If you ask me, parenting magazines are primarily the province of moms. I've never read one that wasn't mom-centric and that treated dads in any way equally. When I first had a baby I used to get worked up about this kind of stuff, but quite frankly now that my baby is a toddler I don't have time for that kind of indulgence. And I get it - men don't buy parenting magazines, so advertisers target women reading parenting magazines, and you aren't going to get one that caters to men too. We've got blogs if we want to get a male parenting perspective (and they've been doing the job pretty well for me for the past year and a half).
So today I saw this news blurb about a poll of new parents that Babytalk magazine recently ran. (Babytalk, for those of us that weren't aware, has apparently recently debuted "Unique New Positioning" and a new tagline, "Straight talk for new moms." "Straight talk" as opposed to the confusing "Babytalk" they were previously getting.) Anyway, the news article said that the poll revealed a "mom-dad-baby love triangle." Here are the conclusions:
- More than two-thirds of the men said their wives don't pay as much attention to them as they did before the baby.
- The majority of women feel more connected to their babies than to their husbands.
- Half of the men feel sexually neglected by their wives; 19 percent feel emotionally neglected.
I am so sick of reading these "polls" that purport to reveal some hidden truth, but really just try to stir up some contrived publicity for a magazine (usually through a catchy headline like "mom-dad-baby love triangle"). Why is this particular poll idiotic?
- Of course the mother of your child won't pay as much attention to you as she did before she had the baby. YOU JUST HAD A FREAKING BABY. There's a lot to do. You probably aren't paying as much attention to your wife either.
- I'm a dude, but even I understand that it's probably impossible to feel more connected to anyone other than the human being that recently came out of your vagina. I'm not bothered by this at all. It doesn't mean your wife doesn't love you or still feel connected to you too.
- Sexually neglected? I'm not sure how the poll was worded, but again, YOU JUST HAD A FREAKING BABY. If you thought you'd have just as much sex as you did before you had a newborn, then you should have rethought the unprotected sex in the first place. There is no way any "new parent" is as sexually active as they were before the baby arrived - which is completely normal. And some dudes might interpret that as "neglect" because, well, dudes are always horny.
New moms, dads polled [Knight Ridder via News-Leader.com]