BABBLE BACKLASH- "DADDING" UP THE DAMAGE OF BABBLE.COMS LATEST FATHERHOOD FAUX PAUX

How Babble.com must be feeling after the backlash over a simple Mother's Day post

I don't usually get angry about other people's blog posts. I get mad at the parenting magazines (print and on-line), corporations, and the odd parenting expert, but rarely do I rail about the work of another parent who merely has something to get off their chest. For me, dad blogging is my sanity. It allows me to speak my mind where I otherwise might have held my tongue. It gives me a voice where I otherwise might have none. It's my privilege, my joy, my right to call it as I see it. And when I see another blogger talking out of his ass it makes me want to f'ing scream (in a manly way).

Take this jewel from Babble.com, a website for "a new generation of parents." It's a blog post entitled "Top 10 Things Mothers Do Better than Fathers," written for “Dadding,” Babble’s dad blogger section, and it really, really.... sucks.


Why does it suck? Well, it sucks for many reasons: 1) it kissed a lot of mom ass (I mean a lot mom ass) for no apparent reason other than the fact it was Mother's Day and that's the day a lot of guys kiss mom ass. 2) It tried to make all men (well, more particularly dads) look like inept buffoons when it comes to child rearing, when the only inept parenting buffoon in this case was the author himself. And 3) it made me scroll horizontally instead of vertically, which I hate.

I get it. Babble needed a Mother’s Day post extolling the virtues of moms for Mother’s Day, something that would make moms feel like all the hard work that they do is not ignored. Problem is in his attempt to build up the moms, Dadding’s dad blogger made millions of dads look like imbeciles. Problem with that for me is I spend a lot of my time showing that most dads are not imbeciles. Bigger problem for me is Babble, the website for “a new generation of parents,” let a complete imbecile speak for millions of men, and made fathers look like secondary caregivers who are only good at “switching the inputs on the TV, mowing the grass, or carrying groceries in from the car,” which only served to set us back a few “generations.”

Is my wife great at hugging and snuggling and driving the kids around and showing her emotions- yeah, she is. But, so am I, and I’m not a touchy/feely kind of guy, but I am with my kid. Is my wife better at cooking, and cleaning, and first aid? No. She hates doing any of it unless it absolutely needs to be done, and she resents the fact that just because she’s a woman that she should enjoy such things. In her words, “that’s what she has a husband for.” Sure, when my daughter’s sick she’ll call for her mom, but her dad’s the one who checks on her all throughout the night and takes his equal share of days off to stay home with her. And, keeping the kids clean? WTF dude- put the kid in the tub, lather, rinse and repeat!!! How hard is that?!? Sure your wife’s the better parent… you let her do EVERYTHING!

Do I have a list of thing’s my wife is better at than me? Sure. She’s more patient, more precise, and more "mothering" that I am (go figure). She can carry a baby for nine months (I can’t), she can give birth (I can't), and, if she was physically capable, I’m sure she’d be a better breast feeder than me too. But, for the most part, when it comes to parenting, and house work, and caring for our kids, my wife and I are interchangeable, adaptable, and more than capable of handling our own when caring for OUR children, whether together or alone. And I don’t need to tear myself or my fellow man down to build up the woman that I love to tell her that she’s an amazing mother on Mother’s Day. I don’t need to kiss her ass, and the asses of millions of other women to make them feel special. All involved moms are amazing and so are all involved dads simply for being there and being available to their kids. Even Dadding’s dad blogger seems like he’s a pretty good dad, although misguided and in great need of forceps to remove Babble’s puppeteer-like hand from his ass.

What are we saying? Simply, we, the other dad bloggers, the first-time fathers, the involved dads, and the SAHDs don’t really like your take on parenting with this particular article Mr. Dadding (whoever you are) and we hope you’ll rethink how you choose to represent your gender in future so you and I don’t have to have this conversation again.

Here’s to equality in parenting… May you one day do your fair share.