Category archive: advice

February 9, 2017

Eliot Porter Photograph Of His Son

Harvard medical researcher Eliot Porter took this photo of his son Jonathan enjoying some tummy time in 1938, the year he had his first exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 Gallery in New York. In 1939, he decided to become...
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February 6, 2017

The Top 10 Humidifiers To Get When Your 9yo Has Croup

It's 10 o'clock on Saturday night, and your 9yo is making agony faces like a telenovela diva and barking like a seal colony because she's got croup. What are the best humidifiers to buy so your kid, and by extension,...
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November 16, 2016

The Overshared Generation

Oh hi. Of all the posts about all the browser tabs in all the world, this is the one that brought be back to Daddy Types. It's an issue that goes to the heart of my idea for this blog,...
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June 10, 2016

In Mother Russia, Wifi Password Names Your Kid

From KVIIIlyn's mom:my husband suggested we replace the 'ait' with the Roman numeral symbol for eight! Now our daughter is truly unique.It's funny because, reading this, the most baffling thing to me ends up being, "What the hell kind of...
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April 10, 2016

63-yo NFL Coach Not Paragon Of Modern Parenting

Amazingly, a 63-year-old man whose life and livelihood have centered on grooming boys into men who pummel the shit out of each other for the enrichment of the oligarchy and the amusement of the sclerotic masses is not inclined to...
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March 25, 2016

English Baby Born In Mumbai Doing Well

Rather than do the typical expat thing (?) of going home for the delivery, Financial Times Mumbai bureau chief James Crabtree and his wife decided to have their first kid in India. I mean with an oceanfront hospital called Breach...
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January 19, 2016

Godspeed, Your Uncle James

At the marathon #MLKNOW commemoration of Martin Luther King at The Riverside Church yesterday, Chris Rock read James Baldwin's "My Dungeon Shook." As the subtitle says, it was written in 1963 as a "letter to my nephew on the one...
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December 31, 2015

Content Generation

Be glad I'm not the sort of person to use social media to publicly document potty training my toddler over winter break. Just... be glad.— David Friedman (@ironicsans) January 1, 2016 Oh, I dunno, I coulda used the content....
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November 27, 2015

Context And Empathy? What Are Thooose?

photo: Pete Souza Political aide wife Laura Moser writes about what it's like having a picture of your 2yo daughter having a meltdown on the floor of the White House go viral. Apparently, you get dog piled by media...
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November 17, 2015

Should We All Aspire To Parenthood On Mark Zuckerberg's Terms?

Been feeling this a lot lately. Actually, since the beginning, but especially in a week I didn't post a single thing:Do I post too much? I whisper with friends. You'll tell me, won't you, if I ever cross the line?...
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October 31, 2015

Hairy Banana

Heather Armstrong gave a really thoughtful and classically unsettling talk at this year's XOXO Festival in Portland where she explained her experience stepping away from pro mommyblogging at Dooce. You should really watch it or, if you're in a...
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October 14, 2015

'People Can Just Pick You Up And Move You And Put You Down'

Amanda Fortini's interview with the writer Mary Karr at The Paris Review includes this visceral description of childhood:INTERVIEWER In the first section of The Liars' Club, you inhabit the mind of a seven-year-old to an uncanny degree. How were you...
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September 28, 2015

A Modest Parental Proposal

We're all Trumans now This has been weighing on me for a while now, the last several posts, and the meaning and relevance and viability of it all. And this, The Atlantic's thought piece on the economics of mommyblogging,...
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September 21, 2015

Don't Sell Your Friend's Pictures Of His Kid

Here is a blog report of an interview from a magazine where a celebrity dad talked about his lifelong friend who tried to sell delivery room pics of their kid. Even on the narrow terms of copyright law, this is...
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September 14, 2015

Canadian Doctor Cures Dad's Earwax With This One Weird Trick

Was this scientific breakthrough suppressed for nearly ten years, or was it merely published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, where no one notices it?A 45-year-old male complained of a profound reduction in his left ear acuity while staying at...
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August 18, 2015

Speaking of Amazon

Oh right, how could I forget to mention in that previous post that Amazon is one of the main sources of revenue for Daddy Types via its affiliate link/kickback program. Also that it's apparently a family-hostile quant-obsessed corporate hellcult? Perhaps...
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Watched Over By Hacked Machines Of Loving Grace

So this guy Ted Benson [who named his kid Everest, great move] just posted about how easy it is to hack Amazon Dash buttons, those ridiculous little gadgets Amazon wants you to put around your life so you can...
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August 11, 2015

You May Say I'm A Dreamer/ But I'm Not The Only One

this is the saddest dream a parent has ever dreamed pic.twitter.com/9jNciVtmTn— Lisa McIntire (@LisaMcIntire) August 6, 2015...
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August 3, 2015

Don't Trust Anyone Over 8

The first generation of kids to watch Teletubbies are now in college, and they are paralyzed with anxiety and inadequacy. And their OG helicopter parents have already called all their professors to discuss it. Kids these days aren't getting enough...
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July 18, 2015

Road Trips And Hanging Out

If you need a place to hang out with a baby for three hours in the greater Chicago area I can recommend the lobby of the Westin at O'Hare— Gabriel Roth (@gabrielroth) July 19, 2015 No one's even asked for...
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July 10, 2015

It's Such A Good Feeling

Fred Rogers just made me cry, and it's ok. At least it'll take my mind off of Inside Out. Fred Rogers Message to those who grew up with the Neighborhood [vimeo via khoi]...
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July 7, 2015

The Swedish Man Project

I know, "The Disease of Manhood" sounds like about half the thinkpieces on The Good Men Project, but Dan Duray's review of the Swedish director Ruben Ostlund's film Force Majeure and My Struggle is a solidly interesting discussion of contemporary...
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July 6, 2015

The Chosen One, Or The Results Of Andy Baio's Video Game Parenting Experiment

Last December Andy Baio wrote about an experiment he performed on his son: exposing him to the history of video games in chronological order, rather than just starting at the state of the art of today. Now the Gel...
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May 13, 2015

Curling Parents

In Denmark, "helicopter parents" are called "curling parents", which I think is a) a better expression b) hilarious. — Malthe Sigurdsson (@malthe) May 10, 2015 The tricky part is that curling parents often wear the same outfits as their...
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May 11, 2015

Elon Musk Wants You To Birth HIS Baby, Dammit

A quote from Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,:"That is no excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We're changing the world and changing history, and you either...
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May 5, 2015

Because I Could Not Search Blogs For Death

Writer Gabriel Roth was reading Alfie books to his 3yo daughter when he got sandbagged by Death, which made a surprise appearance in the story:Children have to find out about death at some point. It's a cognitive milestone, like...
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May 2, 2015

The Price Of Freedom Is Eternal Vigilance

Here is a mom who's trying to run away from brands, but I think she's really trying to run away from herself:I couldn't resist buying her a cheap nylon set of Wonder Woman PJs, cape and all. Then I bought...
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April 28, 2015

Saul Bellow, Dad

This seems like an important life skill, in its own way:When [Saul] Bellow's son Greg was 2, Mr. Leader writes, "Bellow taught him to point first to his ass, then to his elbow, declaring him 'Smarter than most Harvard graduates.'"As...
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April 23, 2015

Come Celebrate With Us! And Maybe Just Bring Cash

More news from England, that just happens to be America: Lately I find that I leave things alone for a few days, see if they remain interesting. And then I decide whether to post them. It gives time for...
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April 18, 2015

Worst Haircut Meets Worst Bedtime Story Idea

I hadn't heard Jeff Cohen's 2012 radio interview with his daughters about the disastrous haircut the 5yo performed on the 3yo's head, but it's fantastic. I might even listen to it again right now. [3min later] YEP, still great! And...
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April 7, 2015

How To Make A How To Pull Out A Tooth With A #Camaro Video

When we look for videos on how to pull out a loose tooth, we find a six year old YouTube video about a guy who attached his kid's tooth to a model rocket. And most of us think, WTF...
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February 23, 2015

'I hope I'll live long enough that she has some memory of me.'

Paul Kalanithi is a Stanford neurosurgeon and a new dad with metastatic lung cancer. And his most recent essay and interview for Stanford Medical School's magazine about his experience is the reason I am crying right now. Before I Go...
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February 14, 2015

The Difference Between Me And Ye

Ive learned that Kanye gets very very very upset if you refer to his kid as "the kid"— erik maza (@erikmaza) February 14, 2015 This website was founded on the principle of countering treacly baby-related writing that calls babies baby,...
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February 10, 2015

Walking Bike Meets Hyperlapse Steadicam

The walking bike dad phonevideo genre has found its Goodfellas, and David Friedman is its Scorsese. He's using Hyperlapse, the timelapse video app from Instagram, at 1:1 speed as a Steadicam to follow his kid around the playground on...
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February 1, 2015

Measles Killing Roald Dahl's Daughter Was Just Part Of It

The pram before the storm: Roald Dahl & Patricia Neal family in 1961, with Theo, Tessa & Olivia. image via telegraph All this time I thought Roald Dahl was just a horrible narcissistic monster who treated his family badly...
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January 30, 2015

DT Friday Freakout: Measles, What Else? Edition

Oh man oh man, how can this week's freakout be about anything but measles and vaccines? What matters is "herd immunity." Unvaccinated people relying on vaccinated people around them to keep the disease from spreading. Including people who can't get...
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January 23, 2015

DT Friday Freakout: Arsenic Edition

The Daddy Types Friday Freakout is a compendium of news stories from the worlds of science, health, and parenting, saved up during the week and unleashed here all at once to freak. you out: Though one could easily say, "There's...
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January 22, 2015

A Vacctivist We Can Believe In

This is the first explanation of why not to vaccinate your kid that makes any sense. Of course, it's also from August, so we should be due for some updates? In other vaccination news, the Disneyland Measles are spreading to...
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January 16, 2015

DT Friday Freakout: Naptime Edition

Oh things are piling up; there will be more to freakout about this weekend, just let me get back to my laptop. But even if it were the only one, this first breaking announcement from the world of pediatric development...
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January 9, 2015

DT Friday Freakout: Measles Is Coming For Your Unvaccinated Children Edition

Here at Daddy Types we don't like to play by publicists' and TV news' rules, stringing you along with one anxiety-inducing science, news, health, and parenting story after another, details tonight at 11, learn how after the break! Parenting's stressful...
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January 6, 2015

By Your Paternity Leave, Milord

Ho. Ly. Crap. I go away for ONE week, and this is what happens to the state of newdadwriting? Writer William Giraldi gets paternity leave from Boston University and the only thing he manages to nurture is a drinking problem?My...
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December 23, 2014

Hermann Hesse At Nursery School

Visitor is struck by the 7yo footnote, but it's the one above that gets me: "'Hermann is going to nursery school, his violent temperament causes us much distress.' The child was three years old." on hermann hesse at seven:...
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December 21, 2014

The Most Maddening Part Of Parenting Is Definitely Copyright

Susan Copich's Domestic Bliss photographs look like pathological, dystopian stock photography, a Stepford Cindy Sherman, about as funny as an electrocution in the tub. I hope she makes a million dollars from them. They've been turning up on various websites...
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December 9, 2014

Andy Baio's Video Game Parenting Experiment FTW

Oh man, Andy Baio just won video game parenting. If you have a kid, why not run experiments on them? It's like running experiments on a little clone of yourself! And almost always probably legal. It's disappointing how many...
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November 26, 2014

The Case For Me Time

Come to Laura June's Parent Rap post about giving a kid time alone for The Awl for the license it gives you to not spend every waking minute attached and focused on the kid. Stay for writing, and the emotional...
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November 21, 2014

The Dad Blindspot

The NYT has a thing about "What It Means To Be A Dad". It is essentially a pitch for the Dad Magazine tag on The Toast, disguised as a trend piece. That it does not mention Kindling Quarterly helps to...
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DTQ: Do Men Take Baths?

Do men take baths— rachel edelman (@werkstatte) November 21, 2014 @werkstatte @waffleweave I'm certain they do, but could not cite precisely who. I'd say most dads (90%?) do.— David Jacobs (@djacobs) November 21, 2014 Saw this today and was rather...
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November 8, 2014

I'm Too Sexy For This Trendpiece

This article about a newspaper writer worrying whether he'll be as sexy as a movie star, a professional athlete, or a boy band member when he becomes a dad, reminds me of the joke about the guy who asks his...
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October 28, 2014

We Are Terrorizing Our Children

Launa Hall, a Pre-K teacher in Northern Virginia, writes in the Washington Post about lockdown drills. There will be a longterm psychological, emotional, and political price for these lockdowns, what Hall calls, with righteous outrage, "rehearsing our deaths," and it...
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October 15, 2014

Overparenting's Overparenting, Except They Call It Le Overparenting

those curling parent pants! image: today.com I think my favorite thing about this NYT column about how parents around the world1 need to step back and take a little me-time, and save themselves and their kids from the perils...
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