Fatherhood in Pop Culture

I was going through a DVD of Scrubs, Season 8 (bought it to make change for my tricycle ride), and there was something about the 13th or 14th episode* that bothered me. It was the episode wherein protagonist J.D. and his girlfriend Eliott attempt to set things right with his ex-girlfriend, who is dating Eliott's ex-boyfriend. J.D. has a son with his ex, and the reason the couples have to make nice is because of the son.

Near the end of the episode, J.D. tells his ex that when his father and mother divorced, his dad was not around much, ending with a personal oath that he would be a better father to his boy. The first thing that came to my mind was:

The first step to being a good dad is staying with your kid's mother. If he had this personal oath, why in the world is he not married to the mother of his son?

(Plus, Elizabeth Banks makes Sarah Chalke look as plain as a bar wench in a medieval backwater.)

In the end, the best J.D. could come up with is "I want to move here". Yeah, well on your way to becoming a better father there. Torture your kid by making it visibly plain that you prefer someone else to be the mother of your children. Sorry boy, you just popped out of the wrong hole. 

I find this cultural assault on the honor of fathers to be disturbing. It is disturbing in the sense that we are supposed to accept this standard that the "good father" is some permanent adolescent who pays child support and takes the kids during the weekends. (Trust me, Scrubs is not alone in this one.)

J.D. is a horrible father, even in his "redemption". I cannot think of a TV show or movie wherein the father's redemption goes all the way through to the rectification of his gravest mistake: abandoning his wife and kids. Not even the excellent "Taken" can take it that far.

How irresponsible is this, considering that the US now has an illegitimacy rate of 40%? Pop culture has normalized divorce, so now it has backed itself into a corner and must normalize the nasty underside of it. Divorce culture has so flattened the American family that the best they can hope for out of dad is that he "moves near here". Gay marriage is an issue on the periphery (though still worth opposing), because the thing that must truly be banned is no-fault divorce. Or if you feel like shooting for the stars, divorce itself. I cannot even believe that there are segments of Philippine society who think we should follow this same course.

Coincidentally, a couple of episodes before that one I described, a wedding sequence ends with an acoustic version of the Outkast song "Hey Ya", with lines that ought to haunt the self-obssessed generation that is attempting to parody marriage. (You can actually understand the lines in the acoustic version)

Thank God for Mom and Dad
For sticking together
'Cause we don't know how...

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*Erratum: it was actually episode 16.