Daddy Dialectic

Daddy Dialectic is a blog about parents of the 21^st Century America. Although the blog consists of six contributors, the blog starter and the main contributor is Jeremy Adam Smith. Smith is the senior editor of Greater Good magazine, the author of The Daddy Shift, and the co-editor of The Compassionate Instinct. His essays, articles, and short stories are also in many books and periodicals. He has a son and he used to be a stay-at-home father. Smith has two other blogs that he has worked on: his own blog, Jeremy’s Journal on Media and Democracy and another blog with other team members, Science of the Greater Good. His most recent posts are from Daddy Dialectic, where he blogs every couple days. Some of his interesting posts from Daddy Dialectic include: The Failure of Success, about how different parenting styles have different influences on children’s success, and The Way We Were vs. The Way We Are, about how marriage has transformed from business-based to love-based. Based on the number of comments the blog receives, Daddy Dialectic is not a very popular blog.

Daddy Dialectic does not relate to my topic as much as I would like it to be. It consists of a lot of other subjects that are unrelated to my topic. Also, the subjects that do relate to my topic tend to be more focused on society’s expectations of people rather than society’s pressures on people. However, although it does not completely relate to my topic, it still relates to my topic enough to be helpful. For instance, in the post The Failure of Success, Smith talks about how middle-class and upper-class parents are more concerned about their children’s success than working-class parents are. Smith points out that the reason for this is because middle-class and upper-class parents live a lifestyle where success is expected of them and their children. Simply put, we feel pressured to live up to expectations because

“[w]e feel intense pressure to follow the norm around us.”

Daddy Dialectic could be considered a scholarly and academic post. Smith often makes references to books and journal and magazine articles. He also often includes studies and research that have been conducted on the topic he is writing about. In The Failure of Success, Smith made references from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: the Story of Success and included a study conducted by sociologist Annette Lareau. Smith’s posts are detailed enough to give his audience an understanding of what he is talking about and what he is trying to prove. Daddy Dialectic’s intended audience is "twenty-first-century parents,” although not all of its topics are limited to parents or parenting. Parents are relevant to Daddy Dialectic because the blog was written by, about, and for them. Daddy Dialectic will give me topics about the different types of societal pressures that parents, wives/husbands, and families face. However, my blog is not going to be limited to only parents, wives/husbands, and families; it will reach out to a greater and a more general audience.