Hey now! Tambor tops the index

With the addition of one of my favorite comic actors, Jeffrey Tambor, to the Recycled Dad Index, Van Morrison falls to second place for virility and Garrison Keillor falls to second place for recycledness. That’s right, George Sr. from “Arrested Development/Hank from “Larry Sanders”/Jinx from “Mr. Mom” is #1, no matter what the criterion is. [...]

For recycledness, we six tower over Trump

The newest addition to the Recycled Dad Index is The Donald. (I know he was ‘newsier’ when he was still allegedly heavily considering pondering announcing exploring running, but even on his worst day he has entertainment value.) As you can see, his recycledness score is the lowest on the list so far, with a widest [...]

Join the ranks of Keillor, Quaid, Jagger and — Janszen?

My co-worker Jeff Janszen is literally the only other recycled dad I know personally, so naturally I asked him for his family stats so I could add him to the Recycled Dad Index. He agreed because he is a cool guy and not afraid of anything (see photo caption above). Now the index has four [...]

Recycled Dad Index (Prototype)

NOTE (6/8/2011): The embedded chart is continually being updated, so it no longer matches the information in this post. UPDATE (5/20/2011): Still can’t put script in WordPress.com, but if you click here or click the chart, it will open the interactive version of the chart in Google Spreadsheets. Still experimenting with different visualization tools, but [...]

“…”

I’m a lot less uptight about the words I use around Jacob than I was ‘a generation ago’ with Charlie and Thomas. Today, as I was putting Jacob in his car seat: Jacob: “Ow!” Me: “I’m sorry. Did I crush your nuts?” Jacob (laughing): “No, you didn’t crush my nuts! How did you know I [...]

“Trophy wife” intro aside, Globe article is a good read

The number of “do-over dads” seems to be increasing, though concrete statistics are hard to capture. Men remarry sooner after divorce than women do; for this and other reasons, more divorced men than divorced women are in a position to have children. Recycled dads tend to be more confident and enjoy the parenting experience more.

(Statistically) Generation 1 resents us?

Our relationships with our original kids tend to be strained because our attention and wealth have to be split more ways than in a traditional family or even a simple stepfamily. In other words, our Generation 1 kids have a reason to resent us, and in many cases they do.

Celebrity recycled dads, courtesy of FameCrawler

I don’t really follow celebrity news. Until tonight I had been only vaguely aware that some famous old guys have young wives and are therefore likely recycled dads. Thanks to a blog called FameCrawler and its “Boys Still Swim” category (beware of the flyover — you may see Rod Stewart in a Speedo), I now [...]

Book preview has insights for older and divorced dads

Do a Web search on “older fathers”* and you will get thousands of results, most of them describing the horrible (physical and mental) health risks you subject your children to by becoming a dad ‘late in life.’ Buried among those distressing results is a link to something a little more constructive: a Google Books preview of “How Children Develop” …