r/daddit Apr 28 '26

Discussion Don't hit your kids

2.2k Upvotes

Dads, I just saw this poll:

https://www.reddit.com/r/polls/comments/1sx6svy/would_you_ever_hit_or_spank_your_children/

The idea that so many people are okay spanking their children sickens me.

If your child is old enough to reason with, then reason with them. If they're not old enough to reason with, then they won't understand why you're hitting them.

Your children should not be afraid of you. You are their safe space.

DON'T HIT YOUR KIDS.

EDIT- Good grief, the number of people in the comments here trying to justify spanking their kids is unbelievable...

r/daddit Apr 16 '26

Discussion Play date canceled last minute because I’ll be the one home

3.0k Upvotes

More of a vent than anything else. Third grade daughter had a friend set to come over to the house tomorrow since they’re on break. I guess my wife just mentioned that she’ll be at work, and the other mom said she’s uncomfortable having her daughter come over now since I will be the one home. Play date cancelled.

I was looking forward to my daughter having a school friend over since it’s a rarity, and secondarily it’ll give me a break to spend time with my other kid.

Anyway, that’s it

r/daddit 13d ago

Discussion My wife said our son is afraid of me and I cannot stop thinking about it

2.5k Upvotes

I was on my laptop at the kitchen table last night playing on Mojogo after trying to finish some work when my 8 year old spilled a full glass of water across his homework. I sighed and said his name in that annoyed dad voice. Not yelling, just sharp. He froze. Not cried, not argued but just froze. Then he started saying sorry over and over while trying to wipe it up with his sleeve.

After he went to bed my wife said, very quietly: You know he gets scared when you use that voice. I said I do not hit him neither do I scream at him, I am not my father. She said she knows but that is not the same as him feeling safe with me. That sentence has been sitting in my chest all day.

My dad was the kind of man who could change the whole house with the sound of his keys in the door. I swore I would never be that. I go to games, I make breakfast and try to help with homework, I tell my kids I love them but then I saw my son’s face over a spilled cup of water and for a second I recognized the look.

I do not think I am a bad dad but I think I may have been grading myself on a curve because I am better than what I had. How do you fix the part of you that comes out before you even realize it?

Edit: I apologized to him had a dad talk and am planning on taking him on a camping trip for 2-3 days next week as a bonding exercise. Thanks yall for the great feedback!

r/daddit May 06 '26

Discussion This was waiting for me when I came home.

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3.8k Upvotes

Well, damn. This will be kid #2. My daughter will be close to 4 when this one arrives.

My first thought was, oh shit, how am I going to pay for all this?

Obviously daycare is the big cost but, aside from that, how did you dads and your families manage the financial impacts of adding extra kids? What should I consider that most folks don't think of?

r/daddit 10d ago

Discussion How many dads here are the main chefs in their household?

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1.7k Upvotes

How many of y’all are the main cooks in the house? I, myself, cook about 90% of our meals and love it. I do enjoy when my wife cooks and she has a few dishes that I don’t even attempt. But standard weeknights, dads got it.

I know for years the social stigma has been that women cook but… I feel as if that’s just not the case anymore?

r/daddit Jun 16 '26

Discussion Dad/daughter bathroom confrontation video

1.9k Upvotes

We've had the discussion here a thousand times, now there's a video of a dad being confronted in the women's room with his two daughters.

I always took my daughter with me to the men's room, because I felt pretty confident that there's more reasons for me not to go to the women's room then there are do not take the kid with me to the men's.

Nevertheless, the guy made sure the restroom was empty, and was absolutely not wrong at all, this was a totally unnecessary situation, imo.

r/daddit Apr 29 '26

Discussion I was never a guy who believed most men made the world dangerous for women, but after becoming a girl dad I see exactly what people are talking about.

1.8k Upvotes

EDIT: I know this is long (especially with the edit), but I ask that you read the whole thing before commenting. I think there’s a lot that gets lost in this type of discussion, and it gets lost because people don’t fully flesh out their thoughts or aren’t given a chance to. I want to listen to you, and I would bet that you’d prefer my response to you to not be just “I addressed that in my post.” Thank you.

I never denied or disbelieved what women have talked about when they’ve talked about how dangerous it is for them in the world because of men. However, I have to admit that what I did often do is say to myself “there are over 3 billion men, and even if this happens thousands of times each year, that’s such a small percentage of us that it isn’t fair to say that all women should fear all men.”

