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Instagram is awash with mummy bloggers. It seems as if every woman with a child and a wifi connection is on board. You can’t step out your front door without tripping over five of them.
The amount of stay at home mums is much higher than the amount of stay at home dads – the December 2017 Household Labour Force Survey shows that 19.3 percent of non-working women list child care as their main activity while only 3 percent of men did. However, those figures are shifting. The 2013 census showed that New Zealand had 36,000 stay at home dads – 5,000 more than in 2001.
And of course, with the rise of the stay at home dad, comes the rise of the dad blogger. Rarer than the mummy blogger, you can go a fair bit down the road before tripping over one of these.
The most obvious Kiwi example, with a prime spot next to his Prime Minister-partner, Jacinda Ardern, at the UN, is Clarke Gayford. The self proclaimed ‘first fisherman’s’ Twitter feed has retained its focus on New Zealand’s environmental issues, and fishing related news but has started to include what is essentially a dad blog.
Clarke’s cute updates on him and Neve’s life as first-family/UN support team also seem to be his best performing content and regularly get thousands of likes – proof that Clarke’s dad blogging is getting noticed.
Though correlation is not causation, and the rise of the stay at home dad with the rising visibility of the dad blogger doesn’t mean that dad blogging is causing more dads to stay home, the growing visibility is a positive shift of awareness and attitude. The dad blogger normalises stay at home dads – thanks, Clarke.
That said, the UK, a dad-blogger-rich society, with such popular dad blogs as Dad Blog UK, Slouching Toward Thatcham and DIY Daddy, has a whopping one in seven dads opting to stay home. So keep those dad-bloggy posts coming, Clarke – we reckon you’re helping the cause.
