Qs&As with DoDads — The Napkin Dad Daily

Nothing a dad does is a throw away gesture for his child. Not one thing.

If you doubt how true that is, consider The Napkin Dad Daily, a sketching of life in art and comment, that owes its genesis to Marty Coleman's daughter saving a napkins' year's worth of drawing and quotes he included with the lunch he sent to school. He received the collection one Father's Day and did what any self-respecting father should do at receipt of such a gift: he cried.

And then he continued drawing all through the remainder of his daughters' high school years and beyond even as they have now gone out into the world and grown in the same (and sometimes different) way his art has.

Coleman lives in Glenpool, Okla. — known the world over as the town that made Tulsa famous — with his wife, Linda, a wiggle dog a stubby dog, and two cats who hate each other and short and long distance fathers his four grown daughters, who contribute to society in ways, including but not limited to: catching turtles; getting a Ph.D. in neuroscience; playing video games; writing and playing songs; farming organic stuff; eating same stuff; sewing and knitting; making art; voting; getting married; studying apparel design; worrying about boys; finding themselves; finding each other; losing (and finding) their religion; kicking butt as a black belt; studying midwifery; yogaizing; going to college; and making him proud in every way. Although world famous thanks to the blog and Time Magazine picking one of his images to help commemorate Barack Obama's election, Coleman took time from his blog, his store and his art to share a few moments and some of his inspiration (and how he is progressing on the formula to cure evil, at the very end).

WhinyDad: What was the biggest challenge to starting and continuing The Napkin Dad Daily?
Marty Coleman: It really wasn’t much of a challenge at first. I had been scanning the napkins for a number of years and had them posted on my flickr.com site, which I use primarily for my photography, but it allows drawings and illustrations as well. When I started the blog it was easy to simply cut and paste the code into the blog and that was that. When it became a challenge was when I decided to start writing commentary along with the napkin. In some cases I had commentary already written but for the most part I do that each day. Having to focus on the specific quote and figure out what I want to extrapolate out from it is hard work. I want it to be interesting and learning oriented, but I don’t want it to be boring or repetitive. I also want it to be interactive, to get people to comment back, to give their ideas of what the quote means as well.

WD: How has your Napkining changed? Has being a father changed your other art as well?
MC: I have a plastic bin full of the napkins I created over the years. I realized as I was going over them, scanning a few every day or so, that many of the early ones were very silly, very simple, sometimes with no quotes, only some funny drawing, other times only a quote. I started looking through and seeing that the drawing had become more sophisticated, more nuanced, and the quotes had become more connected to the drawings. This isn’t always the case, but it became more like that as the years past.

I think being a father is being an educator. In that sense my artwork , both the napkins and larger drawings as well as the photo-collages, has always been about putting out ideas, images, thoughts, ways of approaching the world and others that has some resonance with young people as they grow. Of course ‘young’ is relative so those I helped 20 years ago when they were 16 in a church youth group are now 36 and married with kids. I still hope I am helping them in the same way I did back then, by helping them to think through ideas and think for themselves.

WD: How much of the blog is directed at your daughters and how much do they influence your postings?
MC: The blog isn’t directed to my daughters at all actually. They got all the napkins originally when I put them in their lunches. Now the same napkins are going out again, this time to a different audience. My daughter’s do read the blog regularly and they do comment on occasion. I appreciate their comments quite a bit, they are usually among the most insightful.

I started drawing napkins again in 2008 after many years away from it. These drawings my daughters are seeing for the first time when the read the blog. I hope they appreciate them but at this point they are part of the audience in general, not the only audience, as they were before. So, I am aware they are reading the blog, but I don’t direct it towards them.

WD: Is there art or commentary you can remember posting that you think might embarrass your daughters when they stumble upon it via an internet search in years to come?
MC: No, I don’t see anything specific having that reaction. I do think they might have had some reticence originally in having something that was given to them now going out into the world and having a life independent of them. But I think they see the value in it and support the napkins’ exposure around the world.

WD: What is the most important thing you've learned about being a dad from working on the site?
MC: I have actually learned the most about being a dad from having been interviewed about the site and the phenomenon of the napkins by local newspapers, TV stations and your blog as well. When you are going to be interviewed you tend to try to organize your thoughts. In doing so I was able to clarify what it was I was doing all those years ago. I was attempting to teach my daughter’s a set of ideas. They weren’t a code or a set of principles I could have put my finger on right then, but looking back, trying to figure out how I was going to explain it all to someone who starts knowing nothing about it, I realized I had a number of common threads going through the napkins.

