Awhile ago, my wife had some extra reward points to cash in on a magazine subscription. She didn’t see any that she liked and thought I might like Men’s Health. Intrigued, I said sure. After the first issue, I realized that the magazine wasn’t for me. Nothing against Men’s Health, but I just don’t fit the demographic they’re targeting.
A little bit later, my wife got another free subscription offer. This time, it was Maxim that came under consideration. From what little I heard about them, they featured many photos of half-naked women. Jokingly, I told her to go for it, not really expecting to match their demographic either. And I wasn’t disappointed. I’m sure it’s a great magazine to some people, but articles like “How to cheat on your spouse and get away with it” just weren’t what I was looking for. (I have my own way of not getting caught cheating. It’s called “Don’t Cheat In The First Place!” and it’s 100% effective.)
Around this time, I began wondering if there were any magazines that targeted me as a Dad. I’ve looked at Parenting but was instantly turned off by their website. First of all, they feature sections for baby, toddler, child, and mom but no category for “Dad.” Even their submenus contain entries like Baby Essentials, Kid Essentials, and Mom Must-Have with nary a Dad Must-Have in sight.
It’s like they assume that Moms are the ones who are parents and Dads are just bumbling fools. In fact, one of their articles about dads is titled Mad at Dad where moms vent about how their husbands do everything wrong. Nowhere is there a “Mad at Mom” article for Dads to vent. This would bother me less if the magazine was named Parenting For Moms, but a title like Parenting insinuates that it is for parents which, last time I checked, includes Dads.
This trend isn’t limited to Parenting, though. I went to Amazon’s magazine selection and chose their Parenting category. This resulted in 17 magazines. Nine of these seemed directed at either baby products, pregnancy or motherhood specifically. Care to guess how many “Fatherhood” or “Baby and Dad” magazines there are? If you guessed zero, you’re right.
To be fair, I did wind up finding one dad magazine: Fq Magazine (billed as GQ for dads). The main problem with this one is that it costs over $80 for a year’s subscription (6 issues). Unfortunately, this prices it right out of my budget.
I don’t mean to seem picky here, but I really would like to find a “Dad Magazine” that I could sit down (off the computer) and read. One that doesn’t assume that my Y chromosome makes me interested solely in beer, sports and naked women. One that recognizes that I have a hand in how my children are raised. One that gives us married men with kids sound advice on the topics that matter most to us. This is a demographic that is being woefully underserved and I hope that magazine publishers recognize this soon.
Then again, perhaps I’ve found my “Dad magazine” after all: Daddy Blogs. It might not be printed on glossy paper, but I’m definitely the target demographic. Now all I need it a better way of reading them offline (perhaps with a Kindle or iPad-like device).
