DadCentric

30 Days of Dads: Daniel Pelfrey of 'Post Post Modern Dad'

Whenever I complain online about something, Daniel Pelfrey pokes his head in to remind me it could be worse: I could be a Seattle Mariners fan. A father of four boys and one girl -- ages 2 to 20, Daniel writes the Post Post Modern Dad blog when not fighting perpetual exhaustion from all that child wrangling. He's a guy with "one foot in the past, one foot in the future, and one foot on the accelerator" and an obvious problem with math and/or biology. Enjoy. -- Kevin 

+ + +

There’s a line by the late comedian Bill Hicks where he talks about how parents tend to exaggerate the accomplishments of their children: “He’s not special; he’s just your kid.”

I love that line.

Perspective. It’s something we need as parents, especially today as there are more activities to occupy our children’s days. Between ballet, gymnastics, baseball, underwater nuclear physics, swim lessons, chess club and whatever else we have our kids enrolled in, it can be easy to lose perspective. Our culture has gotten to this point where over-achieving is the norm, and now every kid has to be exceptional.

Thankfully I don’t have a swelled head about what my kids are capable of. Hey, I love my kids as much as the next person (well, all right, a little bit more because they are MY kids) but I’ve learned a long time ago to be realistic.

Let me tell you a story.

30 Days of Dads: Polly Pagenhart, Lesbian Dad

Polly Pagenhart is the author of the award winning blog Lesbian Dad, and calls herself Baba to two wonderful kids she's raising with her partner in Berkeley, CA.  In addition, she's working way too much in her capacity as Conference Program Director for BlogHer.  If you haven't been reading her blog, you should do so immediately.  And if you ever see Polly in person, start a conversation with her.  You'll be glad you did. --Beta Dad

Like Father, Like Daughter

 

This image was taken just two weeks back, the day before what my Pops and I jointly call "Faba's Day." Father's Day for him, Baba's Day for me. He wishes me a Happy Faba's Day, and I wish it back at him: one of his most precious gifts to me is that he sees me. I knew we'd reached that sweet spot when, maybe ten years ago, when he was giving me some of his hand-me-down shirts, as he often did, I made a quip: "I'm the son you never had, Pops." He came right back: "No, you're the son I did have, Doll."

I gave him that Panama hat on Easter Sunday, and he still can't get over that it cost over a c-note.  "Cheap at half the price," he'd joke. But damn he looks right fine sportin' it. Cheap at twice the price.

What I love about this image is his unedited, unforced warmth: so often he can get stiff and self-conscious in front of the camera, but here, it's just him beaming through. I also see the truth there, that the older he gets, the littler and littler he becomes, physically.  He once stood tall at 6'2", and now that he's stooped with the years, I'm taller than him at 5'10". But the largness there abides. The older he gets–and he's 91 now–the clearer it is to him: all is about love, love, and more love. The more people around him die (old, young; gently, tragically), the more vivid that message becomes.  It could get more complicated, but it really needn't.

We're sitting on a bench that his father built over 50 years ago, and I have repaired it and scraped and painted it several times since then. It stands in front of my house now, daring just about anything around it to last as long or weather so well.

30 Days of Dads: Greg of 'Dogs on Drugs'

My favorite site for penis jokes, beloved cartoon characters taking peyote, and blatant calls for Congress to declare a 'National Avocado In Your Pants Day' is the humor site Dogs on Drugs. Kennel Master Greg occasionally let's it slip that he has spawned a new generation of future mental patients, so I asked him to contribute a "very special episode" to DadCentric. Though I would have happily accepted a past post he wrote on his son's documented love of his naughty bits and excrement, the bastard instead wrote a sweet and semi-coherent piece about kids buying gifts for their parents. But with requisite serial-killer references. He's a gent and an asshat. I truly admire him. -- Kevin

+ + +

Because I am incredibly old, I remember when parents could send their kids out into the world without having to worry that some lunatic with a molester-van full of candy would snatch them up and use them as unwilling participants in a personal re-creation of Silence of the Lambs.

That's not to say that it couldn't have happened; in those days, parents just chose not to worry about it.

We called it an "age of innocence," which not only sounds better than calling it an "age of willful ignorance," but has the added advantage of painting the past in a rosy, nostalgic hue that helps to explain away borderline criminal neglect. "Sure we let Charles Manson babysit the kids. It was an age of innocence!"

