Don't Tell (COMM 315W)

Has your dad every did something with you that you know your mom would not allow? Dads tend to be more relaxed and fun than the moms. At least that is the persona that they have. In a recent article I read 70% of mothers are considered the “bad cop” whereas the father is considered the “good cop.”[i] In today’s society women are perceived as the serious and more mature parents than the men. Women tend to feel more pressure on them when it comes to parenting and with this comes the “bad cop” persona.

I recently watched a Hyundai ad on YouTube called Don’t Tell Mom or Dad. The dad takes the kids to a scary movie, gives them ice cream, and goes down a black diamond when skiing. After each event he tells the kids not to tell mom and they shake their head in agreement. However, at the end of the commercial the mom takes the oldest kid sky diving and tells him not to tell his dad. This commercial shows that moms are not always the serious one and they can have fun and be “cool” just like dad.

Check out the below link to view the commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yQB6fsPb3k

Most mothers feel like their children associate them with doing homework, chores, and going to bed on time while dads were more associated with fun stuff. However, nine out of ten moms said that they become the fun or cool mom when the tables are turned and dad has carried the responsible duties[ii]. So why don’t moms let the dads have more responsible duties so that they can relax? I believe it’s the mother instinct in them. I think that they are mentally programmed to be overprotected of their offspring. Having a growing human in you for nine months is a big deal and they have to feel some sort of attachment with that.

Other reason moms are looked at as the “bad cop” is because of the way we perceive them on television and the internet. Let’s look at a video sharing site called Vine. Vine is a video sharing service where users can share six second long looping video clips. One of the people I follow is BatDad. BatDad post videos of himself wearing a batman mask and make videos with his wife and kids. In these videos BatDad is perceived as the “cool” dad playing the drums, running around with a batman mask, and joking with the kids. However, almost every time you see his wife, Jen, in the videos she’s doing laundry, cooking dinner, or other chores. She is perceived as the serious and more responsible one, the “bad cop” persona. BatDad has a following of nearly 1.3 million followers if you would like to check it out here is a link to his site https://vine.co/BatDad .

While writing this blog I started to think “Well if they have a BatDad on vine then they must have a BatMom, right?” Well to my surprise they did and there was more than one. The only problem is that it wasn’t nearly as entertaining to me as BatDad and I think at most, one of the BatMom’s had 60 followers. So I thought maybe I could find a mom on vine that is perceived as being fun with their kids. I searched for fun mom, cool mom, funny mom, and didn’t really find anything that caught my eye. I usually go to the most popular videos, but there weren’t any good ones. So, with no success on finding some entertaining “cool” mom videos I decided to search angry/mean mom videos and what do you know some came up. I found one where a mom and her daughter are sitting at a booth waiting for lunch. The daughter shoots a spitball from the straw into her mother’s face. Well the mom wasn’t having it and poured her entire class of water over her daughter and said, “STOP IT.” Now if that was a dad I think they would’ve made a bigger spit ball and got her back. Here is a link to the video http://vine-videos.com/vines/vine-angry-mom-vs-spit-ball .

Women, especially young women, feel a lot of pressure to succeed in parenting. Fifty to Sixty years ago women stayed at home and took care of their children while the father worked. However, nowadays women are focused on their career goals as well as caring for their children. Most can feel torn between their career and their children. This torn feeling and bring the stress levels up and make the mom feel like she doesn’t deserve to have fun or to be fun, while the dad has always had the persona of putting food on the table. Dads can be more care freeing because they don’t feel overwhelmed like moms do. Moms tend to put more stress on themselves then they need to.

I’d like to tell a story from my personal life. I do not have any kids, but my wife and I have two dogs. Britt calls these two her fur babies and treats them like kings. I’ll take them outside with me when I’m working in the yard and she is like be careful Adam and keep an eye on them. For some reason she doesn’t think I will watch my own dogs and comes out there 10 minutes later to check on them. I’m thinking to myself is this how it’s going to be when we have children? So I ask her why don’t you trust me with the dogs outside, she states that she does trust me, but she feels more comfortable checking on them herself. I then say well you do not trust me. So anyways we go on and on about are different ways of looking after the dogs. Moral of the story is that in my opinion mothers, whether it is with humans or pets are always going to be overprotective it’s just in their nature to be.

[i] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2627078/Know-feeling-70-mothers-left-feeling-like-bad-cop-fathers-centre-attention-known-fun-one-family.html

[ii] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2627078/Know-feeling-70-mothers-left-feeling-like-bad-cop-fathers-centre-attention-known-fun-one-family.html

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