Father Features

For those planning some couch potato time a few months from, keep an eye on some dads who will shortly be moving from screen to DVD.

The biggest pop in terms of stardom and girth is real-life father of two, Kevin James who stars as a single dad in Paul Blart: Mall Cop — and not the Kevin James who wrote Surviving the Single Dad Syndrome. Released today, the reviews are less than kind, but the slapstick save of his screen daughter who is taken as a screen hostage should keep it on the Blockbuster shelves for a few years to come.

Real life single fathers in Baltimore will be mostly unexposed to the multiplexes prior to the release of their lives to DVD. A dozen stay at home dads and their daily strife and successes are the subject of Michael Ivan Schwartz's documentary Happy SAHD.

A movie, whose distribution will fall somewhere between the megascreen release of Blart and handful of arthouse "success" of SAHD is Peter Bratt's La Mission, the tale of a father who rejects and then rediscovers his son.

Naturally, when it's movie night, make sure you have plenty of POPcorn on hand.

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.

SAHDly

Thankfully, the daddytracker battles over the work/kid balance can be dealt with by talk not actual fighting. And both sides can claim to be doing their best for their children. Because when fathers actually go to war, sometimes they don't return. A tragedy now commemorated (?) with daddy dolls (now, "hug a heroes").

Not that a dad should necessarily stay at home once he returns. An experiment in SAHD credibility had a sad result. A pop who only has to go up or down his home's stairs to his office reduces his credibility unless he doesn't let anyone know.

** Everyday is a struggle, but mortality is not always a consequence. **

SAHD Tales

The Canadian Broadcasting Company has just added podcasts of Richard Scrimger's "Still Life with Children" to its Words at Large series.

Scrimger answers questions about his life a little bit differently, but the basics are that he has biologically authored four children and his "Still Life" is drawn from his life and SAHD times. His other work includes books for kids and adults.

In a recent interview, he explained how being a dad made him as a writer:

I didn't develop work habits as a writer until my children were born. I'd have four hours in front of me for writing, but somehow the coffee wouldn't be hot enough or the pencil wouldn't be sharp enough. I'd sit down, write a sentence and then stroke it out and write another sentence and maybe change the punctuation. I'd get up, walk and scratch my head and write another sentence, and I'd look up and the four hours would be gone. Then I'd go and play tennis or something. When the twins, the first of our four children, were born, suddenly my life had serious focus. The idea of having 40 uninterrupted minutes for writing when the two of them were napping was tremendous. I realized that, if I was going to write, I'd have to write during every spare minute, and that's what I've done from the time the children were born until now.

** A story of a man who gives life to kids who give birth to Dad. **

Uncontrolled Emotions

It must be some sort of Christmas season miracle as dads are making money out of both love and rage.

From the love side of equation come SAHD Jeff Robinson, happily chasing after 8-month-old Mae Louise. And then the phone rings and he's got a job for the next few Sundays that will bring in $135,000 as the "long" snapper for the local football side, the playoff-bound Seattle Seahawks.

And from the rage side comes a $9010 net as a Canadian father of a 15-year-old got so mad at finding his son smoking marijuana with stoner friends that he sold his Christmas present right from under the tree. The $90 Guitar Hero III the son lusted for is on its way via eBay (and assuming that the report is true) to an anonymous Australian fool parted from his money.

** Money is the tinsel on almost every dad's Christmas trees. **

SAHD Lessons

Choose not between God or Mammon. Choose the child. But make sure to help him study; she'll do all right on her own.

Minister Vini Nunez chose stay-at-home-dadding rather than fight for a full-time life in the Church. Steve Haderlein left corporate-banking and learned quickly that the SAHD life, "isn't for wimps," but that it would give him more time with his two kids, now 13 and 9, as a high school teacher. Both are happy with their choices.

Today, all is right with the SAHD world, except for the one note of concern from a British study finding that stay-at-homes diminished the test scores of their sons. Daddy's girls, however, don't rely on him to crack the academic whip and do just fine. Or is it just that they don't listen to anything he says?

** The Everything, the lucre and homework. Dads get to the homework! **

World Notes

In the north, daddyies are forever (or at least the Big Daddy is). In the south, more and more men are SAHD.

So is the story of Korea today. Deceased Kim Il Sung, father of today's North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, is "eternal president." In South Korea, according to the National Statistics Office, unemployed men who raise their children and take care of household affairs number 151,000, up 42.5 percent since 2003.

** SAHD or immortal. Quite a Hobson's choice for fathers. **

Stephen's Believen

Insulting, wrongheaded, smarmy and funny. Colbert on SAHDs from February 2007 (with a shoutout of thanks to athomedaddy who pointed me to this and whose daughter is obviously kinder to him during the day than Things 1&2 are to me so he can stay up later).

** Still much less insulting than "Mr. Mom." **

Daddys' Man

Do you want the finger that can set off the Big One to belong to a sleep-deprived sexagenarian father of two pre-schoolers? If so, Fred Thompson — who with his first wife also has two older kids (a third died of a drug overdose in 2002) and five grandchildren — could be your man.

Or, to put it another way, do you want to support the a firm and focused stay-at-home-dad? A SAHD looking for work, but so committed to being with his young kids while trying to make work work that he has decided to run for the only government position you can perform while in your pajamas in your own taxpayer-provided house, whith a whole staff is assigned to the kids to help out while you're on the phone?

Daddytrackers may have their candidate.

** If it matters, he may also have policies. **