00:04:39.000The responsibility stuff is good and it's very real.
00:04:42.420But I think there's also a flip side of it, which is like a complete disengagement from important functions.
00:04:47.880Oh, like every other function except for those functions is disregarded.
00:04:53.680I have heard multiple people in different contexts say to me that not knowing the name of your children's dentist is like a very dad thing.
00:05:05.480That has a set of meanings in this culture that is counterweighted by the stuff you're talking about, like remembering to check your oil, that sort of thing.
00:05:15.920Or not knowing or refusing to remember the names of your kids' friends.
00:05:23.680do you know what i mean it's like that one over there yeah comes over to our house
00:05:31.360all the time but you don't remember their names
00:05:34.800um like old glasses uh having one mug that they always drink from dad jokes right are jokes that
00:05:48.140they're corny it's kind of a i mean this is i've written this elsewhere but i think it's
00:05:54.380being embarrassing yeah but being unembarrassed about that yeah yeah yeah for sure like as an
00:06:00.160attitude we did a live event of dad magazine back in the day and my dad presentation was about
00:06:07.240my own dad's obsession with glacier national park and like how he reposts facebook content
00:06:14.580of like other people in glacier national park he like when it comes up in his memories he'll like
00:06:21.620repost it and be like gotta love it like like just saying gotta love it like stuff like that
00:06:29.160um dad music dad rock yeah and i unsettling text etiquette all caps texts
00:06:36.800and you know i think we'll get into this in our discussion but like some of this
00:06:43.700we're talking specifically about like boomer dads yeah right and but some of those behaviors have
00:06:49.660filtered down into the next generations of dads but i think a lot of what we specifically as
00:06:55.120millennials are referring to is like our dad's generation you know like i don't think of like
00:07:00.880the things that my granddad did as like part of dad culture like smoking six pack of cigarettes
00:07:06.720and like just gin yeah that's a different culture that's granddad culture
00:07:12.700um retiring at age 55 with a full pension it's like granddad
00:07:20.520financial stability financial stability is greatest generation culture
00:07:29.140um and boomer culture has some components of that right yes like dad culture is working a lot like
00:07:36.460these dads work a lot and may have had periods of workaholism, but are now at a point where there
00:07:42.240isn't a component of leisure, if not total retirement. Yes. To that point, too, we're also
00:07:47.760talking, I think, broadly about middle class dad culture. Although, again, there are components
00:07:52.720that spread across. How do you think about that? About the middle classness of it all? Yeah, yeah,
00:07:57.960yeah. Well, I think, and this sort of ties into the sort of larger narrative here, which is,
00:08:04.800To me, there are the sort of components that make the dad as an idea or as an archetype possible, like social, cultural, historical components, right?
00:08:16.440So this goes back to the 19th century, the collapse of what you call the corporate household economy, right?
00:08:23.600So like farmers who their job was in their home and their sons were the inheritors of their skills and their wives and daughters worked within that economy as well.
00:08:37.180Or artisans, right, you know, teaching, trading a craft, but having that be all sort of centered around the domestic space.
00:08:43.980And then there's this shift, right, with industrialization where breadwinning comes onto the scene as a concept, right,
00:08:50.880Where you leave the home to make the money to support the domestic space, and that gets
00:09:00.600But that emerges at the same time that there's this sort of social and cultural and even
00:09:05.240religious change in the idea that children are individuals, they need to be nurtured,
00:09:10.360they need to be educated in the home, not disciplined, not ordered around.
00:09:15.040And so there's both this rise in children need to be cared for and the sort of economic and social split where men are sort of insisted upon leaving the home to go to work and to do these commutes and things like that.
00:09:28.620So they're alienated from their labor, famously, but then also the domestic space.
00:25:34.200Yes. And just like, you know, he was friends with Mickey and Donald, they got into misadventures. And he was he was this like vaudeville, you know, caricature. And in the in 1951, Disney and a couple of other, you know, people within the company decided that they needed to create a like every man suburban character.
00:29:51.020First up, this question comes from Hannah.
00:29:53.520I'm a non-gestational lesbian mom, so my wife carried both of our kids.
