Mothering on Fathering
Posted on 02. Jun, 2008 by Brian Reid in General
If I had a dime for every time I’ve used this space to rail against the gleeful mommy-first coverage of Parents and Parenting magazines, I’d have about a buck-fifty. But that’s only because my interesting in dinging those publications over and over again has waned. I’ve grown accustomed — though not happy — to the idea that parenting magazines will generally ignore dads.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t still pine for change, so I hope every parenting magazine editor picks up a copy of the latest Mothering — the hippie aunt in the family of kid publications — and check out the editorial on their historic focus on moms and why they’re beginning to bulk up their dad coverage:
There is a new generation of fathers who are not second-class parents to their wives. They are fully present and know what to do. Just like mothers, they have to figure things out for themselves and learn from their mistakes, but more of them than ever are willing to show up and get involved. …In addition, here are some other things I want to do to more actively include fathers in the pages of Mothering and on mothering.com. While we’ve always welcomed articles by fathers, we now want to encourage and publish them even more. Please send us your ideas and submissions.
We’re also developing a new regular department, “In His Own Words”: a short interview of a dad by a dad, with a photo. Look for the premiere interview in the July/August issue. Give us your suggestions about fathers to interview.
Joe Kelly is our online fathering expert.
But we want to develop even more content for fathers on mothering.com, and have asked Jeremy Adam Smith, of Daddy Dialectic (www.daddy-dialectic.blogspot.com), to help us set up daddy blogs: uncensored epistles about the experiences of real fathers. I’d also like to use our considerable experience in managing Web forums to host online discussions among daddies. I don’t know, however, if that again crosses a line, is condescending. While it’s important that Mothering facilitate intimate conversation among mothers and fathers, it’s also important that fathers have their own autonomy.
Sadly, all magazine journalists have not suddenly become thoughtful observers on modern gender relations. But I’ll get to Women’s Health later this week.
Kelly M. Bray
02. Jun, 2008
The recent article in LA Parent magazine about stay at home dads was a good example. In many subtle ways SAHD’s were measured by similarity or not to mothers. The picture of the dad was captioned by pointing to the shoes and writing “to walk in mom’s shoes” Arrrgh!
Suburbandaddy
02. Jun, 2008
amen to that!
Lance
02. Jun, 2008
Unrelated (didn’t see a place to send you info), did you see Star Tribune’s article? (Minneapolis MN): http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/19386984.html
Amy
02. Jun, 2008
I haven’t ever read Mothering Magazine, but I appreciate that they call themselves Mothering, instead of pretending to be for parents but really being for moms moms moms.
Of course, most of those magazines are actually marketing tools for women’s clothes and makeup, with various bits of child-rearing books recycled through on a regular basis, so that you’d really do better to just buy Elle and a copy of Dr. Sears/Penelope Whatsit/Things to Dread When You’re Expecting a Toddler/your choice of parenting manual and be done with it. But that’s off the sexism topic, sort of.
Always Home and Uncool
02. Jun, 2008
Amy - you are right on! It’s amazing how little real info those mags contain beyond the ads, the “you must have this” articles and the stuff you probably already know if you read any parenting book, talked to another involved parent or just listened to your freakin’ pediatrician. Women who read these mags should really be insulted at how stupid and vunerable publishers think they are.
Working Dad
02. Jun, 2008
RD,- Good news, as I often say I don’t read those magazines and I’m a parenting reporter.
I also am writing a story about how the workplace, and society, is and is not changing for dads in this era of co-parenting. If anyone has any thoughts you can send me an email at paulnyhan@seattlepi.com.
Thanks,
Paul Nyhan
Family Reporter
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
(206) 448-8145
(206) 718-0374 (cell)
Blog: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/family
Dayv
03. Jun, 2008
I have to give big props to Mothering Magazine. They published an article about the 13th Annual At-Home Dad’s Convention (November 8th, 2008, in Sacramento, CA) a few months ago. It was mainly a publicity piece written by an outstanding author (yours truly), but they asked for it, and they also asked to ad the convention to their calendar of events on http://www.mothering.com. Their willingness to help promote at-home dads has been a breath of fresh air in the world of “Parenting” magazines.
Dayv