Nobody Expects a Parade Disquisition

My self-esteem is in much better shape than it used to be. Of course, I have some issues; if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have this intermittent blog. (My issues are not intermittent. My availability to share them with my audience in the lower single digits, however, is.)

Nevertheless, whatever your level of self-esteem, it’s always nice to receive some validation other than to exit a parking garage cheaply. Non-garage validation can come from a variety of sources: a spouse thanking you for taking care of your child while she has to work late, your child saying you are her superhero, your parents telling you how proud they are of you.

Then there are the unlikely places you find affirmation. Co-workers you don’t get along with telling you how calm you are in a crisis, a neighbor complimenting your garden when you clearly don’t have a green thumb, complete strangers telling you how much they like the way you dress.

(Okay, I made that last one up, moving from the realm of affirmation into fantasy.)

But never in my wildest dreams would I expect to find affirmation from the Land of Small Words, the Town Crier of Small Minds, the Bathroom Reading of America.

Yes, I’m speaking of Parade magazine.

For those of you who don’t subscribe to the newspaper – and you should subscribe to your local newspaper – Parade is a supplement in the Sunday paper. You usually find it mixed in with the ads for blinds and the Best Buy circular. It is provided free to the papers, while at the same time providing a powerful advertising tool.

This Sunday, April 4, Parade featured such things as:
--Walter Scott’s Personality Parade, which is actually written by right-wing hatchet man Edward Klein.
--Ads for such healthy fare as Pepsi, frozen pizzas, and regular salad dressings.
--In place of its normal advertising for commemorative plates, an ad for a prayer cross that shines the Lord’s Prayer on the wall if you shine light through it
--Ask Marilyn, a column of puzzlers with Marilyn vos Savant, who is no longer billed as the world’s smartest woman (although a gig that has been as ongoing as hers in Parade – since 1986 – certainly makes her savvy, if not smart).
--A standard softball interview with celebrities, this time Tina Fey and Steve Carrell.

At least they don’t have the hi-LARIOUS escapades of Howard Huge anymore. Howard Huge is a big dog that makes Marmaduke look as funny as, well, Tina Fey or Steve Carrell.

I don’t even read Parade anymore, and wouldn’t be writing about it, if there wasn’t an article on the back page (the part of the magazine called “BackPage”) that caught my wife’s eye.

It is called “A Dad Who Handles it All,” with the tag: “Kids need new stories about the real fathers and mothers in their lives.”

It’s an article written by an actual journalist, Connie Shultz, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005. She has her mid-America bona fides for Parade, though – she’s married to Sherrod Brown, a U.S. Senator from Ohio.

She writes about how her son Andrew, who is an exemplary father to a son, is irritated by the lack of good stories about fathers. An example was his frustration at a kid’s book that seems innocuous, but actually has as a plot point a father’s failure. Shultz recognizes that she didn’t think it through, apologizes in print, and then provides a story of a good father: her son.

Shultz extols the kind of father her son is, the kind of father pretty much all dads of my generation are: “From the start, he knew the difference between the hungry cry and the lonely wail and, like every young mother I’ve ever known, shared updates of incremental changes in his baby’s gastrointestinal habits as if they were breaking news.”

(“Gastrointestinal,” by the way, is the longest word ever printed in Parade magazine.)

She says, “I embarked on a search for children’s books full of smart and capable daddies,” and although she said she found some (which is harder than she makes it appear), she very touchingly tells the story of her son, who started out as Andy and becomes a generous, gentle father. As she “fills the pages” of her story, she says, “Clever Grandma thinks (grandson) Clayton will love his new book. Because in this story, Daddy is a hero.”

I told my wife how surprised I was that Parade had this article. She accused me of being unappreciative.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t appreciative,” I responded. “I’m just surprised.”

I’m surprised that this article appeared at all, much less in Parade. Usually, this kind of article only rears its head around Father’s Day, and even then it’s more about the unusual, like the single dad who adopted 10 or so kids. Very seldom do you hear anything about the day-to-day of fathering, about the normal life most dads of my generation lead. Even Parade had to hedge their audience bets, putting “mothers” in the subtitle when mothers played little part in what Schultz was trying to say.

It’s highly likely that next week there will be more stories or features on mother’s issues. I will, however, enjoy this moment, and enjoy a little validation.

Having some mid-American recognition that fathers are more than sperm donors and bread winners can’t help but move the needle on cultural recognition of the importance and competence of fathers, even incrementally. And the more stories like this are told – and the more we tell our own stories – the more that fathering is going to be considered a greater part of parenting than it feels like it is now.