Anyone else feeling a little proud of themselves right now? Well you should, because you made it. You made it through Christmas, and you made it through 2023!
All that effort to create the most magical Christmas for your kids, only for them to spend all of 6 seconds playing with the toy you spent far too much time deliberating on. Exhausting, right?
But, we did it! We made it through the chaos of the big day, battling disrupted nights with travel cots, over-excited 4am wake ups and the mother of all sugar highs.
As we look back on 2023, parenting has been bloody hard, but it really is worth it.
This week we’re going to do something a little different. With the New Year closing in, we wanted to take a moment to look back at 2023 and return to some of our favourite tweets, memes and general dad-banter from this year’s For Dads archives.
As always, if you enjoyed this week’s edition and think you might know someone else who would, please do share. We know how tough being a parent can be, and sometimes you just need a moment to laugh at some of the craziness.
It wasn’t long ago that this newsletter was merely theoretical. Now, as we edge ever closer to 1k loyal subscribers, we wanted to take a moment to thank you all.
Being a dad is tough; Movember research recently highlighted that almost a quarter of dads find becoming a father an “isolating experience”, with over half also saying that they wouldn’t talk to their closest friends about their struggles.
There seem to be a plethora of wonderful and much appreciated women’s parenting publications, blogs and support groups, but whilst there are options for dads, a dedicated community can be hard to find.
Our hope is that through our newsletter, we’re able to provide a semblance of this, whether it be the odd useful tip, a weekly recipe to test out with your toddler or just a bit of relatable dad humour.
Thank you for reading and your continued support.
We’ve trialled a few different formats this year, please do share any feedback on what you want to see more of with the For Dads team. You can email us at fred@fordads.co.uk
👀 As seen on Insta
This section is all about sharing the clips that made us LOL in the last week. We hope you enjoy this selection of our favourites from 2023 as much as we do.
From the mildly surprising to the downright weird, 2023 had a whole lot of stats that made us feel slightly less terrible at this whole parenting lark. Here are just a few of our favourites.
Over 1,300 of us search for “baby modelling agencies” every single month. It’s official, we are all in denial.
Thanks to all those uneaten fish fingers we simply had to hoover up, the average man gains an extra 2kg in weight in the years after the arrival of their first born child.
“I was so sleep-deprived that I put the pacifier in my wife's mouth when she asked me to hand it to her. And she was so sleep deprived that she took it, no questions asked.” [anonymous parent]
⚒️ Dad hack of the week
Sometimes we make parenting harder than it needs to be. Check out our favourite parenting hacks from the year that perfectly balance that thin line between genius and laziness.
Doesn’t it make you feel somewhat better about parenting to know that the gilded celebs who adorn our screens have also dealt with some of the same shit you have. Some of these really tickled us this year.
Ryan Reynolds kids proving that toddlers don’t care if you’re famous!
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