So, we were finishing off the Christmas holidays, yes I know, way way in the past now, and we sat down to watch a family movie together. There is enough room on the couch for all four of us. Two daughters age 7 and 10, two parents and potato chips and all.
I am very skeptical about my role as disciplinarian. This role for the father remains his job well into the 21st century even as mothers became single parents in droves, even as fathers became the primary caretaker of their kids in... well increasing amounts. Which means they have to be both security blanket AND chief nagger of kids in duality roles.
If fathers are staying home with their kids and taking care of toddlers lives, or even older KIDS lives, why do they have to be the disciplinarian also? It seems like its a contradiction of roles. I speculate that even when mothers are acting as single parents, the father is still visiting once in a while and acts then as disciplinarian, or even from afar, "what would your father say?" I may be wrong.
I recall my Sister in law was very strong with her kids. My brother had a job in which he was on the road for long periods of time. But when he came home, he was disciplinarian. Why?
I hate being a disciplinarian. Kids always hate, and I do mean HATE, the disciplinarian. He is doing it out of love, but gets no love back. Only, "yeah, sure sure", "I'm going I'm going". Leave me alone, I did it already. Go away".
It seems that as roles change and become more equal and the sexes become more equal in the role of parenting, women could be more of the hard nose disciplinarian. But really, in stereotyping in the media and television, save for Mommy Dearest, do you ever have the mother being a real terrorizer to the kids? I mean even in Grimm's fairy tales and TV the mother will never beat the kids. She may yell at them, but never has physical contact.
Don't get me wrong, hitting kids is in my book wrong, very wrong. I don't condone it, nor do I think society does anymore, as it did whipping in older days. But in all the history and especially current history, has there been any mention of mother physically disciplining the kids? Don't you think it happened?
But no. mom, mother, is always the love giver, the security for the kids. Dad is shown as the strict upholder of the rules and laws.
Why me?
I am a pretty gentle guy who does not like aggression (except I don't mind it in music). While I have much heated debate on the verge of conflict with business people and even friends, I stay away from potential violent situations such as bars and conversation with narcissistic, arrogant types. (I could make a good joke at this point, but I will keep it out). I even stopped Facebook commenting because it was just getting too heated and nasty.
So why am I the one who still has to push them to get to bed each evening? Why am the one who has to push my daughter to practice guitar more? My older daughter doesn't let me kiss her anymore "because I m a boy", and I really miss this. I mean even to give her a peck on the head, she gets angry. And it makes me sad. why cant my wife be in this position for all these things?
I don't have the answer. If there is anyone out there who has statistics on this issue, I would be interested. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there are statistics showing dads are not the disciplinarians as much anymore. I would like to see them. I don't believe it. As the male parent of the family I am, by default, the enforcer, the punisher. Something I did not ask for.
So there we are sitting on the couch on the Saturday or Sunday before school starts again. All the amenities in place. The movie starts. A five minute car chase in which people are shot at repeatedly, heads and brains are shown being shot off and people skidding on motorcycles for meters and meters and much of it in slow motion such as where the head comes off. Then it goes on and the hero threatens a person with death if he continues to stalk someone. He makes his point that he means business and the death will happen. No questions asked. Then we are in a bar where the "hero" starts talking about sucking another characters ..... HOLD IT, ENOUGH OF THIS. WE ARE NOT WATCHING THIS. STOP RIGHT NOW. I took the DVD out. This is not good for a ten year old, let alone a 7 year old. How can this be a Marvel comics movie? We are not watching Deadpool 2 and this is final. Not now, not for many years. Who got this?
My kids hated me. They yelled at me. They glared at me. They tried to restart the video, but I took it and hid it. They said it wasn't so bad and none of the words were bad in translation. We ended up watching Spykids 2 which was incredibly stupid but very friendly. There was bad atmosphere in the house now, but there was no way I was going to let a violent movie put bad ideas into my girls heads. This was not life, this was not how life should be presented. This was a bad example of a non existent life with no value whatsoever, especially for kids. It portrays everything I am against and not how I want my daughters to see life and use as an example to follow, even if we had seen only 10 minutes of the movie. NO WAY.
I had to put my foot down. I had to. No way to :
