Even more importantly, when it came to negative portrayals, fathers were eight times more likely than mothers to be portrayed as incompetent and irresponsible parents. In addition, two-thirds of fathers on TV are married to the mothers of their children, helping to reinforce married fatherhood as the cultural ideal. Despite there being some good dads on television, however, the typical portrayal of fatherhood is one in which the father is involved with his children incompetent in his fathering. Even worse, when television wants to portray a bad parent, it almost always picks on the father. So what, you say, if the creators of prime time sitcoms and dramas find fathers better targets for their witty barbs than mothers.
Television is just entertainment.
Here's the big deal. At a time when nearly 24 million children are growing up without their fathers, we can ill-afford to broadcast so many incompetent and demeaning images of fatherhood into these children's homes. The implication of this study is not that television should renounce its entertainment role and become a purely didactic instrument whose purpose is to promote involved and responsible fatherhood. Television is meant to entertain, even to provoke. At the same time, however, television needs to become more aware of its power to shape social attitudes and not let jokes about paternal incompetence supersede an overriding theme of paternal importance in the lives of children.