I know that DadWagon has a certain maleness built into its name and its mission. And, to be honest, we’re rarely sophisticated enough about the fair sex to get past the virgin/whore dichotomy in our writing.
But for some reason–can we blame this, too, on the heat wave?–women have had many roles on the ‘Wagon this week. It started with Matt’s discovery that women have conquered beer, or at least the art (if not joy) of tasting it. Theodore found a study purporting to show that moms don’t know how to put their kids to bed, and as a sort of single mom himself (when he has custody), he took umbrage. Nathan’s daughter, apparently, needs no one to defend her anymore, since she is now riding a bike in the concrete jungle and also learning to love kicking ass. Matt’s daughter is just sorry. For everything.
We also had a DadWagon Q&A this week, an excellent conversation between Christopher and his colleague Jennifer Senior, a very smart woman who wrote the New York Magazine cover on why she loves her children but hates her life. The article and the interview are both worth a read.
Not that women were entirely good to us this week. In Japan, men had to fight for their right for a little facetime with their kids, and in Korea, mombloggers are hogging all the advertiser swag. At home, Matt faced down the dreaded Hypothetical Relationship Question from his wife and lived to tell about it. But then, suspiciously, he hopped on a plane for someplace very far away, so perhaps he didn’t answer correctly the second time after all.
When boys did appear, they struggled. Nathan’s son had an acute and highly annoying case of pediatric repetitis. Theodore’s son made an appearance in the NY Times’ City Room blog as the gentrifier kid mortified by a playground water fight. At least JP won’t be going to school anywhere ever, so he won’t have to worry about schoolyard bullying. Matt, incidentally, called cyber-bullied parents pussies (which is itself a form of cyber-bullying, no?). Nathan scored an equally large, umm, buzzkill of them all, panning Toy Story 3 out of the perverse notion that it encourages pathological hoarding (when what he really wants, apparently, is to hoard children).
Oh, and Theodore wrote about the psychology of shitting. He promises to deliver more along those lines next week. Try to enjoy your weekend anyway. See you Monday.