Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look in an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Well recently in the New York Times pop culture critic Amanda Hess argued that the immensely popular Australian

children's cartoon, Bluey, is problematic.

According to Hess, the cartoon offers an over-idealistic portrayal of parenting, especially of fathers. Not only is Bluey's puppy dad

Bandit, quote, a good father, he is a fantasy when crafted to appeal to adults as much as

children, end quote. Bandit seems even omnipresent in the seven minute episodes, Hess complained, too often

playing with his daughters, too often doing the housework.

He, and I quote again, represents a parent freed of drudgery, one whose central responsibility is delighting his kids, end quote.

Now the reason why this positive portrayal of dads in Bluey is a bad thing has something to do with what former president George W Bush once called the soft bigotry of low expectations.

See, Haas is not really arguing here that cartoon dads shouldn't be good dads, but only that if they're too good, well then real life dads could

feel guilty. And real life kids with absent or abusive dads could feel even worse. In other words,

if everyone does not mean a high bar, we should lower it.

And a strange sense, of course,

Hess is making a case here that dads in fact matter,

which they do.

Craving a dad who's consistently present, attentive and loving

reflects something about who we are, how we were made, what we need, and

whether we receive these things or not.

We have this craving because it's built into the fabric of reality.

We might wish and often repeat that men and women are interchangeable and therefore moms and dads were too.

But our own hearts say otherwise.

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