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
15 / 50
John Cave Osborne
When it rains, it pours, as John Cave Osborne well knows; it didn’t take long for him to go from single dude on the town to married father of five, which is what happens when you marry a single mom, waste no time having triplets, and then throw in one more baby for good measure.
Osborne has established his unique – and hilarious – voice on his eponymous website as well as here on Babble Voices. He isn’t afraid to address topics such as “Accidentally Pissing Off Legions of Pregnant Women” and he’s even less afraid to examine his own fears and foibles, as in a post analyzing his conflicted feelings as his children grow up: observing that his triplets have gone from infants to toddlers to kids, he describes them as “kids who finally have wills of their own and who are exercising those wills in ways that create a separation between them and me that never existed before.” Still, no matter what John writes about – laundry wars at home, changing diapers for three babies at one time – he always manages to keep his sense of humor intact.
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I am humbled to be included.
Many thanks.
Mitch