Advertisers Are Still Selling the Myth of the Missing Black Father

by The Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy

There is a moment many Black fathers know too well. It happens while sitting on the couch watching television with your children. A commercial comes on, and a family appears on the screen. There’s a mother. There are children. There’s warmth, laughter, breakfast, homework, morning routines, holiday joy, and sometimes even a dog running through the frame. And often, the Black father is missing. Or, if he’s there, he’s flattened into something less than whole. The joke. The cool one. The physical one. The confused one. The man who appears briefly but rarely carries the emotional weight of the family story.

This absence or flattening is not innocent. It teaches.

Advertising has always done more than sell soap, cereal, cars, insurance, diapers, or fast food. It sells meaning. It sells belonging. It sells what family is supposed to look like. It tells the public who gets to be tender, who gets to be responsible, who gets to be trusted, who gets to be adored by children, and who gets written out of the picture.

That is why our latest article, “Black Fathers Portrayals and Characterizations of Black Fatherhood in Television Commercials: A Descriptive Study,” is so important. Authored by Janice Kelly, Jeffrey Shears, and David Miller and published in the Howard Journal of Communications, it does what too much media analysis fails to do: It asks Black fathers what they see when they look at themselves on screen.

The study included 50 fathers enrolled in a fatherhood program and five fatherhood scholars connected to the Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research (MIFRP). Fifty-one participants identified as African American (92.7%). After watching 15 nationally televised commercials that featured Black fathers and aired between 2016 and 2021, these fathers shared their perceptions, rankings, and reflections.

Our findings should trouble every advertiser, creative director, media buyer, brand strategist, and executive who believes representation begins and ends with visibility. The paper identifies “the dearth of rich and complex representations of Black fathers” as a central concern raised by participants and argues that commercials bear a “critical responsibility” to “accurately and fairly depict Black men as engaged and nurturing fathers.”

This is the heart of the matter. Black fathers aren’t asking to be idealized. They’re asking to be seen honestly.

TV Commercials Perpetuate the Missing Black Father Myth

For decades, America has been sold the myth of the missing Black father. Sometimes that myth is loud, dressed in political rhetoric and cultural blame. Sometimes it is quiet, tucked into a family advertisement where the Black father simply never appears. Sometimes it is coded through a father who is present but emotionally thin, comedic, passive, immature, or disconnected from the real labor of parenting.

Our recent research indicates that portrayals of Black fathers in media advertising have often leaned into stereotypes, including absentee and uninvolved fathers. It also points to the 2018 Macy’s holiday ad controversy, where a Black mother and children appeared without a Black father, triggering national criticism. 

That moment mattered because Black families have long understood what others sometimes dismiss: Visual omission is a form of storytelling. When you repeatedly leave Black fathers out of the family portrait, you aren’t just failing to cast a role. You’re shaping public imagination.

Macy’s isn’t alone. Television commercials have often depicted fathers in Black families as “missing,” failed to highlight their daily contributions, and reinforced the damaging perception that Black fathers are absent and disengaged. This falsehood doesn’t stay on the screen. It follows Black fathers into schools, hospitals, courtrooms, child welfare systems, social service agencies, workplaces, and even into their own homes, where children are still trying to understand how the world sees the men who love them.

Our study also found key nuances. Participants often perceived Black fathers in commercials as physical, cool, and strong — traits that aren’t inherently negative. Many Black fathers are strong. Many are cool. Many carry a physical confidence shaped by culture, labor, survival, sport, discipline, and style. But when those traits dominate while wisdom, maturity, caregiving, and wage-earning appear less often, the image becomes incomplete. The paper notes that respondents perceived Black fathers as buffoons more commonly than caregivers, a finding that should stop the advertising industry cold.

This isn’t just a creative gap. It’s a cultural failure. A father is not merely the man who makes the room laugh. He is the man who checks the homework after a long shift. He is the man learning how to braid hair because his daughter asked him to. He is the man who shows up at the school meeting even when he feels out of place. He is the man trying to co-parent through tension. He is the man fighting to stay emotionally present while carrying the weight of work, bills, grief, race, and expectation. He is the man whose love may not always be polished, but it is often persistent.

TV Commercials With Positive Portrayals of Black Fathers

One of the most revealing findings in our research is that fathers responded strongly to commercials that showed ordinary, relational, emotionally recognizable fatherhood. A 2019 Denny’s commercial, featuring a Black father and his infant son, was most frequently selected as the highest-rated commercial, receiving 19 first-place rankings. An Oreo ad followed with 11, and a Dove ad with 10.

Why did Denny’s resonate? Participants said that it “depicted a father enjoying time with his son.” They also named “the need for more realistic portrayals of fathers with their children outside the home” and described the commercial as relatable. There’s something beautifully simple in that. The fathers weren’t asking for a superhero cape. They were asking for a booth in a restaurant. A child at the table. A father feeding, laughing, holding, paying attention. The ordinary stuff. The sacred stuff. The everyday stuff that becomes memory.

The Oreo commercial also ranked highly because participants saw the father-son interaction as relatable and appreciated the bond between father and son. The Dove commercial was praised for showing a father dancing with his children. These responses point to something advertisers should have understood long ago: Black fathers recognize authenticity when they see it. They also recognize performance when it is forced.

Pressuring Advertisers to Update Their Portrayals of Black Fathers

The fathers in the study were clear about what they want advertisers to do. They want brands to:

• “Show more” Black fathers doing things with their children.
• Show positive portrayals.
• Show fathers with their kids and families.
• Represent Black fathers across economic and professional lines. 

One participant called for “more dads with their kids that are really taking care of their kids.” Another wanted Black fathers represented “in all classes from white collar to blue collar to plumbers.”

These requests matter because Black fatherhood has never been one story. Black fatherhood is married and unmarried. Residential and nonresidential. Working class and professional. Young and seasoned. Biological, social, adoptive, and kinship-based. It lives in barbershops, boardrooms, truck routes, classrooms, construction sites, churches, gyms, correctional facilities, courtrooms, military bases, college campuses, and kitchen tables.

Advertisers have made millions selling products to Black families while too often refusing to tell the truth about Black family life. That must change.

The paper’s discussion states the business case plainly. Black fathers are not only subjects of representation. They are consumers, household influencers, brand interpreters, and cultural messengers. We argue that elevating the voices and perspectives of Black fathers as consumers could help media executives create more effective campaigns that resonate with Black fathers and families.

That means the moral case and the marketing case point in the same direction. If advertisers want to reach Black families, they should:

• Stop guessing about Black fathers and start listening to them.
• Bring Black fathers into the research room before the storyboard is finalized. 
• Consult fatherhood practitioners who understand the lived realities of men raising children under complicated social and economic conditions. 
• Show Black fathers in the full emotional range of parenting: tired, joyful, serious, playful, protective, affectionate, uncertain, capable, learning, repairing, and leading.

Most of all, they should stop selling absence.

America doesn’t need another commercial that treats Black fatherhood as a symbol, a risk, a joke, or a surprise. We need images that reflect what millions of children already know: Dad is here. Dad is trying. Dad is loving. Dad is learning. Dad is showing up in ways the camera has not always cared enough to capture.

The myth of the missing Black father has been profitable for too long. It has filled political speeches, shaped public policy, justified institutional neglect, and made it easier to overlook men who are doing the hard work of fathering in plain sight.

Advertisers helped sell that myth. Now they have a responsibility to help retire it.

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Kelly, J., Shears, J., & Miller, D. (2026). Black Fathers Portrayals and Characterizations of Black Fatherhood in Television Commercials: A Descriptive Study. Howard Journal of Communications, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/10646175.2026.2644249