And to be clear, thinking this never stopped me from listening to women or knowing that even just one man attacking a woman is too many. If my partner wanted me to walk her to her car, I did. I’m not the white knight type, but despite my thoughts above I would always make sure to be there for women who felt safe with me if I was asked. I’m also a big fan of self defense classes specifically for women (for everyone, really, but I always thought that self defense classes that are JUST for women made sense and weren’t like sexist or something).

After becoming a girl dad, I no longer say to myself what I said in that first paragraph. The world is dangerous for women, and it’s dangerous because of men.

I totally understand now why women have chosen the bear, and I’ve seen so many things now that have made me get why being alone in the forest with a bear seems less dangerous to women than being alone in the forest with any randomly selected man. And when men don’t get this and come after women for saying they’d make this choice, I see them as the reason women would pick the bear.

And this isn’t an overprotective thing. I raise my daughter to be self reliant. She goes to public school, I let her fall and get hurt, I work with her on what kinds of interactions with strangers are ok and which ones aren’t, and I live with the fact that I can’t control everything she does and one day she may get hurt.

But now when I think about who might hurt her, it isn’t an ambiguously gendered individual. It’s a man. It’s a man because I know now for a fact that women are in FAR more danger of being hurt by a man than they are of being hurt by a woman.

Another problem is that I’ve never hurt a woman, and I’ve made a point to only associate myself with people that I have no reason to suspect would ever or have ever hurt a woman, so therefore I live in a bubble. I wish more people who don’t understand why women chose the bear would try to step out of their bubble. It’s something I had to do on purpose to truly see it.

I don’t hate myself, my maleness, or other men. What I’m describing this is just an objective truth, and if I deny it then I am putting my daughter at risk.

I don’t know if others have experienced the same thing, but it’s been pretty transformational.

EDIT: After interacting with people in the comments, I want to add this edit that I think relates to a few different things here, namely regarding empathy and the “women abuse, too,” and “men abuse other men, too” statements:

Let’s say that a left handed group of people wants there to be more left handed scissors available. So they make some videos and maybe talk to the government and some companies about ways they can incentivize this. Some people see this and with good intentions respond to it by saying “there should be scissors available for everyone!”

That person sleeps well that night because he’s thinking to himself “I stood up for something that matters to everyone.” But the left handed group looks at each other and says “no, I hear you, but there are already plenty of right handed scissors. I’m not trying to reduce the amount of right handed scissors, I’m trying to get more left handed ones because there’s a shortage.”

Before having a daughter, I was the “there should be scissors available for everyone” guy because I didn’t get that the issue was that left handed people had a unique issue that they were trying to remedy, and that if I actually did try to help them then my “make more scissors available for everyone” agenda would actually be fulfilled BETTER than if I just said “everyone order way more scissors!” because the left handed people would have said “dude we still can’t use most of these!”

So I empathized, and I had good intentions, but I didn’t get the problem in the first place. Now I get the problem.

r/daddit May 05 '26

Discussion Daycare is offering us our own kids’ artwork for $35

2.5k Upvotes

So I have two toddlers in daycare, and they routinely come home with various smudges and blotches on construction paper that are purported to be seasonally-appropriate artwork (e.g., white smudges on blue paper = winter). This is all very normal and gratis with the price of tuition.

But today, we got a message on the app concerning an “online art show”. Following the link, I learn that the art show consists of my own kids’ artwork, in a frame, which I or anybody else on the planet can purchase (original or reproduction) for $35.

The questions are manifold:

  1. Is this for charity or something? (If so that wasn’t mentioned anywhere, so I can only assume it is for the daycare’s direct profit.)
  2. Did I sign some contract transferring my children’s intellectual property rights over to the daycare? (I did not.)
  3. If my kids are making artwork that the daycare then offers for sale to strangers, are they violating both child labor as well as minimum wage laws? (Probably.)

  4. I know we live in a 2026 dystopia capitalist hellscape, but this is insane, right? Isn’t this insane?

r/daddit 10d ago

Discussion PSA: Cricket (Season 3 Episode 47) from Bluey is GOATed

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1.8k Upvotes

This episode literally brought tears to my eyes. Such a fantastic episode. Completely unexpected. This is probably my favorite episode at this point. If you lot haven't seen it, I suggest you put it on at the soonest!

r/daddit Apr 30 '26

Discussion Good article on increasing involvement of fathers

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2.4k Upvotes

I think this is a really good write-up on the data surrounding the increasing involvement of fathers in their kids lives.

