February 17, 2004

• I'll start off the bidding at $75 USD. (Do you take PayPal?)
• Pictures of said baby by father in question suggest why such caution may have been necessary. [mushed banana with formula]
• I found this quite amusing, but also slightly depressing. Remember when people used to make jokes about women drivers? And then more and more women learned how to drive, and (surprise, surprise) they were perfectly good at it, and women drivers gradually became an unremarkable part of everyday life. And now you don't hear those jokes any more. Well, I kind of hope the same thing happens to jokes about clueless dads.
• I stopped listening as soon as I saw that the child was not allowed to partake of the genius that is Blazing Saddles.
• The Internet: The electronic fridge door of the future. That guy's name kinda reminds me of GG Allin's, who I'd never leave in charge of a baby, ever.
• Ditto what verstegan said. The thing I don't understand is why would a women marry a man this clueless? Why would she willingly procreate with someone who's DNA carries the stupid gene? That said I have friends who wives treat them exactly like this. Why they don't leave the shrill bossy domineering bitch I do not know.
• They might marry a man that "clueless" because he might have enough of a sense of humor not to be threatened by a little ribbing. Yes, I'm sure that the father needed multiple injunctions not to sell the child on E-Bay.... I laughed at the sound track to "G-Dogg." (Futuristic bow-wow!) /raised by my dad
• A) Jokes are only funny if there's a nugget of truth behind them. B) So chicks like guys that are dull, but can laugh at themselves about it?
• Tracicle-- I'm curious about YOUR take on this?
• Part of me thought this was funny and part of me was annoyed. I was amused because I'm sure that it was all in good fun and there were some funny moments in the horribly over-done flash-i-ness of the page. I see it for how it was intended and in and of itself I think it's fine. On the other hand, my general annoyance at the bad stereotypes present in the page came to head when she signed it "Your Trusting Wife". She didn't seem like she trusted him at all. I'm with the guys on this one: characterizing men as clueless parents is counter-productive. Salon had a great article on this a couple years ago: 'If men haven't become equal partners at home, it's because women won't allow it. Women, they say, may seek equality with men in the public world, but they want to maintain control over their traditional domestic turf, and are particularly slow changing when it comes to relinquishing their primacy as mothers. "Generally, men are as involved with their kids as their wives will let them be," says Armin Brott, author of several advice books for fathers and coauthor of the 1999 book "Throwaway Dads: The Myths and Barriers That Keep Men From Being the Fathers They Want to Be." ' I personally wouldn't consider having children with someone who I didn't think was going to be an equal partner in child-raising.
• A. The "nugget" is that in every new breeder couple that I know, the female is more protective and more controlling on how the child will be raised than the man. And I know some guys who practically lactate -- yet even with them, the rule holds. B. Some of them do. "Chicks" also like guys who are smart and can laugh at themselves about it. Or guys who are dull and have no sense of humor, but look hot in biker shorts. /time to do some crunches, I think /and to write my dad again
• Bet it was all done as a joke with the added poking fun at MJ, which did make me laugh.
• I'm a father with shared custody of my two kids, which means they live with me every other week. My ex is currently fighting this arrangement, trying to get full custody. Her reason? Simply because she's the mother and she believes mothers are naturally better parents than fathers. Sites like this one are perpetuating this (untrue) stereotype. /my 2 cents (Canadian)
• Does this guy have a sponsorship with Costco? Did anyone else notice the proliferation of Kirkland brand crap? This reeked of a bible belt household.
• I just took it as a joke, along with some bad animation (it looked to me like Mom has just discovered Flash and had to play with all the settings for the fun of it). I don't know a single bad dad or even vaguely incompetent dad, so I'd never thought of it as something offensive. I can say that as a stay-at-home mother, there was a period of time where I did know my son better than my husband did. When I realised this (which coincided with me being completely exhausted from chasing a crawling destructo-boy around), I changed our routine so hubby spent more time with him. Now we're equally aware of his likes and dislikes, his habits and his personality in general. (The G-Dogg/eBay thing was pretty funny, too.)
• My husband is amazing with our three year old. Never once have I been afraid of him doing any of those things on that list. However, I did once come home to find them both playing Counterstrike. That only happened once, though.
