Papa, Can You Hear Me?

A review from People in the Sun:

I feel I have to start with a short introduction to--oh, I hate the word--Daddy Blogging. You know, for the haters.

I collect blogging fathers. Not the weirdest hobby in the world, but not the most common one either. I even have a blog where I present my collection. It all started a few years ago, when I visited an old friend who had one-year-old twins. When I told him we were thinking about having one of them baby-things ourselves one day, he said, "It changes everything." I asked him what he meant, and he said, "You know, everything." Now that I'm a stay-at-home father, I'm still not sure what he meant. But by reading other fathers' blogs, I begin to connect the dots.

Maybe what my friend meant was not simply, "You don't have sex anymore," or "You get to relive your joyous childhood moments," or "Having children is very expensive." Maybe he was referring to the change in our self-identities. How quick are we to embrace the change we don't fully understand? How honest are we? Do we try hard to hold on to the Man part of our identities because we're afraid the Father will take over? Or do we embrace the Father part of ourselves to the point of looking back at our pre-Father days with scornful disbelief?

Just like everything else in life, apart from Nutella, it's all about moderation. When it comes to blogging fathers (or, you know, Daddy Blogging), it means embracing fatherhood and accepting the fact that Everything Changes (even if we don't know what it means), while making sure we don't write as if we've invented fatherhood or as if our children say the darndest things. In other words, a father's blog, just like any other blog, works well when it deals with the writer's honest expression of his individuality.

I think SciFi Dad, writing in Tales From the Dad Side, has found the good place in the middle. It's unashamedly a parenting blog. On his About page, SciFi Dad even makes sure we know this is not a random blog, but "primarily a personal parenting blog, where I write about my experiences and uncertainties as a father." But even with a blog that uses Dad in the title, written by a man who uses the word Dad in his moniker, writing about being a father, this blog always keeps the writer and his, well, uncertainties at the front.

What else is there? Well, the navigation is cool. Just to prove me right, SciFi Dad's drop-down label menu is all about the different sides of his life and the way they're reflected on his blog, creating a full image of a real person.

It might come off as me taking the easy way out here, but as long as he includes links to his favorite posts, why shouldn't I follow his lead? There's the one where he decides to listen to his parenting gut rather than to experts. And the really funny one where he goes back in time to help his stressful father-to-be self. Oh, and there's one I even linked to from my Facebook page a month ago.

There are two more posts on SciFi Dad's Best Of list. One talks about the pain of being away from the family because of work, and the other explains his parenting style comes simply from his unconditional love for his kids.

The existence of these posts explains the difference between a Love You button and a Four-Star review. Most of the blog was, for me, just a little too cute. Maybe it's because SciFi dad is Canadian, and everyone knows nothing bad ever happens in Canada. Because everyone is so goddamn nice (apart from the guy who decapitated the guy sitting next to him on the bus. He wasn't nice). Or maybe it's the way he ends nearly every post with a question for the readers to answer in comments (although, to be fair, I only noticed it today, even though I've read the blog for months). Or maybe some of the funny stuff, which SciFi Dad does very well, is there to hide the true SciFi Dad--the one who comes out in those two posts he admits are more "Unfiltered."

And another small thing, SciFi Dad. It's not you--it's me. Or maybe it is you. But I've never seen you in the comment section of your blog. I know you get a lot of comments on most posts, but other bloggers with more comments do reply to each one, even if it's just a single-line reply. I know you care about being a part of a community of bloggers, so it makes sense that you treat the comments as additions to the conversation you had started with the post. It makes sense to me, anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I fucking love you. And to prove it, here are four shiny stars.