Those include: Independent thinking; Giving the benefit of the doubt and thinking the best of people; Self-esteem that is based on accomplishment, not on just wanting to think highly of yourself; Love over judgment. There are many more principles that flow through the napkins and I am exciting about pulling them out and organizing them around those principles.

I also realized that being a dad isn’t a big job. It is a series of very small jobs all strung together. You don’t have to raise them to age 18. You only have to feed them one spoonful of food, or one good and lasting idea at a time. Of course, you have to do those things over and over, as I did the napkins, but it isn’t as daunting to do it with that mindset as it is to try and hold the whole 18 years on your shoulders.

WD: Which are the two or three most interesting dadblogs ... other than yours?
MC: Truthfully, I haven’t read many dad blogs. I call my blog ‘The Napkin Dad Daily’ because of how the napkins originated. But I see my blog has being more about being an educator, an artist and an idea generator than being a dad (even though they are often overlapping). The napkins were originally about me helping my daughters’ education. Now they are about me helping anyone with their education.

WD: A few words on how you'll continue to cure the planet of evil?
MC: I actually found a cure for evil a few years ago, but I left the formula in my favorite blue blazer’s pocket and then left the blazer on a chair at a restaurant. Later I heard it was stolen from the back office by a mysterious woman in black who was last seen boarding an airplane for Peru.

I have started over on the formula and should have it completed in 2010. In the meanwhile I am doing the next best thing, which is to sell the “Napkin Dad’s Book of Absorbent Ideas, Volume 1., t-shirts, coffee mugs, greeting cards and other stuff at martycoleman.com.

Qs&As with DoDads — Daddy Dialectic

Begun to give an online voice to the musings of then new dad Jeremy Adam Smith, the nearly 2-year old Daddy Dialectic evolved within months into a trans-American, but San Francisco Bay area predominant, collaboration of six intellectual and progressive dads.

They blog from the perspective of different life paths and having reared (at last count) a combined nine children while writing, editing, educating and publishing. Using real names and nom de blogs, DD offers the postings of Smith, and Chicago Pop , Chip, Tomas Moniz, Christopher Pepper and TrophyHusband (married to blogger DoctorMama and father of the blogged Hellboy). Blogging on DD and on their own, they write about relationships and the changing nature of parenting, more specifically, fatherhood — and how those identities should change further — in modern American culture. Smith (with Chicago Pop sitting in for a few questions) was kind enough to take time from real life to provide insightfilled As for WD's much more mundane Qs.


WhinyDad: What was the biggest challenge to starting and continuing Daddy Dialectic?

Jeremy Adam Smith: The biggest challenge was translating my life into writing. I had been a writer for many years before I became a dad, but I mostly wrote about books, authors, and ideas for publications like The Nation, The Bay Guardian and the SF Chronicle. I was good at dissecting big ideas, but bad at dissecting my own (and other people's) feelings and experiences.

And yet when I became primary caregiver for my son, I found it to be really emotionally challenging, and I wanted to write about that as a way of trying to understand how I was changing. At the same time, I was fascinated by the social world of parenting and where I fit in as a caregiving father, and I wanted to understand the forces that shaped that world. I started researching the family — psychology, anthropology, history, biology, all of it. I used my experience to illuminate and guide the research, and I used the research to illuminate my life. I read during my son's naps; I read early in the morning, before he woke, and late at night, after he went to bed. I really put myself through several graduate-level courses in family studies.

I couldn't relate at all to the parenting magazines out there, but one day I did a Google search for "stay at home dad" and discovered this world of dad blogs, as well as smart, progressive mom blogs. I saw my life reflected in those, and I learned a lot. It took about a week for me to realize that I could start my own blog without too much trouble.

I tried to write when I got the time, in early-morning or late-night snatches. I discovered that blogging is really an ideal vehicle for writing when you're being constantly interrupted by a crying baby. My posts are still just a series of rough drafts; I think of the blog as a notebook. I've since turned many posts into magazine articles or integrated their ideas and information into my book. In the blog I try to be aggressive and adventurous and experimental. As a result, sometimes I am just wrong or off-beat — but I really try to listen to my reader's feedback. Some comments on the blog changed my ideas, or pointed me in new directions, or helped me to understand my life as a father better. I'm very grateful to my readers.

WD: Why and how did DD evolve from a lone blogger?