• Hey! I heart Costco and my household is the antithesis to a bible belt household. [/derail]
• tcicle: I suspect guys find it offensive - and I certainly do - because, on the one hand, most of use tend to avoid the prejudices against women of the the past, and get more than a little pissed off when we encounter women who idulge in sexist crap of their own. It's unlikely to be considered acceptable to advertise, say, a driving school with jokes about how women are all stupid drivers; yet there are plenty of ads on NZ TV at the moment for products such as house cleaners, nappies, and the like, which feature stupid incompetant men as the centrepiece. It gets more than a little tiresome after a while. Secondly, the implicit assumption that mothers are automatically better parents is more than a little annoying, especially when it's not too hard to find instances where this is manifestly untrue. But is is a social assumption that permeates everything from discourse on the family though to the legal processes around family courts. (And, of course a stay at home parent likely know their kids better than a working one. That, I would suggest, is circumstance, not gender.)
• You know, I think goetter had it right. A. The "nugget" is that in every new breeder couple that I know, the female is more protective and more controlling on how the child will be raised than the man. And I know some guys who practically lactate -- yet even with them, the rule holds. I have unconsciously done this myself, but it was only now that I've re-read this thread that I realise it. It may be true that women (at least some women) implicitly don't trust their child's father to look after said child properly. I'd like to think that now I've seen my husband spend time with my son I trust him fully. In fact, I wish the two of them would go off and do something together more often -- mostly so I can have the house to myself once in a while. :)
• Some funny bits, some not some funny bits, some overdone bits Doesn't seem like much to get your knickers in a twist, though. I do take issue with ol' Armin Brott, Kimberly. "'... women won't allow it.'" Most women I've known in 30 plus years of parenting will tell you flat out that they wish Dad would take a greater interest in the day-to-day grit of child raising. My husband adopted the first two from my previous marriage, and never treated them any differently from his 2 'biological' children. He was a great dad and is a great PaPa to his granddaughters, but I gotta admit, he's not so great with doing hair, washing the Cheetos orange off the walls, or insisting on a bath/brushed teeth/naps, etc. Which is not to say they would live in squalor or neglect, but Ma/GramMa's beliefs are that kids thrive on consistency and develop good habits through repetition, and PaPa likes a more random approach. Makes Ma/GramMa the hard-asses. Not always fun wrestling the little dears and hearing, "PaPa doesn't make me ____ (fill in blank.) Plus, ask most stay-at-home moms (or even working moms) what the term for Dad's caring for the kids when they go to exercise class or whatever. Usually what they say is Dad's "babysitting." WTF?? MOMS don't babysat, they do The Job. Most stay-at-home Dads I know are more casual about nearly every aspect of child raising than their wives--not all bad, but sometimes it's tough when Mom has to come home on weekends and clean to be happy/comfortable in her own home. Then there are the others that are SuperDads--shining beacons! "'... Women, they say, may seek equality with men in the public world ...'" And do they always get it? HELL NO! Statistics indicate women still lag behind in pay and promotions. It's a crappy world sometimes. Things are changing for the better, but we, male and female, have to fight the good fight on ALL fronts, home and work. "" ... [women]are particularly slow changing when it comes to relinquishing their primacy as mothers.'" Well, duh! Now THAT'S a particularly stupid utterance. Maybe if we were spot-off-the-mark it would be GOOD for the species? It's too bad Moms and Dads AND SOCIETY don't put kids absolutely FIRST in priority. Dammit, you have to have a license to keep a dog, but any moron with a dick can engender a child. (or uterus--but mom's left carrying, if not holding, the baby.) "'Generally, men are as involved with their kids as their wives will let them be ...'" Na, MOST Dads are involved as they WANT to be. Some are getting screwed by an ex-wife, and that's a darn shame. But I ask y’all, are there more deadbeat dads or more deadbeat moms? How come the gummint had to step in to get absentee parents to pay child support? Look at your statistics again--who generally gets the short end of the stick economically after a divorce--mom and kids, in spite of any child-support. How many Dads cheerfully go on to have a second family and then bitch about having to support the first set of kids? Anyway, wouldn't you admit that the part about letting the kid play in the toilet, with M. Jackson, or the skunk wasn't funny? Or the part about eating shoes? (They let him chew it long enough to take a cute pic, and she wasn't afraid to show it on the intarweb.)And who HASN'T been tempted to quiet a teething kid with MD 20-20 or a rubber mallet? (EIGHT teeth--gack!) I do believe it was all in the spirit of fun, so maybe we all outta lighten up and send the PC police back to the station.
• Hey BlueHorse, I think you have a bunch of good points, but did you read the whole article? There were a lot of interesting counter points to what you said in there. :)