The decline of the American TV father and the rise of ‘Doofus Dad’

I recently realized that since launching the “Doofus Dad” brand some three years ago, I’ve never really given a good explanation of why I named it that. It has been suggested (by me) that large swaths of the population representing literally 10s of people lay awake in bed, fretting over this conundrum.

“If I only knew what Johnson means by ‘Doofus Dad,’ I may be able to actually sleep through the night,” they whisper aloud into the darkness, startling their snoring spouse into a nearly undetectable change of position.

So to keep the marital peace among these vast uncountable (for a baby) numbers of confused citizens, I’ve decided to explain myself.

I was essentially raised by two fathers — my real, biological one and the fictional Andy Taylor of Mayberry. Both Hal, my dad, and Andy modeled for me a tradition of strength, discipline, caring, and common sense within the institution of fatherhood. Aside from the fact that I had two older siblings and the World’s Greatest Mom, I was, essentially, Opie. (I’m making an assumption here that you, one of my 10 readers, are familiar with “The Andy Griffith Show.”)

Somewhere along the way, America’s view of fatherhood has changed, it seems to me. I’m no sociologist, but my guess is that this has something to do with the social and gender revolutions of the ’60s and ’70s. At some point, the tradition of a dad serving as the “leader” of the family has become frowned upon, as if a strong and capable father and equal rights for women are mutually exclusive.

You have to be at least nearing the age at which you start receiving AARP direct mail to remember when dad’s weren’t routinely portrayed as doofuses in popular media, especially TV sitcoms and commercials. Back in the ’60s and early ’70s, there were quite a few shows that featured a single dad, like the aforementioned “Andy Griffith Show,” “Mayberry RFD,” “Bonanza,” and others. In most cases, the father character was usually the solver of problems created by others, and displayed a strong sense of morality and, again, common sense.

But Hollywood began turning this model on its head in the late ’70s to the point at which, today, the doofus dad has become standard television fare. The website www.tvtropes.com lists the “bumbling dad” as its own trope, stating:

Born out of the sitcom dysfunctional family, he’s a deliberate subversion of the standard ’50s father. Now so ubiquitous, the older trope is nearly forgotten.

Although he’s clever at times, he’s not usually allowed to be smart. He’s lazy, gluttonous, and has miscellaneous other glaring vices. His children may love him, but they often don’t respect him. However, he is still a sympathetic character; the source of his charm is his complete love and loyalty to his family, even if the main way he shows it is by fixing problems he caused himself.

Just think about nine out of every 10 TV commercials that you see on a regular basis that feature both a mother and a father; Is the dad solving the problem or creating it? You know the answer. In almost every case, the dad (who is inevitably less attractive than the mom) is creating a problem that his wife solves.

By pointing this out, I am in no way lessening the role of motherhood. I’ve just never understood why society — specifically, popular media — has found it necessary to elevate the role of women by demeaning that of men. Why not elevate both?

Erica Scharrer, a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, wrote this in her recent article “Why are sitcom dads still so inept?” which I found at a website called “The Conversation.”

For our study, we identified 34 top-rated, family-centered sitcoms that aired from 1980 to 2017 and randomly selected two episodes from each. Next, we isolated 578 scenes in which the fathers were involved in “disparagement humor,” which meant the dads either made fun of another character or were made fun of themselves.

Then we studied how often sitcom dads were shown together with their kids within these scenes in three key parenting interactions: giving advice, setting rules or positively or negatively reinforcing their kids’ behavior. We wanted to see whether the interaction made the father look “humorously foolish” – showing poor judgment, being incompetent or acting childishly.

Interestingly, fathers were shown in fewer parenting situations in more recent sitcoms. And when fathers were parenting, it was depicted as humorously foolish in just over 50% of the relevant scenes in the 2000s and 2010s, compared with 18% in the 1980s and 31% in the 1990s sitcoms.

At least within scenes featuring disparagement humor, sitcom audiences, more often than not, are still being encouraged to laugh at dads’ parenting missteps and mistakes.

Wow. So, according to her study, dads are getting worse, not better, in the view of traditional media.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy the comedy associated with doofus dads like Homer Simpson, Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor, Al Bundy, and Ray Barone of “Everyone Love Raymond” as much as the next guy. But I also think that this relentless barrage of incompetent television fathers has affected our modern view of fatherhood in a decidedly negative way.

By naming my blog, “Doofus Dad,” I was poking a little fun at this stereotype. All humans are, at times, doofuses. However, I don’t really believe that any one classification of humans is consistently dumb or incompetent, as Hollywood seems to think of fathers.

I often refer to my wife, Holly, as “the brains of the operation” and use self-deprecating humor to make my points, which are usually meant to be entertaining and nothing else. It is perfectly accurate to say that Holly runs our household in many ways, including almost anything that involves numbers, math, and somebody getting a shot at the doctor’s office. But it is also accurate that I am generally viewed within my family as the “leader” of the Johnson clan, and I take that responsibility very seriously. In this way, although I certainly make mistakes, I don’t view myself as a doofus.

I think that most dads are closer to the character played by Tom Cruise in the 2005 big-budget film, “War of the Worlds.” Although Cruise’s character, Ray Ferrier, was predictably divorced (because a strong, successful two-parent family has long since fallen out of the favor of Hollywood scriptwriters), Ferrier was nonetheless competent, fairly smart, and fiercely protective of his two children. Although certainly fallible, he would do whatever it took to keep them safe in the face of a deteriorating world, even at the risk of alienating himself from them at times.

In a more figurative sense, I think this is where we’re at. The Andy Taylors and Hal Johnsons of 2020 are doing their level best to raise highly functioning, moral kids in the face of what often seems like a crumbling, immoral society. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to fight off giant, brain-sucking, three-legged extra-terrestrials.

This, I believe, is the responsibility of today’s fathers, not Hollywood’s doofus dads.