Before we go further, have you seen the advert? If not, here you go:

Opinions vary as to whether this is offensively sexist or whether such labels are merely the result of ‘political correctness gone mad.’ However, what is being depicted is pretty unambiguous, especially thanks to the “behind every Great Christmas, there’s mum” tagline at the end: Christmas is the result of Mum working very hard and (by inference) Dad being generally useless, not up to scratch and oblivious of her efforts. It falls squarely into what The Mary Sue terms Dumb Man Commercials, whereby in order to appeal to the (presumed) female audience, the advertisers present men as foolish when compared to the power of womankind – if the power of womankind is limited to, say, cleaning an oven.

Now, lookit, there’s quite enough sexism going on at this time of year what with the pink aisle full of plastic dolls and retailers emblazoned with gender-segregated gifts without the whole of Christmas being laid firmly and squarely on the shoulders of women and negating the role of anyone else in the fulfilment of annual joy. No pressure, love.

This isn’t really a post about lambasting the ASDA advert – many people have done that, and more eloquently too. What it is about is advertisers’ perception of who we are as people, and whether that matches up to how we really are and how we think of ourselves.

Given the results of the recent census, we know that households such as the one depicted in the advert are not in the majority in the UK – far more people either live alone or are lone parents. So the assumption of “Mum” being the lynch pin for the “average” Christmas in the UK is not a reflection of reality.

There will be many families who rely on Dad, or another relative. There will be many Christmases spent amongst friends, or as a couple without children (like my own Yuletide will be). There will also be many Christmases in the UK that people spend alone – either through positive choice or sad circumstances. Lots of people don’t celebrate Christmas at all, of course. But I am absolutely not going to get into a discussion of religion as well as politics.

Well, not for this post.

This is the sort of Found Feminsim I might like the best.

Have you ever seen anything more beautiful in your whole life?

The series is all about being able to showcase positive change in our society, to highlight all the good work that is being done to make the universe a better place for everyone by bringing down all the shitty, stupid barriers and obstacles that mean if we present as a certain gender we can/can’t/must/must not/do/do not delete-as-appropriate bullshit where we all feel we have to behave in a particular way.

We don’t. We shouldn’t have to. Feminism is all about not falling for this nonsense.

My ovaries do not compel me to buy pink products. If I wear a skirt on Tuesday I am not inherently more “female” than when I was wearing trousers on Monday.

And dear, sweet reader: just because a person has the capacity to get pregnant and give birth does not mean that they are then automatically and by crushing biological imperative the only person capable of looking after that child.

So I give to you this offering. A sign in Holland Park that lifted my heart, coming as it does from the heartland of nice, yummy mummy middle class London. A space where Dads can go and do the stuff that babies need. Y’know. The wiping, cleaning, icky stuff that they don’t put on the tube adverts for IVF. The real stuff. The day-to-day stuff. The stuff you really need someone to do if you are little and can’t go to the bathroom for yourself. Caring stuff. Because Dads should be given every and all opportunity and support in public places to be as caring and nurturing as Mums. That’s one of the things that feminism is all about.

I am not really a baby person. I am, however, fully in favour of the idea that if we (as a society) are going to have them, then we should make sure they are properly looked after. Which means giving men as much as women the opportunity to be amazing parents.

And to change the nappies. Which I hear is important.

Now, as the opening music rose I’m sure you cringed as much as I did. But when our enterprising lemonade maker launched into a different language, did you smile instead? There’s a tendency to ignore or overlook the marketing campaigns of big business and to assume that nothing they ever do can possibly be for the good. After all, they’re trying to sell us products and services, right? But marketing tries to make us empathise, and to capture our hopes, dreams and ideas for the future. It also guns for mass market appeal.

So here’s the idea: a clever little girl can grow up to be a multinational business leader.

The lemonade stand metaphor is an interesting one, and certainly well used in the fields of business and commerce. It’s used as the basis of training games for pricing models, economics theory (there’s a nice Calvin and Hobbes one here), maths tutorials and host of other skills needed to run your own business. It’s not just a cute thing that kids do; it’s also about how we introduce children, boys and girls, to the world of work.

The models we use for “work” within childhood play set the tone for how we expect children to behave and the roles they might grow into. I remember books on work with pictures of male pilots and female air hostesses. Mothers cleaning the house whilst fathers returned from work. Some of these have since been pleasingly updated, including the Richard Scarry books.

I was told by a friend of mine (who was a boy) that he couldn’t play with pots and pans because they were “for girls”. We must have been about six. Even though we were actually a rock band. With wooden spoons instead of drumsticks. Maybe we were a girl band.

Anyway.