30 Days of Dads: Jim Hinds, Beta Dad's Dad!

Foreword by Beta Dad: So apparently my dad thinks he's a blogger now. First, he steals my thunder on my own blog, and now he's taking over for me on DadCentric.  I guess I just wasn't doing it right, so he had to do it himself.  Whatever, Dad.

 

Jim Hinds (my dad) is a ski bum living in Oregon.  When there's no snow, he mountain bikes and canoes, and fixes things at our family's cabin in Montana.  Before he was doing that, he was busy bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union and patching Europe together in its aftermath.

 

His experience with fatherhood has been a lot different than mine, as he explains below.

 

 

The Cultures of Fatherhood

By Jim Hinds

 

Fathers’ roles depend partly on customs of place and time, as do celebrations of fathers. For example, in Germany and Austria, where my family and I have spent many years, fathers on Father's Day retreat to secret locations in the forest to drink beer. Their activities have nothing to do with children, except being away from them. Society’s expectations regarding fathers also seem to slip in one way or the other by generations.

 

The modern father seems to be all in. It starts with birth. I mean the actual, physical birth. The father is expected to be in the know and in the room. At least in appearance, he is supposed to support and assist. In my day, the last person anyone wanted to see near the birth process was the father. The father’s job was to wait until informed that he was the father of a baby girl or boy. No one knew in advance in those days. Accepted norms involved a lot of tobacco. The nervous, helpless father paced the hospital waiting room, chain-smoking filterless cigarettes. Then he was expected to view the baby through a glass display window. He might then be permitted to visit the cleaned-up and relaxed mother. His main function was to hand out appropriately banded cigars to co-workers, friends and the boys at the local bar. After fertilization, the father was essentially useless in the parenting business, other than for bringing home the bacon, appearing wise and calm and taking an occasional delinquent to the woodshed.

 

 

Jim Hinds, Company Commander, Echo Company, Third Infantry Division, US Army. Aschaffenburg, Germany, 1963 1963

My own case was even more remote. My first-born arrived at an army hospital in Germany while I was busy in the field, training to stop the Red Hordes as they poured through the Fulda Gap. Those were the days when a favorite army saying was, “if they had wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one.” The local medical facility was called the Aid Station, and the only doctor was the Battalion Surgeon. You can imagine the attention dedicated to pre-natal care. When the time came, water broke, cramps started, and so on, the young mother made her way to the Aid Station. Most of the people, including the doctor, were also out pretending to defend the Fulda Gap. Two young draftees set out to get her to the Army hospital in Frankfurt, about 40 miles away. First, the ambulance wouldn’t start so they fired up a field ambulance, a ¾ Ton truck with a box body on the back. On the autobahn, the truck broke down, but one of the soldiers was a farm kid and knew how to repair such things with wire procured from a fence along the road. They did not know the way to the hospital, so the expectant mother sat in the front seat navigating and, as the truck had no turn signals, signaling through the city’s fast, multilane streets. When I arrived straight from the mock war, mother and daughter had been pronounced ready to leave. I think it was the day after the birth. To cap off the experience, we needed groceries and other supplies before going home. I was in field uniform. The Command did not permit the wearing of anything other than dress uniforms in public. The new mother had to go alone to the commissary on the busiest once-per-month payday.

 

30 Days of Dads: Dan Zevin, author of 'Dan Gets a Minivan'

Any doubts about writer Dan Zevin and his non-street cred disappeared shortly after he answered his phone.

"Could you give me a call back in about 15 minutes?" he said apologetically. "That's when the play date leaves."

Zevin, 47, a former columnist for a Boston alternative weekly, a past contributor to Rolling Stone, a 2004 finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor Award (he lost to the son of some wordy starboard-tacking yachtsman named Buckley or Buffy or something), really is an at-home dad.

His new book, Dan Gets a Minivan, tackles his indoctrination into our small but now sexy niche-marketing demographic. His topics may seem well worn (date night, playground etiquette, the inevitable trip to a Disney theme park and aforementioned vehicle purchase) but he infuses each with a wholly original wit and flair. It's the antidote for anyone worried the transition from being career-driven to driving a Dodge Caravan signals the end.

