Thanks for the feedback. Though support from other bloggers and brands is on our radar screen, our primary goal with posts like these is to get people thinking differently about fathers, mothers, and parenthood. Ours is a diverse community, and I’m thrilled that dads in our group are willing to speak in their own voice about a range of issues.

http://hahasforhoohas.com/top-5-things-mothers-really-do-better-than-fathers/

To most of your other points I agree, but I think we have an opportunity to push change a little faster if we push the right buttons. THEYCALLMECODY has a forum on Babble to say something productive or not. We use this forum to start a conversation that may or may not go anywhere. We’ve written about work-life, and those posts have resulted in direct conversations with individuals, families, and companies around changing the design of family and the workplace. We’ve written about advertising and again, those started conversations that might influence future content creation. I don’t mean to boast about what we are doing here, but we, and especially the collective we of the “dad blogging community” have an opportunity to make change happen faster. And I, for one, will be taking advantage of that opportunity.

Thanks for the response. I see what you are saying, but one of the goals of our group is to open up the definition of fatherhood. If we continue to ignore bloggers, writers, journalists, TV producers, etc. that are portraying dads as generally incapable of caring for our own children, then we lose the opportunity to create change. A perfect example is the situation with Huggies . . . the “dad blogger community” could have ignored the ads, but we instead voiced our opinion, which led to productive meetings with Unilever executives, their advertising creative team, and their PR team. This led, in my opinion, to a better campaign that is both effective in selling diapers, and an accurate representation of the dads we are and the standard to which we hope other dads will be held.

Right, I followed the Huggies thing, and that’s good and all, but I kind of feel like the perception is of less concern than the reality.

Obviously there are a lot of dads doing things these days that moms are traditionally more well-known for. The world is changing, and has been for a long time, and anyone that dismisses the abilities of dads to be equally as effective parents as moms is at best behind the times and at worst ignorant. So I don’t really take offense to the persisting stereotypes about moms v dads and all that, because a) the stereotypes are founded in reality – an outdated, rapidly fading reality, but a longstanding one just the same and b) I know plenty of great dads, like myself!, who consider parenting a joint effort and a team thing.

In the United States some of the mom-dominated stereotypes are even harder to overcome due to a combination of a still evident macho culture and the pure fact that our work culture and healthcare are behind the times in terms of things like paternity leave and all that. Centuries of thinking are not easily overcome, which, I suppose is understood by these group, being that its your goal to change viewpoints. Which I respect.

I just thing the overall perception is changing, the tide is turning, it’s inevitable, it just takes time. But it’s our actions that will effect the change, not our blog posts. And fighting amongst ourselves is not exactly productive.

The only people “parenting wars” or “mommy/daddy blogger wars” that exist are the ones we create and indulge in ourselves.

I wrote a post about this, spurred on by the Time cover controversy, yesterday: http://goo.gl/Liz6r

It’s all just insecurity; who cares what everyone else thinks/does? Just do you.

http://blogs.babble.com/kid-scoop/2012/05/15/i-bbq-my-wife-does-laundry-and-other-gender-stereotypes/

This intense uproar is over the top, people. Hug it out.

http://blogs.babble.com/dadding/2012/05/09/top-10-things-mothers-do-better-than-fathers/#comment-2731

this was an awesome reply.