Hey Dad Bloggers

Hey dad bloggers, just dropping everyone a line about the Dad 2.0 Summit coming up March 8-10 in Austin. There's already over 100 people registered to go which means this is going to be a well-attended event with a lot of opportunities available for doing some networking, getting your name out there, and meeting brands like LEGO and Johnson & Johnson.

Also, at the moment, there are meetup events planned in various part of the country prior to the conference. The are the ones currently schedule (Houston's is coming up in a few weeks):


* Austin: February 1, The Cedar Door

* Chicago: February 15, Johnny O’Hagan's

* Atlanta: February 9

Wondering what the event will be like? Check out this great video by the crew at Dad Labs.



And if your looking to cut costs or have some special circumstances, get in contact with the organizers for help and questions.

If you're wondering what the value in going to one of these conferences is, particularly if you're hoping to take your blog to a professional level, then know that attending events like this this are what will make you stand out.

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Would You Tell Your Children That You Used Drugs?

I’m going to make a confession here that few people know about: I’ve used illegal drugs. For a little over a year after my divorce I took X-stasy and smoked marijuana. That’s right, not in high school or in college, but as an adult.

Go ahead and judge me. This is the internet, which, among its many benefits, is the freedom to condemn others anonymously in the comments section. If you feel so compelled, have at it; just know I won’t care. It was dumb, I know. I’m not going to waste time justifying it, and that’s not exactly the point of this post anyway.

The question I’ve had to ask myself rather, is whether I will admit to my children that I once used illegal drugs. There are pros and cons to this of course, which boil down to... continue reading.

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The History of Fatherhood in the United States

After yesterday’s post about Roman Krznaric’s essay on the history of the men as fathers, I decided to do a little research on my own; being a self-professed history nerd, I didn’t require much arm-twisting to do so either. Unlike Krznaric’s broader worldwide focus, I decided to hone in on just the progression of fatherhood in the United States, and what I discovered was surprising.

Most of us are familiar with the major events in history—the colonization of early America, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, World War 2, and so on. What many of us may have not considered, however, was the part these events played in shaping the image and expectation we have of fathers today, which, when looked at through a lens of the past 300-plus years in its entirety, is slightly off in my opinion.

What’s more, when looking through that lens, keep in mind that many of the perceptions we’ve had of family dynamics throughout history are incorrect or only half-truths. For example, the idea of colonial fathers being an austere, unfeeling, authoritarian ordained by God isn’t entirely accurate. Did religious dogma dictate that the man was to be the head of the household? Yes, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t warm and unloving. We only see it as being so because such an arrangement seem archaic and stifling within the context of our contemporary society—a society that has morphed over three centuries at the hands of ever shifting socio-economic conditions and world-changing events beyond our control.

To get a true picture of this progression of fatherhood through time, there was no way I could fit everything into ten slides; thus the presentation is split into two parts (and even then it’s still probably not enough).

Slideshow 1: Fatherhood in the US: 1700's to 1900's

Slideshow 2: Fatherhood in the US: 1900's to Today

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