimes she sneaked away and managed to visit him but it was rare and she would have been severely whipped if she was caught, so the visits were brief and extremely stressful...she died when he was about 5 or 6...
Douglass noted, as an adult, how these things were deliberately done by many slaveholders to ensure that the natural bond that would normally exist between mother and child was stunted...so these mother/child bonding issues were very well known and acted upon even then.
This is one of the main reason that I get personally insulted everytime I hear a mens or fathers rights advocate try to connect the sh*t they do with the civil rights movement...I mean men as fathers acted disgracefully during this countries' period of slavery, simply disgracefully; and these were NOT poor men but men of the ruling class, they could have helped thousands of children (many probably their own) if they wished, thousands, yet did nothing...
NOW they want to start talking trash about how they should be equal to and given the same standing as a child's mother...or it's a violation of their civil rights? It's actually closer to a violation of women's human rights to allow this to happen...
So I disagree with that nuturing label being 'handed' to us by men...it's just out there far beyond their (or our) capacity to control; but yet they still continue to try...now their latest was a news release from Mount Sinai hospital claiming that environmental toxins are making womens' breast tissue 'toxic'; thus infants breastfeeding might be getting these environmental toxins into their bloodstream...
...they just can't stop their spinning with the latest attempt to intefere with mothers breastfeeding their children...
Some things never change...
"I agree with you...it is necessary for us to love and support our children...right or wrong....but it is perhaps even more critical to teach them right or wrong. we are not supporting our children, our males, if we do not discipline them. by not disciplining them we are then truly failing them."
Yet, I still have to say I cannot see how nuturing and disciplining can co-exist easily...since discipline is about setting limits and I look at nuturing at its heart as laying claim to as many resources as you can for your own offspring...so I guess it's safe to say that a real altruist would probably not be much of a mother...although would probably raise okay kids in conditions not too harsh...
OK, NYMOM. You already know where I agree with you and where I disagree, so I'll leave the larger issues alone. All I'm saying is that I think you're attaching too much significance to these ads. And even if you could, through boycotts or other measures, convince advertisers to just ignore dads and the undeniable changes taking place within families and portray kids with their moms only, it would likely not change anything and could just as easily be called propaganda as anything else could.
Unless we want to just remove kids from advertising altogether as a matter of principle...but I'd sure miss the baby magazines and their great diaper coupons.
Anne
"All I'm saying is that I think you're attaching too much significance to these ads."
If they stood alone without all the other things then yes, they would mean nothing...but as part of a larger pattern, they are significant and so must be addressed...
AND fathers rights advocates call and harrass companies and individuals ALL the time for stuff like that...ALL the time...
nymom wrote: "I do NOT agree that men have made us nuturers however..." & "So I disagree with that nuturing label being 'handed' to us by men..."
i totally abhor the idea that males made us nurturers..you misunderstood me.
if you reread my statement: "so they have spent eons making us believe that we are only nurturers and mothers and virgins"
the key word is ONLY. Believe me i am not saying males made us nurturers. we are nurturers, i mean our species would have vanished long ago if it were up to males to nurture. BUT we are far more than nurturers and that is what has been stripped of us so we have lost touch with our power. so much of our power comes from our ability to nurture for ones ability to nurture comes from fearlessness...a willingness to be truly vulnerable. and (i am thinking as writing) males very well mayhaps have leveraged our willingness to be vulnerable against us....used it as a way to subjugate us and strip us of our power.
i think i see where you are coming from regarding nurture vs. discipline. you perceive nurture as a purely heart energy one of pure love and openness and in that light i would hav eto agree with you regarding nurture and discipline not coexisting....
However, if you consider a mothers role to raise her son and to transform him into the type of male that would be a benefit to society, then i believe you need to look at nurturing from a more practical viewpoint.
