Why Is Dad So Mad?

A father dares to explore his rage.

- By Daniel Engber

For dads, 2015 was a clarifying year. A glorifying year. Fatherly.com—a website described in The New York Times as a father-focused mashup of Vice and BuzzFeed—came online in April with a plan to serve men at the most “blindly inquisitive and acquisitive moment of their lives.” Celebrities were getting in on daddy culture, too. Ashton Kutcher pushed his audience of millions to agitate for diaper-changing stations in men’s rooms. Jimmy Fallon came out with a best-selling, father-forward picture book, Your Baby’s First Word Will Be DADA. And a klatch of daddy bloggers was trying to cajole the nation’s leading online retailer into making its parent-discount program more inclusive for men. By year’s end, Amazon Mom had become Amazon Family.

But 2015’s most telling fatherhood trend was the one that captured dads’ confusion. In the spring, just before the launch of Fatherly, a Clemson University student’s viral essay introduced the world to the phrase and image of the dad bod: “a nice balance between a beer gut and working out,” as she put it. Soon dad bod was the subject of hundreds of newspaper stories, including five in The Washington Post alone. But as the phrase’s popularity increased, so did debates about its meaning. Was the dad bod hard or soft? Was it imposing or forgiving? Was it just a state of mind, or was it—as Men’s Health suggested—a dangerous reality? (“Face it: The dad bod is just a precursor to dead bod,” the magazine’s editor proclaimed.)