Cool Dads Are the New Thing, And Now They Have a Magazine
by Bobby Finger
Kindling Quarterly is a magazine for dads that features photos of well-dressed men playing their facial hair A-games while wearing work boots and holding ukeleles while sitting on bicycles next to their similarly well dressed babies and small children. On the cover you’ll find headlines like “Chris Kaskie of Pitchfork,” “Traveling Istanbul with a Baby,” and “Watching Mr Mom with Foucault.” You know, dad stuff. Its second issue will be published soon. Here’s what cofounder David Michael Perez has to say about it.
Well, [Kindling] refers to the small sticks or twigs used to start a fire, namely a campfire or bonfire. For me the connection to fatherhood is the way in which all the little small things — especially the small things in the beginning — add up to something much greater.
Yes. Because small things adding up to big things is a feature exclusive to fatherhood. He goes on.
I think Kindling is, in part, a response to the way in which men are raising children under very different circumstances then their parents raised them…Due to technology our jobs never really ‘stop.’ This applies to people in creative fields but I think it speaks to broader changes in the work force and how we balance family and work. So I think a lot of families are figuring out creative ways to integrate the two. It is definitely one of the biggest challenges my wife and I face and one I hear a lot from other fathers.
I suppose there is something commendable in the act of creating a new magazine for fathers (especially in a periodical market that’s so tailored to women), but, especially after reading that paragraph, I wonder just how long it will take for Perez and the rest of the Kindling crew to realize that these modern, “different circumstances” he’s speaking of make the perpetuation of this traditionally segmented parenting advice market not just old school, but… just plain obsolete.
Maybe a new, hip, glossy quarterly that has a more general parenting umbrella is the more groundbreaking option. Or maybe people just like staring at hot dads.
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