Bad Dads TV Show - Going Too Far?
There’s a new reality TV show (maybe) coming to FOX that has many a single parent in an uproar - and for good reason. According to Reuters, “The network has ordered a pilot in which an avenger of penniless single mothers hunts down deadbeat dads and forces them to pay child support.”
Ok. I know there are a lot of men out there who aren’t paying child support. For every down-and-out mom with a tale of woe there are ten others with even worse stories, I’m sure. I’m definitely one of the lucky single moms in this respect; my son’s father - although absent from his life - pays child support like clockwork.
But do we really need a show where unassuming men are, literally (again, from Reuters), “ambushed”, but for a “noble cause”? Do the children of these men need to see their fathers being shamed, humiliated and who knows what else on national television? And what on earth will happen in the schoolyard? It reminds me of a political cartoon that has two kids yelling at each other. The caption read something like, “My Dad is more absent than YOUR Dad!”
I understand the intentions are good. Single mothers (and dads) need financial support to raise their children, and one-parent families who have been abandoned by one parent are becoming an epidemic. But if it takes a community to raise a child, do we really need our communities to air the dirty laundry so publicly? I think not.
March 4th, 2009 at 3:54 am
as the grown child of a dead beat Dad I say yes the kids should see their father humiliated. I was very aware that my father was enjoying trips and cars and multiple homes while my mother worked ridiculous hours and had no time or energy left to be a mother at the end of the day. I would have welcomed some justice!