I think that you are correct that Askmen.com is playing to their audience, which is largely made up of single men. They have done market research, and they have decided that the things above sell ad space. In many ways the publication reminds me of magazines like the modern Cosmopolitan (which started out a magazine that included info about childcare and later morphed into a magazine for single women and removed that element).

There are, of course, parenting magazines that are unisex (but the language is often tilted toward mothers).

I notice that if you google "motherhood" you get 10,400,000 hits, but if you google "fatherhood" you get 4,710,000.

It has been my experience that there are more single mothers than single fathers as well, and although I don't have numbers for this year I see that, "[S]ingle-father homes made up 3 percent of the country's 71 million family households in 2000." (You can read the article here.) It goes on to say that single parent families headed by men on are on the rise, however.

I don't have problems with a specific publication knowing what sells and marketing to it, as I do my voting on the matter by not purchasing or visiting the ones that I find offensive. Free speech and all...it protects even the stuff I don't want to hear.

What I do worry about, and I think that maybe the author of this post may be pointing out, is how unsettling it is to see parenthood (especially sensitive and fully engaged parenthood) left out of the dialogue so often. This is especially true for men who really have to search to find places to have meaningful conversation on the matter. I'm sure you'd agree that parenting is an important job, so you can see where he's coming from there.

Also, you have to wonder what it is about us as humans that makes the topics of such magazines so popular...and more importantly the tone of them. If it is something intrinsic about us (like genetic disposition or something), then do we want to actively focus on cultivating those things even if we can rationally figure out that there may be a problem with doing so?

Cosmo is known for headlines like, "How to date seven men at once and not let them know!" That sort of lying and mistreatment of others is wrong, and to gleefully celebrate it is ...well...yucky. Askmen.com has similar headlines like, "Overcome Your Fear of Hurting Women." Once again, is it a good idea to advocate learning to ignore the feelings of others?

I think the author of the post is right. There needs to be more public visibility of sensitive, well-rounded, fatherhood minded, and flat out and out decent men. They most definitely exist in numbers not often focused upon, and they can even sell ad space if a publication would just talk to them and believe they are out there. Ditto women.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could think of men's magazines and child rearing? They are, after all, half the equation most of the time. ;)