Two Funny Videos. (But Only One Intentional Funny One)

This has been flying around the internets for the last week, and it is -- without a doubt -- the best at-home-dad related music video of all time. If you haven't seen it, you really must.

Of course, John Lajoie, the hard-rocking AHD, was trying to be amusing. Not so much with John Hagee, who has apparently added stay-at-home dads to the long list of folks he is intolerant of. Given that it is really, really hard to take him seriously, this qualifies as humor:

Dads and Daughters Shuts Down

Pretty much any involved dad with daughters has been aware, in some shape or form, of the outstanding advocacy group Dads and Daughters. Dads and Daughters has -- as long as I've been a parent -- been a fantastic advocate on a huge number of issues, helping families use the unique power of the father-daughter bond to strengthen relationships and raise strong, confident women.

So it is with great sadness that the group has announced it is shutting its door for lack of money:

Despite our success, we have not raised the funds needed for our work. The reason that DADs must close may be the same reason that DADs needs to exist: the importance of fathers and stepfathers in the lives of daughters is little valued by our culture.

Directly and indirectly, Dads and Daughters has ushered in a new age in which society has begun to recognize the importance of fathers as parents, and it's a shame that they'll have to close their doors. I wish Joe Kelly, who founded the group, the best of luck in his next endeavor.

Patience, Patience: "The Daddy Shift" Book Coming for Father's Day

So you want to know all about modern dads, but you're too impatient to wait until Father's Day 2010 for the exceptional-looking Evolution of Dad documentary? Good news! Fantastic and thoughtful blogger Jeremy Adam Smith from Daddy Dialectic just announced that his book will be out for Father's Day 2009.

It's called The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Fathers, Breadwinning Mothers, and Shared Parenting are Transforming the Twenty-First-Century Family, and I'll be lining up, Harry Potter-style, to get my hands on it.

A Thank-You to Chambana Folks

I really am settled now, so I would love to personally thank those who posted, e-mailed, Facebooked, etc. to give me the skinny on a part of the country that has given the world a whole bunch of Nobel laureates, the 2003 Miss America and REO Speedwagon.

I'll be at Bentley's Pub at around 8 p.m. on Thursday. Let me know if you can stop by: rebeldad@gmail.com.

I'm Going to be a Million Man Marcher

I was registering the big one for her new elementary school the other day, and I received a flier about the "Million Man March" on the first day of school. This was all new to me -- the only Million Man March that was really in my consciousness was the famous one in 1995.

But the new iteration of the march is an effort by the Black Star Project to get dads to take their children to school on the first day. It's explicitly aimed at black dads, but I think it's a great idea no matter what your race (my school district presented it as a race-neutral thing). The more dads are integrated into the life of their kid's school and the more than dads see each other in the hallways, the more we can normalize the idea of fathers as a substantial part of the education of their children.

Now is the Time to Register for the Convention

The At-Home Dad Convention is headed to Sacramento this year (Nov. 8), and registration is now open. It's $85 now, $95 after October 1.

If you want to live it up, you can make it a three-day deal, including events Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening. The main event is Saturday, and will feature sessions on everything from financial planning to hair braiding to the research of Aaron Rochlen.

If you've been before, you don't need a sales job from me. If you're an at-home dad and you haven't gone, it's well worth the trip.

When it Comes to SAHDs, There is Hard Core and There is HARD CORE

I've met some great at-home dads who have bunches of kids, but I don't think I've ever met one with nine. For the record, numbers four through eight were quadruplets and number nine was an oops. The guy, Dennis Ross, seems perfectly happy with the full nest. Hey, to each his own.

AdWeek Asks Why Marketers Are *Still* Ignoring Guys

If there is only one article you read this year about the changing face of masculinity (and, to a lesser extent, fatherhood), make it AdWeek's brilliant "Man of the House," which pulls together a mountain of statistics that suggest that were doing more of the cooking, cleaning and childrearing than ever before. Here are some of the best stats from the piece:

• "The portion of housework done by men in couples has doubled, with men who once performed 15 percent of the housework now doing 30 percent"
• "Men have also tripled the amount of childcare they do since the 1960s"
• "more men than ever are preparing dinner -- 18 percent of dinners in 2007, compared to 14 percent in 2003" (I know, 18 percent isn't a huge number. But a 30 percent rise in 4 years is amazing.)
• "A BIGresearch survey in June that asked consumers what products they buy at least once a month found men trailing only slightly behind women in a number of categories, including household cleaning products (54 percent vs. 56 percent, respectively), dairy products including milk (88 percent vs. 93 percent) and baby products (13 percent vs. 14 percent); for laundry products, men tied women, with 53 percent."
• "A study for Edelman conducted by StrategyOne, "Pride in My Home: A Perspective From Today's Men," found that among men who live alone or in a couple (opposite- or same-sex), 76 percent reported being primarily or partly responsible for buying groceries, and 63 percent reported being primarily or partly responsible for purchasing both cleaning products and laundry supplies."

But the big question still goes unanswered, despite heaps of reporting: why are guys still more or less ignored by Madison Avenue? There are no satisfying answers. My hope is that the slick New York hotshots who drive the advertising business are just a few years behind the time, and that we're on the verge of being demographic darlings.

(Greg Allen from daddytypes.com -- who has some great quotes in the piece -- warns that we should all enjoy our anonymity while it lasts. Being ignored might be better than being defined by the advertising industry.)

You Gotta Fight ... For Your Right ... to Vacation

So I spent some time this week looking at the 2008-2009 school calendar, trying to figure out how to sync up the days off and breaks with my nearly exhausted company vacation time. And I'm one of the lucky ones who actually gets paid vacation.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that I support Take Back Your Time's newest effort: right2vacation.org. Because a little (more) vacation never hurt anyone.

I'm Back. For Real This Time.

Clearly, I'm not so good at transitions, but you have my word that you'll be getting close to daily posts again. To make it up to everyone, I'm planning for beers in Champaign in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.

Babble Says the Days of Equal Parenting Are Upon Us (More or Less)

My opinion on whether involved fatherhood has passed the tipping point or not fluctuates by the day, but hats off to Babble, which ran a piece title "10 Signs that Parenting is More Equal than it Used to Be."

The problem for me is that "More Equal than it Used to Be" is not a particularly impressive bar to clear. There's no doubt that all of the 10 trends are real (more changing tables in men's rooms, more guys taking paternity leave, more at-home dads), but the real question is whether the needle has been moved enough to really make a difference.

(Yes, I know that this was posted more than a month ago, but bear with me. I'm playing catchup.)

Back and Wired and Thinking About DadBloggerCon

OK. I have survived the longest move of my life (to date). I have survived Comcast's installation of my cable internet (barely). Now it's back to business as usual (sort of).

My first act as a new Illinois resident will be to put my full weight behind Paul Nyhan's dadblogger mini-conference idea. Especially if there is beer.