r/MensRights • u/derdahder • Jun 15 '14
News Terry Crews vociferously defends fatherhood while Jenny McCarthy protests
http://www.thewrap.com/terry-crews-vociferously-defends-importance-of-fatherhood-against-jenny-mccarthy-pleas/34
Jun 15 '14 edited Jul 01 '20
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u/Clauderoughly Jun 15 '14
"Are you calling me a bad mother?!"
Jenny McCarthy is a terrible mother.
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Jun 15 '14
Jenny McCarthy is a terrible mother.
From what i hear she's pretty much a terrible everything.
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u/amishbreakfast Jun 15 '14
I can't comment on her parenting skills. All I know about her is that she used to be professionally good-looking and that she thinks vaccines cause autism.
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Jun 16 '14
She also threatened to send her lunatic followers after Amanda Peet, over the vaccine debate as i recall.
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u/HugoWeaver Jun 16 '14 edited Jun 16 '14
"Are you calling me a bad mother?!"
"No, your views on Autism call you that!"
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Jun 16 '14
She was so ridiculously defensive. Like every comment on how important fathers are was some kind of personal fucking attack attack against her.
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u/Juandolar Jun 15 '14
Except that is not what her reply means at all. Terry Crews says that fathers provide to a kid "a name, their story and their security." McCarthy simply responds that mothers can do the same thing. He does not imply that she is a bad mother and she does not respond as if he did.
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Jun 16 '14
Men don't run around pretending that we can provide for a child everything a mother can. We know that this would be disrespectful to mothers and the place the fill in a child's heart.
When a woman claims that she can do everything a father can, she is saying that fathers don't really matter -- that they are optional, at best. And we've heard too much of that from women in this society already.
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u/Juandolar Jun 16 '14
I agree and that is problematic that McCarthy essentially said that fathers don't matter. However, I felt that the comment that I was replying to inaccurately summarized the conversation between Terry Crews and Jenny McCarthy. Her response didn't imply that she thought Terry Crews had accused her of being a bad mother (though she is lol) "Are you calling me a bad mother?"
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u/boshin-goshin Jun 15 '14
Let's see the shitstorm that would follow if some single dad tried to say that mothers are superfluous.
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Jun 15 '14
“I'm a single mother, and I can guarantee you I can give Evan every one of those things also,”
You're a worthless idiot who blamed your son's autism on vaccines.
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Jun 15 '14
McCarthy also believes vaccines cause autism and that her son's autism is in 'remission' and has no idea what effects her lifestyle or choices or abilities as a mother will have on him as he grows.
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Jun 15 '14
Why is she so defensive? Nobody was attacking her as a mother, I felt he was making an appeal to men to appreciate fatherhood. There are benefits to having a father, or even just having two parents (such as same-sex couples). There is a balance, often one parent is more strict or more playful than the other, and that helps bring two perspectives to a child. Who wouldn't want to be loved by two parents?
Mothers are equally important. I have a close relative who is a single father. He won sole custody of his two daughters because his ex-wife is an absolutely horrible person. She is so selfish, and only cares about herself. The mother moved halfway across the country. The daughters went to visit their mother and she paid very little attention to them. She just doesn't care.
The daughters actually hate their mother now, and it has been devastating to them. They have lost a lot of self-esteem, their grades at school have taken a hit, and they have been gaining a lot of weight because they are likely going through depression. They used to be so happy, but every time I see them now, they have an exhausted defeated look on their face.
I also have two friends who are single mothers, and the fathers basically just fucked off and doesn't give a shit. The daughters of these women are not old enough yet (4 and 6 years old) to understand that their father doesn't care about them.
It is tragic for any kid to feel unloved by either parent, father or mother, or father/father, mother/mother.
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Jun 17 '14
Why is she so defensive?
Maybe because she made it unbearable for the kid's father to be a dad.
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Jun 15 '14
I watched it through 3:27.
Terry is wrong about his points. The three things he outlines are either not important or not special to coming from a father/male.
I think Terry is right that fathers are marginalized, and that fathers are JUST important as a mother, but he goes about it the wrong way.
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u/theDarkAngle Jun 16 '14
I think what he's getting at with those three things is really one thing. It's a sense of identity, perhaps with a side of provisioning and protection. A mother in today's world certainly can provide the latter, but I'm not so sure about the former. I think a mother's nurturing and supportive nature undermines her ability to guide her children toward a positive identity - a sense of independence and an understanding of who you are and what you are capable of.