JAS: I wasn't seeing very many blogs out there trying to do the same thing I was trying to do at Daddy Dialectic — that is, writing thoughtful, introspective posts based on experience and evidence. I wanted a blog that tried to capture complexity and contradiction, intellect and emotion. I started to realize that were other dads out there who shared my sensibility and I thought that my blog might be a forum for different voices and get us talking to each other. Also, my role in my family was changing: my son got older and went to preschool, and I started work as managing editor of Greater Good magazine and I got a contract for my book Twenty-First-Century Dad. But I still wanted to keep that stay-at-home dad voice and continue to explore those issues, even as I moved on with my life and into a new stage of fatherhood.

And so I carefully sought out dads who might contribute. Some of them, like Chip, I found in the blogosphere; others, like Chicago Pop, I ran across in real life.

WD: Chicago Pop, recently you credited your dad with great philosophical wisdom when he said "it's fun" to have kids. Was that a guiding principle when you began blogging?

Chicago Pop: Not at all. I've only begun to realize how fun it is, and how right my father was.

WD: How much of your dad is in the blog?

CP: More than I even know. Being a parent is like going forward and backward in time, all at once. I am learning to be a father while remembering I was a child, and remembering my childhood father now that I am

WD: What have you written that you think might "horribly" embarrass your son years from now when he search engines it — or calls it up in whatever manner then exists?

CP: Nothing yet; once he hits puberty, everything; when he's 30, probably nothing

JAS: Tough to say. I've written about his imaginary friends; that might be embarrassing, but he also might think it's cool. Frankly, I hope he does read about my experiences as his caregiver, warts and all, because I want him to be a caregiver someday and I want him to be prepared for it. I've also written about how much I love him. That might embarrass him. Actually, I think Chicago Pop has the best answer to this question.

WD: Other than sometimes as subject, how does your child influence your writing?

JAS: He reminds me of my own fallibility. I try so hard to be a good parent, but I sometimes fail, and sometimes I feel so right about something but then later it turns out that I had it all completely wrong. It's important for a writer to remember that. Of course, you can come to believe too much in your own fallibility; I have to refrain from beating myself up all the time. You just have to do your best and hope for the best, but remember that you're not perfect and try to keep on learning. That sounds a bit like a cliché, but I think it's a good guideline for life.

WD: What is the most important thing you've learned about being a dad from
working on the site?

JAS: I've learned that I have a lot in common with other parents; I get this from real life, too, but you can go much deeper in writing than in casual conversation. Paradoxically, I've also learned in a deep way that parents are different, and different things work for different people.

WD: Daddy Dialectic seems more political than most SAHD or Dadbloggers. Do you think it is a fair assessment and was it a conscious choice when you began?

JAS: I've always been involved with politics and that didn't change when I became a parent … well, I did become less politically involved, but my values didn't change. To me, parenting intersects with every sphere of life, including politics. Nobody parents in a vacuum. It's a social activity, and our choices are shaped by economic and political forces. Take, for example, parental leave: many dads aren't able to take time off after the birth of their child, they have to go right back to work. This hurts their relationship with the mother as well with as the kids. Parental leave for fathers is a political issue, because employers and their allies in Congress have battled against it tooth and nail for decades.

So if we want men to be better, more involved fathers, we need parental leave and we also need more flexible workplace policies for both men and women. Some people claim that dads won't take leave even when it's offered, but we know when it's been offered in places like Germany and Sweden men have indeed taken it and gotten more involved with their families. These changes didn't happen overnight. Public policy has to change, but so has the culture of the workplace and the way couples relate to each other, and the way extended families relate to couples. When bosses take leave, so will employees. When grandparents and aunts and uncles are supportive of dad's involvement, dads will be more involved.

Right now, the pressure goes the other way, to make more money. Until that changes, fear and anxiety will drive the choices that fathers make, and they bring that home with them. I want every father, both caregivers and breadwinners, to stand up together and for government and workplaces to recognize the essential role they play for their children and the mothers. I think this is a fight for both moms and dads together, not apart.

WD: Which are the two or three most interesting dadblogs ... other than yours?

JAS: I like Rebeldad for its consistent coverage of fatherhood issues, and I think Brian Reid of Rebeldad has done an excellent job as a guest blogger at On Balance, the Washington Post parenting blog. I love Lesbian Dad and Doodaddy for being so honest and real. I also really enjoy Rice Daddies. Equally Shared Parenting also has a lot of useful things to say, and Evolution of a Dad is probably the closest blog out there to Daddy Dialectic's sensibility.

It's not a blog and it's not for dads, but I've always thought Mothers Movement Online has really smart coverage of parenting issues. I think dads can learn a lot from reading it.