Rather, as he found, it's the start of accepting a new higher purpose.

30 Days of Dads: Doug French

So for years, a bunch of us talked about doing some sort of dadblogger convention, but "talk" was about as far as we got. Then Doug French, he of Laid-Off Dad fame, got up off his ass and did something about it. Doug was the brains behind the inaugural Dad 2.0 Summit, and all who attended agreed that it was the start of something great. Here Doug talks about why the way dads are portrayed in commercials is important, and it's hard to argue with him.

Why I Do Give A Rat’s Ass What Huggies Thinks of Dads

In a previous life, I taught GMAT classes for a test-prep company. The most tedious part of the gig was grading the essays, because most of the prompts had such a binary structure. Writers had to feel This Way or That Way about a topic and list the reasons why. Which led to a lot of homogeneous mediocrity, and a really sore forehead.

Every once in a while, though, the GMAT got creative and came up with a prompt that was open to much more varied interpretation, like this:

“You can tell the ideas of a nation from its advertisements.”

This prompt has stuck in my mind for all this time because 1) it was the first one that inspired essays that were varied and truly interesting, and 2) it’s true.

If you follow dad blogs regularly (and if you don’t, this site is a great place to start), you’ve read about the mess Huggies made with its embarrassing “ultimate challenge” ads, how Kimberly-Clark reacted to the blowback by sending brand managers to the Dad 2.0 Summit, and how much less insulting the new campaign is. Wins all around, right?

Soon afterward, Jason wrote in this space that he “didn’t give a rat’s ass” about what Huggies thinks about dads. In his usual cogent, passionately detached way, he took down both the Doofus Dad and Superdad stereotypes with one skillful, cutting stroke:

One’s as irrelevant as the other …. These misrepresentations are just so much white noise, gibberish from some alien planet, broadcasts from a Bizarro Earth.

It’s good that a lot of us in our small but burgeoning dad blogosphere have the esteem to tune this crap out. It’s a start, but it’s not enough. This isn’t an alien planet. This is our Earth, which happens to be teeming with young men who are terribly confused by dissonant expectations about what manhood is.

We have to tell them that sexism goes both ways. It’s just as shitty to imply that all girls are “too pretty” to do homework as it is to say all men are dumbasses who can’t take care of a kid. And when a brand asserts either of these things, we have to call them on it. Especially now, when many seem to be listening.

We have to think about kids who aren’t as lucky as Jason’s, who watch a lot of TV and see ads like this far more than they see their fathers. Advertising is an art form (albeit one with specifically corporate goals) that is ubiquitous and universally accessible. And like any art, the best ads succeed by creating a relatable message. If one such message is that dads are idiots, and boys grow up seeing men behave like children and women like exasperated caretakers, the prophecy is doomed to fulfill itself over and over.

It’s a long--and some might say quixotic--road, because stereotypes are grounded in experience. But dads are talking, and shifting the conversation, and that encourages me. Because by the time my sons are ready to become fathers, I want the ideas of this nation to be a lot different than they are now.


--
http://about.me/dougfrench

30 Days of Dads: Andy Trees

Foreword from Beta Dad:

After I got my English degree from University of Virginia, I became a townie for the next 8 years while I waited for a publisher to approach me with an idea (and advance) for the great novel I should write.  I had a little construction business where I spent my days hanging siding and building decks with a cast of characters from a mashup of The Andy Griffith Show and Deliverance.  But somehow my social life became intertwined with a bunch of egghead PhD candidates from the UVA History Department.  One of my buddies from that group is Andy Trees.  He has a kid.  He claims to be a "writer"  (I guess he's written a bunch of those "books" people used to read).  I asked him if he wanted to try his hand at dadblogging.  He was scared at first, but I walked him through it, saying, "It's just 500-1000 words--how hard can that be?"

Trees lives in Chicago and is the author of Academy X, Club Rules, and Decoding Love: Why It Takes Twelve Frogs to Find a Prince and Other Revelations from the Science of Attraction, and the ebook A Scientific Guide to Successful Dating.

********

500 Words

500 words for Father’s Day—how hard can that be? I’ve written 500 words before, sometimes even consecutively. 500 words is, like, six tweets and a digression. Spencer, my soon-to-be four-year-old, is playing quietly in the other room, so 500 words is clearly no problem.

