It's time for the moms to give the dads more credit

The people on Madison Avenue might be surprised to learn that the Amazon Mom in my house is my husband. (At least the folks at Amazon acknowledge the title of their discount program is skewed. " 'Amazon Primary Caretaker' just didn't have the same ring to it," the company says in its FAQ.)

Colleen Padilla, who founded the popular blog and product-review site ClassyMommy, admits there's a pervading mommy bias in popular culture.

The main image on her own site features herself with her two children. You wouldn't even know she has a husband until you near the bottom of her bio, which mentions in passing that they like to spend time outdoors together.

"He's the cameraman," she told me. "The dads end up being behind the lens, and the moms end up being the focal point."

And maybe that's one of our dads' best qualities: his quiet support that often goes uncelebrated but not unnoticed.

I'm not trying to make the case that fathers are suddenly specimens of parental perfection. There are still many, many single mothers — about 10 million — who don't have the benefit of a partner to share the load.

But there are single dads, too. Mr. Mom is no longer just a funny movie but real life for nearly 3 million dads.

Perhaps it's easy for me to appreciate because I had a dad who was just as happy shopping for prom dresses and later wedding dresses as he was coaching basketball.

And my husband doesn't blink at potty accidents on a dining-room chair or tantrums in the middle of Publix.

But dads don't get enough credit for such parenting prowess, and not just from corporations and political talking heads, but from moms.

Taylor, the dad blogger, said he ended up as the only dad amid a crowd of moms last week at his 8-year-old's ballet rehearsal and found himself out of place.

"They weren't hostile or unpleasant toward me, but there was definitely a sense of, 'Whoa, what are you doing here?' No one talked to me; no one said hi," he said.

Moms don't even reciprocate the love they get on Mother's Day. Americans spend an average of $6 billion more to honor mom than they do on Father's Day.

It's symptomatic of where dads sit on the parental totem poll even though more men are carrying a more-equal share of the work.

According to a recent survey by Parenting.com, half of dads think they split child care evenly with their partner. But 75 percent of moms say they do most of the work.

Maybe, at least on Father's Day, more moms ought to question whether our mom-centric frame of mind isn't inflating our own contributions.

bkassab@tribune.com or 407-420-5448