| What She's Reading Are You Sitting Down, Dad? This is your dad ombudsman checking in here. Count on us to patrol the "parenting" magazines. We do it on your behalf, as a public service. Or did you already rip the latest issue of Parents/Parenting/Child from your mailman's clutches? We're kidding, of course. Not that there isn't great information stuffed between the diaper ads and pastel photos of pregnant moms. It's just that, well, the editors haven't exactly produced a magazine with men in mind. Here's what May wrought. That old war-horse, Parents, has stories like "Sexy Summer Skin" and "Mommy Fat Traps" and "How to Wean without Being Mean." Cute. Just what we were worrying about as the warm weather rolls in. With some trepidation we flipped to "Sex and Marriage." Ooops. Big mistake. Our wives, turns out, do nothing but gripe about men who go fishing, men with diminished desire, men with pushy moms, men who ogle other women and men with allegiance to prior kids. Do you get the sense we never do anything right? The magazine also checks in with celebrity anchor (she's on Extra) Maureen O'Boyle on her new bundle of joy. Much excitement, big anxieties, Mom's saving visit, a blissful ending. The tot's dad is mentioned only in brackets. Seems he wasn't around for any of the pictures and had no say in the baby's naming ("After considering my Irish heritage," gushes Maureen, "I settled on Keegan"). Extra indeed! Lest you think we're biased-okay, we are-there's an excellent column in Parenting from Dr. Perri Klass M.D. and Supermom (mother of three, pediatrician at Boston Medical Center, star Ivy League grad and novelist, too!) on "Dad at the Doctors." Dads, she says, give an invaluable perspective at kids' visits to the pediatrician. "My patients' lives are much more real when I see them with both parents," writes Klass. At the other end of the magazine, literally, is one of those unfortunate treacly essays by a father who "sits in" at his toddler's art class and discovers...it's okay to let Hayley do her thing. "Then I understand: the best way to get Hayley to do what I want her to do is...not to want her to." Duh. The author is at work, we learn, on a book about how to start your own business. At least it's not a catalogue of precious names. Onto Child, the third leg of the "parenting" triumvirate. Naturally we immediately skipped to page 111 and the "Moms Dish on Dads" round-table with fifteen moms holed up in "the suite of a hip Manhattan hotel." Whoa! Trouble ahead! Are you ready? Well lubricated ("the food and wine flowed"), the ladies wasted no time in trotting out the heavy ammunition. Their husbands were too permissive, selfish, diaper-phobic, awful caretakers ("When I got back he was still at the keyboard and the twins were wearing all of my postage stamps!") and panicky ("He picked up the high chair with the baby in it and tried to shake the cheerio out.") Don't feel too bad, guys. As the ladies all agree, and we quote, "men are just not equipped with the same multi-tasking genes we moms have." Yowza! True, a few kind words were shared ("They're doing the best job they can") but a man would need a thick skin to find them. Defensive? You bet we are. But we understand. After all, May is that month when drugstores stuff the Hallmark racks with Mother's Day cards. We get our turn in June. Right. Oh, let's not forget the new kid on the block-Offspring. This one's a joint venture between the publishing giants that brought us Smart Money--Hearst and Dow Jones, and it's edited by, gulp, a man. Give the team credit. There are excellent articles on kids and computers, the successors to Dr. Spock and the terrible danger of guns. These are real-world issues and deserve everyone's thoughtful attention. Personally, we cringed at the creepy fashion spread; the overly-coiffed pictures evoked the ghost of Jon-Benet Ramsey. Maybe that's inherent in a magazine called Offspring. We like to think kids are their own people, not a reflection of their parents' egos or vanity. Just one dad's view.
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