How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy (22 page)

The multi-dimensional aspect of Robin's character is also played out in her national origin. Robin is Canadian, but has made America her home. With this mixture comes a complexity to Robin's character that the others often find charming and (even more often) hilarious. But from Robin's perspective, it also brings a confused sense of identity. In one episode, Robin feels estranged from both groups, lamenting that neither country accepts her and she no longer has a home.

This confusion about one's identity is familiar to many women who work outside of the home. Women have fought long and hard for the right to pursue a career outside of their family and be accepted as equals in that environment. While women can (in most cases) work where they want, they are still underpaid compared to their male counterparts and often overlooked for important promotions. They are thus often frustrated by a lack of equality and acceptance in their careers. On the other hand, they are also wives and mothers who find that they struggle to keep everything in order at home. The house is a mess, the kids have to go to daycare and dinner is a constant struggle. (Why many women feel pressure to take on all of the domestic duties on top of their full-time jobs is an interesting question I won't pursue here.)

A common frustration for working mothers, then, is that they seem incapable of achieving perfection (or anything resembling it) in both spheres and so feel like a double failure. While Robin's frustration with her personal identity is of a different sort, she represents the real challenge faced by many women today: where do I fit in? Insofar as we, as a society, have not fully reached our goals in terms of gender equality, this is a very real challenge faced by women (and many men!) today.

It's Barney who puts the entire issue in perspective when he assures Robin that it's not that she doesn't have a country but rather that she has two. This assurance, that we can find our identity in multiple roles and in multiple different ways, can be extended beyond national citizenship to other facets of our lives.

Lily: A Feminist Model?

Where Robin is an obvious candidate for a role model for the women of today, Lily seems less obviously fit for the role largely because she is Robin's opposite in many ways. Whereas Robin is career-oriented, Lily works but isn't focused on her career. While Robin's job is in an exciting, traditionally male arena, Lily works in a traditionally female position, as a kindergarten teacher. Robin is independent and multi-faceted; Lily is defined more by her relationship with Marshall than anything else and seems to lack a certain level of complexity as a character. And while Robin rejects the role of motherhood, this is a role that Lily embraces.

Of course, Lily is arguably more sexually liberated than Robin, not afraid to ask for what she wants or embrace and admire the sexuality of both men and women. And she was raised by a staunchly feminist mother. But when compared to Robin, she seems the lesser candidate for a feminist role model on the show. But should we be so quick to reject Lily as a role model in favor of a strong, independent woman like Robin? To favor Robin over Lily or to think that she better epitomizes feminist ideals is, I think, a mistake. Lily stands in as an (admittedly different) role model for a very different approach to feminist theory: feminist care ethics.

Feminist Care Ethics

Feminist care ethics is a branch of virtue ethics that places its primary focus on care. It got its start in 1982 with Carol
Gilligan's book,
In a Different Voice
. Gilligan noted that men and women typically (though not always) approach ethical dilemmas and issues in different ways.
⁴
And while traditionally masculine ways of looking at ethics have long been favored, Gilligan argued that both have their strengths and a feminine approach to ethics is often preferable.

The study of ethics over the past several hundred (even several thousand) years has focused on such ideas as justice, rights, and equality. In fact, these ideas are often at the heart of feminist social criticism. But feminist care ethics offers a different approach, one that focuses on love, nurturing, and dependence. It is, essentially, a view of ethics modeled on a mother's love and care for her children. This is a radically different approach to ethics but it is one that women typically (though not always—no one's claiming that all women, or men, are alike!) take in everyday life. Feminist care ethics, while very different from typically feminist calls for increased equality, is a feminist view because it calls for the equal status of an outlook on life that is held by many women. It calls for values and ways of tackling problems that matter to women to receive equal respect and weight in ethical theory.

Russ Shafer-Landau explains that there are several key ways that feminist care ethics differ from more traditional (masculine) approaches to ethics. First, feminist care ethics emphasizes the importance of emotions in ethics. Where traditional ethical approaches focus on rationality and suppressing emotion so as to not let it cloud your judgment, feminist care ethicists insist that at the very heart of morality is a set of emotions that surround care, namely “sympathy, empathy, sensitivity, and love.”
⁵
As Shafer-Landau notes, emotions like love and sympathy both keep us in tune with the needs and wants of others and motivate us to move to fill the need. Without care, we wouldn't know what we ought to do, nor would we want to do it even if we knew. Thus, it is a network of emotions that provide a framework for deciding how we should treat others and for inspiring us to action.

Second, feminist care ethicists reject the call for impartiality (p. 268). Many ethical views demand that we view all people as equal. We are told that to favor some over others is unethical. In fact, this is often the sort of reason offered for extending equal rights to oppressed groups. But if we take care to be our model for right action, we see that we absolutely may and even
should
show partiality towards some people, namely those with whom we have very strong, loving relationships. Thus, a mother rightly provides clothes, food and attention to her child over other children because her child stands in a special relationship with her.

Third, feminist care ethics emphasize co-operation over competition. The emphasis is on love, not winning. Hand-in-hand with this idea is a focus on interdependence such that we are not to see ourselves as largely independent beings who are in competition with others, but rather as dependent beings who flourish when we work together. And fourth, talk of justice and rights in feminist care ethics is pushed aside for more emphasis on what we owe one another (p. 269). When we insist on our personal rights, we set our interests against those of others. But when we focus on love and care, our own interests fade to the background because we are instead looking primarily to fill the needs of others. This is the appropriate moral stance to take, one that mothers exemplify in their interactions with their children.