Loud wails from the next room. I go to check on Spencer, who is inconsolable. The tape that we have used to attach his toy motorcycle to his toy jeep—part of his unholy project to create one ultimate super vehicle—has torn, and the motorcycle is now dangling precariously by one strand. Upgrade from masking tape to duct tape at which point Spencer realizes we should also add an airplane and a train engine to the vehicle. More duct tape. We solemnly christen this juggernaut the Jordka (a combination of the two most powerful sports figures in Chicago history, Michael Jordan and Mike Ditka, for those who have never watched Saturday Night Live).

Back to my computer. Spencer is making happy sounds from the next room. New super vehicle should divert his attention for at least three minutes. That’s plenty of time for an introduction and maybe a rough outline because 500 words is the equivalent of one rambling footnote. I feel a gentle tug on my leg.

“Daddy,” Spencer says, “do you have to go to the bathroom?”

Does Daddy have to go to the bathroom? Of course, Daddy has to go to the bathroom! Because one of our potty training methods was to teach Spencer that going to the bathroom was a fun, social activity like going to a party in your 20s where everyone is crowded into one small room, and there is always a line for the bathroom (I push aside vague worries that this will create future uncomfortable bathroom moments when Spencer meets other children who haven’t learned about the party going on in their bathrooms). And, in fact, Daddy does have to go the bathroom because Daddy has to be ready at a moment’s notice to pee, and so Daddy continuously hydrates as if he is preparing for his final two-and-a-half-mile ascent at the Tour de France.

Slight hiccup when Spencer somehow finds the time to unravel the entire roll of toilet paper in the brief interval between pulling up his pants and “washing” his hands—said activity consisting mainly of Spencer splashing water onto Daddy and laughing uproariously. Second slight hiccup when Spencer reaches out to touch this curious yellow liquid that comes out of Daddy’s body. Not clear if this is a joke he is playing on Daddy or if he is genuinely curious to see what urine feels like. Daddy has to stop—painfully—mid-pee and explain to Spencer that we never, ever do that. This just makes it sound more exciting, so Spencer immediately takes another stab at it. Daddy decides that he can hold it and that there is nothing unhealthy about severe kidney pain that radiates down his right leg.

30 Days of Dads: Josh From Man Vs. Baby

Today's guest writer is Josh, who brings us the very funny Man Vs. Baby. He describes his site thusly: "Essentially, my son wasn't doing enough interesting stuff to write about, so I made shit up. It became a habit that everything from Baby Mad Libs to the recent passing of Cookie Monster, from 'just one too many.' May he rest in peace. If my son appears, he's generally the genius and I play the big dumb oaf. You've got to go with your strengths."

Goodnight, Moon to Become Reality Show

The colorful cast of Margaret Wise Brown’s famed Goodnight Moon has agreed to do a reality show of the same name to coincide with the 64th anniversary of the first publication of the classic.

 

We caught up with some of the aging cast in the green room of the Great Green Room to get their thoughts on the project. 

Red Balloon, looking more like a shriveled pink kidney, said, “Doing the book was a life highlight for me. Most balloons just get popped.”

It wasn’t such a lovefest for the entire cast, though. Comb and Brush haven’t spoken in decades. And the in-room romance between Socks and Mittens fizzled with a rejected marriage proposal.

“I guess she got cold feet,” Socks said, with no sense of irony. 

Bowl Full of Mush, looking pale and unappetizing as ever, said only this: “Eat me.”

Two Little Kittens (real names Arty and Marty) are now two nearly immobile mounds of matted fur and eye crust, the hefty toll of childhood fame and readily available catnip. As we chatted, Young Mouse hobbled right past them and gave them the bird. Marty farted.

The years have been gentler to others. Clocks, an ageless wonder, vowed to set the record straight:

“People say I’ve had work done. That really winds me up, you know? This is my original face!”

Noises Everywhere said, “Ahahahahahahahhhhhh. Brrraaaaaahhhhhhaaabrahahabaa.”

Quiet Old Lady Whispering Hush, still old, still quiet, offered some perspective: “Shhhh.”

Moon said, “Can somebody please get this cow off me?”

Should be fun. Shooting starts next week. If all goes well, producers are already auditioning cast members for the long-awaited sequel, Good Morning Sun.

