Husbands, Dads, and the Social Media Revolution

In the last couple of weeks we have gone from The Definitive Daddy Blog List, to 101 Awesome Sites for Men, Husbands, and Fathers, as well as 51 Dad Blogs. After that Derek Semmler put together the Dads on Twitter list. Now in addition to these lists we have websites that are trying to be the be-all, end-all for fathers including SavvyDaddy and DadDaily. Of course, these don’t include sites like Men’s Health Magazine’s blog, AskMen or the super cool ArtofManliness.

So it looks like men are (not surprisingly) embracing the internet as a way to interact with each other and get information on anything from relationships, to beer, to parenting.

The funny thing about all of this? Isn’t doesn’t even come close to the proliferation of mommy bloggers. What gives?

For all the talk about men being early adapters of technology and more electronically savvy, it sure seems like the women are kicking our butts in the blogging world – at least as far as relationship and parenting blogs go.

Should I be surprised? Probably not. Women are much more likely to seek out ways to improve their relationships or their parenting skills. Women are also much better at building social networks around themselves. I think men want social networks, but they just aren’t as skilled at building them.

AGoodHusband has been growing quite nicely, with just over 1800 unique page views last week and 54 subscribers.

Not anywhere near what I envision as AGoodHusband’s ultimate goal.

AGoodHusband fills a very special place in the blog world. There are lots of DaddyBlogs out there. AGoodHusband is about being a husband. AGoodHusband gets to the essence of what it really is to be a man in a marriage.

As so many different start up websites come along, the ones that consistently get the most traffic are the ones that feature pictures of pretty girls along with captions like, “Babe of the month/week/Northwest/Pacific Islands/Boise.” Apparently this is what men like to see. There are a few sites about being a man. They put up pictures of scantily clad pretty girls, write about beer, sports, and sausages, and say that is the essence of manliness.

Give me a break.

Men, are you really telling me (and the rest of the online community) that the pretty girls (that you’re not married to and will never talk to) are more important to you than reading about how to improve your self, marriage, or parenting skills?

I don’t think you are, but I’m an eternal optimist. After spending some time talking with Derek Semmler at The Man Page, Tyler at BuildingCamelot, Jeremy at Discovering Dad, and others, I think that the men’s online revolution has begun. (cue melodramatic music)

There are a lot of men out there who care about their wives. There are men out there who put their children before the Xbox. There are men out there who don’t watch porn, like to eat healthy, and even do the dishes on a nightly basis. And no, these men aren’t even perfect.

The men like these are the ones who have started this revolution. Not by starting blogs or websites, but by doing the work in their own homes – and then evangelizing their way of life. They may not even realize what they are doing is evangelizing – but in the literal sense of the word, they are.

I want to thank the Daddy and Husband bloggers out there who are working to make a difference. Keep on blogging.

UPDATE: In the spirit of Web 2.0, if you liked this post, please Stumble, Digg, or otherwise bookmark it. Thanks!