I couldn’t resist this ad for Procter & Gamble. And I KNOW it seems to show moms constantly picking the kids up instead of kids out there on their own, but its meta-message (besides buy Pampers and Tide) is, “For teaching us that falling only makes us stronger, thank you, Mom.”
Let’s remember THAT part! – L
15 Comments
It’s a great ad. I would have appreciated at least a token dad though. You see working moms more these days but not nurturing dads much. Oh, well. Ad demographics I guess. It’s still a good message in many ways.
Hmmmm…or is the meta-message that if your kids don’t win an olympics winter medal you’re not a very good parent?
>>Hmmmm…or is the meta-message that if your kids don’t win an olympics winter medal you’re not a very good parent?<<
Of course not. How do you think that would make the parents of SUMMER Olympians feel? Anyway, I liked this commercial all right, but I've seen so many like it before, during Olympics in years past, it just seems like more of the same: Montage of children showing interest and aptitude in different sports. They fall, and get up again. They attempt more difficult things, they fall, they get up again. Parents are there throughout, providing support and ice packs. They succeed, their parents are there to celebrate with them. Proctor & Gamble logo shows at the end, claiming this as a tribute to moms. The image gets subtly but indelibly burned into mothers' collective brains, and they buy Proctor & Gamble products instead of generic. However, I can also see that it's a good endorsement for the Free-Range movement…….to a degree. Since it's an ad based around the Olympics, it doesn't say anything about physical activity for its own sake. So, another way to interpret that message is, "Must push my child in sports."
Most of the non-infants getting picked up are children learning to skate or ski. Neither are the easiest to stand up on so I give that a pass!
“Hmmmm…or is the meta-message that if your kids don’t win an olympics winter medal you’re not a very good parent?”
That’s a bit of a tall poppy syndrome comment, I reckon. It’s not because not all kids become Olympic athletes that we can’t admire the ones that do and acknowledge the role their parents played by simply being parents. That’s the message I get from that. They don’t show mothers pushing their kids to practice 7 days a week week for example. They show them doing the kind of stuff all parents do and always have done. Until fear took over, that is.
Lovely ad.
The non-toddler kids all seem to have been out by themselves, mum is only ‘brushing them off’ are a particularly nasty tumble.
As for the idea that they are all medalists. Isn’t that a metaphor for how we feel as parents when we see a child accomplish something that they have been working hard towards?
Nothing wrong that I could see in this ad. Just an ad for Proctor and Gamble products with a tribute to Olympic athletes and their mothers.
When my kids fall, I don’t usually pick them up, and even if I do, it’s not an immediate response. I kneel down close by and let them pick themselves up. I want for them to learn self reliance while knowing that I am close by if they need me. Half the time, they don’t. I also (because of my first aid training I guess) want a moment to observe them and see if they are injured or not before I swoop in and accidently make matters worse.
So far, most of the time the kids don’t hate me. They seem to understand that falling down or getting hurt is not a big deal, and they can get up and try again, find a better way, or do something else.
Love this! You just need to take it for what it’s worth – a great ad with a good message and fhe wonder of the Olympics thrown in to top it off.
The Olympics used to make me feel good…now they disgust me. From the forced large corporate sponsor ship and threatening anyone who dares support their local sponsors to the fact that Russia is telling athletes they can’t wear nail polish in support of gay rights. The Olympics will soon become the Hunger Games-a bread and circus to entertain the mindless masses.
@Quico-nah I think the message is get your kids over involved in lots of stuff, so both you and then will be to busy to see what is really going on in the world.
Very cute ad. However, as someone who until recently rarely saw snow (these days we do take the kids to the mountain a couple of days a year, must be getting middle-class in my old age 🙂 ), must say it is usually the kids picking me up!
So, thank you, kids….
“she says “it’s just not safe these days.” That’s how insidious the media machine is. Here we have a woman who once trusted in the world enough to let her children experience it…yet who now firmly be”
Aren’t tags supposed to be shorter than this? 😉
I was like, where are the bicycle falls?, but then saw it was all leading to excellence in those two sports.
And what a coincidence they used that music – I’ve been listening to that a lot lately.
I loved this, even got a bit teary. WHen the mom hugged her skiing daughter with such pride I remembered the moment I hugged my own daughter after she spent half a year away from us, growing, falling, risking, and learning.
Didn’t make me want to buy Tide though. I hate the way it smells!
It’s not about the falling down. It’s about the getting up again. You can’t succeed if you don’t learn that. The ad uses two Olympic sports as examples, but I think it’s meant far more generally: here’s to all the moms that let their kids take the risks that lead to greater things. You can’t show ALL those things in just two minutes.
[I’ve used P&G products by preference for a long time, in part because they have NOT succumbed to so many of the social pressures from vocal nutjobs. Looks like “not succumbing to the pressure to be a bubblewrap mom” is one of those.]
I don’t really mind the picking-up aspect. It seems to be age-appropriate; it’s just little kids who are learning to walk, and it’s more encouragement from the mum, not implying they’re in actual danger if they’re not picked up. And having been a (rather poor) figure skater in my teens, I was always puzzled by the fact that the sport has a bit of a helicopter-mum reputation when actually they’re letting their kids fall over and over again, usually without harnesses, in the process of learning a jump. (In fact, as free-range as I am, I think figure skating possibly needs slightly MORE thought given to safety.)