Back in the days of the Beaver, family roles were pretty well established, at least in their idealized media form. The dad worked at some sort of white collar job, respectable but unobtrusive, and the mom raised the family. The younguns learned valuable lessons from their daily experiences, tempered by mom's loving kindness and distilled into a nifty truism upon the return of the father from work, whereupon he would offer up some wisdom and all the dramas of the day would be resolved in a loving family embrace, typically followed by a hardy dinner prepared by mom.

Things in those televisual days were clear, literally black and white. The people who lived them knew they were messier than the utopian television dramas portrayed, but despite all the mess, roles were still pretty well established: dad worked and was wise, mom stayed home and did the loving. Well, times have changed, and for a lot of reasons. Women decided they didn't like being stuck at home when they could work just as well (if not better) than the man, some families dumped men altogether, single parenting rose, and inflation increasingly demanded a two-income household, which meant neither parent was home with regularity. These events, in confluence, forced a reevaluation of parental roles that is still very much in process today, and one of the fundamental changes has been the sudden and accelerating rise of the stay-at-home dad. Or as we like to be called, when urging our own form of political correctness, full-time parents.

And so here we are. A generation of men trying to rethink what it means to be a father, to come to grips with not being the primary bread-winner, and sometimes not much of a provider at all. We cook and we clean and try to work through all the issues that come with raising children: do time-outs work? how do I control my temper? will my daughter fall prey to the Disney princess line? is it man-enough to be dad? and so on and so on.

My academic background is in rhetoric and communication, with a dose of philosophy. As my toddler daughter gets set to enter pre-school next year, that means I'm grappling with a lot of issues regarding different educational environments and strategies, as well as the viability of pre-school at all. Those issues will be discussed here. I also love my toys, and part of being a dd is reliving one's joy of toys with the next generation, so expect a lot of discussion about what goods actually have the goods. 

One other main topic - expect some recipes and cooking suggestions. I'm no "Marvin" Stewart, not even much of a "Richard" Ray, but I do like cooking. I'm a vegetarian, as is my partner (though we do eat some fish (the vegetable of the sea?), maybe once a month or so). My kids will be raised vegetarian, too, not because we object so much to them trying out some meat, but because we never have it around to make it for them, and contrary to popular conception, they don't need it. So look here for recipes and laments from the old kitchen, the home inside the home that never seems to stay clean.

There is a growing number of full-time fathers out there, and a good number of them are working out the details of what they do online, thanks to a growing dad-blog community. Hopefully, PhDad will fit nicely into that conversation. So to everyone out there, thanks for stopping by, and I look forward to hearing from you.