While serving as TwoBert's wingman on a playdate the other day, I found myself involved in a discussion about blogging. One mom started off saying she didn't read blogs. (I mean, really! Who has the time?) And if she did, she sure wouldn't bother with a blog about raising kids. (I mean, I'm already living that life, yknow? Why rehash it?) And if she did read blogs about raising kids, she sure as hell wouldn't want to read a daddy blog. (I mean, what am I supposed to read about? Seeing their kid a half hour per day and griping about changing diapers?)
As usual, I was conflicted. Naturally, I was disappointed that this is this woman's experience, one that is shared by too many other parents with absentee partners. However, I also wanted to wave my sunscreen- and popsicle-stained palms at her and say, "Dude. I'm right here. And there are tons of other fathers out here, whose hands I would gladly shake were I a little less sticky. How's about taking a stroll outside the gated community of Head-Up-Your-Ass Estates? Hm?"
I know daddy bloggers aren't the usual case. Not by a long shot. We are a stark minority among parent bloggers, so much so that we are often just lumped in with the mommies. Not every dad has the option to care for his kids as much as we do, or gives much of a shit about washing clothes, checking homework, packing lunches, and the usual crudgery that punctuates parenthood as we might. Fewer still are the men who will make the time to write about it, with vowels and everything.
Nevertheless, it gives me a hot pain in the nethers to spend a few days singledadding my boys, taking care to listen to this and scrub that and pry apart the other things, and feel pretty happy about it, and then walk into a Buy Buy Baby and see this on a onesie:
This, dammit, is why we need daddy blogs.
