Shelf Life — Scott Dickensheets: A Father’s Day glimpse at parenting magazines

Friday, June 16, 2000 | 8:57 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' books and magazines column appears Fridays. Reach him at dickens@vegas.com or 990-2446.

Is there any holiday the Shelf Life clan celebrates with more ardor, with more pomp and hurrah, than Father's Day?

Sure, lots of them. That Canadian holiday having something to do with Queen Victoria gets bigger play around here. Arbor Day? Huge! To my kids, Father's Day -- like Mother's Day -- is mostly an occasion to challenge the family's hierarchical setup with the sorts of penetrating questions I usually answer by saying, "Because every day is kids' day."

Did I mention that I have a teenager?

He's my first child, 13 going on whatever age he's smarter than me (myself, I reached that age regarding my dad at 14, and again at 16, 18 and 22, at which point I realized I wasn't actually gaining on him). The moment all those years ago when the doctor yanked him out of the Caesarian slit in my wife's belly, bending into the action like Hemingway boating a marlin, was, to be perfectly maudlin about it, one of those moments when you feel the entire universe wheel into a different alignment around you. Everything changed. And as the nurse carried my infant away, trailing squalls that already sounded like demands for the car keys and his own room, I followed, utterly entranced (what wife laying gutted on the table?), and the wonderful mystery of it hasn't dimmed much since.

From then until now, I'd never read a parenting magazine.

Not that I couldn't have used one. It was me, after all, who asked, shortly before my firstborn was, er, first born: "How long until its eyes open?" But I caught on quickly, plumbed the mystery on my own. I eyed the shelves of parenting mags with suspicion and contempt -- no way I'm stopping to ask for directions.

Nonetheless, with Father's Day heaving into view and, more importantly, with the deadline for this column heaving into view, I reluctantly paged through a couple of brand new parenting magazines, Dads and Offspring. So it's only now that I'm learning about "defusing the terrible twos" and "13 ways to keep kids learning while school's out," and how to have a sex life with children in the house, and "11 things I need to know about summer camp" and how a few simple moves now can protect my kids' inheritance later.

I didn't even know some of these things were issues -- not learning had always seemed like the point of summer, and as the children of a journalist, my kids long ago surrendered the notion of receiving an inheritance.

But that sex life business was interesting ...

Cal Ripken Jr. is the cover boy for the debut issue of Dads which, judging from its low-tech design and the regular-Joe vibe of its content, is targeting busy fathers in two-income families, the kind of fellows who don't have time to stop and smell the art direction. "(We) are convinced that the cultural and social climate calls out for this magazine," Editor Eric Garland writes in his editor's note. "So here we are."

It's heavy on the how-to info ("A Survival Guide to Disney World," raising confident sons, how to fly with children), but there's a nice if suspiciously flattering profile of Ripken that focuses on his off-the-field achievements as a father. And Robert Huber contributes a warm story about taking time from his busy life to do things with his son.

Down note: a column by well-traveled former quarterback Boomer Esiason, one of the magazine's investors, trotted out for his marquee value and not, on the evidence of his first column, for having something to say.

Offspring, as its gently ironic title indicates, is looking for a somewhat more sophisticated audience of Baby Boomers. Critics have been quick to attack it as another instance of self-indulgent yuppie-ism which, in the tasteful trendiness of its design and the blithe assurance of its content, somehow frames child-rearing as another therapeutic "lifestyle activity."

Me, I kind of enjoyed it. More than Dads, it mixes the content, topping the how-to stuff with a summer-trips package that draws heavily on the entertaining stories of pretty good writers, and a few pieces of actual journalism, such as a profile of the open-adoption advocate who started the group Bastard Nation, which I might join just to wear the T-shirt.

If I give the nod to Offspring over Dads, it's because I don't need more parenting instruction -- most how-to stories in these magazines are necessarily too general to apply to the specifics of raising my three amigos. No, I need fresh perspectives and good reading to calm my nerves.

Then again, that sex life business sounds intriguing ...

Reading matters

Timed to coincide with that release is a mass edition of "Screwjack" (Simon & Schuster, $21), a brief suite of short stories; a very limited edition came out some years ago but it has been a tough find, going for up to a thousand bucks among collectors.

Clearly, the cultural and social climate calls out for these books.