00:29:58.840I've always found that while I am totally comfortable with being called mommy, my wife is mama,
00:30:05.260I don't really know that I fit the category, and I sometimes find that my parenting experience is
00:30:11.880more deeply aligned with pieces of dad vibes. Cutting the umbilical cord, roughhousing with
00:30:18.380the kids, allowing them to eat a multi-course meal at the Costco food court. But of course,
00:30:24.560so much dad rhetoric is so weird and laden with bizarro masculinity that I don't find real
00:30:31.640identity or community there. So I suppose my question is, what is the cultural function
00:30:39.040of creating such a deep divide between the roles of mom and dad? And what are we missing out on
00:30:46.680by buying into it so broadly? All right. Where do you want to take this one, Phil?
00:30:51.980Well, this is a great question. It's a terrific question. And I think that it has a couple of
00:30:57.120answers. So one of them is that dad culture, as I sort of perceive it, is just kind of an available
00:31:02.560set of gender expressions. Right. And anybody can use them. You can wear a dad hat, you can grill,
00:31:08.340you know, you can embody that particular archetype as a part of the way you express your gender,
00:31:13.520regardless of what that is. And so I think that that's one answer. I think another answer,
00:31:19.680and this is mostly about, this is geared towards the question of what's the cultural function of
00:31:25.640the deep divide and i think so at this point like right now i don't know that there's a super
00:31:31.280there's a super important cultural function for it like it's just it is now it like exists and
00:31:36.480it's available right as a as a mode of being i think something that that is really interesting
00:31:41.380to me about it the more that i've read about the history of fatherhood in in the u.s and the history
00:31:45.680of this sort of framework specifically is that the you know what's the structural what's the
00:31:53.240cultural function of creating such a deep divide between the roles of mom and dad. I think if you
00:31:57.340look back to the like 60s and 70s, the cultural function was to soften the divide between those
00:32:04.460roles, right? It wasn't about saying the dads are dads and the moms are moms. It was a reaction to
00:32:10.440like 100 years of gender division of labor in which the mothers stayed at home and cared for
00:32:17.660the children and the fathers were the male breadwinners who left for work and didn't have
00:32:22.040really any intimate relationship with their families when they came home. Like if you look
00:32:26.740into the 60s and 70s, and especially even there's a great book by Kristen Swinth called Feminism's
00:32:33.280Forgotten Fight that has a great section about this, that there was a lot of sort of feminist
00:32:38.760activism in the 70s was about popularizing co-parenting as a concept, right? The idea that0.98
00:32:44.640men should carry a bigger share of domestic labor, of caregiving, of nurturing, right? So I think in0.89
00:32:51.660lots of ways the like archetype of the dad that this question asker is is asking about is an
00:32:58.280archetype that comes out of a desire and a push to sort of destabilize that that like hard boundary
00:33:05.000between the role of the mom and the role of the dad in the like later 20th century yeah like if
00:33:11.240you think about some of the most lampoonable components of dad culture like the overabundance
00:33:16.740of care right about like your well-being just want to make sure you have this thing like
00:33:21.600all of that is like also potential fodder as like a feminized component of masculinity right
00:33:28.040yeah absolutely yeah absolutely and i think at certain points in time there are backlashes to
00:33:32.940this right there are like traditional you know masculinist backlashes like phyllis schlafly
00:33:38.500it pushing like the male breadwinner back into the fore right and all that stuff so i think it's easy
00:33:44.700to sort of allow that stuff, those sort of like conservative backlashes to this, to characterize
00:33:50.680it for us, for us to imagine that like, you know, when we think about somebody saying that the dad
00:33:56.680is a feminized role, to think about that as like a criticism of it, right? Rather than like
00:34:02.500rebalancing of labor within the household. Totally. Okay. Next question builds on this
00:34:07.640a little bit too. So this comes from Caitlin. Does or how does queerness queer the idea of
00:34:13.900dadhood. I am the dad friend in multiple friend groups, and my role is understood to be one of
00:34:19.080providing physical support, expertise, and reliable emotional accessibility, which seems to fly in the
00:34:24.780face of a heteronormative dad role. Is this because we're almost all queer? Is it because we're almost
00:34:30.160all child-free? Is it because we're almost all young Gen X, millennial, old Gen Z? I love being
