In the real world, however; we will have a lot of different combinations, but Dadsworld can’t be everything to everyone. We have decided to promote Dads, involved Dads who are a part of a 2 parent family. That’s our niche. There are plenty of websites promoting Moms, single parents, etc. But there are NOT a lot of sites promoting Dads. Dads who are a part of a family are continually belittled and maligned by the mainstream press. They are not portrayed as loving, knowledgeable (in parenting) and nurturing. They are portrayed as detached, self-absorbed and immature. In my experience, and the experience of my circle of friends and contacts, that’s simply inaccurate. It’s also damaging to children.

Dadsworld is here to help promote Dads, and change that ridiculous image that’s being promoted on nearly every sit-com and advertisement and movie on television.

I appreciate your well thought-out post and your time. Thanks for supporting Dadsworld and involved Dads.

We must also stand up for teaching our children values that are loving and kind; compassionate and firm; self-reliant and collaborative; nurturing and courageous. And those values don’t rest only within what you called in today’s post the ’standard’ of a two parent family of a mother and a father. Only in the last few decades has ‘family’ meant this so-called ‘nuclear family’ of our silly sitcoms on TV. What family really is is a group of people dedicated and committed to the well-being of each other, lived over time, with love.

I just read your post about Father’s Day after having lunch with my friend, who’s married to his male partner, and they are raising a wonderful young boy in their family. I have a single mom friend who has adopted two young people, and recently placed her living-together-friend, not partner, and the kids’ ‘Aunty’, into a nursing home due to her severe arthritis, so my friend is raising these two young people alone now and doing a good job.

And here’s the thing–the size and shape of family 200 years ago consisted of nearly 40 people living together in one place! There were uncles and aunts, grammas and grampas, cousins, friends, gay and straight, married and courting, all together. Recent research in the actual structure of our brains and how they develop has shown that we are physically wired for MORE relations, not just a connection with dear old mom and dad.

Only our very short-sighted viewpoint that ‘our way is the only way’ would allow us to think that one definition of family is the ‘right’ definition. Clearly, reaching far back in history, and all the way forward to my lunch with my friend today that ‘right’ definition isn’t big enough to include what family really means. Families are the building blocks of communities, and those communities throughout history and including today consist of a myriad of shapes, sizes, colors and flavors.

This doesn’t diminish or threaten any shape of family. What it calls on us to do is to see beyond our heterosexual stereotype of what is ‘right’, and instead be a full human being, engaged with others, learning who they are as people, not preaching how we can squeeze them into our narrow notion of what constitutes a moral person or a ‘real’ family. That is not the unity that I would want my children to live in, and certainly not a kind of unity I would want to teach my four children.

As dads, with so much riding on our contribution to our children’s lives and the future of our world, we must teach our children the value of honoring other’s paths in life, including their chosen path in whatever shape ‘family’ means for them.

I lost my father in March of 1980 and still miss him to this day, but his influence is very strong on me. I hope that I can do the same for my wonderful daughter as my dad did for me!!!