'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.'

Dad dancing – 'like an apple going brown'

While it's on the BBC iPlayer, you have to listen to the feature on BBC Woman's Hour about 'Dad dancing'. It starts at 12:15.

'They call it Dad Dancing,' says the presenter. 'It's when a man jerks and jiggles to the music and his children shriek at him to stop because it's embarrassing. Dads… seem to feel they are not the greatest dancers, so they hang back or just shuffle a bit.'

This, the presenter goes on, is despite research from Goldsmiths which shows that more men than women can recognise a beat accurately, so men should be better dancers than women. Guest on the show, the wonderful Dr Peter Lovatt, says that 'data tells us that men are born to dance', and as they get older they tend not to because they are self-conscious, they feel they haven't got any motor co-ordination, they feel they don't know what to do.

I wouldn't disagree with that, having been in an audience of hundreds at one of Peter's talk where I was literally the only person not joining in (the rest were students). I'm sure there are, as he says, social and psychological reasons why men don't dance. But I do have a few points to make.

Firstly, although I do tend to have prohibitively dodgy knees when it comes to a conference Ceilidh or some line dancing at a wedding, give me Andy Weatherall in the DJ booth or a 90's indie disco and I may well be tempted out of retirement. As the salsa teacher on Woman's Hour said, 'when they relax after a few classes' – I heard 'glasses'.

Secondly, I'm not so convinced 'Mum Dancing' is that different. 'Show your wrists' anyone?

Thirdly, I had to laugh when Peter came to the possible evolutionary psychology explanation. 'If dancing is part of the human mate selection process, like an apple going brown is meant to put people off eating it, perhaps middle-aged men dancing in this uncoordinated way might be signalling to women that they are not the right people to mate with.'

I don't need dance to send that signal! I'm well aware that I'm now past it... if I was labouring under any illusions they were shattered on a 'Dads night out' in the Peak District a couple of years ago. Freed from parenting duties by our other halves, we had a great pub crawl round Castleton, ending in a lock-in where we found ourselves chatting to some younger women – pretty much as equals, we thought. We would never, of course, have dreamt of performing any mating rituals, but I suspect some of us thought that in a parallel universe it might have been an option. Until, that is, one of the young ladies in question uttered the immortal line 'You know, you've really restored my faith in the older generation.'

So I think most 'Dad dancing' isn't about sending unconscious messages from some primordial past... we know we're the brown apple, and we're celebrating by dancing like nobody's watching. Because nobody is.

As with all evolutionary psychology though, this should lead to testable predictions. Peter, what of it? Do Dads dance worse than married non-fathers, and worse still than single men of the same age? Do they know they do? Do they in fact dance their worst when their kids are watching, because embarrassing them is fun? Do married men with two kids and a vasectomy dance worse than anyone else? It would be nice to have an excuse that's backed by science…

Dads on holiday

Having just booked my first ever proper, foreign, all-inclusive family holiday, I am very hopeful that the effect on me will be something like this.

Because that's what it's like, isn't it Dads? Before the holiday, you tend to arrive home at midnight, never speak to your family, break everything you touch and generally groan under the weight of your hideous deformities. It's a wonder you don't literally eat those children. But once you get on holiday, you slowly begin to participate in life, culminating with a sequence where your horns fall off (but you still manage to frighten the life out of a hotel maid), you stagger with your last ounce of energy into the sea… and then you emerge as a new man, a hunky fella whose family are happy to jump on, possibly including your wife (all these ads tend to hold out the hope of more sex with your wife).

Even though it's yet more 'Dads, eh? What are they like?' advertising, I'm not annoyed by the ad... I'm more annoyed that it's pretty much true (apart from the sex with your wife bit).

Making parenting 'a guy thing'

Last week I blogged about parenting and risk. Good friend, excellent Dad and moover / groover Dr Paul Redford got in touch with some excellent related resources, including the must-buy for Father's Day '50 dangerous things (you should let your children do)', and relevant articles.

In particular, he pointed me to this piece in the Wall Street Journal. It says:

'… the pop-culture image of the inept dad who wouldn't know a diaper genie from a garbage disposal has begun to fade. In his place, research shows, is emerging a new model of at-home fatherhood that puts a distinctly masculine stamp on child-rearing and home life.

At-home dads aren't trying to be perfect moms, says a recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research. Instead, they take pride in letting their children take more risks on the playground, compared with their spouses. They tend to jettison daily routines in favor of spontaneous adventures with the kids. And many use technology or DIY skills to squeeze household budgets, or find shortcuts through projects and chores, says the study, based on interviews, observation of father-child outings and an analysis of thousands of pages of at-home dads' blogs and online commentary.