00:34:36.240this kind of dad, but I'm wondering how we ended up here, and if this version of dadhood is unique
00:34:40.760to us and me. This is so interesting because I think a lot of times in like a group of women,1.00
00:34:46.320there is someone who's thought of as like the mom, right? Like the cruise director,
00:34:51.400right? Like who's taking on that role. But then there's also definitely people in my friend group
00:34:56.180who I think of more as like the dad. So what does this make you think of? Well, it was making me
00:35:02.100think of in the first week of the dad culture class, one of my students brought up dad friend
00:35:07.780as a phrase, but defined it kind of the opposite of this as specifically the unreliable friend,
00:35:14.620right? The friend who is like up for whatever, but needs to get a reminder from the mom friend
00:35:20.620or is going to forget that it's time to do the thing or is going to like, you know, think on
00:35:26.420accident about something. And so, I mean, we talked about this already, but like there's a
00:35:31.260wide spectrum of like how people use this term and what they use it to mean. And this makes
00:35:36.580complete sense to me right this like ideal of competence expertise paired with emotionality
00:35:44.360and availability and and all that stuff i think you know and this goes back to the to the last
00:35:49.580question to some extent or another i think there's like i think these usages like this usage of dad
00:35:55.100friend it's like a reparative version of that right like this person is like creating a positive
00:36:00.200role within their friend group and using again the like available gender expressions of this
00:36:06.560culture to like frame and articulate that. And I think that's really great. There is a version of
00:36:12.660the dad that is hard line and inaccessible and that sort of thing. But like, even if you think
00:36:19.720about like popular conservative dads, like Tim Allen on Home Improvement from when we were
00:36:24.600growing up, he's like grunting and stuff. But like, if one of his sons is having a hard time,
00:36:29.920he'll like, have a chat with them and like, really like get down on his level and talk to him. And
00:36:34.820And I think part of the archetype of this, at least for us generationally, is this idea of a casual or a softer masculinity, right?
00:36:46.040That it is masculinity, but it's not like insecure. It's not worried about performing strength because it's like confident that it's actions, whether that's, you know, knowing directions to a place or remembering to check the oil or being like emotionally available to your kids, that those are also like masculine virtues within this framework, right?
00:37:10.800So I think that's, that makes sense to me, even as, you know, my, my, I had heard a different dad friend version of this, it also makes sense. But I think like, this is just, it's people using that framework to create like a positive identity position for themselves.
00:38:32.960just the same as it fit Tim Walz's aesthetic.
00:38:35.580And that aesthetic is like, that's a dad aesthetic, right?
00:38:38.420That they're both drawing on from very different positions, right?
00:38:42.120But the idea that they could stand next to each other
00:38:44.300wearing that same hat and it like made sense
00:38:46.820within their individual outfits and vibes
00:38:49.140was, I think, a really good illustration of what this is and how flexible it can be.
00:38:53.160I love that answer. So we also got this other listener question we're not going to play,
00:38:57.760but I wanted to cover a little bit of it. And it's asking, like, what cishet dads can learn
00:39:03.160from queer dads of any kind? So that includes, like, whoever is occupying that position of dad,
00:39:09.020right? And what's lost by not looking to queer dads as role models?
00:39:14.880Yeah, I think, I mean, I think this goes back to the sort of, again, like flexibility in, you know, this is a set of gender expressions. And even as much as the last, you know, the last two questions we've talked to are about like queer folks who are using and drawing upon this set of gender expressions, it can go the other way too.
00:39:31.860yeah like there's a caricature and and i think a justifiable caricature of people who are like well
00:39:37.160i'm a male feminist or or like you know like wear a girl dad t-shirt or something like that where
00:39:42.700there's like a defensiveness to that yeah to saying like well you know i'm i have you know
00:39:47.980daughters and that's fine you know as a father of daughters as a father of daughters right yeah
00:39:53.000and uh and i think that part of what uh what sort of like says that dad culture can learn from
00:39:58.820like queer culture, queer dad culture, if we're describing it that way, is like to be less panicked
00:40:05.160about that sort of thing, for goodness sakes. Like, just calm down. Like, I.
