Pop psychology
If you went by the images on Father’s Day cards, you’d think most dads did nothing but play golf, grill burgers and relieve themselves. You’d think every dad was a beer-guzzling TV-remote freak whose seats of choice were a recliner or a toilet.
“It’s Ed’s favorite chair,” proclaims one woman to another on the cover of one such card. The chair, of course, is a commode, which the woman has lovingly set up in front of the television set.
Another card shows an image of a father fishing — or at least trying to fish — in a mountain lake. “You know, Dad,” the card says, “sometimes when the lake is quiet and the wind has died down and you listen very carefully … you can actually hear the fish laughing at you.”
In the current crop of Father’s Day cards, dads are ridiculed, taunted, insulted and mocked. They sleep a lot, belch a lot and fall on their faces a lot. Some cards portray them as clueless, the last to know anything about anything, especially what’s going on in the family.
“We’re either useless or we’re doing damage,” said Nick Spitzer, a father of one child and professor of folklore and cultural conservation at the University of New Orleans.
That’s not to say there aren’t any serious cards on the market. But honestly, have you ever seen one without a duck, ship, fish, map or timepiece?
“Do we have the ducks because of the interest in ducks or because it masculinizes the message ‘I love you?’ ” said Dr. Doug Walker, a New Orleans-area child psychologist and the father of two young children.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if a 12-year-old boy could pick out a Father’s Day card that is nothing but the message that says ‘I love you’ but without the ducks?”
Representatives of greeting card companies such as Hallmark and American Greetings insist such cards are out there. But if the truth be known, humor sells when it comes to dads.
“Funny cards are big for Father’s Day,” said Dan Weiss, Father’s Day program director at American Greetings, where humorous cards account for about 25 percent of all Father’s Day cards sold — a larger percentage than for any other holiday.
“Our top-selling humorous cards make fun of his mannerisms, his cooking skills and his lack of handyman ability. We are not real gentle with dad.”
Comical cards are equally popular at Hallmark, though the trend is more toward light humor than cards that are insulting, said Hallmark spokeswoman Rachel Bolton.
“We do a lot of research, and we have consumer demand for humor,” she said.
“But some of the cards that slam dad or make fun of dad don’t seem to do as well as the light humor.”
The research Bolton referred to is a year-round process that involves focus groups, demographic studies, online surveys and market tours to find out what consumers want in greeting card selection.
“It’s not an exact science,” she said, “but there is a tremendous amount of investment on our part to try to understand as much as humanly possible what consumers need and what they want.”
And one of the things their research has shown is that humor is a “safe” emotion to share on Father’s Day and that making Dad laugh is generally more acceptable than making him cry.
“My wife knows that I will at least take the time to read a funny card rather than pretend to absorb some sappy jargon that I certainly do not live up to,” said New Orleans father Sean Arrillaga.