Learning The Lessons Of TV Fatherhood
It sounds like the title to an awful, self-confessional memoir: Everything I learned about fatherhood, I learned from TV. But, as Father's Day approaches, this TV nerd finds himself reflecting on exactly that, the surprising lessons about fatherhood and parenting that came to me from iconic figures on the small screen.
My own father isn't with us anymore, and I loved him a lot. But he and my mother split before I was born, and during my formative years, it was mostly me and Mom against the world. Any sense of what it might feel like to have a father close by. These days, when TV shows like and offer lots of different takes on black family and fatherhood, it might be tough to imagine how rare and important it was for a young black kid to see in 1974.