00:40:12.540It's just like, just like live, live your dad life, like, and like, whatever that looks like
00:40:17.980for you, right? Like, you don't have to, like, be declarative in that capacity. Yeah. Because
00:40:22.160usually the people, as we've learned, I think, most recently and vividly in the example of
00:40:26.760justin baldani usually the people who are saying it the loudest are the people who like aren't
00:40:31.500living at the loudest right yeah um okay so for our next section this is going to be kind of like
00:40:38.600the part of our aaa section our ask an anything section and we're going to pivot to questions
00:40:43.820about why do dads do that thing um and this is more humorous and less theoretical although of
00:40:50.060course like everything we do there will be theory underpinning it first question here comes from e
00:40:55.620Nico Stratus just posted an Insta story of people, I assume dudes, possibly even dads,
00:41:02.120reacting to the release of her book about dad rock with the assertion that Wilco is
00:41:06.620not dad rock, which is laughable to me. A huge Wilco fan who thinks of them as the
00:41:13.980quintessential dad rock band for your corporate job cool dads, musically virtuosic to blast on
00:41:21.980your fancy stereo songs about recovery from drug addiction and finding god and just a little bit of
00:41:27.880sex and violence killer guitar solos to go with viciously poetic lyrics that are nonetheless easy0.95
00:41:34.280to sing along to and the best damn live show you've ever seen youtube with twang but not0.93
00:41:40.860firing their own bs but this is generational my dad is mid-60s what does dad music look like for0.96
00:41:47.720dads in their thirties. I'm a mid thirties trans mask who identifies with dad as gender for what
00:41:54.760it's worth. Okay. So can I just praise this question for, um, being like giving such a good
00:42:03.060pitch for Wilco? I also, I want to praise its bravery and I want to praise its truth. It's
00:42:08.320absolute correctness. But it is like, why do you think there is reticence to think of Wilco as
00:42:14.760dad rock uh people didn't do the homework it's a historical bullshit so i don't understand why
00:42:23.420people wouldn't think wilco's dad rock that the only reason we have the phrase dad rock is because0.81
00:42:27.660of wilco why do you think why is that i pulled this this is so rob mitchum at pitchfork wrote
00:42:32.760a review of the wilco album sky blue sky and in it i pulled this quote because i knew we were
00:42:38.500we were going to talk about this he writes an album of unapologetic straightforwardness sky
00:42:43.440blue sky nakedly exposes the dad rock gene wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to
00:42:50.080disguise never has a band sounded more passive wow so that's that's from i think 2007 and if
00:42:59.540we're talking about this like in terms of etymology like that's where it comes from that's why people
00:43:03.780use the phrase dad rock is that review and the sort of explosion around it that happened rob
00:43:09.320Mitchum actually wrote a like 10 year anniversary piece about it and about like creating this
00:43:13.660firestorm when he said this in the thing I so I think there's two things two things one hand is
00:43:19.560this the like lineage of this review putting this phrase into the mainstream discourse and to that
00:43:26.480extent what it describes is a kind of band a band that used to be experimental avant-garde hard-edged
00:43:34.780and has settled into like more – he uses the word passive, unapologetic, straightforward sort of mode, right?
00:43:43.740They're not as edgy as they used to be.
00:43:45.520They're not as like cool as they used to be.
00:43:48.520They're figuring out a way to like be 40 years old and rock musicians is basically the archetype there.
00:43:55.340But since then – and I think there are lots of bands that you could describe bands of all sorts that do this, right?
00:44:01.740Where they become like a sort of – I think The National is a band that probably fits in this mold.
00:48:29.080I can't, I can't, I don't like wearing shorts.
00:48:31.840It has to get so hot for me to be comfortable to like consent to wear shorts.
00:48:36.840You used to live, did you wear shorts in Louisiana?