"Just as we saw a feminization of the workplace in the past few decades, with more emphasis on such skills as empathy and listening, we are seeing the opposite at home—a masculinization of domestic tasks and routines," says Gokcen Coskuner-Balli, an assistant professor of marketing at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and lead author of the study. "Many men are building this alternative model of home life that is outdoorsy, playful and more technology-oriented."

...This really chimes with research I have pointed to which suggests that Dads see encouraging active exploration, pushing the boundaries a bit, as a central aspect of their role. 

Let that point sink in, because I think it's a significant one. In my relatively new and ongoing meditation on what constitutes 'Dad Pride', and whether Dads are really as rubbish as they are often made out to be, I am increasingly being asked about fictional Dads like Homer Simpson and Daddy Pig from Peppa Pig (which is, after all, the British Simpsons). Here's the thing: I don't think Homer and Daddy Pig are rubbish Dads. In fact I think they're excellent role models! As in the quote above, they're not trying to be perfect Moms. They have spontaneous adventures, they find shortcuts through projects and chores, they take pride in letting their children take more risks.

Just as feminisation of the workplace led to some men pushing back against women, and some women taking time to adjust to their new roles, so a masculinisation of domesticity perhaps leads to some women pushing back against men and – I think more frequently and more significantly – some men struggling to get their head round it all. To me that's why most media portrayals – ads, TV, films etc – still peddle the inept Dad stereotype but often a Dad that comes good in the end.

My wife tells me that when I used to go to parenting groups with our first son, other Mums used to report back to her with an incredulous chuckle that I had found the time to read the paper while he played with the other kids. No matter that they weren't particularly interested in talking to me, and that they themselves had found the time to drink lots of coffee and have a very nice chat. There are different ways to be a parent, and the unusual will always attract attention and ridicule.

Through all this the most important thing to me is that Dads find their own way of parenting, and that it's one – like Homer and Daddy Pig – that is at the very least 'involved'.

Epic

Half term this week, so another trip to the cinema to watch more crap Dads. This time: Epic.

I am happy to report that Epic passed the Bechdel test, courtesy of a brief conversation between Queen Tara (voiced by Beyonce Knowles*) and MK. But did it pass the Sutton test?

As seems to be the way with films I watch these days – is my wife trying to tell me something? – there were loads of Dads in the film. Were they rubbish?

The leader of the evil, decay spreading Boggans, Mandrake, intent on destroying the forest, seemed like a fairly loving father as tyrannical leaders go. He included his son, a general, in their joint enterprise of spreading devastation and darkness. When his son meets a messy end, and one of his soldiers says 'Plus, your idiot general gets himself mulched!', he thunders: 'That idiot general was my son!' with something approaching fatherly pride. So, setting aside the apocalyptic intentions, I think Mandrake passes the Sutton test.

The leader of the Leafmen, Ronin, voiced by Colin Farrell in a really off-putting way where his Irish accent pops up and disappears like a Whack-a-mole fairground game, is a father figure to MK's love interest, who he has mentored since the death of his birth father. He's the square-jawed, stoical hero type, who struggles to express his emotions. There's a nice line at the end where the two, relieved to be alive, are ribbing each other and MK says 'Oh please… just say you love each other!', and Ronin replies 'I thought we just did'. Dads, eh? Can never tell our boys we love them. Except of course we can and do. But again, a pass for the Sutton test.

Finally there's MK's Dad, a naturalist obsessed with finding the advanced race of little people in the forest. He starts off as the stereotypical rubbish Dad, barely noticing his daughter (grieving for the loss of her mother – for every rubbish Dad in a film, there's a Mum who's got off the hook by dying). His single-minded pursuit was behind the breakdown of his marriage, and although he obviously loves his daughter he's on track to lose her too. He's basically saved by the fact that he turns out to be right, so MK starts to see him in a different light. When someone asks her 'Who gives up everything for a world that's not even theirs?', she replies: 'Dad. My Dad does'. 

Us Dads have been known to have our obsessions, and the message here seems to be that as long as they bear fruit all will be forgiven and your children will still talk to you. But once again, overall I think MK's Dad just about passes the Sutton test.

So well done to the makers of Epic, who I think also made Ice Age (which has a lot of Dad themes in it). It's all still pretty relentless though isn't it: certainly seems that all Dads in films have to display some level of thoughtlessness, single minded obsession or repressed emotion!

*Dad joke alert: How do you contact dead single ladies? Have a Seyonce. Yes, that's right, this whole post was just an excuse to tell that joke. 

All-stars: Does it pass the Sutton test?