 

30 Days of 30 Dads: Neal Call

All I know about Neal Call, author and cartoonist behind the newbie Raised By My Daughter blog, is that he showed up on my blog's doorstep one day like a stray puppy leaving little packages of insight instead of poop. He now tells me he was born in Paris to a military family, and received an ROTC scholarship and the nickname "Gandhi" from his commanding officer. Obviously, he didn't last long there. Before that he was voted "most likely to disappear and survive alone in the wilderness" by his high school class, a title he's still hoping to live up to someday. An unemployed writer with EMT training, this California resident can break your heart with his words then put it back together with a nifty combination of cellophane tape and plastic wrap. Maybe that skill will finally allow him to move out of his in-laws house. -- Kevin T. Uncool

+ + +

ON HOLDING HANDS

Around the time that my daughter Addison turned 18 months old, she transitioned from finger-holding to hand-holding. It was a big moment. Now don't get me wrong, it was cute the way her warm little fingers would curl around my single big one, like a bunch of tiny tentacles. And since she's rarely inclined to hold my hand or my finger, I'd take either one in a heartbeat. But if I have a choice, hand-holding is the tops. Let me explain.

While in the womb, Addison was tightly swaddled in a sea of love and other strange fluids, a pearl cultured in a stream of nourishment that filtered through the kinks and bends of her mother to become something that could sustain life. It was her mother who protected her, a living armor to defend against the world with an all-encompassing embrace.

When she was born, the waves of that sea crested over her one last time, and then crashed, spilling away on a fading tide, draining from her lungs and clearing from her eyes. In the residue of these waters were my wife and myself and a little girl, who looked directly at us, and screamed. As we beheld this tiny sea creature, wafting ocean spray formed drops that ran in rivulets down our cheeks, and then also spilled away.

And there we were, all of us washed up on dry land. Addison, the most recent castaway, cried out immediately in bewilderment for something to take the place of the soothing waters of her life as a fish and to quench her powerful thirst. Her mother provided much of that, and would continue to do so, for the next year of her life. But in the first moment that I stroked my daughter's hand, she grabbed onto me, without even looking, and didn't let go. I knew that my wife wasn't her only safe harbor. 

She placed herself completely, without a hint of reservation, in my hands. It was hard to fully grasp then, and it still is. She needed me. But I also realized during that time that she didn't just need me as I was, but that she needed all the potential in me. I didn't immediately feel like a different person. Rather, I felt the weight of my obligation to become the best father my daughter could wish for. Some fatherly instincts were automatic; others I've tried to cultivate. 

Eventually she lost her automatic grasp reflex, and now any time that she holds my hand it is an act of volition. When she merely held my finger she was barely on the cusp of serious decision-making, and she never wandered far anyway; but now she can grasp my hand with hers, her sweaty little octopus hand, and every time she does, my heart swells a little. Because she is choosing me. 

When we are holding hands, it is another umbilical. Probably the nourishment goes both ways, but I can't help feeling that this umbilical reverses the flow, this time for my benefit. Addison does not voluntarily hold my hand often, but when she does, when she slips up quietly and puts her hand in mine, I feel like she is saying: "Daddy, I'm back. Keep me safe. Hold me close, for another day."

There's probably going to come a time when we no longer hold hands. Maybe puberty, maybe even before that. It's been a long time since I have really held my dad's hand, but I still remember what it felt like. His hands were sometimes rough from calluses. They had old scars on them, from woodworking and from biting horses and from hammer blows, and so many freckles on the backs that they appeared many shades darker than his natural coloring. I remember how they dwarfed my hands, encircling mine in a gentle but powerful sheath. They were heavy. Firm. Safe. And they still are. I've found other harbors in my life, but I know I can always go back to my dad. The next time I see him, I'm going to shake his hand, and I might hold on for a while, to remember. And in the meantime, I'll try to reach out my hand to my daughter every chance I get, so that someday when she needs it, a recollection will twitch in her hand and she'll know a safe place where she can put it.