00:48:39.720um well i was a younger man then and i wasn't a dad yet but uh yeah i guess i did wear shorts
00:48:46.520in louisiana but yeah but like if i have to like when it gets to 105 degrees here i'll put on some
00:48:51.760shorts but like i will keep the pants the long pants until a very very close to like uh heat
00:48:59.460stroke level of problem i'll even like cuff up a long a pair of long pants like so that so that
00:49:06.980there's like i've got like six inches of ankle um but so shorts dad i mean i don't have a lot to
00:49:12.040say about it i guess but it is you know observably a phenomenon but it does also i think it goes
00:49:17.400across age ranges i see you know we i have uh kids in third grade and in kindergarten and the boys
00:49:23.180are underdressed as like a rule yes they're not wearing the coat they should be wearing they're
00:49:27.760not wearing the pants they should be wearing and i talk to people other parents it's like an issue
00:49:31.920in their home that they they won't like an argument an argument yes for sure i think um part of it is
00:49:39.140feel right on the body like pants especially the pants that we sometimes ask people to wear
00:49:46.500in more formal situations are not comfortable and i think girls and women are often socialized
00:49:52.800to deal with discomfort you're like you know what you should have is a piece of wire running around
00:49:58.880your rib cage at all times like a very stiff piece of wire and then also underwear that cuts
00:50:04.500into you like all the time and maybe goes up your butt um whereas i think there's a lot of
00:50:10.980components of menswear that are not asking you to feel that way and also are like you should be
00:50:17.260the perfect temperature for you at all times um and so i think that that is part of it and also
00:50:23.860utility that's like oh if i get a little hot then i'm okay like there's there's room to breathe
00:50:30.960inside of the pant leg it's utility and it's also i don't care yeah you know and because i think
00:50:37.420that's a big part of the aesthetic as well is like i'm gonna do the thing i want to do and it
00:50:42.440i don't care what it looks like yeah and and i think that's part of the like when some of my
00:50:47.800students were talking about dad jeans and that's kind of how they were describing it where it's
00:50:50.800like these pants don't look good on you, but they are very comfortable. And so I'm going to
00:50:56.220prioritize that. And that like, it's not that the look of dad jeans became popular. It's that the
00:51:03.500attitude of them became popular. Like I also want to wear something that's comfortable, even though
00:51:07.780it looks, you know, goofy or poorly fitted or something like that. And the capacity to ignore
00:51:13.040social dismissal or like, like that, that is a privilege of a certain type of dad.
00:51:18.700yeah to not worry what other people think about them i mean it's the other part of this conversation
00:51:23.800we haven't that i we haven't really brought up too much is that it is absolutely like this
00:51:27.420this cultural this is the dad as a cultural idea is a is a privileged position to be in
00:51:32.480and i think um you know i think the things that really bug me are when you read articles or like
00:51:38.520op-ed type things from people who are like frustrated that like dad rock is being described
00:51:45.040as like a joke or that like dad jokes or they're being described as corny or like they're not being
00:51:49.900taken seriously and it's like come on man it's like you're punching up you're punching so far
00:51:54.360up people are not prejudiced against you because they're making fun of your shorts just get a grip
00:52:00.740for goodness sakes uh charlie likes to talk about what he thinks of as the quintessential item of
00:52:05.440like american dad culture which is the rei hiking pants that zip off below the knee
00:52:12.540like they are so dowdy um but like so utilitarian and we were hiking like a couple months ago
00:52:26.000outside of the u.s and like all the europeans had these like very svelte like still very like
00:52:31.220high-tech hiking pants but they didn't make you look like you were like i don't know like your
00:52:37.660pants were falling down um and that to me like that particular like i don't care about fashion
00:52:43.840i just want utility like that understanding um but it's also like the other thing about them is
00:52:50.200it's actually really awkward to unzip those like half zip things and then you have like
00:52:54.200then you have pant bottoms floating around so it's also like peak dad tech where like there's
00:53:00.360like more complicated than you need it to be i think about the um the office episode where
00:53:07.900michael goes into the wilderness and he cuts off the bottom of his pants and then he takes
00:53:13.360he takes them and wears them it's like a hat yes yeah okay last question my favorite question
00:53:21.100comes from sicily why do all dads do the thing where they stand behind the couch or in the
00:53:26.960doorway while the rest of the family is watching something on tv and pretend like they're not
00:53:30.800watching but make commentary the whole time do they think it says something about them if they
