Daddy Day Care is a comedy from 2003 about two friends, Charlie Hinton (Eddie Murphy) and Phil Ryerson (Jeff Garlin), who start a day care after being laid off from their corporate jobs.
With ratings of 5/10 on IMDB and 48/100 on Rotten Tomatoes, this movie doesn’t get the love it deserves. Perhaps viewers are uncomfortable with its progressive messages about gender roles…which leads us to the first of seven important lessons from Daddy Day Care.
1. Men get in the way of men’s equality.
In the beginning, when Charlie and Phil are starting up a day care, a man scoffs at the concept: “Wow, good luck with that.” Charlie responds, “Hey wait a minute, don’t you believe in equality of the sexes?” Phil adds, “Yeah, can’t men do everything women can?” The man, holding his son’s hand, responds, “No, we can’t. It’s unnatural. And a little bit icky.”
Later, an ex-colleague from their corporate job reacts to Charlie and Phil becoming preschool teachers this way: “You’re wiping boogers for a living? LOSERS!”
Men who insult men whose actions defy traditional gender roles should be ignored. Often these men are dealing with their own insecurities. In the case of the character who called Charlie and Phil “LOSERS!”, his own life circumstances are clearly unenviable: his wife is joyless, vain, and a bad mother, and his son is disobedient.
2. Women make great allies for men’s equality.
As Charlie and Phil flounder in their efforts to register kids for Daddy Day Care, a woman named Peggy steps forward to vouch for the concept of a day care run by men. Peggy signs up her son, and then other moms follow suit.
PEGGY: Come on ladies – you’re troubled by them being guys? Are you from the dark ages? Aren’t you for gender equality and all that jazz?
Peggy’s advocacy for the men saves the day. Sometimes one woman speaking up for men makes a bigger impact than ten men speaking up for themselves. For a real-world example, learn about Cassie Jaye’s story.
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3. We underestimate the difficulty of childcare.
Charlie has not been a very involved father, and he underestimates how difficult it will be to take care of several kids at once. “It’s not rocket science,” he says confidently, right before he accidentally knocks his 4-year-old’s head into a wall.
On Day 1 of opening Daddy Day Care, Charlie and Phil have no activities planned, no nutritious food for the kids to eat, and their method for gaining cooperation from an unruly child is to bribe him with cash. They gradually realize they need to prepare activities to stimulate the kids’ minds and provide them nutritious food to eat. (Cash remains king with the unruly child, however.)
4. Ignore the doubters.
“This is crazy on ten different levels!” is how Charlie’s wife responds to his idea of starting a day care center. Phil’s wife doubts the business will last any longer than three days. Prospective customers are scandalized by the ‘daddy day care’ concept:
MOTHER 1: I thought there’d be ONE guy. Not ALL guys.
MOTHER 2: I just thought it was a clever name!
MOTHER 1 TO MOTHER 3: They’re guys. They’re all guys!
MOTHER 3: They’re WHAT?!
Charlie and Phil don’t let the doubters dissuade them from trying. Soon, they demonstrate that they’re capable of running a successful day care business.
5. Men’s gender-based expectations for themselves are difficult to shake (even for the enlightened ones).
Six weeks into being unemployed, Charlie and Phil sit on a park bench together supervising their sons on the playground. All the other adults around the playground are women.
Charlie asks Phil, “Do you have a nauseous ache in the pit of your stomach that you’re a worthless failure?” Phil replies, “We are worthless failures.” The two men have internalized that their value as humans depends on earning money.
Even after their day care business takes off, Charlie still doesn’t think of it as a real job. “Daddy used to be a big shot at work,” he tells his son Ben. “There were a lot of cool things about that job. I had people working underneath me, a pretty view out my window, and the pay wasn’t bad either.”
BEN: I’ll sell all my toys.
CHARLIE: Why would you do that?
BEN: If I don’t have toys, we don’t need money, and you can stay with me [and continue doing Daddy Day Care, instead of finding another corporate job].
When Charlie runs into his ex-colleague Bruce who asks what Charlie is up to, shame or fear of humiliation cause him to dissemble. “It’s a start-up,” Charlie says. “We offer time management facilitation to working professionals.” That’s an odd way of saying he runs a day care center.
6. Gender stereotypes inhibit men’s career choices.
In the movie, people see two men opening a day care center and they think…child molesters. “A couple of sickos is what you are,” says one mom.
Fears of being perceived as either a predator or as unmanly prevent some men from pursuing careers they might thrive in. Teaching and nursing are solid jobs, and those fields need more men, but social stigma is a barrier. The character Marvin illustrates this.
When enrollment grows at Daddy Day Care, Charlie hires Marvin to help with the additional workload. Marvin is hesitant to take the job though — even when offered the job directly after successfully facilitating a fun activity for the kids. “I guess I do like hanging out with kids. It’s kinda cool. But childcare isn’t a professional avenue I felt I was headed towards.” Later on, when Charlie and Phil shut down the day care center, Marvin is devastated. He had found his true calling as a preschool teacher. By the end of the movie, it’s clear that Charlie and Phil, too, are in their element with their jobs at Daddy Day Care.
CHARLIE’S WIFE: “I haven’t seen you this excited about something in a long time.”
CHARLIE: “Those little crumb snatchers got under my skin.”
7. Choose an occupation that aligns with your values.
Near the end of the film, Charlie accepts an offer to return to his corporate gig at a higher rank and with higher pay than when he’d previously worked for the company. Before long, he realizes he made a big mistake. His ethical concerns about selling Cotton Candy Puffs breakfast cereal, combined with his realization that what’s most important to him is his son, compel Charlie to quit his high-status corporate job. He opts for a lower-prestige, lower-pay job rather than selling sugary cereal. Charlie chooses the occupation that aligns with his ethics and core values.
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Conclusion
In summary, Daddy Day Care is a valuable pop-culture contribution to the conversation around gender roles. If it’s ok for Eddie Murphy to open a day care center and derive great satisfaction from that work, then it’s ok for other men to transcend barriers that might otherwise hold them back too.
We conclude with a couple fun observations from the movie’s closing credits:
- A woman named Bria Murphy is credited for creating the children’s drawings in the movie. Imagine being the adult whose role in a big-budget Hollywood film is providing drawings made to look like they were done by 4-year-olds.
- In the credits, listed after the job of “Caterer” and before the job of “Medic” is the job “Kid Wrangler”. We’re sure Maula Green and Courtney Shannon did a fine job of wrangling those kiddos.
Honorable mention: Dads bring something unique to childrearing.
One of Charlie’s early plans for stimulating the children is to play football with them. Later, Charlie and Phil dress up in vegetable costumes and stage a WWE-style wrestling match…which ends up getting a little too real. At one point, Phil hosts an educational Three Stooges Film Festival for the children.
Dad’s parent differently, and that’s ok! Contextualizing this for Washington state, it is a reason it’s important to be aware that there are more children raised without frequent contact with their fathers than without frequent contact with their mothers.
