The Space - my children's book, free

One thing I do feel some 'Dad Pride' over is that I think I gave my boys a decent introduction to books, through our regular bedtime stories. Reading the classics inevitably gave me the idea, along with 99% of the population, that I might have a book of my own in me.

That book has sat in a drawer for years (and yes I have bought the Writers and Artists' Yearbook). As I have largely given up hope of having it properly published, I thought I would post it here so you can have it for free (although see back page about donations...)

Download for free from http://tinyurl.com/TheSpaceBook

I would be delighted if you were to download it, read it with your kids (you can print it, or the PDF actually works pretty well on a tablet or smartphone), share it...

And please let me know here, by email on jonmsutton@gmail.com or on Twitter @jonmsutton what you think of it. Some might say the plot makes no sense whatsoever... I prefer to think it leaves space for valuable parent/child discussion...

Free PDF download from http://tinyurl.com/TheSpaceBook
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Dad song #12

Inspired by a Father's Day viewing of the surprisingly funny 'Daddy's Home'…

My son calls another man daddy
He'll ne'er know my name nor my face
God only knows how it hurts me
For another to be in my place

"Stop telling men they're useless at childcare"

Others continue to pick up on the need for some 'Dad Pride': see this article from Andrew Watts in The Spectator.

I used to be on the receiving end of these comments quite a lot on 'Daddy days' when the boys were younger. Less so these days, but I think there's still a general sense if I am alone with the boys for a weekend that it's a miracle if they come through it unscathed. 

I maintain that many of the Dads I know are fantastic, and that many parents - Dads and Mums alike - inevitably have the odd moment they're less proud of. Incidentally, on that note, it's well worth listening to Adam Buxton's interview with Doc Brown where he talks about children's books, and in particular 'Not now, Bernard'. If you haven't read it, do: it's a splendidly dark exploration of parental neglect.

A celebration of Dad jokes

It seems it has been a year since I last posted, and another Father's Day prompts me to return.

I think my two young boys, now nearly 12 and 9, finally disowned me this Father's Day following an elaborate and protracted build up to the punchline 'Ghostlusters'. This reminded me that this whole blog could conceivably be a front for my continued obsession with Dad jokes, which will be familiar to anyone who follows me on Twitter.

So for the first of a hopefully more regular series of posts, I thought I would share a radio show that I took part in for last Father's Day - a celebration of Dad jokes.

"That's why he was fired from his job as a…"

Given that I set up this blog in response to the ubiquitous idea that Dads are a bit rubbish, it's odd that I’ve become obsessed by that celebration of Dad rubbishness, the classic Dad joke. A roll of the eyes, a groan, a tut, an ‘awww, Dad!’ – I’m in heaven!

I think it’s because I believe every awful joke I tell my boys is doing good. Just as Dads tend to push the boundaries in play and risk-taking, I like to think that’s what I’m doing with jokes. By telling jokes that are clearly pretty awful, I’m modelling how not to do it and by implication how to do it! I firmly believe my children are growing up being way funnier than I am, at least in part because I’ve shown them the ropes in a groan-inducing way. Children should simply be bathed in humour… As Roald Dahl wrote, ‘a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY.’

Why do Dad jokes take the form they do? Well, consider genuinely good jokes. 

“I went to the library and asked for a book on Pavlov’s dogs and Schroedinger’s cat. They said it rang a bell but they couldn’t say if it was there or not.” 

Now there would be no point telling that to an 8-year-old. So lots of historical and cultural references are out, as are sexual innuendo (e.g. ‘How does Mr Miyagi relax? Whacks off’), or anything too rude or gross. What are we left with? "What do you call a nervous Jedi? Panakin Skywalker."

That’s not to say you can’t try to introduce them to new concepts and vocab in Dad joke form. My favourite joke, because I genuinely made it up (unlike all the others which I pinch), is this: 

"I had a dream the other night that I was going to get wet on a camping trip. Must have been a portent." 

You have to explain the concept of 'portent' to them, but surely anything that tortures a joke to within an inch of its life merely improves it?

But this post is mainly about a developing interest in another form of Dad joke – jokes about Dads. For example, there’s a whole genre of jokes that include the line ‘That’s why he got fired from his job as…’:

My Dad always said to fight fire with fire. That’s why he got fired from his job as a fireman.

My Dad would never call a spade a spade. That’s why he got fired from his job in the casino.

Or there are jokes related to your Dad’s career path:

My Dad was a clown; those are big shoes to fill. 

My Dad’s a coffee taster for Nescafe. I don’t know how he sleeps at night. 

My Dad invented windowsills. Total ledge.

My Dad spends all day every day crushing fizzy drinks cans in the recycling plant. It's soda pressing. 

That kind of thing.

Why don't you tend to hear 'My Mum was a…' jokes? Is it simply down to traditional gender roles in terms of who is the breadwinner? Or is it to do with hapless Dads having the broad shoulders to take being the butt of the joke all the time?

