I love this commercial everytime I see, because its just so cute, without being too cheesy like those say no to drug public service announcements. I caught myself sitting on the couch one day singing, “those boys are much too much.” I like the fact that this shows a father daughter relationship, because those relationships are extremely important. Especially for black women, too many of us don’t have father figures at home. I think that all girls; white, black, asian, indian-whatever their ethnicity need strong male role models. It is these relationship that shape the relationships that we have with males for the rest of our lives. You find some women looking to fill a fatherly void and you sometimes wonder, “Well, what is she doing with him,” or sometimes you see the girl searching for it by bed hopping, looking for that male to take care of her. We see these tarnished relationships reflected in different ways every day. The same is with boys. Many boys need to have a male role model to show them how to fix things, how to be a man. Instead of having to grow up with this innate sense to be the “man of the house.” Like Janice Huber (The first Aunt Viv from Fresh Prince of Bel Air) said in her recent Essence.com article “I feel like there’s so much decadence in the world right now. I feel like our children have really been corrupted with sex and violence and the need to fit in [by adopting] the whole thug-wannabe, gang-wannabe [mentality]. The role models out there are really dangerous,” this is true. She is not speaking from a place of older versus younger. I am young and I believe this. So I try to be a role model for my younger cousins. But I do find it kind of sad that there has to be an initiative to promote fatherhood. It is sad, and frankly appalling. I mean, even like Barack Obama said during his fathers day speech, “any fool can make a baby.” And this goes for women too… any one can give birth, but it takes a true soul to stand up and be a parent. On the website for the National Fatherhood Initiative I saw that they were more than just public service announcements. They offer a variety of tools and resources for fathers in various settings. They had community based programs, healthcare programming, school programming military programming, corrections and christian based programming along with information for balancing work and family. I wonder how many people, who have children, have seen those commercials and really visited their website. It makes me no difference because I don’t have a child, but if I did…and they had the motherhood initiative, I’d check them out.
Check them out here.