shameless

A piece I wrote on being a second-generation stay-at-home dad is up on Babble. They've been publishing the occasional piece about and by dads for a while, but it's only lately that they seem to be making a concerted effort to build content specifically for and about dads (stay-home or otherwise). Beyond seeing more of my own work up there (surely you read my merciless evisceration of the lullaby industry there earlier this year) I'm glad to see Babble's increasing acknowledgement of fathers' roles. At the moment, though, the Dad Channel, which includes sections on Tech & Gadgets, Family Finance, Relationships, and Fatherhood, in that order, isn't readily navigable from the site's front page--you have to end up there by already being in an article in the section, which I guess you got to because you followed a link there from the outside, or one of the pieces ends up on the rotating billboard on the front page. Surely that topline banner could lose a few point sizes to squeeze "Dad" in there between "Celebrity" and "Products."

While the timing might make it seem like this widening focus is related to the announcement last week that Disney is buying Babble, this piece was in the works well before that news came out, and I found out about the sale just like everybody else. (The award for best headline on the news has to go to Gawker's "Disney Buys Pornographers' Parenting Website," which, besides just being awesome on its face, avoids the loathsome term "mommy blogging" that so much of the coverage lazily chose.) Given the lead times in the industry, as well as the general tendency for the money folks to keep editorial as in the dark as possible about major moves like this, my uninformed bet is that the new Babble Dad Channel was developing separately from whatever was brewing under the unblinking gaze of the Mouse. And so far no tie-ins to princess wands or upcoming Pixar releases have mysteriously shown up in what I wrote.

11/22/11: A link to the Dad Channel has appeared on Babble's top navbar, but no widget full of articles so far.