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Today's Gazette
Not your father's father
not even baby-food stains faze the hippest generation of dads. They're deciding it's possible to be fully involved without losing their cool
EILEEN TRAVERS, Freelance
Published: Saturday, June 16, 2007As men are becoming ever more involved in parenting, bragging rights about fatherhood's joys are now out in the wide open.
Celebrity poster dads are already doing it with paparazzi in hot pursuit of Hollywood's leading men in their roles as fathers. Brad Pitt rides motorcycles with son Maddox. Johnny Depp plays Barbies with daughter Lily-Rose. Tom Cruise gives soccer moms competition when he cheers on the sidelines at his kids' games.
Following Hollywood's father boom are pop-and-tot clothing lines, racks of newly published paternal how-to books and websites and magazines targeting the male side of parental units.
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If 2-year-old Julien Lacombe McCulloch has a booboo, he's as likely to seek comfort from his dad, Scott McCulloch, as his mother, Sophie Lacombe. McCulloch works from home, but makes sure he gets downtime each week. "You're still a father, but you can go out and blend in with the cool people."
PIERRE OBENDRAUF, THE GAZETTE
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Pop culture has come to have two meanings. Above all, it means being a more involved parent while being true to yourself, said Neal Pollack, pop culture writer and author of Alternadad, a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the challenges of being hip and being a dad.
"Why do you have to be the man in the grey flannel suit to be a successful father?" said Pollack, 37.
"It's important to retain a sense of your own identity after becoming a parent. What I find depressing is when they become obsessed with parenthood and they can't see the forest for the trees."
As fathers redefine their forests, there's plenty of help along the way.
Father's Quarterly now publishes in Britain and Japan, and, on the Internet, advice columns, blogs and web sites are paving the way for new dads.
Yummy mummies will have to share shelf space and move over copies of the Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy to make room for a fresh bouquet of daddy books that run the gamut.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius's Crouching Father, Hidden Toddler: A Zen Guide for New Dads, helps fathers master Buddha-like calm in the face of inevitable messy eating, sleep-deprived moms and "some assembly required" toys.
"There are a lot of books about what it's like to have your first baby when you're a woman," said Nevius, 57, "but none about being a dad. I think men are ready. They just need a template."
Plenty of templates are set. Among them, the lighter side of fatherhood unfolds in TV producer Larry Bleidner's Mack Daddy: Mastering Fatherhood Without Losing Your Style, Your Cool or Your Mind, with tips from surviving pregnancy to guerrilla feeding strategies.
After all, dads now have a cool image to maintain.
The lingerie giant Victoria's Secret has added Sexy Dad to its annual What is Sexy? list, with British soccer star David Beckham taking the 2007 title.
Life & Style magazine's best celebrity dad poll ranked father-of-almost-five Pitt last year's winner. This year's list is due out on Father's Day tomorrow.
Moving along the magazine rack, Details, dedicated to hip urban males a decade ago, now routinely runs features geared towards hip urban dads. Even Sports Illustrated is extolling the virtues of Beckham's family life and golf champion Tiger Woods's pending fatherhood.
Fashion templates are also multiplying.
Just look at bend-the-fatherhood-rules-like-Beckham hipster dads K-Fed, Project Runway-worthy Seal, Pitt and Depp. Dads aren't losing their leather jackets. They're just buying one for junior, since Harley Davidson now makes mini-motorcycle leathers.
Che Guevera T-shirts for dads and their tots are de rigueur in hipper parts of Manhattan, but Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and other North American clothing stores and online shops are catching on.
When Brett and Melissa Rosenthal of Pennsylvania began selling rock band T-shirts in adult and children's sizes online in 2005, they realized there was a gap in the market.
Eight months later, they launched the website www.Shirts4Squirts.com, specializing in infant and tyke-sized versions of Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and David Bowie items.
The line includes onesies and T-shirts emblazoned with B for Bob Marley, Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the Pre-K, iPooed, or AB/CD, designed as the rock band AC/DC logo. And the Rosenthal kids, ages 2 years and 12 weeks, are partly to blame.
"They're actually the reason we started the second company," said Rosenthal, 34. "I think people want clothing that's different than Osh Kosh."
Then there are the toys. Despite drool-provoking electronics out there targeting adult males, kids have even cooler toys. Moon Sand. Lego's build-your own robot. Nerf's multiple-action suction-cup foam shooters. Spiderman's glove with self-activating web sprayers. Today's dads can buy them all, and play with them without seeming juvenile.
And what better rationalization is there for buying a Hummer, the 21st century's answer to the minivan? Beckham snapped up a $134,000 model, with car seats, for himself along with a pint-sized Hummer for son, Brooklyn, 5.
But Alternadad author Pollack says that during this trend of commercializing fatherhood, deeper role shifts are taking place. "Fatherhood, after all, is not a game," he added.
