It's Not a Lecture: #DadsLove

Last month I attended Dad2.0 and saw an emerging community of online parents with something to prove. Fathers aren't the dopes you see portrayed in sit-coms or commercials. We aren't a group of guys who are just "watching the kids" while mom is away. We aren't apathetic schlubs who care more about our favorite sports teams than our families.

At least we hope we aren't. We try to shatter those stereotypes every day.

That's close to the message I heard from men like Matt Schneider, Doug French, Jason Sperber, and John Cave Osborne. However, rather than tell you what they aren't or what they hate, these men are much more interested in talking about who they are and what they love.

So I'm kicking the tires on this growing community of online dads and I'm going to see how many of them want to engage in a good ol' fashioned blog meme I'm calling #DadsLove. I'm going to try to get at least one father in each of the 50 US states (plus DC and Puerto Rico, what the heck) to write a simple blog post that describes three things they love about being a father.

Yes, I did something like this with moms a while back. But that was a large, global community of moms that was reasonably well-established. While there are some leading voices among online dads, I think this community is still trying to figure out what it is. I know business and civic leaders are still, oddly enough, really in the dark about this community.

I may be a dad, but I'm not really a "Dad blogger" - this isn't a blog where I share the details of my family life. But I can say this. I love:

1) Learning all the little things I'd never think I'd have to know;
2) FINALLY understanding some of the things my own parents would say; and
3) Watching a personality develop before my eyes.

I expect the "real" Dad bloggers will have something much more personal to share. So I'll keep track of the posts from people who participate and just add the hashtag. My hope is to collect a large #DadsLove list from across the country. I'll keep it running until I get there. Let's see just how creative this community can be.