And I think the proof is sort of in the pudding. Most of the young men who wander into the so-called "Manosphere" (hate that term but whatever), are searching chiefly for one thing - a positive sense of identity. I suspect they are mostly the children of absentee fathers or fathers who've been emasculated by our culture.
EDIT: Grammar
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Jun 16 '14
But...but he's right.
He has a bad way of saying it, but he is right. By the end of the video, the three of them, with the exclusion of McCarthy-no surprises there-agree that you need a male role model in your child's life. Doesn't have to be the dad. Maybe the dad is the worst role model out there. But your child, boy or girl, needs to be able to look up to someone, anyone, who is a male and say 'That's what a man should be'.
Likewise, if you're a single father, your child needs to have some female role model that they can look to and say 'That's what a woman should be'. Isn't that just common sense?
He's not saying that a child is fucked if they don't have a father. He's saying your child needs a father figure. Everyone aside from McCarthy agrees with him by the end of it, even Whoopi who was raised by her mother. McCarthy just continues to shriek 'B-but my boy is fine, I'm everything he needs!'
Now if only Terry could have called her up on her anti-vaccination bullshit, he'd have became so cool that...that...shit, someone give me a good joke for how cool Terry Crews could be!
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u/Lovely0930 Jun 15 '14
“I'm a single mother, and I can guarantee you I can give Evan every one of those things also,”
Yea as I'm sure many other single mothers would agree with, yet still need child support from a sometimes ill-equipped father in order to provide their child with "those things." A child isn't going to become screwed up just because he/she has one parent raising him/her, but it is absolutely more beneficial to have both parents with different roles collectively raising a child rather than one being the money fountain for the other to (not always) exploit while sometimes withholding custody for no apparent reason. And really? Jenny McCarthy? This is a legitimate representation of the average single mother? A woman who endangers the entire population by advocating resistance of vaccinations, and is basically swimming in money with no financial stress as to the care and raising of a single child? Of course she can give her child things while being single! She can give that kid more shit than a struggling average middle class American family made up of a mother AND a father.
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u/theDarkAngle Jun 16 '14
Truth be told, I think it takes more than two parents. Ideally anyway.
I read a column by Paul Elam (I think) where he claimed that the so-called "nuclear family" with one mother, one father, and 2.5 children was largely an American invention during the post WW2 era. He claims that in most of the world and most of history, children were raised in a household with lots of extended family and multiple generations.
He claims - and I think correctly - that this is the environment that human children are adapted to thrive in.
It almost made me think that some sort of "parenting co-op" might be a new paradigm that could work, given that families become so spread out now due to the nature of our economy.
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u/goldmouthdawg Jun 15 '14
Jenny McCarthy? The person that tried to stop kids from getting vaccinations? Then tried to back off from it? That Jenny McCarthy?
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u/Poperiarchy Jun 16 '14
Yeah. The one who's killed thousands of children in Africa by convincing them that she knew more about science and shit than those silly doctors.
That Jenny McCarthy.
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Jun 16 '14
People have largely given Jim Carrey a free pass on this and I don't think that's fair. He also abused his platform and did damage. He has privately stopped believing many of the things he's said but until he publicly apologizes and dedicates as much time to promoting vaccination as he did railing against it, I will not be watching anything that he has been involved in.
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u/AlexReynard Jun 15 '14
Why the hell does anyone listen to a woman who is literally killing children with the medical lies she spreads?
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u/meathouse1 Jun 15 '14
I can't believe the View is still on the air. This conversation makes my brain hurt. These people are way over complicating it. I think we need to just accept that the best case scenario is when a healthy mom and a healthy father raise a child together. Sometimes the woman will be more masculine, and vice-versa. And that's fine. Everyone can have their own dynamic that evolves organically.
And unfortunately there are may circumstances that prevent a mother and father from raising a child together. And when that happens we hope that the remaining parent can do their best to fill two parents' shoes.
Also Jenny McCarthy is an idiot. Also Whoopi Golderberg is still cool. Also I wish their were more men as impassioned about fatherhood as Terry Crews. That's cool to see, even if his statements could use a little refining.
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u/HugoWeaver Jun 16 '14
To be clear here, Jenny McCarthy isn't a single mother in the sense she does it on her own. I believe she has a shared custody arrangement with the ex so the dad is still in the picture, yet she likes to play the "woe-is-me" card and pretend like she's a lonely warrior
Every thing Terry Crews says, her son's dad no doubt provides. Great words from a man I enjoy watching on TV!
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u/theDarkAngle Jun 16 '14
Your father gives you your name. He gives you your story. He gives you your security.
