It took more time than expected, but the launch of The Modern Father is finally here!
I’m Eric Olson, the founder and only current member of the team. Expect to see more voices over time, though right now this is a solo effort with plenty of support from my wife. Ultimately, this site is meant to be a platform for all fathers and interested people. I’m building a place for it to happen, as I have not been able to find one myself in the time I’ve been a dad. Please share articles, comment on them, and invite friends and family to join in.
Please look around and let us know if there’s anything you want to see (or that looks wrong).
Launch Day Content
While it’s not a huge collection by any means, there are a handful of articles ready to go.
Background on The Modern Father
To explain who I am a bit more and talk about my ideas on what makes a father modern, here are a couple of articles to get started.
Introducing The Modern Father
The first is a short one about my journey to fatherhood and what I discovered along the way. It also provides some background on why I created the site.
What is a Modern Father
This is probably the first of many pieces that is opinion-based that is my reflections on what I saw growing up and experienced after becoming a dad. It also serves as an explanation as to why I felt a site like this was lacking and necessary.
Parenting
Since the site is about fathers, it’s only natural that parenting will be a common topic here.
Your Newborn is coming home
To start things off, I went back to my early days as a father and when we brought home our boys. The purpose here is to help new fathers understand how they can help during the first few months, when a newborn is entirely dependent on Mom for nourishment and much of their comfort. Dads have a key support role, and it’s also a critical time for defining their role.
Around the house
Parenting has changed a lot in the last few generations, which includes the division of labor at home. Since fathers still aren’t doing as much around the house as they could be, it will be an area of focus.
Cast iron cookware is your best friend
Since most fathers started out life on their own, cooking shouldn’t be completely foreign to them, even if was only turning on the oven to bake a pizza. Because cooking is such an important life skill, it’s important to model it early and often. With that in mind, I wrote an article about my enjoyment of cast iron and why it needs a place in your kitchen. Since it’s cheap, it’s a good way to get back into cooking if the cheap pans of your bachelorhood drove you to take-out and microwave meals.
What’s on tap for 2017
I have a few more items in the hopper that will be published through the rest of the year.
Back to the kitchen
Around here, meal preparation is one of the more stressful tasks in the house when you have young kids. After dealing with it for a while, I have some thoughts to share on how to make it work. Some will take the form of guides, but others will be about products and services I’ve found helpful.
Relationships
While there isn’t any content yet, I plan on publishing a couple of articles on interacting with other adults.
Intimate relationships
New parents often struggle with finding time for each other, and certain habits or behaviors that were just annoyances prior to kids become huge issues. Since a key idea of modern fatherhood is to move beyond the role of breadwinner, dads need to learn how to remain or become a loving and supportive partner. This goes beyond date night and will touch on daily interactions, division of labor, and other things.
Friendships
When kids show up, it’s hard to maintain our social relationships because of time and logistics. Since it’s important to maintain these relationships as well as forge new ones, I will describe strategies I’ve tried out, how they’ve worked, and how to deal with the stress of plans going wrong.
Gift Guides
Since it’s the holiday season, I have a few items in the works for gifts to get new fathers, soon-to-be fathers, and probably fathers who like to cook. These are all areas I know well and have items that I’ve found useful or important to have.
I also would like to do a gift guide to help fathers pick things out for their partner, but the truth is that I also need help in that regard because I’m terrible at it. This might be one of the first articles that has a byline that isn’t me. However, I don’t have anyone lined up just yet so it may not happen this year.
Other stuff
I have a lot of drafts and ideas bouncing around that need some work, so there might be other content that appears before the end of the year. Current ideas touch on finding a parent/father-friendly employer, juggling work and home responsibilities, and how to keep healthy.
Keeping in touch
As I touched on in the first section, this site is about sharing and learning. I don’t have a monopoly on ideas, and some fathers might have things they want to share. In the near-term, there are a few ways to interact.
For specific articles, there will be a comment section included where you can leave your thoughts or ideas and talk to other fathers about it.
For more general comments, questions, etc., there is the The Modern Father Facebook page and Twitter handle.
And if you just want to send a private note to The Modern Father, there is the contact form. You can also DM the Twitter account.
While I created the site and (so far) the content, this is a space for all fathers to come and enjoy. I know some people aren’t huge fans of Facebook and don’t want to have an account just to interact with us, or they avoid Twitter. Technically, there are also Instagram and Pinterest accounts, but I haven’t quite figured out how best to use them for the site.
The Modern Father Newsletter
One last item. Over on the right side you’ll see a sign-up for our newsletter. The newsletter will be sent out via email no more than once a week, and it will feature articles and upcoming events or news regarding the site. This is a great way to stay up-to-date on the site, and I highly recommend you sign up.
Your email address and name will only be used for the newsletter and won’t sold or used for other communications, even by The Modern Father.
Thank you for stopping by and I hope that we can inspire you to step up as a father and do things you haven’t been comfortable doing. As a dad who’s still changing diapers, I know how gross it can be, and that’s just the actual mess. Raising kids while still being a competent adult in other areas of life is difficult and draining; it wasn’t effortless for anyone. The Modern Father will try to provide any support it can.