Cheerios' #HowToDad Campaign

General Mills Wins Big By Making Fatherhood Look Rad

First off, let me state that I love this new Cheerios commercial. It's funny, clever, and promotes a message of good, involved, competent fathers. 

Many of us are superheroes (at least in the eyes of our kids), negotiators, counselors, disciplinarians, and just plain awesome dudes. Our kids adore us, our spouses think we're sexy, and our friends always give us a fist-bump for putting our families first. 

Contrary to what you'll see in television and movies, dads like this guy are the norm in households across America. We give baths, we wake up in the middle of the night to tend to our crying babies, we know how to style our daughters' hair, we aren't afraid to put on a dress and have tea parties, and we change diapers. More importantly, we're not looking for medals or trophies for doing these things. We do them because it comes naturally to us and we take the job of being the primary male role model for our children very seriously.

So if it's truly the norm, why do people get so excited when they see commercials like this? Probably because we so rarely see them. Television, movies and the evening news are littered with men who have no clue how to be a dad. Don't take my word for it; check out this ad showing how well a dad keeps his house clean while his wife is away on a business trip.

Unlike a commercial aimed to get a few laughs at dads' expense from the viewing audience, sometimes stories can be tragic, like the dad in Georgia who left his child in a car on a scorching summer day earlier this month. After constantly hearing the same fatherhood narrative over and over again, many start to believe that's how all dads are. Call me naive, but I don't know any dad who can't keep a house clean when his wife is away, and I don't know any dad who would leave his baby alone in a hot car. We all should know that there are more dads in this world like the Cheerios dad than the crappy ones we see whenever we turn on our TV sets.

Should we be excited when we see good fatherhood in the media? Absolutely — at least for now. But my hope is that we can see a commercial like this in the future and say, "What's the big deal? Every dad I know does all of this, too." In order for that to happen, our thoughts on modern fatherhood need to evolve — and thankfully that's exactly what's happening. The more we see great ads like this, the faster the incompetent dad will be thrust into irrelevancy faster than the Harlem Shake. Kudos to General Mills for taking notice and celebrating the type of dad I am — and many other great men are, too.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy some Cheerios. 

Doyin Richards is a blogger, author, husband, and daddy committed to creating a world of more good, involved dads. He writes on his own blog, Daddy Doin' Work, TODAY Parents, Huffington Post and the Good Men Project, and has a book titled Daddy Doin' Work: Empowering Mothers To Evolve Fatherhood coming out this year from Jolly Fish Press. You can follow him on Twitter @daddydoinwork.