With the rise of dad influencers, a more equal version of parenting goes viral | Canada Voices

Shaun Frey did not set out to become a dad influencer. But when he and his wife were expecting their first child, Mr. Frey thought maybe he’d start an Instagram account to document his experience of being a new father. He asked his wife, lifestyle and motherhood influencer Rini Frey (known as @ownitbabe on social media), what she thought, and she happily encouraged him.

Five years and two kids later, Mr. Frey (@ownitdad) has created hundreds of posts on a variety of topics – everything from making school lunches to the frustrations of dealing with a toddler who won’t stop asking “why?” to how to hang a photograph and other DIY projects around the house.

The part of the job that fulfills him the most, Mr. Frey says, is when other dads write in the comments that they are doing all the same things he is, whether it’s changing diapers, doing bedtime or any of the other thousand-and-one responsibilities of raising children. “It seems like most people have moved to this level of shared parenting and involvement, and it just gets me super excited,” says Mr. Frey over the phone from his home in Airdrie, Alta.

Dad influencers are nurturing the cultural shift towards a more involved conception of fatherhood, but how much impact they’re ultimately having is up for debate.

Outside of this particular social media bubble, there still appears to be a long way to go to achieve parenting parity: a report from StatsCan found that in 2019, women with children averaged a little over 15 hours a week of household work, while men averaged just over 10.

The report also found that women in partnered households spent more than twice as much time with children under 15 than men.

As is so often the case, Instagram isn’t real life – but dad influencers are doing their part to make it so.

They are not looking for a pat on the back, but instead strive to normalize what University of Nevada sociologist Casey Scheibling calls “caring masculinities.”

“By spreading these sorts of images and stories about men being competent caregivers and compassionate and interested in being an involved father, it won’t be thought of as atypical or shocking or praiseworthy anymore,” he says.

The version of fatherhood these dads are promoting on social media is, for many dad influencers, a counterpoint to the often retrograde ideas of fatherhood portrayed in pop culture, Prof. Scheibling says.

“The motivation for many of these guys to start these blogs and other forms of media was just that the persistent mass media stereotyping of fathers is either the bumbling Homer Simpson or the disconnected breadwinner who’s barely around,” he says.

Jonathan Kamba, a father of four in Dieppe, N.B., who goes by @tuquedaddy online, is a case in point.

His most viral video, which has been viewed more than 20 million times, shows this dad’s technique for soothing a crying infant by folding the baby’s arms so he’s hugging himself and then rocking him.

“That really showed me, wow, a lot of people are looking for this kind of help,” says Mr. Kamba, who works as a consultant.

Most of Mr. Kamba’s content revolves around relationship advice and the mental-health struggles that parents often face.

As with many dad influencers, the majority of his followers are women, but he says his messages reach men through their wives.

“The fact that I was really open about my journey – that encouraged a lot of women to go and talk to their partner and say, ‘Hey, look, it’s okay. This guy’s got half a million followers and he’s saying he’s struggled.’”

Although Mr. Frey says his male followers number in the thousands, he believes his content reaches more by a similar pathway.

“A lot of content of mine that goes viral tends to be sent to a lot of husbands and men. They get it sent to them, but they’re not actually seeing it on their feed.”

Joseph Tito, a 45-year-old LGBTQ father of twin girls who lives just north of Toronto, says the fact that the vast majority of his followers are women is a good thing when it comes to the business of being an influencer.

“You want female followers, because from a marketing point of view, they’re the buyers. Men don’t buy, right. Men don’t buy houseware products,” says Mr. Tito, who posts as @thedaddiaries.ca.

“When I’m advertising Nivea’s men’s line or L’Oréal’s men’s line, the women are going to go and buy it for their husbands.”

Most of Mr. Frey’s advertisements are for things like diapers and groceries, but he says brands don’t always know how to best leverage dad influencers.

“I think they don’t totally know what to do with us yet because we’re this weird mixture. We’re these men that mainly have female followers.”

Women over 20 living with a partner are more likely to do the food shopping, according to StatsCan data from 2020.

The study found that 37 per cent of women do their household grocery shopping, while 30 per cent of men reported it being their primary task (31 per cent of couples said it was a responsibility they shared).

The relative closeness of those figures, however, might be a result of the pandemic, when men and women were both home more and therefore more able to share domestic tasks.

A previous StatsCan study from 2017 found only 15 per cent of men reported that grocery shopping is their primary task.

One reason why some dad influencers have more female than male followers could come down to the platform influencers are using, says Tom Yawney, vice president of business development at The Influence Agency, a Toronto-based marketing firm.

“Instagram tends to skew more towards women,” he says. In general, approximately 65 per cent of users are female, depending on the topic, Mr. Yawney explains.

But he says as the role of fathers expands and evolves, brands are increasingly interested in tapping dad influencers.

That can mean dads working with health brands that want to produce content about what fathers are feeding their kids or dads buying lunchboxes, backpacks and other back-to-school supplies.

Christophe Keyes, a father of three kids ages 11, five and two, who runs the social media account Dad On Duty from his home in Southern California, has worked with Target, Disney and the clothing company Diesel, among other brands.

Many companies are seeking out the untapped market of Black fathers like himself, Mr. Keyes say. And many are probably drawn to the fact that his content shows that involved fatherhood can bring joy, even if it’s not always easy.

“I really strive to make sure I am making time for my kids and make sure I am paying attention to them, make sure we really enjoy life,” he says.

Mr. Keyes, who works in real estate, points to the many videos of him dancing with his kids as examples of his determination to show that fatherhood is fun.

Mr. Yawney points out that as dad influencers have grown in number, they have also begun to serve a variety of more niche interests.

“There’s not just dad influencers. It is little pockets of life that exist within fatherhood that are now sort of generating its own little micro-communities.”

For instance, he says, that could mean a Tidy Dad who focuses on organizing and cleaning, a Hockey Dad raising kids obsessed with the sport or any other number of social media dads serving specific interests.

The more dads on social media showing how involved they are in family life, the more our understanding of what a father can do will change.

“There’s not a dad role or a mother’s role‚” says Mr. Tito. “Like, the mother’s role is not to cook dinner, and the dad’s role is not to go out to work. It’s a human role to do everything. That’s what I’m showing in the Dad Diaries.”

Mr. Frey has come to a similar realization. Often, in the past, his posts would include a line of text saying “Being a dad is like” with a video of whatever he happened to be dealing with.

When he’d then get moms reaching out to him in response, he’d realize his experiences really are broader and include all parents.

“Everybody’s going through the exact same struggles,” he says.