"Mr. Mom"

In the 1983 movie "Mr. Mom", Michael Keaton plays a corporate executive who is downsized - laid-off, in the vernacular of the day -- and, after being unable to find new work, decides to take on the traditionally female role of caregiver to he and his wife's (Teri Garr) young children.  She is offered a job in advertising, much more highly paid than is credible for someone who has been out of work for as long as she has, but it's Hollywood, so they write it the way they want.

Mr. Mom (1983) Trailer - YouTube
	www.youtube.com/watch?v=solr1W5idNYJan 10, 2008 - 1 min - Uploaded by depplover63 Hilarious! Michael Keaton rocks! "Wanna beer?" "It's 7 o'clock in the morning!" " Scotch?"

Believe it or not, this was pretty groundbreaking stuff back in 1983.  The stay-at-home Dad was virtually unheard of, and most conservatives were incredulous that such a thing could even occur, much less work.  And it really didn't work out very well for the Micheal Keaton character, either.  He struggles hilariously with appliances, is hit on by a curvaceous divorcee, forgets to pick up his children, and at one point just quits shaving, getting dressed -- he even starts popping beers at 7 a.m.  He feels underused and his self-esteem is in the toilet.  His wife, meanwhile, is not having a much better time of it.  Her kids have forgotten who she is, and her marriage is starting to crumble.

So now it's 2012.  "Mr. Mom" seems dated, right?  But I have a couple of friends who are stay-at-home Dads, and things have worked out okay for one, and not for the other.  One of my friends is also a part-time musician, playing local gigs.  He has a son and a daughter who are also musically talented, and his wife is a flight attendant.  They all seem fairly happy.  My other friend doesn't work at all outside of the home, and is raising two sons.  His wife was laid off a few years ago, and has struggled to find work that paid nearly as well as the old job.  She's gone half the week, which their younger son dislikes.  The older son is sullen, disrespectful to his father, and flunked out of college.  I've found myself wondering if a nonworking father can really be a role model to teenaged sons.  The old "Get a summer job or else" doesn't have much force when Dad doesn't work and goes off to the local gym to work out every day.  It doesn't seem fair -- lots of women do the same thing  -- but somehow it just doesn't seem to go down too well.  My friend has started to look like the Michael Keaton character lately.  I don't think he's drinking, but he's stopped shaving, and wears his bedroom slippers to Safeway.

This whole male-taking-on-female gender role thing has a long way to go.  "Mr. Mom" was released 28 years ago.  Seems like a long time, but we haven't come a long way, baby.

From June Cleaver to Murphy Browne

As part of the huge mass of humanity known as the baby boomers, I have had a front-row seat in viewing the enormous societal changes in the American landscape.  I was born in 1954, a time when gender roles in the U.S. were pretty much firm and fixed.  Women were homemakers and mothers, and men went out to work to support the family.  The television shows of the time - "Leave it to Beaver", "Father Knows Best", and even "Lassie" perpetuated the myth of the "ideal" family of that era.  The women who had found fulfillment and excitement working outside of the home during World War II were quickly sent back to domesticity -- usually inside a Playtex girdle.  Even among college-educated women, the choices were few.

Some of my peers look back with longing to that seemingly simpler time.  I am not one of them.  Rigid conformity was the order of the day, and to deviate from that conformity was to face certain social rejection.  Families depicted in the television shows of the era are white, heterosexual, and the shows themselves show a sanitized America that in reality did not exist.  The reasons behind the perpetuation of this myth are too complex to be addressed in a blog post.

Anger erupted in the sixties, and women and African Americans began to protest their enforced roles.  Television did begin to show women in roles other than that of domestic goddess, but generally the entertainment industry was slow to embrace societal change.  When the movie "An Unmarried Woman", starring Jill Clayburgh and Michael Murphy, came out in the 1970's, people were shocked to see a divorced woman actually find happiness and fulfillment after her philandering husband left her.  That was one of the first movies I can remember showing a woman actually owning her life, not depending on a man for her complete happiness.

Television lagged far behind.  Women were seen in roles as spy and cop - "Mod Squad", "Honey West", -  but the domestic goddess was an archetype television was reluctant to give up.   Even "The Mary Tyler Moore Show",  a seventies comedy about a single female journalist, portrayed Mary as ultimately marriage-seeking.   "Murphy Browne" was the pioneering woman of T.V. land.  Determinedly single, undomesticated, and an unwed mother, she defied all cultural stereotypes.  But she wasn't allowed to exist until the 1990's.

I like these times better.  "Modern Family" is an intelligent comedy showing the new face of the American family, and no one really thinks twice anymore about the concept of a working mother or a gay couple raising a family.  History will keep evolving, and hopefully  television will reflect the changes more quickly than in the past.