Rebuilding Rob

Before I get started today, I would like to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans, wherever you may be. To the rest of the world, I’d like to say “it’s Friday Eve!” Let’s all make it a good weekend…

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What is a gender role or stereotype you really don’t like?

When we discuss ‘gender roles’ and ‘stereotypes,’ the conversation often focuses on what society expects of women. However, there are two deeply frustrating stereotypes about men that I feel compelled to challenge today, and which I truly cannot stand.

Men as The Bread-Winner Machine

I don’t want this to come across the wrong way, because I know when people inaccurately take this to the extreme and think that I’m OK with men being deadbeats, because I’m not.

But there is definitely a gender stereotype not only men should be the providers or the “bread winners” but that they should do so without complaint. Some people think that being the breadwinner and being a “man of the house” should be basically what defines that in traditional marriage. I couldn’t disagree more.

Maybe it’s just me. I’ve had times in my life where that role was put upon me. Likewise, there were situations where I don’t feel like either of my partners really gave a damn about my feelings. The expectation was that I was supposed to put on a brave face, not letting anything bother me because I was supposed to have everything completely under control.

The truth is, men don’t always have everything under control. We have fears and insecurities, just like everybody else. But no one wants to hear about that. Our jobs annoy us, but no one wants to hear us complain about our work. The rationale behind that is that if a man complains about his job, he might decide to quit and become a deadbeat.

I’ve used this quote before, and I will use it here again. Chris Rock once said “only women, children, and dogs are loved unconditionally. Men are loved for what they provide.“ He was absolutely right. the moment that a man slips, the moment that he falters even in the slightest, the moment that it appears that he may not be able to provide – however, temporary – he is cast aside. In most modern marriages, the expectation is that men are machines.

That needs to end.

Perhaps it’s just me. Perhaps I’m just not cut out to sacrifice my personality, my passions, and simply become that breadwinner machine. My previous experiences have been far too enormous of a strain on my mental health.

The Bumbling Dad trope

I’ve written before about the Bumbling Dad Trope HERE. I feel like television, and to a lesser extent movies, are full of these stereotypical portrayals of dads as idiots. Shows of the 90s and early 2000s, in particular (Home Improvement, The King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, and to an extent Malcolm in the Middle) feature dads who are reduced to be utterly incompetent buffoons. So much, in fact that it has become something of a comedic fallback, a trope, if you will. When writers don’t want give any good comedic material to Dads, they turn the characters into idiots.

Yes, I get it, I know that the joke about a dad not knowing how to change his baby’s diaper is timeless. The truth is, I grew up with Mother telling me that she could count – on one hand – the number of times that The Old Man changed diapers for me, Phred, and Guillaume, and still have fingers left over. In the 70s and early 80s, this went back to the idea of men being the emotionless bread- winners. They weren’t expected to know how it is take care of day-to-day tasks involving raising their children because they were too busy earning a living at the office. It simply wasn’t expected to be in their wheelhouse.

For the life of me, I still think this Bumbling Dad Trope was a side effect from the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s. Our culture acts very much like a pendulum. When things go too far to the extreme in either direction, the culture lashes back in the extreme opposite direction. For decades, we had TV shows like Father Knows Best where the dad was the end all, be all source of intellect, wisdom and rationality. The backlash of that was women being seen as the heart and soul of the nuclear family. Men were just there to provide comic relief as idiots.

I think there is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, though. As I’m rehashing The Idiot Dad Trope today, I’m having a very difficult time thinking of many television shows where this trope still exists. That could be because it’s not as prevalent as it used to be, or it could be because I don’t watch as much television as I used to. Either way, I am encouraged.

The problem with The Bumbling Dad Trope is that too many people think that television is a reflection life. To make matters worse, it also ties in to the idea of men as the Breadwinner Machine. They don’t have feelings. They don’t have emotions. They don’t want to take care of the kids. Give them their beer, their football and man-child toys. As long they put food in the table, nothing else matters These thought processes suck the life out of men. This is why I’m so gun-shy about getting married again; not because I don’t want a family, but because I don’t want to viewed as a product.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related (and perhaps, not-so-related) posts:

• Acknowledge Me: The Simple Art of Being Seen
• Rob’s Retro Movie Review: This is Spinal Tap (1984) – The Movie That Scaled to Eleven
• A Death in the Family (And My Disposable Income): My Life in Comics
• The Supporting Cast: Navigating the Eras of Male Friendship
• Life is What Happens: A Look Back at My Non-Existent 2025 Vision

AI art created with Google Gemini

The article “Beyond the Breadwinner: Why I Hate the Man-as-Machine Stereotype” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.