I like the fact that this campaign could have just as easily been done with a young boy and his mother, but instead we have a girl and her dad. A decisive, smart and multi-lingual little girl. Her loving and supportive father, blown away by his daughter’s abilities.

Future businesswoman of the year, perhaps?

But feminists come in many shapes and sizes and while the froo-froo shit doesn’t bother me in weddings (although really, someone tell me why you would spend money on wedding favours instead of booze?), there are a couple of traditions that I’m having trouble swallowing. I’m talking about being given away. This is actually really stressful for me, because I’m torn between duty/love and wanting to remain true to myself. It’s tradition that the bride’s father gives her away. Sometimes, if he isn’t available, it’s her brother or uncle, or her mother. In Jewish tradition it is both her parents. And I sodding hate the entire idea.

It’s only in recent years that we primarily started marrying for love. Back in Ye Olden Dayes^TM, people married for financial security, or because their families had arranged it. Brides came with dowries of land, money, and/or resources and grooms came with significant presents to her family. To show that the head of the family (the dad) was satisfied, the bride would be handed over on her wedding day by her father to show that she was no longer his property and was now the responsibility of the groom’s family.

Ick.

The very thought of this makes my skin crawl. I don’t understand why I can’t walk down the aisle myself, head high as I approach my future husband – my own agency, my own choice, nothing to do with being someone’s chattel. I even like the idea, becoming more common in America, of meeting your betrothed at the entrance of your ceremony venue, having a private moment and then walking in together. You are, after all, entering the married state together, so why not the church or hall?

But. There’s a but. In that I know my dad has always planned on walking me down the aisle. I mean, it’s not like he’s been fantasising about it since I was seven, but it was taken as fact that that’s what I’d have. And while he’s said to me he doesn’t mind what I do at my wedding and that he doesn’t even have to be invited, I can’t quite get to the point of saying ‘No, dad, I don’t want you to walk me down the aisle’. For one thing, he’s my dad and he’s been damn supportive of me, so making him happy with this one thing should be a compromise I’m willing to make. For another, I may need someone to lean on so I don’t wobble with nerves, or panic, or booze (fuck yeah, Dutch courage!). And part of me thinks ‘aww’ when I envision his face as he walks me down the aisle and I face my fiancé. We’re not having a traditional ceremony so there will be no ‘who gives this woman’ because no one does – so surely it won’t matter that much.

So with all these reasons, why does my stomach clench when I think about it? Why do I actively fret over this very simple, 30 second task that is dwarfed by the lifetime vows I’m going to make five minutes afterwards? Do what I want, and I have to deal with a hurt father and guilt – do what will make him happy and I feel like a fake. It’s a conundrum and one I’m not sure I know how to answer. I’m hoping wisdom and clarity will come to me sometime this year.

(Photo: Phil Hawksworth.)

• Lizzie is getting married in 2013 and has already planned roughly 5,748 weddings in her head. You can find more of her musings, wedding-themed reviews and rantings at Wedding Belles UK.

I was taken by his concept of dadhood, and his understanding and appreciation for the importance of it. He takes a tandem approach, both looking to replace the aspects of himself as a person and looking for people whose responses to “what advice would you give my daughters” he liked. The end results are surprisingly non-gender stereotyped – get over obstacles, jump in mud puddles, find a friend.

He also talks a lot about the importance of community in creating a whole person, and a little about the idea of a “modern man” as actively seeking a role in their child’s upbringing, which is very encouraging.

• Found Feminism: an ongoing series of images, videos, photos, comics, posters or excerpts – anything really, which shows feminist ideas at work in the everyday world. Send your finds to [email protected]!

“Feminism? Does that mean you hate men now?” My father is a master of both dry wit and directness, you can’t foil him with flannel, so what I say next can’t be fluffy or theory-wanking.

“No, it’s more about equality.” At this point I have to pause, because realistically my dad does not need to know the entire history of the feminist movement over tea and scones at the South Bank. He is taking an interest in my interests. Which means I should at least have the grace to be interesting.

“We’ve theoretically got legal equality, but there’s still a lot of inequality in society. A lack of respect for women as people…” He’s still got his eyes open and therefore so far, so good. “Like when men call out to women on the streets if they are wearing dresses. Makes me feel uncomfortable to wear a dress, and that’s not on.”

I can tell that I’ve got him right there. He starts to tell me about a time he was out with my brother and two men were “effing and blinding” (my father rarely swears) at a young woman across the street.

“I might read up on this, on the internet, when I get home to your mum.”

We return to our cups of tea, but internally, ideas are brewing.