Children and especially males need boundaries. If we as mothers cannot provide them then are we truly nurturing them. Is it ok for us to say "oh what a little darling and i love him so much" as he terrorizes. "how sweet, look what he is doing to that defenseless furry creature"...etc.
wouldnt it be far more loving and nurturing to make him accountable for his actions. make him know that certain behaviors are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. that to me truly nurtures him.
discipline can and must come from love not anger......
"Children and especially males need boundaries. If we as mothers cannot provide them then are we truly nurturing them. Is it ok for us to say "oh what a little darling and i love him so much" as he terrorizes. "how sweet, look what he is doing to that defenseless furry creature"...etc.
wouldnt it be far more loving and nurturing to make him accountable for his actions. make him know that certain behaviors are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. that to me truly nurtures him.
discipline can and must come from love not anger......"
Yes that is all true what you say...however I have seen mothers, whose children have done the most dastardly things, defend them like lionesses...
After all who else WILL defend you after something so horrible, except your mother and perhaps the ACLU (little joke there)...
I mean in my granddaughter's school, for instance, a number of children stole things, other childrens' jackets and sometimes bookbags or hand-held electronic equipment...and frequently even when it was pointed out to the mothers, they defended their child...
AND even with my own child, when younger she did get involved with a theft from a store of a very large amount of expensive items. I was going to take her back to return them, but when I realized the amount I was afraid she might get arrested...so I mailed all the items back anonymously (well not quite anonymously, I put her fathers' return address on the box in case the store followed up) and then punished her...
So I guess it's a question of nurturing, as well as discipline, maybe in a more protective way...but I'm just not sure on a daily day-in-day-out basis if mothers do quite the same job of combining nurturing and discipline in correct amounts...and that is a FAR bigger issue for women then abusive mothers, that's the point I was making before...this issue is FAR bigger...since we cannot get away from the statistics which show that children from single mother homes DO show up more in the rolls of prisons, mental institutions, drug rehabs, etc., all the deviant indicators...and the only thing I can think of as a reason would be this constant struggle between nurturing and discipline...
I mean if you look at the animal kingdom, young males (probably equivalent to our adolescents) are driven from the herd, pride, whatever and forced into the company of other males to survive on their own...Most of the family groupings consist of mothers, daughers, aunts, sisters (in other words all female relations) and their children...the few alpha males that hang around are mostly on the fringes of the group marking terrorities and fighting off other males...
So somehow women have to come to terms with what might be an 'inbalance' within the evolutionary process (for want of a better term) and formulate the correct formula for nurturing and discipline required in handling boys in single mother homes...if possible...
I say IF, because I know it sounds correct when we discuss it, I'm not so sure however, if mothers really can just throw off a couple of millions years of evolution telling us to protect our offspring for a far shorter span of 'obeying the rules' for the good of society...
Perhaps our hardwiring will always interfere with this...
So I don't know the answer...just the problem...
my dear nymom,
i do so much enjoy our little exchanges here. what wonderful fodder for honing my thoughts about a subject very near and dear to me. i have no doubt about women's role in society and i am well aware of the tremendous hurdles we must overcome in order to achieve even a modest iota of accomplishment....not in our lifetime....
they are certain distinctions i wish to make....the difference between protecting one's young from predators (i.e. the outside world, society, police in your daughters case) and diciplining him/her soundly at home. i know for a fact that if my brother had done what your daughter had done, mother would have taken a hairbrush to him...absolutely. but she would probably have also reacted much the same as you....returning the stuff anonymously....
btw, did her father get in trouble?...i find that action of your disturbingly delicious.
and you did discipline her as she deserved.
