Guest Post: Backpacking Dad on Mompacking
Posted: July 28, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized 5 Comments »Sunday was another sweltering day in NYC and we decided to drive to the Upper West Side to go to the Children's Museum. While I was circling for parking, I noticed a suddenly fascinating phenomenon. In each straight couple passing, the woman was pushing the stroller and shouldering a large diaper bag while the man walked unencumbered. I mentioned it to Wes, who shrugged – he believes most NYC mothers to be control freaks so was unsurprised. I decided I should investigate this with a blog post. Then, over lunch, I was catching up on Twitter and had the following Tweet exchange (like blogs, you read from the bottom up for chronology).
So I sent him my freshly observed phenomenon.
And so, I am pleased to introduce my first ever guest post by Backpacking Dad. I am greatly dismayed that he is not attending BlogHer this year, as blogging about him has constituted roughly 6% of my content this year and I wanted to thank him by… contriving more interactions to use as blog fodder.
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Backpacking Dad appreciate your patronage of our "you pick it" blog post
service. This post is free. And, to show you just how much we appreciate this
business we are offering all future blog posts at the low-low-low rate of $7 per
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valid in Maryland or Canada, the 51st state.
Briar (if that is her real name and not her spy name) was out walking in the
Upper West Side and saw a woman pushing a stroller and lugging a huge diaper bag
around while her husband blithely strolled along, unencumbered by so much as a
pacifier on a clip. No, I misspeak: it was every couple she saw, not just one.
No, I misspeak again: it was every straight couple she saw.
explanation and defense of this practice, known in the dad world as MomPacking
(not to be confused with the unsavory site on the web of the same name which
involves, well, I won't describe it beyond saying it involves a suitcase and
many many rolled up socks).
makes perfect sense because kids are gross. Kids are gross and nobody likes
them, except for mom. Dads don't like them. If dads liked kids they would
gestate them at least half the time, but dads don't gestate kids even one
quarter of the time. So, dads don't like gross little kids and those gross
little kids get their gross little hands on all of the stuff within reach: give
that stuff to mom to put in a bag and hang around her neck like medal, because
it just makes no sense for dad to go near it.
makes perfect sense because dads are incompetent. Seriously, dads don't know
anything about anything. Ask a dad to get a bottle for the gross kid he doesn't
like and he's as likely to pull a tube of Neosporin out of the bag as he is to
actually pull out a bottle. Why put the gross little kid in jeopardy of
ingesting a paste intended to accelerate the healing of cuts when he could be
safely entrusted to the care of someone who knows what milk looks like? Give the
bag to mom.
makes perfect sense because moms just like carrying heavy things. Look, this
should be obvious. It's not just that moms are the only ones who like kids that
explains why they gestate for the entire nine months rather than making dad do
it for half the time: moms also love the back-cracking weight of an engorged
womb dragging them down to earth. They've come a long way in the last century,
but they'll be the first to admit this whole equality thing isn't for them. The
weight of a tragically over-laden diaper bag is just the reminder they need not
to get too big for their britches in other realms, like politics and business.
They actually like carrying the diaper bag because it confirms for them
that the world, despite its overtones of egalitarianism, is just as
chauvinistically ordered as it is supposed to be, and that brings them
comfort.
straightened things out. I'd hate for the situation to be misinterpreted as a
dad just being a jackass or a mom being a control-freak, because really, those
are the least-likely explanations for what is going on in the world. Men are
rarely jackasses, and I have yet to meet a woman who has had an opinion about
where things should go.
ha!
when are they going to come out with a backpack I can put on my kid so that he can carry around his own loot?
I love this post like a fat kid loves cake. Or any kid, really. Why you gotta be all fat-hating, me?
Inhaled my coffee laughing over this.
I really appreciate the logic and scientific methods you used to come to your spot-on conclusion…excellente! They invented diaper backpacks to dad’s would finally carry them – how many of those do you see anymore? Exactly.
Thankfully my husband schleps – giant floral diaper bag (check), kids in the double stroller (check), carrying two kids (check). Often I walk unencumbered. Thankfully the 3 year old thinks it is “fun” to push the stroller.
Honestly I think it’s just moms get used to doing it and then when Dad is there we forget to ask for help/doesn’t occur to husband to push/carry. Sad statement.