Gender Roles exist for Parents too!

From now on I will be starting every blog post with a quote:

“Stock male characters, especially those who happen to be fathers, are often shown to be hyper-reserved when it comes to emotions. They won’t cry, and they won’t hug or kiss their kids in public. They sometimes have trouble just telling their kids they love them. This idea that dads are (or should be) “masculine,” and thus should be stoic creatures, is a stereotype that needs to change for all men. We need to stop teaching males that they need to “man up” and not show emotion, and we need to stop teaching them that showing emotion is a sign of femininity and, worse that femininity is something bad.”
― Sarah Khan

When people talk about gender roles they typically assume that the topic is going to center around children. The usual, don't reprimand your son for liking barbies or don't force your daughter to dress in pink. The conversation, however, usually ends before discussing what gender roles are in place for the people who are raising the children. Gender roles for parents still exist and are constantly perpetuated by the media. In addition to the fact that men grow up believing that they either have to be completely masculine or face public ridicule, men who are fathers are portrayed as blithering idiots by both common stereotypes as well as by the media. 

Take this advertisement for example, the poster suggests that dads are the ultimate test to see whether a product really is easy to use. This is equivalent to saying that simply because of their gender, men are incapable of preforming one of the most basic tasks necessary for being a new dad: putting on a diaper. This is an absurd stereotype that pokes fun of a father's inability to nurture. This is extremely detrimental to not only the father's themselves, but their children as well. If a child sees their father as nothing more than an unemotional brick, they are sure to not grow close with them. A man is completely deprived of a close bond with his child simply because of what traditional media and gender norms dictate he do as the father figure. In the piece "Arm Wrestling with my Father" by Brad Manning, Manning's father is portrayed as a walking stereotype instead of a full, rounded human being. He is unemotional, unattached to his son, and his inability to communicate with his son using language, while tragic, is in fact the basic message projected to the world by media. All of these messages are being subconsciously absorbed into the human psyche and are slowly pressuring men to act and look a certain way, and in Manning's father's case, to parent a certain way.