Fathers: Not Just Comic Relief Anymore - Focus on the Family ...

Just got through watching ABC Family's new sitcom Baby Daddy (watch for the review tomorrow), and really the only thing remarkable about the show was how unremarkable it was.

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Baby Daddy felt as though it had been transported straight out of network television from the 1980s or '90s, boasting the same setup-punchline rhythm, the same cookie-cutter characters, even some of the same jokes?most of which were pinned on how inept men are when it comes to dealing with babies: A guy holding the baby as if it was a live grenade. A guy fastening a diaper with duct tape. A guy disposing of a dirty diaper with a pair of tongs. If we learn anything at all from the world of sitcoms, we know that men take to babies like Siamese cats take to water.

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The show will naturally and predictably evolve into a salute to fatherhood, of course. But it's interesting that all the show's initial tropes?the idea that guys don't know how to deal with their diaper-wearing offspring?are still in play. I mean, how many fathers out there haven't changed their fair share of diapers?

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If we trundle back a few decades, maybe those stereotypes held a bit more truth. Parental duties were, for better or worse, more clearly defined: Dad went off to work. Mom stayed home. Mothers were supposed to be the nurturers, fathers the providers. Dads might read their kids a bedtime story and kiss them goodnight. And, in some homes, that was about it.

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But even that feels disingenuous in some ways. When I was being raised back in the 1970s, my dad was off on business a lot. My mom did stay home. And yet my dad fills my childhood memories just as much as my mom does: He wasn't distant at all, and he clearly took fatherhood quite seriously. Maybe he was an exception, but surely he wasn't the only one.

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And now, with many moms working outside jobs and dads being more involved with their kids' lives than ever, the stereotype feels even more antiquated. Sure, first-time fathers might be a little uncomfortable at first. But are they really that much more uncomfortable than first-time mothers?

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Ideally, we fathers provide our families with more than comic relief. Dads matter. Studies tell us that over and over. A new one suggests that fathers are particularly adept at teaching their kids the value of persistence.

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"Fathers have a direct impact on how children perceive persistence and hope, and how they implement that into their lives," wrote study co-author Randal Day, professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. "It's important to say that moms can do this, too, but it turns out that when fathers use authoritative parenting, they have an impact on how their adolescents perceive themselves and how persistent they are in their lives."

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But maybe that message of persistence is present, in a curious way, in Baby Daddy too (along with all those age-old clich?s I mentioned earlier). These guys, after all, are caring for what feels to them like a strange, alien being. They have no clue what to do or how to do it. But they do it all the same. And with practice?several seasons of practice, if ABC Family has its way?they might get better at it.

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If that's not persistence, I don't know what is.

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