Dad
Top 50 Dad Blogs of 2012
Last year, when we inaugurated our Top 50 Dad Blogs list, we praised dad bloggers for “changing the way we think about fatherhood.” Indeed, a number of our favorite bloggers on this, our second Top 50 list, insist our thinking needs to be changed. They describe themselves as advocates for fathers, taking to their keyboards in order to counter dominant cultural stereotypes of dad-as-incompetent-buffoon. (You don’t believe them? Tune in to most any family sitcom on most any night of the week.) Others on the list aspire simply to entertain us with funny, relatable tales from the trenches. A few write to work through the shattering grief of losing a child or spouse.
This list features straight dads, gay dads, working dads, stay-at-home dads, geek dads, single dads, and more. In a culture where the dominant conversations around fatherhood center simply on whether dads can deign to change their kid's diaper, it's refreshing to see these guys take the public perception of parents into their own hands. We are again struck by the variety of their voices and experiences, which itself puts the lie to the notion of any one “typical dad.” A lot of our favorites from last year are back, while many worthy entrants are making their debuts. We hope you’ll enjoy laughing, crying, nodding, and discovering along with them as much as we have. As dads' online influence grows, this list will only become more and more difficult to curate — and that's a good problem to have. If you think we missed any of your favorite dad bloggers, nominate them here. – Barbara Spindel and the dad blog panel
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Beta Dad
The super-sized tagline sums it up pretty nicely: “There’s this guy in his forties and his wife gets pregnant with twins and he builds an addition on their house but before he’s done his wife has the babies and then he has to stay home and take care of the kids and finish the house and do a bunch of other stuff too. Also there’s a really big dog with emotional problems.”
Beta Dad, who appeared at #48 on last year’s list and who also blogs at DadCentric, exemplifies the tectonic shift in gender roles vis-a-vis parenting. His wife is the breadwinner, but once his twins started preschool he had to bring in additional income, so he found part-time work in carpentry. He complained about that development at first, saying he’d rather continue getting paid “to write about my feelings,” but eventually found that “working is pretty okay after all.” Beta Dad’s struggle, of course, is one that many moms can relate to. “I want to be part of a movement encouraging people to embrace the realities of the changing (for the better) American family,” he says, “a family in which the work is shared equitably and all parents are fully engaged in child-rearing.” Amen, Beta Dad.
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I am humbled to be included.
Many thanks.
Mitch