Dad rock! Dad dancing! Dad bods! Why it’s time to reclaim the word ‘dad’
In Cornwall last month, my wife and I were walking with our daughter down a lane between two fields of sheep when I was struck by a droll thought. Turning to my beloved with what I imagined was a mischievous gleam in my eye, I said: ‘Here I am, stuck in the middle with ewes.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘See, that’s what I’m talking about,’ she said. ‘Dad jokes.’
I protested. This was the kind of average pun I had always made. If anything, given I had only been a father for 14 months but a son for 32 years before that, they were much more ‘son jokes’. It was fine not to like the style (although she was set for a difficult marriage) but why bring paternity into it? Besides, her definition of dad joke needed work. Sometimes it felt like any joke which emerged from me, a father, automatically became a dad joke, like any plane becomes Air Force One when the president gets on it. Not fair on me, not fair on the dad community. She rolled her eyes again.
I’ve noticed this word ‘dad’ cropping up more and more since I became a father. It’s rarely a compliment. I only partially blame my daughter, who has started to make proto ‘dada’ noises. She is too young to know better. Also, it’s far from clear what they mean. Sometimes she seems to be addressing me, but at other times she’s just announcing she has crapped her pants again or has spotted something new and exciting to destroy. Dada is clearly a versatile word in her mind. English isn’t normally a tonal language, but depending on the situation, ‘dadadada’ can be loaded with hunger, fury, impatience, curiosity, bemusement or — so I like to think — the admiration and respect worthy of my office.
In the other new instances of ‘dad’ in my life, I’ve noticed a marked lack of respect. My music has become ‘dad rock’, which is to say guitar-heavy songs my wife doesn’t like. What was previously a difference of taste is now being passed off as objective criticism. I remonstrated that dad rock was a specific genre — Boston, Dire Straits, Toto — and couldn’t simply be used as a catch-all for things that weren’t Beyoncé. She disagreed. In a huff, I consulted the track listing of Now That’s What I Call Dad Rock, the natural authority on these matters, only to discover it now includes Bastille and The 1975, as well as Blink-182 and The Fratellis. May we all live long enough to see the music of our teens become dad rock.
A ‘centrist dad’ is the lowest form of political animal, a pathetic Blairite who mistakes his ideology for natural reasonability. ‘Dad dancing’ denotes the arrhythmic flailing of a man who is no longer looking to attract a mate. ‘Dad clothes’ are sensible and loose-fitting. The other day my younger brother sent me a chart in which the two axes were ‘relevance of personal style’ and ‘awareness of personal style’. ‘Dadcore’ was self-aware yet untrendy, only one rung down from ‘cheugy’. ‘Dad shoes’ — ie, chunky comfortable trainers — have had a moment recently, in the way that beautiful, thin young people are fond of appropriating unlikely items and proving that they don’t have to look bad when worn by beautiful, thin young people. A dad car is measured in fuel economy and boot space, rather than acceleration or style. The single instance where I hear ‘dad’ with even a hint of admiration is when I’m told I might soon have a ‘dad bod’ if I lose a bit more weight.
What’s strange is that few fathers would object to being called ‘dad’ rather than ‘father’, except possibly Jacob Rees-Mogg. Father has an Old Testament gravity at odds with how most parents see themselves in 2021. There’s a reason the prayer does not begin ‘Our dad, who art in heaven’. I’m struggling to think of a case in which I would refer to my dad as my father, other than official forms.
Although there are instances of ‘dad’ in English as far back as 1500, its modern usage is an American import. Google Ngram (which logs the frequency of words and phrases in books over the years) charts a sharp rise in ‘dad’ in American English from the 1970s onwards, with British English following the trend a few years later. Unlike ‘father’, which has an Old English root meaning ‘he who begets a child’, dad doesn’t have an obvious etymology. Like ‘papa’, which was massive in the 19th century but has drifted out of usage, dad apparently mimics the noises made by babies. The cultural usage of the two terms reflects the distinction. A father is responsible, upstanding, authoritative. Perhaps a little aloof, even stern, but a respectable member of society. Even if a father was abusive, he was rarely incompetent. Scary rather than silly. Mr Bennet is kindly and mostly disengaged from his daughters’ romantic shenanigans, but not a fool.
