Turns out I’ve been making this dadhood thing much too complex. It’s just so easy! All you have to do is follow the three instructions laid down by a team of researchers, and everything will go swimmingly:

Researchers (M. Lamb, 2004, and others) have developed what they call the “Big Three” elements of effective fatherhood: (1) Accessibility: The father needs to be present and available to the child. (2) Engagement: The father needs to be in direct contact with the child, providing care and interacting in a close, warm and consistent manner. (3) Responsibility: The father needs to participate fully in making decisions about child care, which includes arranging for the child care, meals, doctors’ visits and other activities.

Parents who master these skills during their child’s infancy and toddlerhood find that their children listen to them and respond more positively during later stages of childhood and adolescence. The effort of good parenting is worth the time spent.

Okay, well, thanks. Not at all obvious, guys.

While some parents are excitedly anticipating the May 7 release of “Babies: The Movie,” the anthropological look at infants around the world, others of us are a bit more, shall we say, self-involved. We don’t care about babies—we wanna see dads onscreen!

Which is why, I suppose, there’s “The Evolution of Dad,” a DVD documentary going on sale very soon. The movie is—and I’m just guessing wildly here—and how fatherhood is, like, changing. You know, once upon a time all dads were “work all the time, bring home the bacon, never see the kids,” but today they try to balance work and family? Maybe you’ve heard of such a thing?

Sorry to be so snarky, but based on the trailer (watch it below), Dana H. Glazer’s movie looks like a maudlin recycling of the usual clichés of modern fatherhood. Retelling the tale of his entry into fatherhood, Glazer says in the trailer, in the kind of slow, careful voice you use with a not-too-bright child, “And then I became a stay-at-home dad, and I felt alone. And, sometimes, like less of a man. Did other dads feel this way?”

From there we go on to every stereotype you’ve probably heard if you’ve ever read a parenting blog: men can be equal to women as parents, huge cultural shifts, emasculation versus liberation, soulful talks with elderly fathers, blah blah blah.

Sorry to be so snarky about this. I’m sure the movie itself is a bit more nuanced, but this kind of generically uplifting dreck makes me hate being a parent—or rather, identifying as being a member of a group called “parents.” It’s also why we here on Dadwagon try (and occasionally fail) to skip right over dreary sentimentality and get to the good shit: dead imaginary friends, spontaneous subterranean transsexuality, and ultra-obese German girls. Oh, and drinking. Yeah, we talk about crying (almost) and occasional happy moments, but we trust that if we get too almost-weepy, you, our beloved readers, will tell us to man the fuck up. For that, we thank you. Sort of.

Even casual observers of DadWagon must know that I love me some kids-ponder-death writing. I do it myself as often as the cheerful bastards who co-blog here will allow.

This piece from Her Bad Mother is a lovely read. And at the same time depressing because really, none of us parents have good answers for our kids.

The one thing we’ve decided to fudge is that we are promising our 4-year-old daughter Dalia that we won’t die and that her little brother won’t die. As in, ever. Because she asks, but she doesn’t want to hear about cycle of life and all that crap. She wants to hear that she is safe and that we are safe. Until the day I’m smote by my maker—or until she’s a little older—that is my story and I’m sticking to it.

Via Gawker comes a tale of pedo-panic in San Francisco:

Everyone knows the only thing people do with their cell phones is take weird sex pictures. When moms saw a man lurking around San Francisco’s Mountain Lake Park apparently taking cell phone pics of their kids, they leaped into action.

That is, they took pictures of him, wrote about him on the local parents’ e-mail list, and tipped off the SFPD. That’s parenting in action!

It’s also utterly groundless, according to the San Francisco Examiner:

Police identified the man last week and visited his home Monday, according to a police update. He was “cooperative,” “unguarded,” and “surprised at being the subject of a police investigation,” according to a report from Richmond Police Station Capt. Richard Corriea.

“He allowed officers to examine his cell phone and his laptop computer,” the report said. “He stated that he hadn’t taken any photographs. He explained that he was looking at his phone’s screen while using the telephone’s stopwatch feature as part of his workout.”

So, look, parents: Yes, there are bad people out there. And yes, you need to be a little bit wary of a stranger’s intentions. But not everyone is out to molest your kids. And sometimes you can even clear things up by, like, you know, talking to the stranger yourself and seeing what he’s up to. So just chill out next time, alright?

And remember that you, your family members, and the people your child regularly interacts with (teachers, priests) are much more likely to fondle, kidnap, or kill your kid than some dude doing pull-ups at the playground.