"As the king goes, so goes the kingdom," recognizes Arthur in Excalibur.
OK —— I LOOOOVE knowing that my core principles are often politically INcorrect, so, "fellow" girls, try not to get your panties in a wad over the following. Think now – did Lorraine, when George was kind of a weenie, emerge as a stalwart career woman – harried but carrying on? No, actually, her life was destroyed and she was rendered ineffectual and pathetic. It's funny how, no matter how liberal and feminist minded Hollywood claims to lean, they actually GET IT. They understand on a basic fundamental level that it is the husband, the father, who makes or breaks a family.
Now there is no offense intended to single women families – women whose husbands died or abandoned them. My grandmother was a single mom who brought up her three children and struggled through the depression singlehandedly after her husband, my grandfather, died. I also have two friends who lost husbands to early death and soldiered on to raise their children alone.
To me those lone moms are heroes: keeping their families intact, earning a living, being the backbone of their children's lives all the while dealing with grief, loss of income, and spiritual challenges. But is that the way they WANTED it to be? My mother, to the day she died, mourned the fact she did not have a father while growing up. He died when she was 12. I have other friends who are mothers today, divorced, widowed, or alone in other ways. They persevere – and I respect them and thank God every day I did not have to raise my children without a stalwart husband at my side. But is that what these single matriarchs prefer? Do they find now that their husbands were irrelevant luxuries? Not the ones I know.
But what does the media try to convince us that they believe: that men are as useful to women as a bicycle is to a fish, thank you Gloria Steinham. Have you SEEN the shows Married with Children and The Simpsons? The fathers are — well, wastes of space would not be an overstatement, even though they stay with the family and continue to provide for them.
The mantra today is that women do not need men. Women's Lib, government welfare, commercials, movies, songs and TV shows attempt to treat the Dad as jokes – useless, unneeded baggage, or worse: alcoholic, abusive and better off gone. When in fact, if you watch closely, even in the media entertainments which denigrate the father, it is the Dad whose personality informs the family he creates.
A good father/husband, even when gone, leaves a legacy of strength. A bad one leaves his mark too, whether on the moral character, religious faithfulness, work ethic, or respect for the law. And this reality is reflected in the movie media, even seemingly against their own will, to trivialize the very person, for better OR worse, whose personality will primarily shape the persona of the children and wife either in their care or that they leave behind
Mary Poppins and The Pacifier