What do our jokes tell us about ourselves?

I was watching television the other day when a commercial for Friendly's came on. A confident, proud father comes on and shows off a baseball to the server. "I caught this at the game today!" He proclaims. Then his child pipes up, "Actually, dad dropped it. Mommy is the one who caught it." Everyone smiles but the father who blushes and looks sheepish.

Amusing, right? Maybe. It is certainly a cultural standard for America at present. The braggart dad shown up by a super-mom is all over the television as a way to appeal to women. And it has extended now to even commercials and shows intended to appeal to men. (King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Malcolm in the Middle come to mind.) "Come on," We seem to be saying to ourselves, "We all know that men are empty-headed blowhards, and it is really the women who hold the family together. They can't help it. It is just part of the male experience."

It struck me this week how much this idea has permeated our culture. It is a standard joke you see in commercials, hear on the street, and even hear from the pulpit. It is a standard situation in our dramas. (When was the last time you saw a successful father in the movies who was not either a sports coach or a buffoon?) We are told from all sides that men are weak, boastful creatures who can not be relied upon. Rather, it is the women in the household who are to be trusted. It is Mom who is always there. It is the woman who is on-time, on-budget, on-topic, and on-the-ball.

I know that some of this is simply a reaction to the images of pre-feminist American, where the man was idealized and the woman was seen as merely "the weaker sex." Cultures never stop on a dime, and turn from one extreme to a balanced view. Rather, they go from one extreme to the other before finally finding a happy medium somewhere in between.

But I have to ask what damage we are doing while we unthinkingly nurture this new extreme view of men and women. Increasingly, men are abandoning their families, divorcing their wives (or being divorced by them), and leaving the raising of children to the woman. Increasingly, men are not even getting married but either bouncing from woman to woman, or embracing the "living together" lifestyle so long as it is convenient. We see this as a problem - a social problem of wide impact - but we don't look at ourselves and see how we are encouraging this trend. By living with this cultural joke, by laughing at it and retelling it, we are reinforcing this standard. We are telling men "Don't try to be the strong, good image from the past. You can't achieve it, anyway. You're a man and men are fools." We are saying to the world, "Do not expect greatness from men in the family realm. They are just empty braggarts, and only a woman can truly be great there."

We all try to exceed the expectations of those around us if we are challenged. But if we are told it is okay to fail, we are happy to do so. After all, it is so much easier.