An award-winning UK parenting and lifestyle blog
I was interested to read an article in Huffpost Parents this week. It reports on a claim that a family of four would need £40k a year to live comfortably. I have to admit that I'm somewhat surprised by this figure. Why? Well, we're doing fine on a significantly smaller amount and there are five of us! The ...
With Father's Day on the horizon, lists of the most important 'dad skills' are doing the rounds. With over seven years of blogging under my belt, I've seen a lot of these. And I really wish they weren't a thing. I can see why people make these lists as marketing tools, of course. Society is slowly starting ...
As a parent blogger, I receive a lot of press releases about kids' books. One that arrived recently really stood out. At first for good reasons and then quite the opposite. The book in question features rhyming verse and colourful illustrations about fathers looking after their kids. "Brilliant!" I thought. "A title that celebrates hands-on dads!" ...
Today was a sad day. We learned that, despite council tax increases, our local library - as well as six others in the county - is to close. For the last few months, I've been campaigning with a group of like-minded school parents to keep it open. We've worked really hard petitioning, raising awareness and encouraging ...
The Government has today launched a new initiative aimed at increasing the uptake of shared parental leave. Unfortunately, the 'Share the joy' campaign misses the point. When I read the headlines this morning, I naively thought that some much-needed policy change was on the way. Sadly not. It's just raising awareness of a pre-existing option that ...
I was interested to read about a school banning pupils from dressing up as YouTubers and sports stars for its World of Work Day recently. I wrote about the amount of homework young children get earlier this week and it links to the same theme. Namely that we should let kids be kids. The rationale offered by ...
I was interested to read comments made by MP Alison Thewliss recently. During a commons debate on sexual harassment and violence in schools, she advised parents to teach children about consent from a very early age. She also suggests doing this in a way that may seem unusual to some, but that I agree with. In ...
I was dismayed to learn recently that our local library is under threat of closure. In fact, East Sussex could soon lose a quarter of its libraries as a result of council plans. A consultation is underway. Meanwhile, local residents are being urged to write to their councillors to voice their opposition to the plans. As ...
I was interested to read this article about work-life balance recently. It argues that workplace culture needs to change to help men become better dads. Although the research and case studies are from Australia as opposed to the UK, there's much that rings true for me. Over here, shared parental leave is dependent on individual circumstances ...
I was disappointed to see some comments in a Facebook group for dads today complaining about International Women's Day. The poster asked if anyone else in the group was sick of being bombarded with it; his gripe being that International Men's Day was ignored by the press and on social media. I, for one, am ...
I'm Tom Briggs. A proud dad of three and, somehow or other, a multi-award-winning parent blogger.
I've been writing Diary of the Dad since 2010 and it's gone from a small hobby to my full-time job.
I still have the same enthusiasm for this blog as I did when I wrote my first post and hope you enjoy reading my musings as much as I do writing them.
