This picture, showing a dad who didn’t “properly” dress his daughter for daycare has been making the rounds with many people add the #Dadfail to it. It’s an exchange between a husband and wife and people have used it as a springboard to stick it to all the dads out there.
#DadFail?? In my estimation this is a #DadWin.
Clothing applied to body? Check.
Child apparently loving the upper body freedom? Check.
Armpits free to feel the glorious summer breeze? Check.
Fewer areas of clothing to be spilled/ puked upon? Check.
Oodles of adorable baby skin to hug when you lift her? Check.
When people look at this as some kind of a fail I’m really left asking why. In most publications you’ll be guided to the hilarity that the parental instincts of fatherhood are only just this side of a cabbage caring for an octopus. That it is our ingrained programming to bumble along as a 200 lb toddler, caring for a smaller human than ourselves. That without clear and sharp rules, we’d be unable to figure out the most basic of caregiving.
I see something like this and you know what I think? That’s a dad who is being a dad. I don’t think about his fashion sense, or about his failures, or about how he needs his hand held. I see that he’s an active parent. A person who is there for his daughter. And unless he was either a 1920’s sharecropper or heavily influenced by The Fresh Prince as a teen, probably didn’t wear overalls all too often and didn’t know the accessories.
Plus there’s always the other angle. Maybe he’s just too shy to admit to his wife that he wants their daughter to be a trend setter! Fashion is something that’s created and it has to start somewhere. We’ve all seen adults with far worse fashion sense than this baby/ father combination had. Here are a few stellar examples of things this dad DIDN’T dress his daughter as.
He could have dressed her as a urinal!
Or perhaps it could have looked like Alice In Wonderland threw up on her.
What if he put her in a squid hat???
Or accordion pants?
Or dressed her as the unforgettable giant tampon??
Now remember, these were all outfits people chose! Real adults with real choices!!! So let’s not lay into dad too hard for not putting a shirt on his little gal. Let’s remember that an active dad is something to be happy about.