I became a dad for the first time at the very beginning of the pandemic. It was obviously a very lonely time with the lockdowns and all, and I discovered lots of parenting pages online. It didn't take long at all to learn that the vast majority of parenting pages are only welcoming of moms and love to shit all over dads any chance they get. Here are a few of my most frustrating examples.

I saw a sort of viral video a couple years ago of a toddler that got ahold of dad's beer or something while he was watching his phone at home. The comment section was full of women making comments like, "Immediate grounds for divorce!" "I wouldn't let him near my kid without me ever again!" "He should never be able to be alone with his kid ever again!" And there were tons of comments bashing him for looking at his phone when he should have been watching his kid. I'm telling you, when I take my kids to the playground, I see moms ALL THE TIME off on the side staring at their phones not paying the least bit of attention to their kids. So I called some of them out and said that. What did they say? "Well moms deserve a break and letting their kids play!" "It's probably the only time mom had a chance to herself all day and she's taking a well-deserved break!" So remember, dad is being neglectful and shouldn't be allowed to spend time with his kid if he's watching his phone at home, but it's totally ok for moms to have their faces buried in their phones at a public playground where anything can happen.

I came across a post a little while back of women complaining about dads playing with their kids on the playground. "Why can't the dads just leave their kids alone and let them play?" "I don't want some strange man out on the playground while my kid's trying to play!" "If I saw a man doing that at the playground, I'd take my kid and get out of there real fast!" So remember, dads need to spend time playing with their kids (absolutely!), but not too much time or apparently moms get mad at that too. But also, if we're looking at our phones in front of our kids, we're being neglectful, but it's ok if they do it.

I see so many posts like, "Moms, remember you're doing a great job!" "Keep going, moms! You got this!" But the second I see a post inspiring and lifting up dads, they flood the comment sections with, "Oh, so we're praising men for doing the bare minimum?" "What did dad actually do to deserve this?" "Why are we praising men when the bar is so low!" I agree the bar is too low for men, but god damn, they can't handle when we get the slightest bit of encouragement or positive remarks for being a dad, and get so mad about it when people acknowledge that we work hard too.

Finally, I would see SO MANY videos with captions like, "Dads will NEVER understand what it's like to..." and it's things that I feel all the time. Struggling with feeling like I'm not good enough, that I could be doing more for my kids, always feeling exhausted, not having any time to myself. Sure, there are some things that are women-specific, but there's this mindset out there that dads don't feel anything like guilt, social isolation, loss of self-interests, etc. I actually posted a heartfelt comment once about how I felt all these things as a stay at home dad. Their response? "Maybe you should try not being a piece of shit dad then." "Aww, the poor man is triggered, it must be so hard being a man!" "I feel so sorry for your kids." Not to mention all the laugh reacts I got. When moms don't feel like they're good enough, they expect everyone to bend over backwards to lift them up, but when dads don't feel like we're good enough they just laugh at us and make us feel like we're horrible parents. Their hatred towards men and dads is truly pathetic, and I hate how it's become so acceptable online to belittle dads and no matter what we do, we can't win.