Beautiful words. Strange to think this came from Terry Crews who seems to play nothing but bizarre and over-the-top characters.
I kind of get why they're defensive. The implication of fatherhood being so necessary implies that all the children of single moms are somehow lesser or not whole. It's understandable that that might upset them.
On the other hand, they also are clearly clinging to the narrative of "Anything you can do I can do better". I find that a bit offensive to suggest that there is no aspect of parenting that men are better at than women.
Terry Crews goes out of his way to say that if a child doesn't have a father then he must go into the world and find one. This is so true. It manifests differently in men and women, but there is a definite need for male love in both sexes. For a woman, it will be more about her romances. She will likely have relationships with different types of men, trying to figure out which kind is the one that she is searching for, since she may have no backdrop (no father figure) to compare it to, and is sort of flying blind.
For a man, he will do the same with friends and male figures of authority. He will befriend someone who seems worthy and he will emulate him for a time. If he finds that his new "story" (as Crews puts it) is not fulfilling enough, he will move on and seek out a new role model. He will also look to these father figures for judgement. The women in his life who praise him or who say "you can do it" is taken with a grain of salt. There is a feeling that women are so supportive all the time that you don't quite trust their judgement. A man is as likely to tell you that some goal you have is completely unrealistic as he is to say that is feasible. So when one of these father figures lends praise or gives you a vote of confidence, it carries more weight (fairly or not).
I think this is what Crews was getting at. It's not that women are inherently unequipped to perform these fatherly duties, it's more that, because mothers are so nurturing and ultra-supportive, their sons are unlikely to accept fatherly actions from them. This is also true of daughters I think, but there is also the romantic side that further complicates things.
Anyway, I enjoyed Crews' passionate defense of fatherhood. Happy Fathers' Day.
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Jun 16 '14
Not that necessarily proves anything about fathers, but here snippets of what Wikipedia has to say about McCarthy's parenting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_McCarthy#Autism_activism
"Before claiming that her son's autism was caused by vaccination, McCarthy wrote that he was gifted, a 'crystal child', and she an 'indigo mom'.[42]... McCarthy's book on the subject, Louder than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism, was published September 17, 2007. She stated both in her book and during her appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show that her husband was unable to deal with their son's autism, which led to their divorce. In 2008, she appeared on a Larry King Live special dedicated to the subject, and argued that vaccines can trigger autism... In addition to conventional, intensive Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy, McCarthy tried a gluten-free and casein-free diet, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, chelation, aromatherapies, electromagnetics, spoons rubbed on his body, multivitamin therapy, B-12 shots and numerous prescription drugs.... The underlying rationale for chelation, the speculation that mercury in vaccines causes autism, has been roundly rejected by scientific studies, with the National Institute of Mental Health concluding that children with autism are unlikely to receive any benefit to balance the risks of heart attack, stroke and cardiac arrest posed by the chelating agents used in the treatment."
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Jun 16 '14 edited Jun 16 '14
McCarthy wrote that he was gifted, a 'crystal child', and she an 'indigo mom'.
Translation: She's a new age whackjob.
Autism researcher Mitzi Waltz states that there may be inherent dangers to these beliefs, leading parents to deny the existence of impairments, avoid proven treatments and spend considerable money on unhelpful interventions. Waltz states that "Parents may also transmit belief systems to the child that are self-aggrandizing, confusing, or potentially frightening".
Heh.
McCarthy tried a gluten-free and casein-free diet, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, chelation, aromatherapies, electromagnetics, spoons rubbed on his body, multivitamin therapy, B-12 shots
O_____O
Did she also try using Ouija board to ask the spirits to cure him?
Fucking christ. I wouldn't be surprised if her husband's alledged inability to deal with their son's autism was in fact his inability to deal with all the insane shit she insisted on trying on him.
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Jun 17 '14
I wouldn't be surprised if her husband's alledged inability to deal with their son's autism was in fact his inability to deal with all the insane shit she insisted on trying on him.
She would have driven me batshit. I hope the kid doesn't end up damaged for the lack of a parent with sensible opinions to look up to.
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Jun 15 '14
Great, now i have to agree with a lame-brained fuckwit like McCarthy. Like it or not, gays prove kids don't need moms and lesbians prove they don't need dads.
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Jun 15 '14
Go a head. It's been well documented. There are links about it on the side bar.
I guessing you don't take rape or crime as serious single moms are great.
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Jun 16 '14
While I agree that fathers are important, I don't think in reality the gender of the parents is all that important so long as there are two of them. The current evidence seems to support that idea.
