Photograph by Thomas Butler for the Guardian
We’ve rounded up three articles, a podcast, a YouTube channel and a book that tackle the realities of being a dad in the modern age.
1. What Dad Really Wants For Father’s Day
Spent hours agonising over what to get your father figure for Father’s Day this year? Don’t lose sleep over it – the reality is that it’s not a hard ask, according to popular psychology journal Psychology Today.
2. How Fatherhood Changes Men’s Bodies
Everyone knows that childbearing changes women’s bodies and brains, but men’s bodies and brains are changed by fatherhood too. The New York Times examines the ways.
Roping in celebrities, comedians and a cast of experts, Joshua David Stein and Krishna Andalou explore everything from the financial challenges of fatherhood and parenting with mental illness to how to make your kid’s taste in music suck less. Funny and frank.
Viral sensation Jordan Watson built his online persona off the back of videos demonstrating mostly what not to do with children. Now the author of two tongue-in-cheek parenting books, his schtick is firmly established but somehow his kids deadpanning him as he runs through a mix of observational and physical comedy never gets old.
5. Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon
Dad-lit is a pretty limited category, as evidenced by the fact that Bill Cosby’s Fatherhood still comes up as a top hit on Amazon, but Manhood for Amateurs by novelist Michael Chabon (Wonder Boys) is one of the most nuanced and lyrical explorations, pulling together essays that originally ran in the New York Times, GQ and other magazines.
6. Yotam Ottolenghi’s Journey to Gay Fatherhood
We have an ongoing soft spot for British celebrity chef Yotam Ottolenghi, and found that the intimate and sometimes uncomfortable story of how he and his partner Karl came to be fathers to their son Max gave us a new perspective on the challenges of starting a family when there’s no straightforward physical path to parenthood.