I should also note that the Center for Law and Social Policy and the Council on Contemporary Families both do really important research and outreach.

That's more than two or three, I'm afraid. I could list even more.

WD: A few words on how you'll continue to cure the planet of evil?

JAS: There's a huge gap between public policy and the way people live in this country. Policy is designed to support suburban heterosexual male-breadwinner, female-homemaker families. But families today are very diverse. Most moms work; there are stay-at-home dads and highly involved fathers. There are gay and lesbian families. The divorce rate is falling, but it's still high and still a part of the landscape, and so are step families. And many people today have children without ever getting married. As the historian Stephanie Coontz once pointed out to me, policy needs to help these families to leverage their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.

I think MomsRising deserves a lot of support, though they do not recognize the stake dads have in their issues. They say they do, but I don't think they really get it. I know they started a companion project for all parents, but to me it feels like a token effort — sort of like those "parenting" magazines that are written from a mom's POV but toss in an occasional article designed to appeal to some stereotypical dad: the articles assume dad is an idiot who can't cook and doesn't know how to do the laundry, but here's a few helpful tips on how to manage the big lug. Well, not every dad is like that, and many dads have a strong interest and stake in the issues championed by MomsRising.

Still, I agree with every change they are advocating for, and, of course, it's true that dads have not started a parallel organization of their own — not one that's claimed wide support, anyway.

Fathers, I think, are more prone to wrestle with these issues on an individual level, or they are more likely to work on these issues through larger organizations like labor unions. The advocacy language needs to be crafted to appeal to a sense of self-reliance. It also needs to come from a position of respect for fatherhood and assume that fathers are looking out for their families instead of their social dominance as men. In other words, you have to appeal to their better natures and provide some hope, not beat them over the head with the manifold failures of mankind. I think an advocacy organization for fathers will need to recognize this, if it to be successful. I wish the Democratic Party was more progressive on families. They're really not. They don't want to offend constituencies that think things went downhill after the 1950s.

Qs&As with DoDads — Rebel Dad

"I never expected to end up a rebel," wrote Brian Reid in a Rebel Dad book proposal/manifesto (pdf file). "I have a graduate degree from an Ivy League university, a 401(k) and a marriage to a high-powered Washington lawyer. No motorcycle. No tattoos. Not even a leather jacket. But six months after my first child arrived I became part of a movement ... being an at-home father is tantamount to a being a revolutionary."

The revolutionary Reid began his blog, Rebel Dad, in 2002 when his daughter was born and he took advantage of a parental leave to stay home with her. RebelDad remains the go-to site for SAHD news as well as an online hub for daddy bloggers. Stealing time from his fathering passion, as well as his journalistic and public relations career, he was kind enough to offer some of the gleanings from his past and present by way of pointing to the future:

WD: When you began there were many fewer dadbloggers, What was the biggest challenge to starting and now continuing RebelDad?
BR: The goal at the outset wasn't actually to build a big, public blog. It was mostly just a place for me to bookmark stuff that I found interesting. ... I wanted to have a place where I could go to see everything that was being said about at-home fathers.

But as time went on, and more people stumbled across it, the community began to build — people began flagging new items to me, more blogs emerged, books were written. It's been great seeing all of these resources emerge.

WD: How are your kids involved in the site?
BR: Just inspiration. They aren't involved and, as a general rule, I don't write about them. This is in part because my personal life is pretty dull and in part because they're not old enough for me to invade their privacy in this way.

WD: What is the best thing you've learned about being a dad from working on the site?
BR: The best thing I've taken away is the passion for parenting that so many of the guys in the at-home dad community have. When you go to the At-Home Dad Convention or read some of the really good dad blogs, you can't help but be inspired to be the best possible parent you can be.

WD: Are you the SAHD you were when you started?
BR: No — as time has gone on and the kids have gotten older, I've worked more and more, to the point where I can no longer claim to be anything close to a SAHD. I've become less obsessed with celebrating at-home fatherhood for its own sake: I still think it's vitally important for both individuals and society, but I'm also uncomfortable when dads get lauded for doing the same stuff that every other parent does.

WD: What are the two or three most interesting dadblogs ... other than yours?
BR: DaddyTypes is just so well-written and funny that it's hard not to include. I love Daddy Dialectic, even when it makes my head hurt. And I read Blue Sloth, too, which strikes me as perhaps the most honest dadblog out there.