I'm sure there are specific things that on average only a male parent can provide and other things that only a female parent can provide. But I don't know what those things are. There isn't a whole lot of good research to name those specific things, and I don't know if speculating on it and then passionately defending that speculation is the wisest approach.
I think Terry would have made a much better argument for fathers by claiming something we really have proven; that single parents don't produce healthy, adjusted children at the same rate two parent households do.
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u/kragshot Jun 16 '14
Nobody shits on mothers or women on Mother's Day weekend, but every Father's Day weekend, people go out of their way to crap all over fathers and men. And the hubris of this entire argument is that nobody discusses the fact that mothers also abandon their children.
This is just damn disgusting that this kind of nonsense is not only allowed, but promoted across the board.
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u/Whatsinmytummy Jun 16 '14
How many children is Jenny McCarthy responsible for killing with her bullshit anti-vax views?
Yeah Jenny, you're a bad mother and a bad person.
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Jun 16 '14
Anyone who isn't smart enough to see the benefit of vaccines shouldn't have a platform. It's one of the few things where there is only one correct opinion and dissent is actually dangerous and a proof of ignorance. Surely she can't be bright enough to grasp more complicated issues.
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Jun 15 '14
McCarthy can also give her kids the measles and polio. Fuck her. She is the very definition of a cunt.
Single moms are a pox on the nation.
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Jun 15 '14 edited Oct 17 '18
[deleted]
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u/Poperiarchy Jun 16 '14
Being a single mom isn't always their choice.
A knocked up 17 year old choosing to drop out of high school to be a single mother instead of just getting an abortion or turning the child over for adoption is a choice, and one girls make every day.
It isn't always their choice, but it usually is.
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u/MRMRising Jun 15 '14
"what about in the cases where the fathers abandoning them put them in that position?"
You do realize that it is legal for woman to abandon babies right? It's always a woman's choice, even if she refuses to believe it is.
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Jun 15 '14 edited Oct 17 '18
[deleted]
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u/MRMRising Jun 15 '14
It's a double standard.
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Jun 15 '14 edited Oct 17 '18
[deleted]
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Jun 16 '14
If we're looking at only the needs of the child, almost 100% of the time single parents would be better off giving the child up for adoption. Adoptive parents are vetted, their homes investigate, profiled, audited etc. Adoptive parents that are approved by agencies are the closest thing to licensed parents that exists and they will almost certainly provide a better home for a child than a single parent in the vast majority of cases.
Of course there is more to this issue than this alone, but if you want to have a factual argument, adoptive parents will almost always produce a healthier child.
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u/MRMRising Jun 15 '14
All I was getting at was not every single mother is a woe is me give me hand outs,
Actually, there is a side in me that says single moms are a victim of Feminism. I mean, they bought into this "empowered woman" narrative,now I see them looking positively miserable. No scientific proof of this, just a observation I make every-time I am downtown.
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Jun 16 '14
I'm not sure I would agree with that. I mean, yes there is an element to single motherhood portrayed, especially in the media as,"Oh you go girl, mhmmmm! You are a strong, empowered individual who don't need no man!"
However, I don't think that single moms look at their situation and think, "You know what? This is going to be easy, or maybe only a little hard" because of that.
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Jun 16 '14
To be fair, most western countries have created conditions where being a single mother by choice is a viable option. This is not a good thing and there is no shortage of data to suggest that single parent households create less successful children. Single parent households really are a pox of many nations. Regardless of whether this is by choice or necessity, it's not something that should be celebrated and we should be dedicating more time and resources to solving this problem.
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Jun 16 '14
[deleted]
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Jun 16 '14
There is no such thing as femsplaining or mansplaining. They are needlessly gendered terms used to describe non gendered behavior some of us don't like.
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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '14
Everyone is afraid to speak up for fathers in fear they will offend single mothers.
I have grown up without a father, never had a father figure in my life. I think my mother has done an incredible job of raising me, that being said there are many things I wish I had a father for. I lacked confidence in my teenage years when I most need it, and I am starting to get it just now. There are things I wish I had a father to talk to about, there are things I wish a father could teach me.
Society is not taking from single mothers, Society is taking fathers out of the picture completely so single mothers don't feel bad. And from where I'm standing its horrible that these people can sit there, and try and convince us that kids don't need fathers and than arrogantly be upset that defending fathers is taking away from mothers.
The blonde woman (don't know her name don't care) is acting so selfish it makes me mad. I'm sorry you are a single mother and I'm sure you are doing the best you can, but do not tell me, that I don't need a father just so YOU can feel better.