"I say IF, because I know it sounds correct when we discuss it, I'm not so sure however, if mothers really can just throw off a couple of millions years of evolution telling us to protect our offspring for a far shorter span of 'obeying the rules' for the good of society..."
i dont see this as a problem with our wiring. i view this as mostly societal. i think our wiring actually calls for us to discipline our young...animals do it, if necessary....if we didnt instinctively discipline our young then we as a species would have perished long ago.....discipline is necessary for survival.
rather i believe that "obeying the rule" of society is actually obscuring what we know to be right.
look at our current situation with spankings. as a society we have almost outlawed it. if a child were to complain about receiving a spanking the parent might very really get into trouble.
now i know that there are many abusive parents but somewhere along the line we have thrown out the baby with the bathwater(no abuse intended *wink). spanking in and of itself is not necessarily abuse.
bit by bit, our rights to discipline our children as we see fit is eroded in order to comply with societal views mostly proposed by a pyschotherapeutic model which fundamentally is based in the ultimate mysogynistic model of penis envy. (my god what woman in her right mind would want one of those ridiculous looking things dangling between her legs).
if we begin to view societal heirarchy as propagated by frightened bullies who fear our power and sexuality, but due to their overwhelming physical testosterone laden strength they HAD been able to subjugate us, then things become clearer.
and in this day and age they are even more frightened because we no longer need their brute strength to save us from those nasty mastadons. now they KNOW deep down inside that their role in society is very limited UNLESS they begin to reinvent themselves in OUR IMAGE....hence the ads that you find so disturbing.
males have to become the mommies...not just to regain their power but also because it is the only viable alternative for them.....otherwise they become obsolete.
wow.....sometimes i surprise myself.
"...males have to become the mommies...not just to regain their power but also because it is the only viable alternative for them.....otherwise they become obsolete..."
Oh you are so right...I was actually listening to Alan Dersowitz discussing this a while back wondering what men would be 'doing' in the 21st century...He was postulating that wars would be over I guess as the end of history was here with the fall of communism... Probably he thought men would have no role since he was saying '...well women will raise the children, but what will men be doing now"...
Little did he know how inventive men would prove in finding a new enemy so soon...Actually even as the Berlin Wall fell we didn't have time to take a freakin breath and savor the enormity of the whole thing as we were at war in Kuwait under Bush, Sr...and now here we are again in a full-fledged war against an increasingly determined enemy...who knows where this one will end now, who knows...
As I often said about the wars against Germany and the Soviet Union, they were almost like family feuds. Although murderously vicious, ultimately at the end of the day, we would still be able to live with one another and we do.
I'm not really sure about that 'living with one another at the end of the day' part anymore, not with this one...
It's interesting isn't it however, that everything men decide to do, they do it by starting a war of some kind...like now they started the "Custody Wars" now...
One more of their historic legacies to explain to later generations...
"Don't forget NYMUM (sorry, NYMOM, (i'm Australian)), in todays world, it's very easy far companies to be slandered as being sexist if they present the woman as a mother figure to repetitively, or as motherhood being their central role. Now you're slandering them for not showing women as mothers enough! I guess when it comes to advertising, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't."
No...I don't agree...the ads are a tool, part of a larger propaganda campaign being waged against women in their role as mother...
Otherwise they would be meaningless...
I actually enjoyed them before I realized how the men and fathers rights movement did too...and how they intimidate and strong arm companies into making and running them...
It's just like Israel doesn't allow certain Germanic pieces to be played in their concert halls...Not because they are not beautiful, as they are...but because either their insidious message is anti-semitic or the composers were...
Same thing here...the ads are cute, I actually like them and I adore Tom Selleck...yet the message is part of the larger insidious movement to denigrate women in their role as mothers and more importantly to separate our children from us for financial gain; thus the ads are dangerous propaganda and women need to be made aware of them as such...
"(well not quite anonymously, I put her fathers' return address on the box in case the store followed up)"
I didn't do it to get him in trouble but to be able to mail the package as the post office wouldn't accept it without a return address...and he never mentioned it to me, so I assumed they never mentioned it to him...
Actually it was my daughter's idea as she went to the Post Office with me and was the one who mentioned doing it...I probably would never have thought of it on my own...LOL...
But looking back, it was rather funny...