Why aren’t more fathers involved in the feminist movement? On the surface, it seems an obvious partnership. Surely no father would want his daughter to grow up in a world where she had less respect, less equality and less room to succeed than her brothers? Yet the link between “feminism” and “making life better for your daughter” seems to be feeble to the point of invisibility. Instead, there is a jump to the fear of the unfamiliar, the media-generated whispers of what evil feminists are like – man-haters to quote my dad, who is neither a sexist nor easily swayed by the opinions of the papers. He was just recounting what he understood the term to mean.

I want to take a little time to unpick the relationship between feminism and fatherhood, with the hope of encouraging more people to think about feminism in a more positive light, to give them the tools to talk to their parents about feminism, and to (finally) get our dads on board.

There is a lot of prejudice surrounding feminism and the family. This can range from the (in)famous Pat Robinson quote that “feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians” to the somewhat outre thinking (not to mention strange definitions) of a divorce campaigner in America. A quick google for references to “feminism and the family” or “fathers and feminism” reveals heartbreaking commonalities mostly centered around the idea that the feminist movement is somehow trying to extract men from the entire family process.

You can see how a wrong-headed reading of women’s rights might have picked up that impression. The longstanding assumption that an increase in freedom for women must naturally lead to a decrease in freedom for men (as if there were only a certain amount of freedom in the world). Changes in legislation over the past eighty years or so, from the vote, through to divorce laws, inheritance, mortgage rights (yesterday I was talking to a lady who told me when she was my age women couldn’t apply for a mortgage by herself) and so on have all enabled women to move from being reliant on men to being more self-reliant. However, this move is all too often read as a move away from men rather than being a move toward engaging with men on equal, independent terms.

The stock figures often quoted as examples of how feminism is destroying the family unit are the rising divorce rate. Personally I take issue with the idea that relationship status is indicative of a strong family unit – I would much rather that parents were happy with each other and unwed than unhappily married. However, that aside it’s important to note that  it is almost impossible to gauge what, if any, influence feminism has had on these numbers. Frankly, if feminists could somehow cause such vast social change, then it’s unclear why we still have such crappy rape prevention or why little girls are forever dressed in pink. More is at issue here – starting with the lessening of religious influence in our daily lives (if marriage is not a sacrament, then divorce is no longer a sin), the decline in different social status for married versus unmarried people (there is less incentive to remain within an unhappy marriage) and the lowering stigma of the single parent (although I would argue that single mums are still pilloried by society whilst single dads put on pedestals, but that’s another article). This is social change, perhaps influenced in part by feminism, but just as equally influenced by all the changes that have occured in the last century. The world has changed.

It is easy to sneer at those who think that feminism is damaging to the family.

But before we sneer, we must understand what we are looking at. The truth is that what feminism wants is deeply challenging to a traditionalist and parts of what feminism is hoping to achieve can also be somewhat difficult to swallow by almost anyone raised in the modern UK: it involves a complete step change in our understanding of the family unit which has massive knock-on effects in most areas of society – work, education, retirement, marriage and relationships. If we wanted a truly equal setting for the family, in which neither gender is assumed to have a “natural” role in parenting – and I think we do – then all of these things must change both in theory and practice.  And that is mindblowing. Here’s how: try and think about it. Picture, in your mind, if you can (and I find it quite hard), a world in which mums and dads are given exactly the same weight and priority by society. Have exactly the same expectations placed upon them. Are communicated to by the media and advertising in the same fashion.

In other words, that parents are treated as parents, rather than isolated and grouped according to gender. And we aren’t surprised by it. Dads change nappies. Mums go out to work. Dads do the dishes. Mums do the school run. Parents Evening is exactly that. There’s no assumption or hierarchy in who might be better at doing what beyond what each individual is able and willing to do. People with ovaries teach children to throw and kick balls in the playground. People with Y chromosomes make chocolate crispy cakes (and mostly mess) in the kitchen. Maternity and paternity leave cease to exist and we have parental leave. No-one bats an eyelid.

It’s a strange place, isn’t it? But wonderful.

And it’s a place I think we can get to, if we try to break down the barriers that exist between perceptions of what feminism could really mean to fatherhood.

In the UK there are a number of dad centered internet institutions (nowhere near as many as for mothers – mumsnet, for example, is  a huge and generally positive and useful resource, but despite the claims to be “by parents for parents” is still in name and deed more focused on women than men). These include Fathers 4 Justice and other similarly named organisations that fight for changes in family law, including the website Dads UK which again focuses on access, divorce and children. As far as I’m aware, neither of these organisations have strong links to UK feminists, and in some cases a scan of their pages reveals the same sort of prejudices that are repeated over and over and over again – that the feminist movement took their children away. It’s a little bit like 21st century witchhunting. Scapegoating is easier than finding the real solution – especially when the real solution involves complicated individuals and their lives rather than a nice easy public target.

So how do we change this for the better?