Issue Index

Full-Time Dads;

The Magazine for Caregiver Fathers

Issue 23

The Daddy Machine

By Johnny Valentine

A strange story of two kids who live with their two mothers. One day, the moms go out for the day, leaving a construction set behind. The kids, who have been musing about what it would be like to have a Daddy (obviously no one told them that they already have daddies, somewhere...), decide to build a Daddy Machine, and just like that, daddies start appearing. Eventually, the kids fix the machine so that the daddies disappear again, but the last two decide to stay, and move into the house next door.

What is disturbing about this story is that these children already have real fathers who obviously have never been a part of their lives, for some unknown reason. It appears that the kids are not even aware that they have fathers, or even that fathers are a fact of biology. Some of their friends have fathers, although not very good ones.

The other thing that bothers me is the message this book gives that all you need to do to get a father is make one, that they can be summoned by a simple machine, and that they can be dismissed when you are all done with them. This denies that a father is an intimate part in the creation of a child, or that being a father has to do with that creation, or that a father is an integral part of the child's life, a permanent fixture, not so easily cast aside. There is far more to fatherhood than mere physical presence, a fact that this book rejects.

It may be comforting in the short run to tell children with two moms that fathers are no big deal, easy come and easy go, and that they are not at all necessary, although sometimes they can be sort of fun to have around. But it is cruel to the fathers of those children to teach their kids that they are so valueless, and it is cruel in the long run to the children. This is a cute story on the surface, but it hides a deeper, and I think dangerously anti-father message which will not escape the children who read it.

The Daddy Machine