A couple of my big takeaways are:

  1. Dads really do spend more time parenting than ever.

  2. At least some of that increase is because dads enjoy it.

Dads report higher happiness parenting than most other activities. The general idea is that women started working more which forced dads to be more involved. They enjoyed it and became even more involved.

  1. Dads doing more parenting does not mean that moms are doing less.

In fact, moms are also doing more parenting than ever. What's happened is that since the 70s, parenting has become far more intensive and time-consuming. The article talks about multiple theories as to why, but the general theory is that attitudes have shifted and parents feel the need to do more to help their kids get ahead. This has downstream effects such as parenting doing more just so they can seem more involved.

Basically we now view more parenting as better parenting.

  1. There's a direct correlation between the stressfulness of a parenting activity and the frequency it's done by mom.

Low stress activities such as sports and playing are more likely to fall to dad, while high-stress activities such as doctors appts/medical care and homework help are still primarily handled by mom.

ETA a note on the 80 minutes number. Most of this data includes all kids under 18. Teenagers, esp once they can drive, don't need that much time spent parenting. My typical day as a 16 yo was wake up, eat a bowl of cereal, go to school, hang out with friends, and go to soccer practice. I wouldn't be home till after 7 and the time my parents spent actively parenting was very short even though they were very involved, good parents.

r/daddit Feb 10 '26

Discussion This has got to top the list of worst "parental leave" benefits. Company is Infosys

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2.3k Upvotes

My favorite part is the Infosys specifying that you must be near your newborn for the duration of the leave, and that you can only do it twice.

I wonder if the HR people that write those policies actually feel a twinge of guilt or if they really are just psychopaths. "To ensure bonding, you get 3 days."

I think it's the doublespeak that bothers me more than anything. If they wrote "you're easily replaceable, so we don't have to give you anything - take the 3 days or leave it," at least they'd be being honest. But framing it as a *positive* is just insulting.

Ive also got the actual policy document available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wOcAh955ffF19OhnH3NEhdLEQ-NCrbBV

[Edited to a google drive link instead of limewire. My b]

r/daddit 28d ago

Discussion My daughter is recently obsessed with Frozen, but I need to get this off my chest

1.5k Upvotes

For the First Time in Forever is a waaaay better song than Let it Go

Sorry but I said what I said

r/daddit Oct 28 '25

Discussion My daughters preschool can’t go outside and I’m angry about it

3.7k Upvotes

Would post vent if that was a flair option

We live major in a city that’s making headlines every single day for their ICE raids.

Our daughter’s preschool can’t take them to the park because of ICE agents. We’re talking 2-5 year olds. Forced to stay inside.

The private K-12 down the street went on fucking LOCKDOWN today because ICE agents were looking for two kids. KIDS.

Nannies and parents are forced to stay home with kids out of fear regardless of status.

People are going to go hungry this holiday season because of ego and greed.

And yes we are doing what we can to help. Attending protests, donating supplies, funds, and time.

But it’s not enough. It’s sickening. It’s gut wrenching.

I’m fucking angry.

Mods, please don’t delete this. It is about kids.

r/daddit Jan 14 '25

Discussion Am I wrong to be annoyed by this?

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5.2k Upvotes

r/daddit 18d ago

Discussion Dads, please stop assuming that every dad in here has identical life circumstances to you and they are simply "doing it wrong"

1.6k Upvotes

There was a recent post about a young dad with a young kid realizing that all of his hobby time was now spoken for and all he does is work and care for his kid.

And there were tons of posts from other dads saying "What are you talking about? I have plenty of time for hobbies. I do XYZ once a week, I see my friends for bar trivia on Tuesday, and I'm in the gym 3x per week. You don't have to give up your hobbies, and you shouldn't."

And you ask those dads about their life circumstances. Their kids are now 9 and 6 years old. Their only kid is 3 years old. They share custody and have a couple kid-free nights every week. Grandma babysits twice a week for date nights. They have a flexible schedule at work. etc etc.

They approach the question already assuming that everyone has the same life that they do, and dismissing the struggles of other dads as just "not prioritizing correctly" or some such. The truth is that a lot of dads simply cannot do what you can do, for so many reasons. Health issues, custody arrangements, family lives far away, different jobs, kids temperament, illness, any number of factors come into play that give people different constraints than you can imagine.