00:53:35.940actually choose to sit down and watch something that's not sports this is actually such a good
00:53:42.240full circle question it really is where did your mind first go i this is just i would not have
00:53:49.120thought of this and it is 100 a like existing thing i don't i don't even think it's like
00:53:55.420something i think of my dad is doing or or or that i do but it is something like i i see it
00:54:01.060immediately and it i don't i don't know there's it's just like we talked about dad being like a
00:54:08.420floating signifier i think this is like the embodiment of that well i think that it has
00:54:13.480something to do with like the dad wants to be part of the family right like the reintegrate like
00:54:20.080everything we were talking about at the beginning like this desire to like reintegrate into the
00:54:24.300domestic sphere but like this also desire that like if I'm watching tv if I'm being idle I need
00:54:32.040to also be in control of the thing that I'm watching so the idea that you would find interest
00:54:38.000in something someone else was watching right is in some way like contra to like dadness in the home
00:54:46.480but at the same time if someone else is doing something in your sphere you also feel like you
00:54:53.340need to comment on it and thus direct the way that people are like interacting with that thing
00:55:00.340right and sometimes it's like needling you about like your thing right like it's like
00:55:05.940I don't know I'm trying to think of something that I would watch that my dad would like kind
00:55:09.580of casually make fun of like it's like oh like how many hot guys are there on this show like
00:55:14.940which one is the hottest of those guys like you know just like kind of like yeah joshing you
00:55:20.380because sometimes and this was always like a joke in my family like my dad when i would get upset
00:55:25.800like he would try to like joke with me and i'm like i'm serious right like so like the only way
00:55:30.980that you could like interact with something serious is by making a joke and like lightening
00:55:35.080the mood and entering the conversation that way what do you think of that well i think it's that
00:55:40.100makes perfect sense to me i think that's really right you know all of these conversations are
00:55:43.720about like intimacy structure of involvement um but also like maintenance of identity and so i
00:55:50.640think about like the sitcoms we were talking about like the 20th century sitcoms we were talking about
00:55:54.260where you know we can think about those especially as you go into like 60s and 70s
00:55:59.180it shows that are kind of about teaching men how to not be the like structuring central patriarch
00:56:07.020of their family right here's how you share space with your children here's how you share space with
00:56:12.260your wife with other family members that sort of thing but in order to like produce that argument
00:56:17.760in order to show people how to do that they had to become the main character right so so it's like
00:56:23.580yeah you're the main character and here's how you aren't the main character and so that to me the
00:56:28.540standing and watching tv feels very well i'm outside of this but this is also now about me
00:56:33.720i'm not watching with you guys i am standing and calling attention to myself though
00:56:40.560That is peak dead culture, I just got to say.
00:56:43.780I think that's a great place to end the show.
00:56:46.460Phil, where can people find you if they want to find more about you, about your work, all that stuff?
00:56:52.420Well, you can find me on Blue Sky at PJMACIAK, and you can catch me at The New Republic, where I write twice a month.
00:57:00.860And if you have ideas for future Phil episodes, because he, you know, occupies such a specific space in the culture-studying universe.
00:57:09.380A space that I have described as the David B. and Cooley of culture study, and nobody else is saying that, but I am trying to make that happen.
00:57:18.340Please comment your suggestions down below in the show notes.
00:57:23.520Thank you so much for joining me, Phil.
00:57:33.120Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast.
00:57:35.040Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, because we have so many great episodes in the works, and I promise that you do not want to miss any of them.
00:57:43.240We're working on episodes about historical romance, how cookbooks get made, all things fan fiction, cleaning culture, and the idea of spiritual care, however you want to think about that, for people who are not religious.
00:57:57.080If you want to suggest a topic, ask a question about the culture that surrounds you, or submit a question for our subscriber-only advice time segment, go to our Google form at tinyurl.com slash culturestudypod, or check the show notes for our link.
00:58:12.500Today's episode is free for everyone, so if you like what you hear and if you want to support the show, head to culturestudypod.substack.com.
00:58:20.600It's $5 a month or $50 a year, and you'll get ad-free episodes, the Ask Anne Anything
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