Actually my daughters' have always been more 'worldly' then me as I was raised by nuns in a very sheltered environment (it ruined me as I frequently tell people today, only half in jest)...
It was even my older daughter who actually took the steps necessary to get her younger sister child support finally...as I never even HEARD of child support before my oldest stepped in...My daughter was 11 years old, her sister 22 and I had been divorced from my ex-husband for almost ten years and he never once gave me a penny for child support...but finally my oldest went down and filed the papers for me and served her former stepfather on Christmas Eve with the paperwork...and believe me that wasn't planned...just another one of those unbelievable coincidences...
I asked her what did he say when you handed him the papers and she said he never even looked at them, just kissed her and said Merry Christmas...I'm sure after he opened them later, that incidence went down into the family chronicles as another instance of wrongdoing on my part, but it was just the luck of the draw really...my daughter filed and they gave a limited timeline to serve...
Oh well...
"I had no idea there were women out there who hated men this much. Amazing."
I don't hate men as you say...Must everything be about you all...In fact, it's more of a love of women and children that drives this issue for me...not a hatred of men...
I don't want you screwing up everything women have accomplished for ourselves or our children in this society through your selfishness...is that hate?
"NYMOM does NOT hate men. She hates the IRRESPONSIBLE AND SELFISH BEHAVIOR of SOME men. Something (one of the very few things) her and I can agree on. But not all men behave this way and she knows this."
Yes, the amazing thing about the whole situation though is how mens/father rights advocates are always screaming that law-enforcement, the court, legislators are all biased against them...these are all institutions btw, composed mainly of other MEN...so perhaps these advocates need to look within themselves to see what these other men see, that causes bias against them...
That's the truly interesting question...
Wow, we must live on different planets. We both live in NY, but maybe just the city is that horrible.
Where I come from (upstate) most men, and most women, are stand-up, decent, hardworking folk. Most dads love their kids, and so do most moms. Upstate when a husband watches the kids, we wives say thank you, and vice versa, instead of worrying if it is some great conspiracy. Ads which encourage fathers to be good fathers are taken for what they are-an attempt to help our kids, since absentee fatherhood is the number one indicator of trouble with teenagers, including dropping out of school, drug abuse, and suicide.
In upstate NY, we consider any PAS, whether from the father or the mother as unethical and damaging to the child. It is unacceptable either way, and should be grounds for losing custody. Of course the courts may not see this yet, but if you ask one of us on the street that will be our answer.
When dads spend time with the kids when we mothers are not around? Great! It means mom has a few minutes to herself. And we feel good, and do not feel less of a mother because our kids have been seen without us. I mean, moms are shown all the time on tv with thier kids and no father, and no one has a cow about that.
In upstate NY we don't try to con each other, so maybe that is why when an ad campaign comes on which really is just about helping kids...we take it a face value. I am really glad I live in Upstate NY. If feel valued as a mother and do not need to disparage dads to feel that way. The city must just be a wicked place if something so simple as encouraging dads to be with their kids, or showing dads in commercials with their kids, is seen as sinister.
I look forward to raising my two sons to be just like thier dad, uncles, and grandfathers. They are wonderful men, and I wouldn't change a thing about them.
Well I'm glad you're happy, healthy as are your kids...so, I guess you won't be one of those who need to come here very much will you?
Thanks for sharing anyway...
Oh, btw, tell Shades of Pale over at Stand Your Ground I said hi...
Boy, your daughter sounds like the adult in the family...
Look I thought you understood before...I don't want you or anyone else from Stand Your Ground posting on my site...
I was trying to be polite before but obviously you didn' take the hint.
It's important to me that this remain a harrassment free zone just for me and the other mothers who might wish to come here, read, comment, email me, whatever...if I let you start posting, then the rest of them will follow and I'm not allowing this place to degenerate into another place to bash women...
Thus if you post again, I'm just erasing it...
Sorry...
Sorry mein gott...but I'm erasing your comment...
I warned you already...
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