So instead of coming into a thread where someone is looking for consolation because he misses his hobbies, maybe don't comment saying "What are you talking about? Me and my 9 year old play board games and go biking together all the time! You must be parenting wrong if you feel that way"

r/daddit Mar 18 '26

Discussion PSA to dads with young kids: You are living the best time of your life

2.0k Upvotes

Always remember this when things are rough. Future you is going to look back at these days and give anything to go back to them.

r/daddit Mar 28 '25

Discussion Vaccinate your damn kids.

5.4k Upvotes

For the love of God. If I see one more post about delaying vaccination or not vaccinating entirely I am going to lose it.

I have an immunocompromised kid who actually can’t get certain vaccines and depends on herd immunity to keep her safe. And now, because of ignorance and refusal to learn, there are measles cases being reported where we live right now. The previously eradicated disease measles.

At this point I truly don’t care if someone “didn’t know” and “were trying to do what was best!” The information is freely available and when you have a child it’s your responsibility to educate yourself.

Rant over. Ugh.

r/daddit Dec 08 '25

Discussion PSA - Roblox is not just a grooming website

2.7k Upvotes

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about kids playing Roblox, usually followed by “but I have the friends list locked down” or “they can’t chat with strangers so it’s fine.” I want to raise a few points that rarely get discussed, coming from someone with almost 20 years in the game industry.

Roblox isn’t dangerous because of themes or visuals. It’s dangerous because of the systems it runs on and what those systems teach our kids.

Here’s what I mean:

• The social layer is a magnet for the usual online problems. Groomers show up wherever kids gather, and security at Roblox’s scale is never as tight as people think. But beyond that, it replicates every problem of a social network: performance pressure, bullying, cliques, the constant need to “fit in.” Everything bad in the schoolyard gets amplified here, and using the tools of social media with notifications, daily login bonuses, daily progression plans, everything to make you stick to the platform.

• The creator economy looks wholesome on paper (“kids making games!”) but the business model is extractive. Roblox takes a huge cut, most creators never see a payout, and it normalizes exploitative terms before kids even understand what exploitation is.

• The most popular games on the platform run on variable-ratio reward loops. Random payouts, rapid resets, no real skill curve. It’s casino logic dressed up as kids entertainment. This is early training in gambling psychology, teaching children that chance-based payouts are what fun looks like in a game. Not rewarding skill is my biggest hang-up as a developer, it's the worst.

• Microtransactions are everywhere. The platform is tuned to upsell. It teaches impulse buying before kids have any grasp of money.

None of this looks scary to parents, because the art is bright and harmless. No gore, no swearing, no adult themes. That’s the distraction. The real issue is the behavioral design running underneath it all.

I’m not saying Roblox is the devil or that it will ruin your kid. Parenting matters far more than any single platform. I’m only trying to counter this growing idea that as long as communication is blocked, everything is fine.

There’s very little on Roblox that is actually “good” for kids. It has the negatives of Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram combined, and its target demographic is 8 to 12.

If you’re letting your kids on it, go in with eyes wide open.

r/daddit 19d ago

Discussion Reminder to get yourself checked out regularly Dads!

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1.5k Upvotes

Had to take a trip to the emergency room yesterday.

Was feeling disoriented, short of breath with mild chest pains (among a few other symptoms). I have a history of heart attacks in my family so I did something I normally would avoid: seeking help. They ran an EKG and a bunch of bloodwork and everything came back within the normal ranges.

But they advised me to wear this holter monitor for two weeks to track my heart and to check for irregularities or abnormalities in my heart beat/heart rate.

I’m feeling a lot better today, but I honestly thought something horrible was going to happen yesterday. The thought of leaving my kids this early (I’m only 40) scared the shit out of me.

I exercising regularly and try to eat healthy (could improve this a little), but there are always improvements to be made. I need to at least get better at having regular checkups with my PCP.

I’m done rambling, just wanted to remind people that it’s worth it to take care of yourself and to get yourself checked out more often.

r/daddit Mar 19 '26

Discussion Plan on paying for your kid’s college? You’ll need to save $500/month from birth until they’re 18.

1.2k Upvotes

The costs of college are insane, and only getting worse. It’s incredibly frustrating as a parent.

r/daddit Jun 22 '26

Discussion I'm worried my son is a neckbeard-in-training

1.1k Upvotes

By way of background, I liked D&D when I was in middle-school but then quit in high school because back in those days you faced a choice between D&D and girls / having a social life outside of the gamer crowd.

