RebelDad

Hope for Magazines About Parenting

Posted on 07. Jun, 2010 by Brian Reid in gender wars, media

I have, for years, been despondent about the state of the parenting-magazine market, which has — like the majority of the baby-industrial complex — aggressively and intentionally marginalized dads.

This wasn’t the result of some mom cabal, either. There are plenty of guys editing at and writing for these magazines. If you look far back enough, you can even find my byline in some of the larger-circulation parenting books. My editors were primarily other men.

But neither I nor the guys I was writing for ever aired our daddy centricity on the page. So I was thrilled to see Shawn Bean, the executive editor of Babytalk, lay it all out there in a nifty piece titled “Meet the Modern Dad.” It’s full of pride and swagger and confidence in parenting:

That’s right: a dad editing a baby magazine. Let’s be honest. This is not a traditional role for a guy. I push tandem strollers through the halls of our building, inspiring all manner of rubbernecking. I receive emails that read, “Shawn, as a mom I’m sure you’ll love this new bouncy seat.” I am a pro football fanatic who knows the best brand of binkies. I can hook up a DVD player and swaddle a newborn.

I am a 21st-century pop.

The rest of the piece goes on to lay out the stats: dads are a rising parenting power, and we’re increasingly coming together for social support and hands-on advice. We are daddies, hear us roar.

Of course, a more cynical reader would still facepalm at the structure of the article, which stops every few hundred words to reference “What moms should know” about this new, strange type of male. (Because, you know, the article — while *about* dads — isn’t actually *for* dads.) But I’m not that kind of cynical. Not today.