Dad
Top 50 Dad Blogs of 2012
Last year, when we inaugurated our Top 50 Dad Blogs list, we praised dad bloggers for “changing the way we think about fatherhood.” Indeed, a number of our favorite bloggers on this, our second Top 50 list, insist our thinking needs to be changed. They describe themselves as advocates for fathers, taking to their keyboards in order to counter dominant cultural stereotypes of dad-as-incompetent-buffoon. (You don’t believe them? Tune in to most any family sitcom on most any night of the week.) Others on the list aspire simply to entertain us with funny, relatable tales from the trenches. A few write to work through the shattering grief of losing a child or spouse.
This list features straight dads, gay dads, working dads, stay-at-home dads, geek dads, single dads, and more. In a culture where the dominant conversations around fatherhood center simply on whether dads can deign to change their kid's diaper, it's refreshing to see these guys take the public perception of parents into their own hands. We are again struck by the variety of their voices and experiences, which itself puts the lie to the notion of any one “typical dad.” A lot of our favorites from last year are back, while many worthy entrants are making their debuts. We hope you’ll enjoy laughing, crying, nodding, and discovering along with them as much as we have. As dads' online influence grows, this list will only become more and more difficult to curate — and that's a good problem to have. If you think we missed any of your favorite dad bloggers, nominate them here. – Barbara Spindel and the dad blog panel
42 / 50
Greg Allen, Daddy Types
We don’t know about you, but as working parents we don’t always have time to sift through our ever-growing stack of New Yorkers, and even though we tune our radios to NPR, our kids are so darn loud we can’t hear what anybody’s saying.
Thank heavens for Greg Allen, the prolific writer/artist/filmmaker behind Daddy Types (he also blogs about grown-up stuff at greg.org). Daddy Types covers all kinds of fascinating family-related subjects drawn from the highbrow worlds of design, art, and culture; recent topics range from portraits of kids by Andy Warhol that just went to auction to Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon’s new book on children and difference.
Be warned, though, that this blog (and its photos) might make you feel covetous. See, for instance, Allen’s post on a funky feather-covered Eames rocker by artist Meredyth Sparks, or one on the rooftop retreat sculptor Tim Hawkinson built his 9-year-old daughter, titled “Artists’ Kids Always Have the Best Rooftop Treehouses.”
Allen is brilliant, funny, and slyly subversive. A recent entry titled “A Large Company Is Opening A Store” consisted only of the following text: “And they would like you to know about it. By paying a firm to ask me to write about it for free. Yeah, capitalism!” Fight the power, Daddy Types!
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I am humbled to be included.
Many thanks.
Mitch