Hey, Brad Pitt has been named the best dad in the world! Votes were cast at the Web mag StyleList.com, which clearly attracts a deeply thoughtful, even scholarly, crowd. With excellent personal knowledge of Brad’s parenting skills.
I might agree that Brad is the best looking dad in the world. But THE BEST? Put him up against my husband in a fathering smackdown and Brad would be toast.
Perhaps my spouse’s finest achievement is teaching the boys never to assume a woman is pregnant. A lesson he himself did not learn until his 40′s. (I will blog about this another time, under the heading “Never Take Your Spouse to a Reunion.”
A sports and car nut, Chris has shown our boys that real men also know how to shop and cook – every day. He indulges a bit of their pyromania with schoolwork burning bonfires and fireworks festivals each summer. Since I get woozy at the sight of blood, he’s the household medicine man. Chris is the one who taught the boys to bait a fish hook, tie a Windsor knot, fix a bike chain, mow the grass, strum a guitar, and play fantasy baseball. He’s made killer Halloween costumes. Standouts include a meticulous cardboard Thomas the Tank Engine construction that toddler Ian wore for exactly two doorbells and later, also for Ian, the perfect Howard Hughes ensemble, complete with Kleenex box shoes. And he has shown the boys how to gently hold their new cousin.
Mr. Pitt has people who do all this sort of thing for him. I seriously doubt Brad is making any Halloween costumes. I imagine the Pitt-Jolie houses around the world are full of personal chefs, personal shoppers, personal trainers, personal gardeners, personal drivers and personal nannies.
That leaves very little space for personal parenting. And personal parenting is exactly what makes a dad the best on Earth.