Scratch the veneer of pop culture's new pop (and mom) culture and find a sentimental heart tug of sons who grew up with dads who earned a paycheque and spent little time with their kids. That fusty father figure branded by Ward Cleaver's paternal character on the 1950s television series Leave it to Beaver has been getting an extreme makeover.
"The Ward Cleaver model is antiquated," said Scott Mactavish, a Virginia-based film maker and author of The New Dad's Survival Guide. "The norm today is that there are more single parents and you have two parents with two jobs. We have busier lives. Dads are having to start co-parenting with their wives."
While Mactavish said he has no real relationship with his own father, he wants a different kind of fatherhood for his three sons, ages 2, 4 and 7.
"I'd rather pass on to my boys that family is the No. 1 thing in our lives," said Mactavish, 42. "I stumble in parenting like everyone else, but the greatest part of being a father is being there."
If 2-year-old Julien Lacombe McCulloch gets a booboo he'll probably seek comfort from mom or dad, whoever's closest. That's because his parents, Sophie Lacombe and Scott McCulloch, split duties in ways their own parents never did.
"My dad never changed a diaper in his life," said McCulloch, 42, a book editor in Montreal. "I can do it standing on my head. I give Julien his bottle in the morning, I bathe him and feed him and take him to the park. My son gets a lot of maternal vibe off his father."
McCulloch's launch into fatherhood was bittersweet, laced with choices of what kind of father he would be. Three weeks before his son's birth, Julien was pronounced healthy but his wife was diagnosed with cancer.
"Julien became the glue holding us together," McCulloch said. "The cards dealt to Sophie and I forced us to make a hard decision."
McCulloch quit his publishing job and they moved from London to Montreal to be close to family. He became a stay-at-home dad while Lacombe went through six months of energy-draining chemotherapy.
"When we came back here, our parenting changed dramatically," he said. "I had a direct hand in Julien's upbringing from Year One to Year 2, every single day of the week, which was fantastic."
Now Lacombe is in remission. McCulloch works from home, taking lunch breaks with his wife and son. It's a life opposite from his own upbringing, when mom wore an apron and dad brought home the paycheque.
Lacombe and McCulloch are thrilled with the way they're raising Julien, but strive to define their own parenting roles.
"Fatherhood creeps up on you," he said. "One day, you look in the mirror and say: 'How come I'm wearing these ridiculous dad trousers?' or 'how come my hair looks like that?' You start to slip."
So in between the joys of building igloos in the backyard and making sure Julien is warm and cuddled with a bottle at bedtime, McCulloch takes some downtime every week.
"You're still a father, but you can go out and blend in with the cool people knowing junior's safe at home with a babysitter," he said. "And nobody needs to know that you have a baby-food stain on the inside of your trouser leg."
He said self-fulfillment and interests are part of a rich and varied life, one he shares with his son every day.
"I keep forgetting Father's Day is something that applies to me," he said. "This year will be a lot more special. I'm coming into my stride as a father."
To Julien, he's probably already there.
AMONG FAMOUS DADS, PITT REIGNS SUPREME:
Competition among famous dads is getting increasingly steep. Here are the results of Life & Style magazine's Father's Day best celebrity dad poll of 2006. The magazine's new list will be out tomorrow - Father's Day, of course:
1. Brad Pitt
2. Heath Ledger
3. Ryan Phillippe
4. Ben Affleck
5. Will Smith
6. Matthew Broderick
7. Chris Martin
8. Guy Ritchie
9. David Arquette
10. Dean Cain
Help out a dad with a how-to gift book
Last minute Father's Day shopping? Here are a few titles for fathers and fathers-to-be:
Alternadad, by Neal Pollack (Random House, 2007)
Mack Daddy: Mastering Fatherhood Without Losing Your Style, Your Cool, or Your Mind, by Larry Bleidner (Citadel, 2006)
Pop Culture: The Sane Man's Guide to the Insane World of New Fatherhood, by Christopher Healy (Penguin, 2006)
Crouching Father, Hidden Toddler: A Zen Guide for New Dads, by C.W. Nevius (Chronicle, 2006)
The Guy's Guide to Surviving Pregnancy, Childbirth and the First Year of Fatherhood by Michael R. Crider (Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2005)
The New Dad's Survival Guide: Man-to-Man Advice for First-Time Fathers, by Scott Mactavish (Little, Brown and Company, 2005)
Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads, by Gary Greenberg and Jeannie Hayden (Simon & Schuster, 2005)
The Bloke's Guide to Pregnancy, by Jon Smith (Hay House, 2004)
Keeping The Baby Alive Till Your Wife Gets Home: The Tough New "How-to" for 21st Century Dads, by Walter Roark (Clearing Skies Press, 2001)
The Father's Almanac, by S. Adams Sullivan (Main Street Books, 1992)
