When I was growing up and imagined life as a parent, my view was significantly different than the reality of today. I saw myself as the ideal Ward Cleaver father with perfectly behaved children that did nothing wrong other than occasionally breaking old lady Wilson’s window with an ill-thrown baseball.
Boy, was I wrong. I learned quickly that Ward Clever was a farce. He didn’t actually do any real fathering, except giving them Yoda-like advice about girls and cheating on their homework. I never saw him taking the kids to school or waking them up in the morning to get them dressed.
He never had to worry about his kids getting into trouble, Wally and the Beav never had a kicking fight because the Beav took away Wally’s rubber ball or stole a crayon. All Ward ever did was sit in his chair and read the paper. There were no Internet predators, dangerous lead paint-covered toys or The Bird Flu to think about.
In retrospect, Ward was a pretty awful father. Beaver comes in the house and Ward would say, “Where ya been, Beav?” Dude, you should have already known. Beav could have been fooling around with the girl across the street or smoking a pack of Pall Malls with Eddie behind the General Store.
There was no real interaction with the children or spending any real time with them. You never saw Ward sitting down with a book and reading to Beaver or help teach him about long division. Ward never shared stories about his youth and the things that he liked as a kid. It was all about the slippers, paper and comfy chair. Things never got tough for the Cleaver family. There were no economic downturns, no lost jobs, no foreclosure crisis. Ward never had to worry about shootings in schools or teen pregnancy.
In the end, I am glad I am nothing like Ward Cleaver. He lived in a perfect world filled with denial. He wouldn’t last 10 seconds in today’s society, and I bet he wouldn’t have lasted too long in the real 1950s society either.
Next time you are watching an old “Leave It to Beaver“ episode, don’t compare yourself to Ward Cleaver, Mike Brady or, in the women’s case, Carol Brady, because they are idealized creations from the mind of a outdated writer. You are a great parent even if your kids don’t act like the Beav and you don’t act like Ward. He was a tool anyway.
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