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“The Sisterhood of Motherhood”, that is. Yeah, that sounds like it has a giant “Welcome Dads” sign held high right? Wrong; High not five Similac!

Similac, in its latest ad campaign titled “The Sisterhood of Motherhood“, created a video depicting various parent cliques coming face to face on the playground. There were working moms, stay-at-home moms, breastfeeding moms, “crunchy” moms, and even, yes, dads, all lashing out and talking down to one another.

As the lashing out reaches a climax and all of the close-minded groups charge at each other, a baby in a stroller begins to roll down a hill. Suddenly, the imminent brawl amongst clashing parent styles quickly ended as all groups rushed to save the runaway baby. The video ends with a quote saying “No matter what our beliefs, we are parents first.”

Or that’s when it should have ended. Instead, Similac went the extra mile and welcomed us in to the “Sisterhood of Motherhood.” And by us, I mean moms, apparently. Those dads in the video, they weren’t really there, or they were actually very masculine women.

Besides the dad wearing his baby facing out, which I am firmly against (click here to see why), the video was entertaining and you could even catch a smile on my face. Until that damned ending welcoming my clique, dads, into some sisterhood of motherhood. What the crap?!

So why even add a small group of dads in the video at all? Which, by the way, if I wanted to really nitpick, there’s more than just one group of like-minded dads, we have our own cliques too. But whatever, basically the ending would make more sense to read simply “Welcome to Parenthood”.

The large group of Dad Bloggers I am a part of on Facebook have all had their say on the video with most of us obviously not accepting of the closing words. One dad blogger, Chris Routly, who runs the blog Daddy Doctrines, goes into detailed analysis on where the video goes wrong and why it matters. Check out his post here.

As a caring father, I agree with Chris’ thoughts 100%. I get that dads are still the minority when it comes to ad campaigns, but that doesn’t mean we like it one bit.

So, thank you, Similac, for welcoming dads into the sisterhood to #SisterhoodUnite, but I think we’ll pass.

What are your thoughts on this video?

Do you agree the better approach would be to make the campaign gender-neutral by using “Parenthood” in place of the prefixes “Sister” and “Mother?

According to a survey published by Yahoo.com, the rise in stay-at-home dads is expected to continue in 2015. And this is not just because dads can’t find work (23%), it’s because we WANT to stay home (21%) with the kids and we can do a damn good job at it too!

It’s true, check out this PEW Research Foundation report published back in June of 2014 for proof. Stay-at-home dads actually represent the biggest increase in those caring for family.

We may not be capable of breastfeeding (also a “Hot in 2015” trend), but we can handle every other aspect just as well in our own unique, fatherly way. More families see the female earning more than their male counterparts and just do better in a work environment.

I’m fortunate that this is the case in our family as Going Mom handles the work stress better than I did and I tend to handle the stay-at-home life stress better. Although it is stressful in both cases!

The very common and extremely annoying negative stereotypes of stay-at-home dads is decreasing every year, and with this survey, I’m hopeful it will continue it’s downward trend. Dads staying home only seems weird b/c it goes against what most of society has been raised to believe. Remember how smoking was “hot” (pun kind of intended) not many years ago? Yeah, that’s the power of society painting the image of how things “should be”.

As a member of several social media groups with other dads, I can proudly say at-home dads will continue to grow and we’ll snuff those negative views right in the sandbox where they belong!

The one downside to having more stay-at-home dads? A most likely increase in the number of kids telling corny jokes. Besides the jokes, dads do play an important role in a child’s development from newborn to college-bound, and that’s an extremely important role indeed!

Oh nothing, just working on Avery's development for later in life... — Oh nothing, just working on Avery’s development for later in life…

Among the other parenting trends for 2015 is breastfeeding in public being more socially acceptable (as it should be!) and school lunch being highly debated even more than previous years. Breastfeeding and nutrition are of the utmost importance in our home and we value them dearly.

I can’t say it enough how proud and grateful I am that Going Mom is able to continue breastfeeding Avery past a year and can see our daughter’s healthfulness (and crazy energy) shining through each day.

What do you think about Yahoo’s survey? Please share your thoughts below as I’d love to hear your views.