WD: A few words on how you'll continue to cure the planet of evil?
BR: As I've moved away from at-home fatherhood, I've become much more interested in the question of work-life balance: how can I keep the passion for parenting that I had when I was an at-home dad and still be the best possible worker? Right now, I have the opportunity to write on that issue every Thursday at the washingtonpost.com's "On Balance" blog.

Qs&As with DoDads — DadLabs

In general, dads are funnier than the other parent. And some are even more amusing than others. Five of the most humorous put aside more honest work to metamorphose into DadLabs. Together, they have 11 (nearly 12) kids under management ranging from in utero to nine; one entertaining web site — over 250 episodes of dadly humorous "tips and advice"; and a book and other deals in the works. Because that is not nearly enough to fill up a dad's life (and possible because Texas football teams aren't playing this time of year), Creative Director Clay Nichols — also responsible for the oldest child, a boy, and his younger brother and sister — spent a few moments offering some of the "behind the scenes" of the scenes they make

WD: What was the biggest challenge to starting and (and is the biggest to) continuing DadLabs?
CN: We quit the day jobs. As idiotic as that may sound, particularly if you've been to the site, we all left nice stable careers in education to do this internet television thing. So keeping the panic down long enough to shoot another show is a pretty big obstacle. Deceiving, er, getting advertisers willing to sponsor the show is pretty tough. And keeping up with the post-production demands of posting four shows a week is pretty tough — the editing and graphics. Shooting is easy, crafting that into something useful and/or funny is much harder.

WD: Do your kids ever come home mad at you when the kids at school tell them what they found when they Googled their dad(s)?
CN: Mostly I just have to wrestle with them to keep them off the computer because they want to watch. They're pretty cute about it. I once got a little disturbed when I found my oldest son watching "The Due Dads: The Man's Guide to Pregnancy" we made about pregnancy over and over until he had memorized all the obstetrical buzzwords. That'll impress the teacher.

WD: Is there one or perhaps two or three episodes that stand out?
CN: The Breast Pump has to be a favorite — that's the one that kind of launched us, plus I'm not the one hooked up to the pump. I think the vasectomy bit was funny, mostly because the doc said so many obscene things we couldn't put on film. I also think Owen's Milk Man is a classic.

WD: What is the best thing you've learned about being a dad from working on the site?
CN: I love being able to do research and stay focused on parenting all day long. It's nice to feel informed. I think the most reassuring thing that I've found is that your instincts are usually right. We know more about parenting than "experts" would probably like us to believe. Men especially.

WD: What are the two or three most interesting dadblogs ... other than yours?
CN: I read daddytypes because he has the most intelligent analysis of dad controversies. rebeldad because he's a good resource to find out what is in the media about dads. There are a number of great, comic dad bloggers out there, recently I've been reading the holmes and busy dad.

WD: Would you like to add a few words on how you'll continue to cure the planet of evil?
CN: We've got a book deal in the works, which I have no idea how we'll find time for. I'm avoiding writing a feature that I've been assigned by Fit Pregnancy because I am neither fit nor pregnant. I am procrastinating that until the situation changes. I'm also learning from my son what Destination Imagination is, and why exactly I've been recruited to be involved. Oh, and we've got two DVDs out "Due Dads: The Man's Survival Guide to Pregnancy" and "Due Dads: The Man's Guide to Labor and Delivery" Both are available at www.dadlabs.com/store/

Qs&As with DoDads — The Story of the Baby

Seattle's Jeff Vogel is by turns a game designer, a writer and father. Two of the three came together a few years ago and begat The Story of the Baby, which begat the sequel, which led to a not-so-misbegotten tome, The Poo Bomb. Momentarily bringing the entire universe of game design to a halt, Mr. Vogel offered some who, what and when:

Whinydad Chronicle: What was the biggest challenge to starting and continuing your blog?
Jeff Vogel: Coming up with new, fresh material, week after week, for a whole year. I insisted on it being actually funny.

WD: When and how did the book come about?
JV: Once I did a full year of the journal, I realized that I had a book's worth of quality material. Then I went through all the standard steps. Querying agents, writing a proposal, etc.

WD: What are you going to tell your daughter when she googoogles you and finds out what you said behind her back while she napped?
JV: That the advance from the book went into her college fund. So suck it up.

WD: What are the two or three most interesting dadblogs (other than yours) and why?
JV: I've never read another one, I'm afraid. I only read blogs that don't remind me of the awfulness of having children around.

WD: A few words on how you'll continue to cure the planet of evil?
JV: Right now, I'm not doing much writing. I'm focusing on my computer game business, which is doing very well. They're good games. They're at http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com. Plug!!!