While the original ad was meant to pull at your heart strings and get you to call your mom to thank her for being both a culinary chef of the highest order as well as a trained medical professional — I have a sneaking suspicion that my mom didn’t go to a tier-one medical school because her response to everything from flesh wounds to broken bones was to just dump hydrogen peroxide all over everything and hope it bubbled — this parody is meant to poke fun at being a dad by pointing out that dads, unlike moms, basically do nothing but talk about walking up hills both ways, hitching their pants up to their nipples (true), and telling the world’s worst jokes.
I get that this is supposed to be hilarious — and I did chuckle a little at how cheesy it was — but it just makes me think that maybe these kinds of ads shouldn’t exist at all. Yes, the first video was manipulative and awkward, but this ad is just as bad in its stereotyping. I know that there are definitely dads who don’t do very much, but many dads are amazing caregivers. And maybe instead of debating whose job is harder we should just focus on the fact that parenting, like any other job, is incredibly difficult.
The “humor” of these ads is pitting “dad” roles against “mom” roles. But the real ways parents (and other primary caregivers) care for children is much more complex than the stereotypes associated with these traditional roles. Someone should make an ad about that, but it probably wouldn’t be as catchy.