Fox Television recently announced a new reality show called “Bad Dads.” The show is about collection agencies going after men who are delinquent on their child support payments. There’s been a flurry of protests against this show. Male issues leader Glenn Sacks has been one of the leaders of the protests. Touched off by a post on his blog and fueled by his supporters, the mainstream media, and others, Fox is under heavy pressure to cancel this upcoming show.
I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.
I come from the background of having a father who skipped out and refused to pay child support. My mother had to go to court and eventually have his wages garnished. In addition, after that happened my father moved and didn’t inform the court where he was so the wage garnishments stopped for a number of years.
I think that “Bad Dads” could help track down some of these men and force them to do their duty.
Now, perhaps I would have a different perspective if my mother had been financially well off, but I grew up poor. I worked and contributed my income to the household finances from the time I was 14 years old. I made it into college, luckily, but had to go into serious debt to pay for it.
While Glenn Sacks makes the argument that this show unfairly portrays men and that you’d never see a show like this about women, it is absolute truth that there are a lot of men out there who don’t take care of their responsibilities.
I’ve written here at AGoodHusband about how negatively men are portrayed in the media. It sickens me. As a product of a delinquent father however, I have a strange emotional reaction to this show.
I’m really not sure that it’s a bad thing. What do you think?
