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Today, especially since we are just hours away from Mother’s Day, we need to see that moms are equipped to do important things dads simply are not equipped to do—and we need to affirm our mothers for doing them.
Not many decades ago, people understood these things, even intuitively. Before Father Knows Best (FNB) was a television show, it was a regular radio program. Robert Young played the Father, Jim Anderson, on both radio and television. Be forewarned: If you get all bent out of shape about the title, you’ll miss out. FKB portrayed Jim Anderson’s flaws as well as his strengths.
On Thursday, May 18, 1950, an episode titled “Betty’s Screen Test” aired. It’s available for download here. Hear Robert Young’s tribute to mothers in the following one-minute, eight-second clip.
We can readily affirm that today, we would frame some of the statements made in this episode in ways different from how they were framed in 1950. In Robert Young’s tribute to mothers, for example, we wouldn’t use the world “plain.” But we know what Robert Young and Ed James, the writer of the script, meant; and we are foolish to get hung up over how Jim Anderson said what he said. His statement should be taken in its entirety.
We must never disparage the woman who chooses motherhood as being less important, or as doing less important work, than the woman who holds a career full time. Some mothers must work outside the home and be full-time mothers too, and they also deserve accolades.
Copyright © 2021 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.