Last weekend saw another family trip to the cinema, this time to watch All Stars, in which shy streetdancer Jayden must team up with wheeler-dealer Ethan to save their local youth club.

Now some of you may remember me proposing the Sutton Test, to complement the Bechdel Test (which I'm happy to say the film passed, by virtue of a brief conversation between 'Gina' (Ashley Jensen) and a council official). Put simply, the Sutton Test when applied to any media is:

1. Is there a man in it?

2. Is he a Dad?

3. Is he being anything other than a dickhead?

 

Unfortunately All Stars failed this test, aside from a few minutes of redemption at the end. To be fair, a) it's just a film (yes, I do know), and b) adults in general didn't fare well in this film. The whole point was that kids were doing stuff for themselves, in the face of bureaucratic madness, work-enduced exhaustion or blind ambition from the adults surrounding them.

 

But did there really have to be three crap Dads? Jayden's ignored his obvious love of and talent for music, banning him from dancing in favour of an entrance exam for an independent school. He did come round in the end when he chased him to the performance and actually saw him dance. Ethan's Dad was, again to be fair, a reasonably good portrayal of that kind of Dad that keeps banging on about being a lone wolf, not wanting to be tied down by actually facing up to his responsibilities and being there for his family and son. Amy's Dad, John Barrowman, spent the entire team grunting from the sofa (apart from one dream sequence), depressed at his wife walking out. I don't think he even made it to the show, which is unusual for John Barrowman.

 

I'm not saying that lots of Dads don't have those faults. But three of them, in one film? The portrayal of rubbish Dads in the media just seems so relentless. Maybe the Sutton test is even harder to pass than the Bechdel test. Or maybe the difference is that men in films start out rubbish and then, because the films are largely written and directed by men, by the end they're vaguely passable. Whereas women just barely get a look in as three dimensional, independent characters at all.

 

 

Prison Dads

I've just watched 'Prison Dads' on BBC iPlayer. It's part of ‘Baby Britain’ a season of BBC Three programmes exploring what it means to be a young parent in Britain today, and how having a baby changes your life. I thought I'd skip ‘Don’t just stand there, I’m having your baby’, which followed ‘clueless first time dads’.
‘Prison Dads’ is a documentary from Ruth Kelly covering six months in the lives of fathers at Glen Parva in Leicester – the biggest young offender’s institution in Britain. Prisoners there are five times more likely to be Dads than other men their age, and as I have written elsewhere this is a growing, worldwide issue. Although the offences and treatment of their beleaguered other halves of some of the Dads featured made it rather difficult to identify with them, you’d need a heart of stone not to get a tear in the eye at the dawning realisation that ‘That’s all gone now, for good that is. Won’t see him do his first words, trying to crawl, all that funny baby stuff’.
The children are growing up with the situation and don’t know any different, with one being told that Dad is ‘on naughty holiday’. These Dads are just kids themselves, hankering after school days as they chat in their cells. Some grew up in the same way themselves. You just have to hope that they will have plenty of professional support on release, to face up to their adult responsibilities and break the cycle.

Ug… are all Dads cavemen?

Due to this cold weather we've been having (I don't know if anyone has mentioned it?), a trip to the cinema has become a staple of our weekends of late. What better opportunity for a Dad to have an afternoon nap?

On Saturday, we went to see The Croods, an animated film about a cave-dwelling family dealing with continental drift and the dawn of ideas. Now, let me say from the outset, I liked it. The boys loved it, with my youngest declaring it even better than Top Cat: The Movie, which – given that TC gets an average rating of just 2.8 out of 10 on Rotten Tomatoes – doesn't sound like much, but believe me it is.

But unfortunately, my enjoyment of pretty much any film at the moment has been scuppered by a mild obsession with the Bechdel test and my own Dad equivalent, the Sutton test.

In brief, the Bechdel test is three simple questions used to identify gender bias in fiction:

1. Are there at least two women?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. About something other than a man?

The Croods has four female characters (I think the baby is a girl) – 50 per cent of the cast. One big tick. 'Eep', the curious young woman wanting to break free from the shackles of her family, is potentially a really strong role model, but then it turns out really she just loves shoes and boys and is mainly struggling to choose a different man to follow aside from her Daddy. DrMathocist writes about that here.

Those female characters do talk to each other, a couple of times I think, for a few seconds. But I can't recall them discussing anything other than the Dad or the new boyfriend. I'm happy to be proved wrong, but it does seem pretty amazing to me that it's so hard to find a film that passes the Bechdel test!

