As I dropped my youngest off at daycare this morning, the teachers’ in the 18 month old ro… more
Archive for the ‘Parenting Books’ Category
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Spanking Baby New Year
By Daddy Clay Friday, January 1st, 2010
Happy New Year! Should one of your resolutions be to spank your child more regularly? If the authors of Nurtureshock are to be believed, you should consider it. This flight in the face of conventional parenting wisdom is just another day at the office for Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. They love nothing better than to tweak the nose of well-intentioned parents everywhere.
This latest finding comes from a recently launched longitudinal study of a couple thousand teens. In it, researchers discovered that kids that reported being spanked between ages 2 and 6 enjoyed more “positive outcomes” than kids that had never been spanked. Read the rest of this entry »
The Daddy Shift: A Must Read for Dads (and Moms)
By Daddy Clay Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Women today are locked in a noble struggle to overcome sexism and to reach equality in the workplace, juggling all the while their many obligations at home. Men just suck at laundry. And forget to pick up the birthday present for Jenny’s party. Where mom’s struggle to balance career and home is heroic, her failures a result of an unfair system and high aspirations, dad’s is a touch pathetic, his shortcomings a result of sloth or a carelessness, evidence of a lack of commitment.
It’s easy to unleash a torrent of complaints about today’s dads. Just ask a mom if she has a 50/50 marriage.
It’s a tough moment to be a dad. Expectations have changed radically, stereotypes are being defied, male identity reshaped. And it’s a good thing. A change that allows us to enjoy more the things that are really important in life. It is a rare voice that understands both the historical and societal origins of this change, and the impact that it has on the dads standing over changing tables across the country.
That’s why I think that everyone that reads this blog or visits DadLabs or any other dad site with any regularity should read “The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family
The Kid Stays In The Picture
By Daddy Clay Monday, September 1st, 2008
This past Tuesday was clearly the craziest day in the history of DadLabs World Headquarters. I don’t know if I’ve clued you into the fact that this place is not exactly Rockefeller Center. It’s not even as nice as the basement under the janitor’s closet in Rockefeller Center. Our interns, coming straight from UT frat houses find the transition very comfortable. But not so much with civilized, real people. We did scramble around to clean up when we thought Daisy Whitney might be coming by, but the place is still a pit.
So when I looked around the office and saw about twenty moms with newborn babies — little ones crawling through the dust bunnies — I was certain we were about to have a health crisis on our hands.
The whole situation was Troy’s fault.
Our publisher, Quirk Books, had pitched him an idea for the cover of our book. The four of us (Owen, Brad, Troy and I all contributed to the book) all holding newborns, standing in a sea of babies. Troy said, “that sounds great. I don’t need a life. I’ll just spend my next week rounding up babies.” And with a little help from a local casting agent, that’s basically what he did.
All we had for baby bait was a bit of stuff from our good friends and sponsors — a plate and utensil set and bib from Baby Bjorn, and some sunglasses from Baby Banz. Troy thought nobody would go for that, so he invited way more models than we needed. And of course, they all showed up. Babies were absolutely everywhere you looked.
At first, I felt an enormous wave of gratitude that my wife was not there to see the amazing collection of cute babies that were assembled. It was the kind of sight that would make any child-oriented woman get uterus pangs. Even I was momentarily caught up in the cuteness. Momentarily.
When the photographer was ready to shoot, there was a moment of panic. No Owen. His wife had just given birth the night before. We waited as long as we could. The babies were ticking. So with heavy hearts, we trudged into the studio.
We stood on a cyclorama of white paper, donned our lab coats, and the baby wrangler started to load us up with babies. One on each arm. When we got to about baby five, baby one started to cry. By the time all the babies were in place, all of them were crying. The photographer is yelling direction to us to be heard over the din: “Look confident!”
About then the screaming upset one of the babies not in the shot. Soon it is a hellish nursery of banshees that has us all feeling like we are doing something deeply wrong. But at the same time it’s completely hilarious. The lab coats and the screaming babies. Everybody is cracking up. But when we get the shot, it’s hard to tell who is moving quicker, us or the moms. Of course as soon as the babies are back with the moms, it’s all cooing and cuteness. Not good for the Dad self-esteem.
The babies are off to take individual shots, and we’re all feeling thankful that we’ll never have to do that again, when Owen comes through the door.
Just two days after becoming a dad for the second time, looking sleep-deprived and every bit as bedraggled as he should, Owen has somehow mustered the energy and the brownie points to show up for the shoot.
And we’re all horrified.
And Owen doesn’t know that we’re horrified because of the Screaming Baby Picture. He just thinks we’re trying to ace him out of being on the cover, trying to get more airtime for ourselves, overlooking the sacrifice he’s made to be present. Instead of getting irate, he just looks a little puzzled.
Finally we clue in, and instead of trying to explain, we start setting up the shot again. This time the babies go even crazier, because they recognize the setup — plus there are two more of them in the picture. Total baby banshee screaming. Moms fretting and laughing.
Was it worth it? The book releases on Father’s Day 2009. Mindy at Quirk would have kittens if I published the photos here. But I really wish I could.
Noobie Dad Sites Galore
By Daddy Clay Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
Several newly launched Dad sites have come to our attention in the last few days. Dadosphere is a social networking site, brought to you by the team at type-a mom. Obviously this site is just getting off the ground, but if they can find the writers to provide the kind of content available on the mom site, they will be successful.
We also came across justdaddys, also a forum/social site just getting started. I like the dad-angle, but if you don’t mind having a few moms in the mix, check out parentricity.
The forward looking, early adopter types may be saying that social networking is already sooo 2005, but I do hope that the next step may be niche social networking — finding networks that are manageable in size and organized around a specific topic. It’s what led us, with our friends at FYI to launch our own experiment in social networking, the DadLabs Crib. (If you haven’t already, please head over there, create a profile, and join in.)
I’d also love to suggest that you check out greatdad. The guys over there have put together some really impressive text content there. It’s a great resource, more on the content than social networking side, but still worth a look.
It is still amazing to me, on the verge of my ninth Father’s Day, that the online parenting scene is still so dominated by moms. iVillage, CafeMom (founded by my college suitemate Andy Shue) Dooce — towering online empires. Maybe Dadlabs will rise to be the counterpart for these sites, maybe it wont, but I sure hope that the amazing dad site will come along to prove that guys online aren’t just about tech and cars and girls and porn.
So best of luck to the noobies, may somebody, please, win.
