Are we overdoing it with the ‘dad’ prefix?
Dadbods, dad core, dad cinema . . . using ‘dad’ to preface pursuits and hobbies is a surefire way to render something instantly daggy or culturally benign. Is it all becoming a bit of a (dad) joke?
By Ben Jhoty
WHEN MY DAUGHTER was born, I remember a friend saying that I had joined ‘the best club in the world’. Some six-and-a-half years later, I can report that my friend was right. Becoming a father has been life changing, as it is for all parents, neatly dividing my existence into two distinct epochs: pre-and-post kids.
But as well as the many ways that you might expect your life to change – experiencing total unconditional love for another human being, erratic sleep patterns, nuked social life – there was one shift that I hadn’t anticipated: cultural neutering. Somewhat ironic when you’ve just procreated.
You see, joining the best club in the world seems to revoke your membership to other clubs, most notably the cool club, something that is achieved by the casual use of the devastating prefix: dad.
Let’s start with your body. Before becoming a dad, you had a body that you either pushed and prodded in the gym or largely neglected. Now, you either have a dad-bod, or you’re in a desperate battle not to have one. Either way, your body is now assigned with baggage it didn’t hitherto have. But I will exit this point swiftly because, of course, mums fight against cultural and societal expectations of their bodies that most men would find difficult to fathom.
Venturing into safer territory: fashion. Dadcore has been defined as anti-fashion. Think khakis and chinos, baseball caps and leather belts. In 2016, when the term first arose, The Guardian columnist Priya Elan wrote that “Dadcore is inspired by the wardrobe of the man who gave up on fashion when he became a father”. Apparently, dad dressing became a trend for a while – Adam Sandler might’ve been its poster boy. But besides Sandler, it wasn’t necessarily inspired by aspirational role models like actors, musicians or athletes. Rather, its origins can be traced to comedy skits and internet memes, before it was codified and briefly celebrated on runways.
The fact that dadcore has some fashion cache is heartening but its origins as a source of humour are unmistakeable. Fashion is a tricky space for the new dad to operate; dress too well and you will be accused of trying too hard to resist the inherent dagginess of your station in life. Go full dadcore and you confirm a stereotype that no amount of ‘I’m being ironic’ can rescue you from.
Let’s move to culture, specifically cinema. Dad cinema has become a burgeoning genre in the past decade or so. It consists largely of middle-aged action men kicking younger men’s asses, or pulling off stunts men half their age wouldn’t even contemplate. Its twin spearheads are Liam Neeson and his ‘very specific set of skills’ from the Taken franchise and Tom Cruise and his Top Gun and Mission Impossible popcorn vehicles. Other notable entries in the canon include Ford v Ferrari and Master and Commander, both of which offer a certain kind of dad an appealing mix of aspiration, risk and the application of technical skills and hands-on prowess to achieve a feat or save the day.
A sub-genre of dad cinema is ‘dadsploitation’ movies, where you can find films such as the John Wick and The Equaliser franchises and the myriad films Neeson has made since Taken: Non-Stop, The Commuter, Run All Night, Cold Pursuit and last year’s Retribution. The MO in these films is explicit: vengeance through disciplined annihilation.
Watching these films is a great way for a tired dad to unwind on the couch with a cold one after a hard day muting aggression in corporate trenches. But while action movies appeal to men (and people) of all ages, with or without kids, labelling them dad cinema or dadsploitation films, invites ridicule and reduces their cultural weight – they are, society seems to be saying, films for men who either haven’t grown up or are resistant to the idea of doing so. The ultra violence, it could be argued, is a salve for the impotence and powerlessness a suburban SUV-driving dad feels for his waning virility, relevance and position in life.
Finally, the category that perhaps started it all: dad-jokes. This right-on-the-nose form of humour is frankly irresistible when you become a dad, for the fact is, young children, at least for a few years, delight in it. Of course, they will inevitably join your wife in rolling their eyes at you – thankfully my daughter isn’t there yet.
The problem arises when you make a genuine attempt at humour with an adult and are hit with the withering assessment that your cutting quip is a dad-joke. That can be truly devastating to fragile dad psyches – trust me.
Speaking of psyches, resistance to the use of dad as a descriptor can probably be traced back to the fragile male ego. Some dads may feel their cultural primacy is eroded by the prefix, others that their standing in society is reduced to caricature. There are perhaps a few who may not be happy that their sexual allure has been diminished by reproducing, while others may rail against their inclusion in a monolithic bloc, where previously they had relished their status as idiosyncratic individuals.
In some cases, you might argue, this form of cultural relegation could be healthy, particularly for dads whose egos are powered by their own energy source. At the same time, though, conflicting feelings around having your status as a dad subsume your identity entirely are legitimate and possibly inevitable, likely linked to broader insecurities about getting old.
But while some of the thrust to assign prefixes to cultural pursuits or conditions might be to diminish or reduce them – see, dad bods, man-flu, mummy bloggers – it’s just as often driven by commercial forces; lumping dads into an all-encompassing demographic makes it easier to sell us stuff.
Mostly though, I suspect the motives in the dad designation business, if there are any, are harmless. Linguistically, dropping ‘dad’ around, while amusing is often meant with affection and semantically it serves a purpose, acting as a form of cultural shorthand that instantly conjures images of a loveable, benevolent, if slightly daggy figure.
So, new dads, take note: of course, being a ‘dad’ doesn’t define you, but it is an important part of you. And the truth is, while ‘dad’ is increasingly used as a prefix and, strictly speaking, is a noun, it could perhaps be better deployed as a verb, to dad. The reason is that raising a child is less about who you are and more about what you do. The labels don’t really matter.
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