Anyway, how about the Sutton test? Just to remind you, this is also three simple questions:

1. Is there a man in it?

2. Is he a Dad?

3. Is he being anything other than a dickhead?

It's a tricky one, this. Yes, there are men in it, and one of them, Grug, voiced by Nic Cage, is the Dad. He spends much of the film being a dickhead. His main rule is 'Never not be afraid', he tells depressing stories and he gets punched in the face by monkeys (much to the amusement of his family). So far, so familiar. There's also a rivalry with his daughter's growing love interest which I'm sure many Dads would relate to, and it reminded me of the fantastic 'Cuckoo' and this Phil Jupitus routine.   

But as the film develops, so does Grug. The key exchange with the boyfriend, Guy, has Grug defending his stifling rules by saying:

'I guess I was just busy keeping them all alive'.
'It's ok, that's what Dads do', replies Guy.

Despite bemoaning 'I can't change, I don't have ideas, but I have my strength and right now that's all you need', Grug does then go on to have an almost painful moment of cognitive enlightenment… we are seeing thousands, millions of years of evolution and brain development compressed into a few seconds. And I suppose the film is encouraging an audience of sleepy Dads, dragged along to see the film, that they too can change – they can keep their family safe while encouraging creativity, independence, in short to let their children live a little.

I think most Dads are aware of this. But when I do lose the plot in parenting terms, it tends to be over 'rules' that probably aren't anywhere near as important as keeping them safe from a prehistoric monster, so it doesn't hurt to have the odd reminder.

So I think The Croods passes the Sutton test. I realise I may be reading too much into all this, but hey at least it kept me awake!

The hapless, bumbling father

Here's an interesting article about fathers and advertising, which begins:

THE hapless, bumbling father is a stock character in product marketing. He makes breakfast for dinner and is incapable of handling, or sometimes even noticing, a soggy diaper. He tries desperately to hide the crumb-strewn, dirt-streaked evidence of his poor parenting before the mother gets home.  

As I've said, Dads in advertising annoy me so much that I've proposed the Sutton rule. Not only are Dads in ads usually hapless and bumbling, ads aimed at Dads seem to be so emotionally manipulative. Current hates include the 'take your teenage daughter to Disneyland before she stops talking to you forever' ad, and the 'if you're trying to make a connection with your stepson and all else fails, there's always junk food' McDonalds ad (if anything, stepdads fare worse in ads than biological fathers). 

Apparently advertisers are getting more interested in the 'Dad pound':

In the past, consumer-product marketers weren’t all that concerned with what fathers thought — women, after all, make the majority of purchasing decisions for households. But men are catching up: In 2012 men spent an average of $36.26 at the grocery store per trip, compared with $27.49 in 2004, according to data from Nielsen. Companies see an opportunity to reach a new demographic. 

Advertisers are reaching out for the 'Dad pound'

The article has some great examples of campaigns which have ignored or belittled fathers. But what really struck me about the piece was the hook of 'Dad 2.0 Summit – a meeting of so-called daddy bloggers and the marketers who want to reach them'. I'm just dipping my toes into the blogosphere, and it's becoming clear there's already a community of daddy bloggers (although many more US-based than UK). 

THE 200 or so bloggers and media professionals who attended the second annual Dad 2.0 conference in Houston from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 were mainly in their 30s and 40s. They tended to wear well-fitting jeans, button-down shirts and blazers, and they were quick to whip out pictures of their children on their iPhones. 

That's me! I do that!

If you read on, you see that the event offered:

1) free whiskey

2) sword-fighting lessons

3) test drives of minivans

4) free cheese

5) cheerleaders

DADDY BLOGGERS – LET ME IN!!

How movies teach manhood

This is a fascinating TEDx talk by Colin Stokes, put my way by close friend and great Dad Paul Redford.

'Is Girl Power going to protect them if at the same time, actively or passively, we are training our sons to maintain their Boy Power? … I think we have got to show our sons a new definition of manhood… I want fewer tests where my son is told "go out and fight it alone", and more quests where he sees it his job to go out and join a team.'

Give it 13 minutes of your time.

It has introduced me to the fabulous idea of the Bechdel test, which can be applied to film and other media. It's three simple questions:

1. Are there at least two women?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. About something other than a man?

There is a user-edited database of some 3,300 films classified by whether or not they pass the test, with the added requirement that the women must be named characters. As of July 2012, it listed 53% of these films as passing all three of the test's requirements, 11% as failing one (the women's conversations are about men), 25% as failing two (the women don't talk to each other) and 11% as failing all three (there are not two named female characters).

 

I'd like to introduce the Sutton test, which will be applied mostly to supermarket ads:

1. Is there a man in it?

2. Is he a Dad?

3. Is he being anything other than a dickhead?