Looking for Mr. Good Dad.

By James McLoughlin
FTDMag@fathersworld.com

. . . So this Father's Day it was business as usual: The retailers ran their sales and the advertisers ran their "tribute to dads" commercials that encouraged us to remember dad on this special day. The corporations did their part, but what about the press? The once heralded Fourth Estate is seemingly more of a Carnival's House of Mirrors, showing us a distorted reflection of ourselves. If all the information you had to go on was media reports, you would have to conclude that we are a society of murdering thieves, with an odd fascination for disasters, whose government is more interested in publishing reports than addressing the needs of its people. And where are the dads in that warped version of society? Same place as in the dictionary. somewhere between Absent and Deadbeat!

. . . The Press has been replaced by "The Media," which is more interested in entertaining than informing. Members of "The Media" call it as they see it, but see it as they can sell it. Unfortunately, good news doesn't sell, and good news about good fathers just doesn't entertain enough . . .

When I finished the first draft of this editorial, it had come to be a brutal attack on the Media, blaming them for all our ills. I cannot say that I was dissatisfied with the result, but it was not quite right. They must shoulder a large portion of the blame. For example; Newsweek puts out a special edition of their magazine, Your Child and devotes 1 of its 96 pages to fathers. Johnson & Johnson, which seems to have sponsored the edition, has only 1 ad featuring a man. Most of the magazine's photos featuring a man, are of the paid professionals (Doctors, Actors, Models). It was a terrible job done by Newsweek, but, unfortunately, pretty typical of the coverage Dads get. That, in essence, is why there is Full-Time Dad's magazine; to give representation to the nurturing side of men, to acknowledge that fathers are parents too!

But, it would be most unfair to dump all the blame on the Media. Good news about good Dads just doesn't sell. Not in the News, not on TV, not in the bookstores and apparently not on the Magazine racks either. While this Magazine has been well received, the response has been a bit underwhelming.

Full-Time Dad's Magazine is one of the few options available to us to respond to the Media Slight. To shout back to them that fathers care. To let them know, when it comes to parenting, that fathers should be, and will be counted!