I would really love to hear your thoughts on Dad jokes, and your own examples – get in touch on Twitter @DadPrideBlog and @jonmsutton

Want your daughter to become 'sexually unrestricted'?

I have two young boys. So I can only speculate as to what it is like to be a father of girls, notably at the point at which they become sexually active. And I speculate it may be rather like this superb story from stand-up comedian Phil Jupitus.

If, for whatever reason, you would prefer your daughter to have sex later rather than sooner, it turns out the key may be to remain engaged in her upbringing. According to this Scientific American Mind article, “Researchers have revealed a robust association between father absence – both physical and psychological – and accelerated reproductive development and sexual risk-taking in daughters”.

The researcher, Sarah Hill at Texas Christian University, explains:

“When Dad is absent, it basically provides young girls with a cue about what the future holds in terms of the mating system they are born into.” When a girl's family is disrupted, and her father leaves or is not close to her, she sees her future: men don't stay for long, and her partner might not stick around either. So finding a man requires quick action. The sooner she is ready to have children, the better. She cannot consciously decide to enter puberty earlier, but her biology takes over, subconsciously. “This would help facilitate what we call, in evolutionary sciences, a faster reproductive strategy”.

The researchers are the first to admit that the links between puberty and a father's presence are just associations. They do not reveal what causes these changes. The article continues:

'In the ideal experiment that would answer this question, we would assemble a group of families and randomly assign some of the fathers to abandon their families and others to stay. Obviously, this proposal is not likely to win approval from an ethics board. So what is the next best thing? Hill and DelPriore designed an experiment in which young women—some of them teenagers and others just past their teen years—were asked to write about an incident in which their father supported them and then were encouraged to write about a time he was not there for them. Then they were asked about their attitudes toward sexual behavior. If the researchers' hypothesis was correct, memories of unpleasant father experiences would lead the young women to express more favorable views of risky sexual behavior. Pleasant memories of their fathers should push them in the opposite direction.
And that is what happened. Women became “more sexually unrestricted” after recalling an incident in which their father was disengaged, Hill explained. Further experiments showed that father disengagement did not change women's views of other kinds of risky behavior; for instance, they were not more likely to ride a bike without a helmet. The effect was limited to sex.'

Not like riding a bike

There is plenty more of interest in the article, including the hypothesis that a father's involvement could have a different effect on sons, enhancing a competitive urge and spurring sons to achieve more when they grow up and leave the family. So do read it.

There's also the important point that 'fathers have been widely overlooked in scientific studies. For example, in 2005 psychologist Vicky Phares of the University of South Florida reviewed 514 studies of clinical child and adolescent psychology from the leading psychological journals. Nearly half of them excluded fathers.'

'When did being a good father become so complicated?'

That's the question posed by Alex Blimes in this rather long and slightly confused piece in The Guardian. I suspect the answer is 'when the broadsheets started paying people by the word to write about it'.

No doubt I risk accusations of pot-kettle-black here, but I don't think being a good father actually is that complicated, mainly because what's needed are the characteristics of a good person in general. You just need to take some time, be loving, set boundaries but have fun, and relax. I recognise that this is an ideal I don't always live up to, but this blog was intended to be more about celebrating the numerous examples I come across of Dads getting it pretty much right, rather than worrying too much about when we don't.

I'm sure Alex and I agree on many things. For example, when he says approvingly of his friend that 'He is not defined solely, or overwhelmingly, or even chiefly, by his child-rearing achievements and expertise', I agree that is desirable. Although retaining a decent chunk of your own identity in the face of the competing demands of work, marriage and fatherhood is not an easy task, it is indeed an important one.

But maybe where we diverge is when Alex writes:


When did being a good father get so complicated? Is there any middle ground, or must one either go full Wet Wipe or be a lazy, incompetent, dinosaur? Is it still possible, as it certainly used to be, to get away with the occasional omelette, some skewwhiff shelves in the spare room and, once in a blue moon, a full day with the kids so your other half can go out?

I know the answer to that last question. It's no, probably not. The expectations of fathers have changed. More is demanded of us.

You can't make an omlette without reading a 3000 word article
about whether or not you're doing it properly

I'm not sure I agree with that. Of course there's still a middle ground, occupied by the vast majority of Dads. And if expectations of Dads have changed, I'm not convinced that pressure comes from the Mums or from Society in general, I think it's largely internal. Perhaps more Dads are realising that no, it's not acceptable to do a half-arsed job when it comes to something as important as raising your own children. Surely that's no bad thing.

No doubt many of us are still wrestling with how to juggle the various aspects of our hectic lives, just as many women are. And no doubt that will lead to endless hand-wringing and troll-baiting in the liberal broadsheets, on radio phone-ins and on blogs like this one. But at the end of the day most Dads I know appreciate they are not and never can be perfect, but that as long as they love their children and show them that through what they say and what they do then they're not going to go far wrong.

The last word should surely go to this great New Yorker piece from a couple of days ago: 'A recent study has shown that if American parents read one more long-form think piece about parenting they will go fucking ape shit.'