POSITIVITY, a character, values, morality, and courage of parents movie review of the movie DADS for people who praise parenthood, want PEOPLE to do a better job of parenting, want to be better informed, and who want to be more well-rounded by Gary Smolker, Parent, Grandparent, Movie Reviewer, Values Critic, Social Commentator and Trial Attorney

GENETICALLY SPEAKING, EVERYONE HAS A FATHER.

DADS is a 87 minute documentary film in which Hollywood Celebrity dads Judd Apatow, Will Smith, Jimmy Fallon, Neil Patrick Harris, Kenan Thompson, Jimmy Kimmel, Ken Jeong, Conan O’Brien Patton Oswalt, Hasan Minhaj, Ron Howard, and additional fathers living in the United States, Brazil and Japan, as well as Bryce Dallas Howard, make the point:

• There is no rite of passage for dads – no baby showers
• New fathers are ill equipped – no instruction manual or classes for new fathers
• These fathers do their best.
• These men get great joy from their children.

THE CREATION AND PRODUCTION OF THIS MOVIE WAS FUNDED by organizations who promote parental leave for fathers.

REPORT FROM JAPAN

Some films make people feel their deepest emotions.

This is such a film.

A Japanese man who lives in Japan reported:

• A man who doesn’t work in Japan is considered a drop out.
• He was diagnosed having a disease which made it impossible for him to work.
• He wanted to commit suicide.
• When he told his wife of his sickness, his wife begged him, “Please continue to live for me.”
• He then became a full-time father.
• Being a full-time father transformed him.
• He became cheerful for the first time in his life.
• While being a full-time father constantly interacting with his child, he cried tears of joy for the first time in his life.
• After many yearly check-ups, his physician told him, “Your illness is gone.”

I want to be a well-informed parent.

I HAVE THREE DAUGHTERS AND A FRIEND WHO CRITICIZES ME FOR MY REFUSAL TO TAKE STATINS TO LOWER CHOLESTEROL

I recently read:

“Middle-aged women, in most countries, are encouraged to get regular mammograms.  But breast cancer is really rare. Just under 0.5 percent of women who get a mammogram actually have the disease.  Looking for breast cancer is therefore a haystack search.

“Epidemiologist Joann Elmore recently calculated just what this means. Imagine she said, that a group of radiologists gave a mammogram to 100,000 women. Statistically, there should be 480 cancers in that 100,000. How many will the radiologists fined? 398. Believe me, for a task as difficult as reading a mammogram, that ‘s pretty good. ”

“But in the course of making those correct diagnoses, the radiologists will also run up 8,957 false positives.”

“Now suppose you want to do a better job of spotting cancers.  Maybe getting 398 out of 480 cases isn’t good enough.  Elmore did a second calculation, this time using a group of radiologists with an extra level of elite training. These physicians were very alert, and very suspicious.  They correctly identified 422 of the 480 cases – much better! But how many false positives did that extra suspicion yield? 10,947. An extra 2,000 healthy women were flagged for a disease they didn’t have and potentially exposed to treatment they didn’t need.  The highly trained radiologists were better at finding tumors not because they were more accurate.  They were better because they were more suspicious.  They saw cancer everywhere”. 

“If you are a woman, which group of radiologists would you rather have read your mammogram? Are you more concerned about the tiny chance that you have a cancer that will be missed, or the much larger probability that you will be diagnosed with a cancer you don’t have? There’s no right or wrong answer to that question. Different people have different attitudes toward their own health, and to risk. Looking for something rare comes with a price.”

Quote from “Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell, published by Little, Brown & Company in 2019.

WHAT THEY DID SAY

None of the dads said anything about what their children should be taught about what takes to survive independently, or what their children should be taught about anything.

They did say:

• FATHERHOOD is the realization you aren’t the most important person in the world.
• Being a father gives you a purpose in life, makes your life meaningful.
• Fathers need to provide their children with love, safety, security, and an example to follow.
• My children taught me to be authentic.
• There is nothing more amazing than seeing your kids evolve.
• A good gardener helps the seed be what the seed is ment to be. A father is a master-gardener. He doesn’t want a rose to be an oak. 
• Being a father is winning the lottery.
• You are only as happy as is your family.
• You won the lottery. Ask yourself: What kind of example to you project?

SIDE COMMENT CONCLUSION

Many lawyers, in big law firms, making lots of money, complain their children hate them.

When you are understood, it is sweet and precious.

Gary Smolker, Parent, Grandparent, Movie Reviewer, Values Critic, Social Commentator, and Trial Attorney.

Copyright © 2019 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved