Some papas don’t preach

Some parents have a strange habit of clicking pictures of their babies in the buff. With the Internet and blogging, a few parents are also putting up those pictures for all and sundry to see. Either there should be legislation against allowing parents to click naked pictures of their kids, or some sort of age of consent where kids have a say in whether the world should see those pictures. Parents need to be told that 2-year-old Ratan’s picture showing his little wee-wee is really not funny when said Ratan, now 32, brings home the girl he wants to marry.

If Angelina Jolie’s newly popped-out twins are sending the paparazzi in a tizzy to get that first shot (pray why, aren’t all newborns red and wrinkled?), elsewhere dad and art critic of Australian newspaper The Age, Robert Nelson, is in the middle of a media blitzkrieg for publishing naked pictures of his six-year-old daughter Olympia in the Art Monthly’s latest issue. While he initially denied the pictures were sexual, an essay written on Polixeni Papapetrou’s blog (polixenipapapetrou.net) seemed to say otherwise.

Perhaps Nelson needs to learn about parenting from parents who blog, who, despite sharing regular insights on everything from baby poo, nappy rashes and when-to-wean-the-baby, don’t put out naked pictures of their infants. While mommy bloggers come in all ages — from the to-be mommies, new-mommies to wish-I-wasn’t-mommy-because-the-tots-turned-to-teens — the daddy bloggers seem to be singularly of the same ‘type’. Most are new dads, who stay-at-home and try to be funny. Some succeed.

Some of the daddies rue the time they were single, a few are single and trying to juggle babies and booties, while others are plain preachy. Writer, blogger and divorced single dad David Mott invites voyeurs to his blog and offers stories, tips and expert advice “in an age of online dating, friends with benefits, hookups and booty calls” on Dad’s House (dadshouseblog.com). While he recommends a beach vacation as the best family outing, he also supports tantric sex. “Cooking is sexy. Reading is sexy. Tantric sex is sexy. It’s the fast-food guzzling, sports blathering, selfish lover sorts of men who are unmanly,” says David, supporting the cause of men-who-like-gourmet.

Reading through some daddy blogs shatters the myth that it’s only women who ‘think’ babies all the time; men do too! However, unlike most mommy bloggers, the daddies use more humour. Consider the issue of baby names for instance. Greg on Daddy Types (daddytypes.com/) suggests using drug names for babies for originality. “Aren’t Paxil, Ambien, and Cialis kind of cute names? Tramadol, Klonopin and Zyrtec, not so much.”