The State of The Dad Blog Union

As a veteran dadblogger, I get a lot of questions from neophytes looking to make a splash in the dad-blog-o-sphere. What should I write about? Which dadblogs should I read? Are poop/fart stories still funny? Should I emphasize a humorous word, line, or passage by writing it in all caps? 

We're into our 5th year here at DadCentric (pause for polite applause) and I'm pleased to see that more and more dads out there are writing about their experiences. (Which dadblog should you read? Well, if you had to pick one, it should of course be this one, but if you had to pick two, it should be this one and DadWagon. Damn, those guys are good.) People blog for different reasons: it's fun, it's a good way to gain exposure for would-be professional writers, it's cheaper than therapy. Some dadbloggers write for themselves, with no intention of building an audience/community. Others have every intention of building an audience/community.  With a few exceptions, I would encourage all noob dadbloggers to seek out the former. 

Writing about parenting, whether you're a mom or a dad, is an endless attempt to answer a simple question. Am I a good parent? I read a lot of dad blogs, and I'm starting to notice a couple of disturbing trends. The first: the growing number of websites for dads that claim to have the goal of making Better Men And Better Fathers. (Share your feelings with fellow men! Give yourself over to a Higher Power! Put a flower in your hair and join hands and sing Kumbayah!) The second: the growing number of dad bloggers that feel the need to feed the Dads Aren't Moms Therefore They Must Be Incapable Of Caring For Children Beast by joining the "debate". The Modern Father is a different animal than his knuckle-dragging ancestor! Or not! Discuss!

I'm a WAHD. I spend a lot of time out and about with my kids; playgrounds, kindergarten, karate, swimming lessons, the library, the zoo, everywhere one might expect to find a parent and child. I don't say this to brag; in fact, quite the opposite. First, no matter how much time and energy I devote to my kids, it rarely feels like enough, and second, I'm a parent, and that's what we do. I go out with my kids, I see lots of moms with their kids. I also see lots of dads with their kids. Perhaps they give me approving looks. Perhaps they think I'm a perv. Brad Adamson? Ronnie McGorvey? Cliff Huxtable? The pendulum swings wide. I used to care. I used to want those people, the play groups, those Learn'd Astronomers out of Whitman's classic poem, to give me their approving nods and encouraging smiles. I used to feel the need to shout I Am Dad, Hear Me Roar. It felt right to use this site as a platform for Downtrodden Unappreciated Fathers everywhere. I used to love venting my spleen at those moms who write about their husbands' axiomatic parental failings, and I took equal pleasure in dropping the hammer on those dads whose inspiration seems to come from Married With Children reruns. 

Now? I don't care. I'm too busy worrying about/playing with/feeding/reading to/teaching my kids. I'm working in the real world of children, where the colors aren't blue and pink, but a spectrum of grays. I'm too busy being a dad. 

I'm finding that "helpful" dad blogs, whether they purport to help make better parents out of hapless dads or right the perceived wrongs inflicted upon good fathers by a society that deems them second-class parents, are anything but. Here's the one constant about being a good dad: your toughest competition, your harshest judge, your most exuberant cheerleader, they're all one person, and he's the one looking back at you in the bathroom mirror when you rub the snot from your eyes in the morning after another sleepless night and when you're brushing the grime from your teeth at the end of another exhausting, exhilarating day. He's your invisible cutman, the one who stitches you up and applies the cold compress, who is always in your corner, who tells you the same thing, over and over and over again. Life's not fair. Being a dad is hard. Suck it up. Whining's for pussies. Be a dad.

Where I find solace, comfort, laughs (of the knowing and commiserating variety) and real insight into the minds of fellow dads are in the stories I read by dadbloggers who are content with being mere diarists. The words "real" and "honest" get tossed around quite a bit in the blogosphere, and for good reason; those words are currency with value, and the dads who earn that currency, who bleed their mistakes as well as their triumphs on to the page, those are the ones worth reading. The other moms, the other dads, the bloggers who spew their endless diatribes and sermons about the way things are and the way things oughta be, who offer hollow advice and easy solutions? They give nothing but sound and fury. (And by now you should know what those signify.) 

Mere diarists? The truths they tell - the truths of self - are the only ones that matter.