A dad is an altogether softer and more cuddly specimen, lovable perhaps, but never mistaken for God. A famously controversial example is the Peppa Pig patriarch, Daddy Pig, a lazy, forgetful figure with a ‘big tummy’ who is too fat to get in Peppa’s treehouse and terrible at DIY. Compare that to Mummy Pig, a have-it-all porcine Stakhanovite who juggles impeccable mothering with a successful career. In recent decades, Daddy Pig has been the norm rather than the exception in how fathers are depicted on TV. Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, Kevin from Motherland… useless dads abound.
One reason the trend of useless dad/competent mum has been so popular is because it’s where feminism coincides with capitalism. One easy way to show women in a better light is to make the men around them hopeless. As my friend Matt, who works in advertising and worked on the BT ads in which Kris Marshall was useless, explains, this approach suits brands, too. ‘Ads have to show that you need a product or brand in your life,’ he says. ‘Therefore lots of ads are constructed in ways that show an imperfect life that is resolved by the product or brand. Because mums are the “gatekeepers”, ie the people who spend the money, they can’t be shown to be at fault. Dad becomes the fall guy.’
And so dads become duffers who don’t understand anything, to be helped out by their wily children or understanding partners. Isn’t this an unhelpful and reductive view? It lets men off the hook domestically, as though knowing how to unload a washing machine was something that can’t be carried on the Y chromosome, while piling more pressure on women at a time when they are expected to have careers.
But as Dr Jeremy Davies from the Fatherhood Institute tells me, this cuts both ways. If dads get a hard time, that’s a reflection of structural obstacles — most notably parental leave — which continue to get in the way of genuine parity between the sexes. ‘In recent years expectations on fathers have increased. We’re expected to be providers and caregivers, and we get a lot of bad press about not doing enough hands-on caregiving or housework when actually most of us are tied to our work.’
He adds that ‘mum’ can be overused, too. As dad has become derogatory, mum has attained a kind of superpower. Iceland might have abandoned ‘that’s why mums go to Iceland’ as a slogan, but the stereotype endures. Mums are industrious, inventive, loving, empathetic, intuitive, thrifty. But they are also domesticated. Politicians might cower before Mumsnet, but mums are not a force in FTSE 100 boardrooms. Like dad, the term is far from flattering in other contexts. Like dad shoes, ‘mom jeans’ are cool provided you are a skinny 19-year-old and not actually a mother.
The pandemic has exposed some of these fault lines, by forcing both partners to spend more time at home. Millions of men have had to see what life is like away from the air-conditioned tranquillity they enjoy at work. As one female friend says, compared to trying to work around childcare, ‘the office is a spa’. The Fatherhood Institute reports that men think of themselves as better fathers since the pandemic and that four out of five would prefer to work more flexibly in future. An aeons-old mythology in which dad’s sole function is to put a modicum of bread on the table doesn’t help anyone, except the makers of washing powder.
As I write this, my daughter has come over saying ‘dadada’. There’s something she wants to show me. It can’t wait. She hops from foot to foot. Ah, the dada movement, I think, sad that there is no adult around to hear this dad joke. As we waddle off hand in hand, I remember that while words are important in parenting, thought and action count, too.
Dad habits: five fatherhood stereotypes
Centrist Dad
Voted for Blair then ‘held his nose’ and voted for Cameron ‘because of Iraq’. Hates Boris but couldn’t ‘bring himself to vote for Corbyn’.
Dad bod
The physique of the soft, round middle-aged man. Off-duty DiCaprio on the beach or Seth Rogen. Not ‘fat’, you understand, but not ‘not fat’ either.
Dad rock
Then: Deep Purple, Dire Straits, the Quo, Whitesnake, Toto. Now: Oasis, Ocean Colour Scene, Kasabian, Kings of Leon.
Dad dancing
He’s pointing, he’s bending, he’s clearing a large area around him…
Dad food
‘Elevated’ pub grub. Burgers that list the breed of cow, fish that specifies the method of catching. Reassuring nursery food for men who think they’re too good for a ’Spoons.
Read More
In lockdown my male identity has been reduced to stay-at-home dad and husband