30 Days of Dads: Nathan Thornburgh

Nathan Thornburgh is the Brian Fantana of dadbloggers. When he’s not out travelling the globe, having adventures, and recording those adventures on the excellent site Roads And Kingdoms, he’s wryly observing Dad Culture on the also-excellent site DadWagon (and I hate to play favorites, but I’ll say it – DadWagon has been my favorite dad site for some time now). We’re stoked to have him contribute this post, and hope that it helps you avoid being pegged as a paederast. - Jason

I have lots of problems. Let’s talk about one of them: I am a bad listener. In one small example of this, I have not been listening very closely to the Internet lately, so I missed this entire conversation that happened almost a month ago. But it’s a good conversation, and something that dads can contribute to mightily (as opposed, say, to conversations about which breast pads work best).

It is, of course, the heaping pile of paranoia that Circle of Moms contributor Sharon Silver posted in her piece called “How To Spot A Child Predator”. If you, like me, haven’t been paying attention, let me summarize: concerned mom walks into a sandwich shop and sees an older man having an animated conversation (about astronomy, in part) with two 3^rd graders, so she goes up to the counter of the shop, essentially calls him a pedophile in a loud voice, and then walks out proudly to go blog about it.

 I don’t want to lay into Mrs. Silver personally, since I have no idea if she is that immoderate in the rest of her life or writing. And I really appreciate her candor. Blogging is supposed to be all personal and expressive, but many of us (I’m guilty of this) pull our punches and self-censor when we write. That’s a shame: we end up presenting a carefully stylized version of ourselves and our thoughts, versions that are inevitably safer, more normative, less outrageous than we really are. Silver does not have that problem. She initiates what I would consider to be an unfortunate fit of slanderous fingerpointing in a public place and she has the strength (or lack of filter) to just present it all from her unique point of view.

 Did I say unique? One of the reasons that I am so drawn to the post is that I don’t think she’s very unique at all. She is just more open about it. Really, I think many consumers of mass media in this country could be forgiven for thinking that this is what pedophilia looks like: a conversation in a public place between a man and children he’s not related to. Silver uses language that you’re likely to hear on any evening newscasts, especially during sweeps season:

My name is being called to pick up my sandwich. Then, like a thunderbolt, it hits me! Those boys are being groomed. That man may be a predator!

This is not a gender thing per se. The messaging in our country—be afraid—is powerful enough to blast through chromosomal differences. The comments section in Silver’s post, which is now closed, included plenty of women who pointed out there is, in the words of one commenter, “a whole lot of crazy going on in this ‘article’”.

 But since this is 30 days of dadbloggers here at DadCentric, I think it’s worth pointing out that there were NO men (that I saw at least) supporting the public shaming of a dude for essentially being a dude and talking to children. But even more than that, the dadblogosphere did a nice step further and explained why Silver’s reaction was not just wrong, but even damaging. Zach Rosenberg over at 8BitDads (who apparently took astronomy at UC Santa Cruz like I did) wrote a nice piece pointing out how dangerous Silveresque hysteria is to the already frail sense of community we have in this country. BloggerFather did his first xtranormal video on the topic, in which he was able to just use Silver words verbatim and that was all the comedy needed.

I can’t improve on their sentiments, but I can say that my job now involves me getting into situations that would put me perhaps in this poor sandwich shop dude’s shoes. That is, I travel, and I talk to, and take pictures of, strangers. Sometimes children even, if they are around and part of the story I’m working on. This could land me in trouble, for example, with pro-Silver commenter Michelle, who asked over at Circle of Moms, “if you see a man surreptitiously taking pictures of a child (say, a little girl around the age of 7 or 8) with whom he is clearly not familiar, do you assume it's all ‘harmless’?” I rely very much on the fact that in other countries, I haven’t run into the kind of rich, dark imagination that Michelle has. People may or may not like me taking pictures, and I never do it surreptitiously, but never has it come up that I might be some kind of child predator.

The key thing is that I, like the dadbloggers I mentioned, will read Silver’s post or future posts like them and immediately identify with the hounded man, not with Silver. As dads get more involved as parents, we’re going to be the ones who watch over and take care of our own kids, and in a pinch, other people’s kids. If the dominant voices out there say “fear men”, then it’s even more important that people are out keep writing as fathers, not predators, explaining that some men think children are actually interesting to talk to, with their anarchic minds and sense of wonder. And maybe we’ll get the Sharon Silvers of the world to think twice before turning a trip to the mall into an episode of Law & Order: SVU.

So get out there and blog, dammit. That guy in the sandwich shop needs you.