Episode 845 - Year of the Dad. What's trending in 2012? Dads! Laurie Gelman, co-host of The Mom Show talks about the shifting roles of primary care givers from Mom to Dad. There's also the scarier trend of reality TV/YouTube/internet fame influencing parenting. Parents need to be more aware of what children are watching. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than 2.5 hours of "screen time" which includes ALL screens, not just TV. One way to battle technology and hours and hours of texting, bad youtube videos, and generally bad programming is family dinner. Unplug and spend genuine quality time with your family.

Clay : Today in the lab we've got lifestyle and trending expert Laurie Gelman and she tells us that what is trending just might be you.
[musical interlude]
Clay:  Laurie, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Laurie Gelman:  My pleasure, Clay. Thanks for having me.
Clay:  You're looking into your crystal ball at trends for 2012, and is there anything out there for the dads?
Laurie:  Absolutely, I think it's going to be the year of the dad. What are you talking about? It's been tough for the dads the last couple of years. A lot of men have lost their job in the workforce, and they haven't been able to get back into it. What we're finding is that a lot of dads are taking over the childcare responsibilities. They're picking kids up from school, they're taking them to the after school, to the Gymboree, they're making sure they're on their play dates. It's going to be a big year for dad.
Clay:  I think so and we're also showing up in the marketplace and you're actually seeing that on the television, more and more dads depicted in ads that you're seeing on t.v.
Laurie:  Yeah, it's the future. If the economy stays the way it is, that's what's going to be the big switch. Apparently 34 percent of men who have wives that are in the workplace are now being the main caregivers. Actually, Baby Center just did a shopping rituals report and they found that 26 percent of dads are now doing the grocery shopping.
Clay:  Well, that's certainly good news for us because we talk to dads all the time and want to talk to them about parenting. They're obviously more involved. Are they going online, are they talking about it, are they creating communities about being a dad?
Laurie:  I think there are a lot of places where dads can go to commiserate and commune. Certainly on the Baby Center Momformation blog, we have this guy Scott Adler, that's called the Dadler, and everything's from his perspective, and he's terrific. I think that dads need it, they need the support system just as much as women do. I think women are more willing to support a dad who's sort of floundering and out there not knowing what to do. It's nice that they have the women's support group as well to bolster them.
Clay:  So you're looking in your crystal ball. What other trends are you seeing for 2012?
Laurie:  Other trends we're going to be seeing. I think you're going to see a lot of reality T.V. affecting the way people are parenting and I don't think that's such a good thing. I think that shows like Toddlers and Tiaras, with these girls behaving badly and their mothers behaving even worse, is something that's giving people fame and people at home are saying, "Gosh, I can do that. I can throw my kid on television and tell them what to do. Or I can put a YouTube video up of my daughter singing Nicki Minaj," and boom, all of a sudden they all get flown over to the Ellen DeGeneres Show and they get to instant stardom.
I think that when parents think of their lives and think, "Well, maybe it's passed me by, but it's not too late for my kid, to throw her under the bus and make her the star," or whatever, because they get the backlash fame, the wave, they bask in the wave of the fame.
Clay:  Certainly there's got to be some people that look at that show and think, "Wow. That's what I want to be." But don't you think it's even more often that people look at that show and think, "Oh my gosh. What a train wreck. What a nightmare." It's like you watch it because that's the last thing on earth you want to end up being.
Laurie:  Yes. Yes and no. Yes, it is a train wreck, but all of a sudden who's going to turn down their own reality show. The Kardashians is also a train wreck but people just want to be like them. They want to be a part of it. This celebrity obsessed culture we have is crazy. If you're offered 15 minutes or 15 seconds even, of Internet fame or T.V. fame, a lot of people are going to take it.
Clay:  This is getting a little uncomfortable because actually, we were...
Laurie:  [laughter] Really?
Clay:  They shot a pilot and I have to say that the moment when they came into film me reading a good night story to my daughter, that was awkward so we said no. Actually, the networks didn't buy it. [laughter]
Clay:  What's the antidote? What can we prescribe to families to work counter to this kind of reality show culture that's taking over? Do we ban watching television? Are there reality shows that offer healthy models? Something that we can offer as an alternative?
Laurie:  I don't think that banning television is the way to go about it. I think being smarter about the things you let your kids watch and the role models that they choose to emulate and helping them pick the right sort of role model and not the sassy teenager on the Disney channel or the Nickelodeon kid who's rude to his parents. I think you really have to be smart about the type of technology you let your kids handle and what you let your kids watch. We're seeing it a lot. The screen time is crazy now. The American Academy of Pediatrics don't even call it t.v. time anymore, they're saying two and a half hours of screen time because screens are everywhere. There's nothing we can do about it.
I think if we as parents are like this, with our thumbs on our iPads or our iPhones, that's learned behavior. The kids are going to do exactly the same thing. We have to be the ones, in 2012, to put that down, make eye contact, make sure that the time we have with the kids is quality time.
I know that's like a catch phrase, there's, "Oh, let's have quality time," but we're not doing it anymore. Literally it's, "Oh, yeah, we all spent the day together," but if everybody's on their iTouch or their other electronic device, what kind of quality is that?
Clay:  You know what I think a great antidote to reality t.v. culture and technology overload is? Family dinner.
Laurie:  I agree. Even though a lot of times we'll sit around the table and you'll say, "How was your day," and "I don't want to talk about it," ultimately something will get things going. We used to actually put headbands on, like the game headbands where you wear a headband with a person or an animal or something on it, and if we had nothing to talk about we'd play the headband game and that sort of gets conversation going.
Clay:  That's very cool. Laurie, thank you so much for joining on the show today. We really do appreciate it.
Laurie:  Thanks, Clay.
Clay:  That's all for us this week, here at DadLabs.