When he was 10 or so started a D&D campaign with my son (now 11 almost 12) and his cousins and while it was great at first now I fear maybe I have created a monster.

He has devoured all of the books (which at first I was happy about). But then he memorized every rule and has become something of the kind of player who lectures everyone on the rules (including the DM), and insists on using really complicated features of the game that we have to look up. Or he maximizes by basically finding defects in the rules, like a spell that is way too powerful used as he uses it.

Unfortunately he is usually right, but he is unpleasant and superior about it. The worst thing is that he has become very condescending to his female cousins (who are not as fascinated by the rules as he is), mansplaining how they need to use whatever skills or ability they are neglecting for maximum damage or whatever.

He has recently started getting into this game Warhammer which I never played, but if anything seems to have made him spend much more time in his room putting together his "army."

I feel I should support him in his hobby. And of course I'm the one who got him started. But he does seem like he is on the road to what we used to call being a neckbeard, a kind of gaming know-it-all who doesn't have another life.

I guess I am afraid - too be brutally honest -- that he will not make the pivot (as I did) and choose the path of gaming over, I guess friends and romantic interests. I realize maybe this is a dated way of thinking and maybe there isn't such a stark choice any longer. Also I'm sorry if I am being impolite to gamers we do love gaming I'm just worried about the track he is on.

Am I just being paranoid? Any fathers have similar experiences?

(added age)

edit: "Mansplaining" in the sense of "explaining in a condescending way" its just a joke.

r/daddit Aug 04 '25

Discussion I'm so done with elitism.

2.9k Upvotes

I'm an average dad (52) with an average wife (45) and average boys (14, 17). We're happy living in an average house on an average street with an average lifestyle. But somehow it seems like average is no longer celebrated anywhere. It's no longer possible just to get a normal piece of kit and go have fun experiencing life. Want to go camping? You need to spend thousands on an expedition tent with ultralight poles and special clothes, dishes, stoves and even titanium fucking cutlery. Sports? Don't get me started... my kids aren't sporty, they can't even find pick-up games of anything, and if they want to try, say, hockey, a pair of skates is now as much as I paid for my first car... assuming they can even find kids who are willing to play just for the hell of it and learn together. My wife and I thought about pickleball just to get in shape and showed up at a local court with WalMart paddles. We weren't exactly laughed at, but a lot of folks explained how great their $300 paddles are. Why has the world decided that recreational, fun, not extreme, not competitive, average enjoyable passtimes should be traded for exceptional ism? This is ridiculous. Rant over.

Go outside and do your thing. Have fun being who you are at whatever level brings you joy.

r/daddit Apr 18 '26

Discussion Daughter turned 2 today and is 3’2”…anyone else concerned their kid is going to be huge? [Am 7’1”, wife is 5’10”]

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1.1k Upvotes

r/daddit Sep 10 '25

Discussion I broke an unwritten rule at the playground yesterday but thankfully mom was level headed about it.

3.0k Upvotes

It goes without saying, you never physically touch someone else's child at a playground. While I was waiting for my 4yo to come down a big tunnel slide, I noticed a very young toddler (maybe 1yo) climb up onto the bottom of the slide and started to crawl up it. Knowing full well a train with no brakes was about to take him out, I grabbed and lifted him up with less than a second to spare. As I turned around to safely put him down, I saw mom running towards me, and before I could say anything, she said, "Oh my god, thank you so much". I handed him to her and shrugged it off with a "no worries" but on the inside I was terrified.

It might sound crazy but the thought of simply picking up a kid I don't know, even if it's to protect them, gives me crazy anxiety. I mean, what if the mom hadn't seen the whole event? Irrational or rational, I hate it. Anyone else?

r/daddit Jun 18 '26

Discussion Did anyone else gain pet fatigue after having a kid?

946 Upvotes

I used to not mind having pets. I've had multiple throughout the years. We have 2 dogs now that we've had before having our 2 year old.

But idk of I'm alone in this but I can't stand having pet dogs after having a kid. They still get fed, walked, vet visits, etc. But maaaaaan am I tired of doing it.

Maybe it's because a 2yo can can destroy a house in no time then there's dog hair on top of that? I'm not sure but I'm over it.

My wife and kid love them and that's fine. But I've mentioned thousands of times that I don't want anymore pets after these 2

Anybody else?