Rebel Dad, I have also let my subscriptions lapse to Parents and Parenting magazines. Like you I agree that most of their advice/articles are outdated and even insulting. But worse, while they pretend to write "about moms" or "for moms" most of their stuff is targeted at women for one simple reason -- research shows that moms make something like 80% of the buying decisions in a family. The articles, as I see them, are ads, attempts to get women to buy more junk we don't need. Most of the stuff is written to undermine our confidence and make us buy more useless baby stuff. There are no real women in the pages of the magazines -- only ideas of what moms, as consumers, are thinking.
Gee, that's probably even more cynical than I'm willing to go. (But let me be honest: I don't read the really absurd, commercial sections, like "Beauty.") I think a lot of these magazines article are honest attempts to demystify parenthood. But like any number of publications, Parenting (and Parents) is forced in large part to continue running the same articles, over and over, putting a premium on novel approaches. And Parenting's latest novel approach is to write from the point of view of a "sassy" modern (and largely imaginary) at-home mom. What a waste.
--rD
Rebel Dad-
How we were tricked into a Parenting subscription is too long a tale at this point, but I have to say "amen" to your comments on that article. As a dad-to-be (literally any second now), I saw the headline for that article and just tried to laugh off my anger. Parenting seems to be so out of date with regards to the role of fathers in today's household. ALL (100%) of my friends love being dads, and participate as partners in parenting, NOT as some additional household toddler that needs discipline.
Grrr....
Having worked for a consumer-magazine publisher, I largely agree with Lizbeth. I very much doubt the Parenting editorial staff cares deeply about the content, so long as circ and ad pages stay up. I'm guessing the vast majority of moms feel powerless and (deep down) resentful, so I bet it feels pretty good to them to see someone else scoring shots off whitey, I mean fathers. Want more cynicism? I bet the way these articles get discussed in editorial meetings involves the words "empowerment" and "confidence". Again, no depth or real meaning to it, beyond editorial staff's need to believe they're doing something worthwhile instead of recycling crap text and pushing makeup.
=) You could always try taking over the editorial office, a la Good Housekeeping.
I think something like this calls for a boilerplate letter campaign...you know, like the lobbying groups put together? A standard letter saying "this is bullshit. Change or I'll take my business elsewhere, good sir." Something anyone with a mind to could print out, add their name to and pop in an envelope.
'Cause really, this pisses me off.
You could...but I suspect it's a waste of postage/electrons. You'll create a new niche in their minds (Pissed-Off Stay-Home Dads), but my money says it'll scan the way Angry Hairy Feminists did 35 years ago. I'm thinking you'll either have to wait till the at-home dad numbers rise substantially...or take over the editorial offices. 
Not that I think that'd be fun, or anything.
It still explicitly targets mothers, but the only parenting magazine I've ever found that doesn't suck is Brain, Child. Honestly, you might be better off getting them to put more dad-centric stuff in their magazine than trying to work on shlock like Parenting.
I think most of the time I'd act up just to get sent to my room for the time-out. There's satellite TV in there.
Gosh, I have the responsiblities of 4 children, why would I want to turn my husband into another one? This is degrading to men and women. This is why I stopped reading all "parenting" magazines. I felt like the consumerism and "duh" factor were overwhelming.
All I'm saying is that I find many of the articles in national parenting magazines to be insulting to women's intelligence. I do not "giggle" at the "between us moms" tone. I do not recognize myself in those simplistic "how-to lists" and I am tired of being told what I am doing wrong and what I should be doing. I know many men are saying that they aren't represented in parenting magazines and all I'm saying is beware of what you wish for. The next thing you know they'll be treating all fathers as one disturbingly generic demographic too.
Right now we are *already* a generic demographic to many parenting mags: non-caregiving, non-crap-buying non-entities. I have no doubt that if we shed that image, we'll be over-simplified again in some new day, but we have nowhere to go but up.
-- rD
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