Lily as a Mother Figure

But which character in
How I Met Your Mother
does this sound most like? It certainly doesn't sound like Barney or Robin. It seems to me that it most describes both Lily and her hubby, Marshall. The most obvious proof of this is not only that Lily's the only one in the group who actually
is
a mother, but also that she's seen by the other members of the group to be a mother figure even towards them. She's constantly looking out for each of her friends and goes over and above to make them happy (even when they do not want her to). She is always the one to reinforce the rules and give relationship advice because she wants her friends to find the happiness with their love interests that she has found with Marshall.

Lily demonstrates the specific traits associated with the feminine moral outlook that Shafer-Landau points out. She's
probably the most emotional of the group. This is sometimes a bad thing, but often it's a good thing. She is motivated by her love of her friends to defend them, even to the point of violence and manipulating circumstances behind their backs. While she is at times misguided in her attempts to bring her friends happiness, and very often overdoes it, she is always motivated by her love for them and very often right about what it is that they need. It is because she is motivated more by certain emotions, such as empathy and concern, that she can see down to the heart of a situation or relationship and perceive more than what at first meets the eye.

We have seen this emotional, caring side of Lily come out on several occasions in the eighth season of
How I Met Your Mother
. Most notable are her reactions to her own son, Marvin. She and Marshall care deeply about his milestones and making sure that he is safe and happy. This is seen in their long search for a nanny, their obsession about Marvin's bedtime routine, their depression when they miss his multiple milestones and the trouble they have finding a balance between time with Marvin and time with the gang (and with one another). Lily reacts to many of the issues that arise for new parents with very strong emotions that demonstrate the depth of her love.

But Lily's love and care is not just directed towards Marvin. Lily is instrumental in helping Ted get through Robin's engagement to Barney. In fact, we find out that she has strong misgivings about becoming a mother and sometimes regrets having made this life decision. Rather than undermine our belief that Lily cares more for others than she does herself, this revelation further strengthens this view. Lily views this emotional reaction to motherhood as morally reprehensible and it would be easy for to keep it to herself. But she opens up to Ted in order to help Ted come to the realization that he's not dealing well with Robin's engagement. So, Lily does something that hurts herself in order to help a friend and in doing so demonstrates not only care and empathy, but also a commitment to co-operation. She and Ted are in this together, even when things get really messy. A few episodes later, it's Lily who supports Ted's unhealthy relationship with a stalker girlfriend, not because this is a good relationship but because it is what Ted needs. And she lets Ted know that when the relationship inevitably ends, she will be there to help him pick up the pieces.

Lily definitively favors her friends (and Marvin once he arrives) above strangers and will often go to comical lengths to ensure that they are happy. And she's rarely motivated by issues of fairness or impartiality. Lily often meddles in Ted and Robin's love lives, openly scorning their rights to determine their own happiness. She does this not because she doesn't care for Ted or Robin, or because she lacks respect for them, but because she wants them to have what she has with Marshall. It is because she loves them that she meddles. She is particularly active in Barney and Robin's on-again, off-again relationship, forcing them to come to terms with their feelings for one another. But for all of her meddling, we find this to be a charming quality about Lily, rather than something she should get rid of. And finally, Lily is constantly stuck in the middle of bets and competitions between her friends (can anyone say “slap-bet?”) and continually calls for co-operation and compromise, to no avail. She seems to value co-operation and the group dynamic more than any of her friends and it is Lily who often serves as the glue that holds everyone together.

Lily Is Complex

Lily does exemplify many of the values of feminist care ethics, but she is not a pure representation of the ideal. Lily is often very focused on justice and retribution when she is wronged, much more than any of her friends. For instance, when Ted co-opts many of Marvin's firsts, Lily waits years for her retaliation. She makes sure to exact revenge by bringing Ted's child to Santa for the first time.

Lily also often fails to consider how her friends might feel when she meddles in their lives. She acts from care for them, but often does not go far enough to consider their values and concerns. And she's always the one called on to enforce the rules in various competitions, showing that she has a healthy respect for justice and impartial rules. But, far from showing that she fails to be a feminist icon because she does not tow the party line on feminist care ethics, I think this complexity adds to her depth as a character. Lily shows an interesting mix of both a masculine and feminine moral outlook, something that many responding to feminist care ethics would embrace. That is, she embodies character traits that both groups of feminists
embrace (care and empathy on the one hand, and an insistence on rights and justice on the other), adding a layer of depth and complexity to her character.

Actually, if any character most exemplifies feminist care ethics, it is Lily's husband Marshall. Not only is Marshall a caring individual, but he sacrifices personal gain to pursue an admirable career defending the environment. He cares so much about Lily that he feels guilty about fantasizing about other women and places her needs above his own at every opportunity. He cares deeply for his family, including most importantly his parents and his son. And he often calls for cooperation in his group of friends. While he participates in crazy competitions with Barney, he rarely gets vindictive like his wife Lily and will often bend over backwards to help out a friend (even though that often backfires and he is taken advantage of).

It's a strength of the show that a female character, Robin, best exemplifies personal strength and independence, and it's a male character who best exemplifies feminist care ethics. Lily bridges the gap between the two, as does Ted, who has a strong career-focus but is also driven by a search for love (in fact, the entire show is about the story of how Ted meets his wife and the mother of his future children). Only Barney truly embodies a gender stereotype (one that he's slowly growing out of as his relationship with Robin deepens), and insofar as he does, he comes off as ridiculous. And while Robin is a clear example of a feminist icon, Lily, both in her own character traits and in her choice of a mate, shows the importance of another side to the coin and serves as a second, albeit different, female role model.
How I Met Your Mother
deserves to be ranked as equal to other currently popular, obviously progressive, sitcoms such as
Community, 30 Rock
, and
Parks and Recreation
as portraying and embracing the complexity of gender roles in the twenty-first century.