Father parenting magazines???????

There's little market. It isn't going to happen.

This is going to sound harsh and sexist, but unfortunately this is how marketing droids work and think.

1) Magazines basically work with advertising. A crunchy magazine about being a father is going to try and sell, what, exactly? Who are you going to find to advertise in this? Harley Davidson? Not exactly the kind of advertising they want, in fact they offer an escape from domesticity. As for baby wipes, diapers, baby food, etc. women buy that more than 70% of the time, so for all intents and purposes, advertisers would see that as a wasted dollar, because you could shove your ad in Mothering magazine and get far more sales bang for the buck.

2) 50-60% of fathers are in divorced families, and therefore almost never see their kids.

3) So, OK, what about the other 40-50%? Well again, in many families the female is the one who does the banking, checking etc. and far from the stereotypical "dad sits at the table and hands money out to the rest of the family" in reality most of the time it's the man attempting to justify purchases to the gatekeeper of the finances. Whereas women can and do impulse shop and will spend the family finances on non-essentials like a magazine like this. I'm sorry, but if the average man went out and spent $7 on a magazine, he'd have to explain this to the female parental unit. Whereas she'll chuck it in the bag because there's a great article on not spanking children.

It isn't sexism per se, these decisions are purely financially driven. It's a raw deal, but there's raw deals all over the place.

Yeah the market droids aren't going to allow it, that's for sure. Capitalist pigs...

OTOH, one could easily regard "Mothering" as "parenting." In a non-sexist world Mothering would change their name and folks would stop seeing "mothering" as the exclusive domain of the feminine. Now that I've pissed off feminist males and females and non-feminist males alike, I'll posit that in an imperfect world, Mothering is the closest fathering mag in existence. For now, it'll have to do. I just try to read all the female gender-specific things like BFing and birthing to learn as much as I can about what the female gender reps of parenting are doing. The rest of it, IMO, is the domain of males and females who become parents.

OTOH..... I'd love to see a Green, eco-spiritual, deep-masculine fathering periodical. But I'm not holding my breath.

I am a new member to these forums, and I decided to join because I've spent some time this morning looking in vain for a decent 'natural father' magazine online. I bought Mothering for my partner this week and I'm exploring this new universe of becoming a father for the first time.

I checked out fathermag.com but I was turned off by a few of the articles on its homepage. Some seemed a little alarmist, and one cited a study about how courts overcharge single fathers for child support. At any rate, the message the homepage left me with there was 'this world is totally crazy' and 'are you doing enough to protect your child?'

I'm reading a book by Ina May Gaskin, and she talks about careful we have to be about language when educating parents. I don't want a fathering magazine - a supposed authority - informing me of everything I have to worry about.

So, I will keep looking and I hope you all do to. Maybe there's even some local, independent, homemade zines out there. Meanwhile, Mothering is great and is very helpful.

Welcome to the boards, dad2B!
Be sure and post your intro in the 'pleased to meet you' area so others can greet and welcome you.
Which Ina may book are you reading?
see ya 'round

I'm reading "Ina May's Guide to Childbirth" and I'm mostly through the birth stories part.