As a father of two girls there is a perceived notion that you must raise your daughters in a certain way (or at least I sometimes get this impression form the people that I interact with). At the same time, when I talk to fathers of boys, I hear differing things about their impressions and the ways in which they feel that they can and should raise their boys as well.

For girls, there is the impression that society expects that they will be introduced to dolls, dress up and the like and that fathers will support this feminine societal view. While boys are given toy guns, legos, cars or trucks to solidify their manhood. Who says though that it has to be this way? Who says that a girl can’t love playing with cars or trucks? Who says that a boy cannot like playing with a Cabbage Patch Kid doll?

For me, I have always encouraged my girls to do what they want to do. Whether this is playing baseball or dolls, dress up or cars, I am encouraging them to be the person that they want to be while at the same time encouraging them to explore areas outside of the normal societal mores.

For many of us we will walk into the new year with grand aspirations about what we will do, or what we hope to accomplish this year. We call them resolutions, but unfortunately, for most of us they tend to become null and void pretty close to the same time that we make them.

There has been a lot of talk this year about the fact that this is the year of the dad blogger. .I have had a a lot of time to think about this, being a dad myself, for me when starting my Dad of Divas blog, I started this for myself. I did it to share my thoughts and concerns about being a father.

Have you ever really thought about what you are afraid of in being a father, or what issues really trouble you in fatherhood? For me, when thinking trying to think of eight main fears/issues that are difficult for me to cope with, I came up with the following:

I like lighthouses! The pictures that you will see through this article are a few that I have taken through the years. Recently I have been thinking of lighthouses in relation to fatherhood. Lighthouses have played and still play an important part in nautical safety as many are still in working order doing the job [...]

No matter our differences in geography, ages, the number of children we have or whether we are WAHD, SAHD, single dads, adoptive dads, etc… We are simply dads united in solidarity based on one principle: We love being fathers, and want to share this love with the world.