How to lose customers and offend half the world's parents in one easy lesson

Massive congratulations to Chris Routly, a daddy blogger from Pennsylvania whose petition against Huggies' demeaning 'Dad Test' advertising campaign forced Kimberly-Clark (Huggies' multinational owners) into an embarrassing turnaround.

The original campaign was based on the idea that Huggies nappies could withstand the ultimate test - that of being put on and taken off by fathers...who are of course completely incompetent fools.

Yes folks, an idea this sexist, patronising and ridiculous got through whatever processes exist at this huge international company, and was deemed perfectly ok to unleash on the unsuspecting consumers of America.

Thanks to floods of complaints and Mr Routly's petition, the company decided to adapt its campaign. You can read about the whole sorry tale in the Washington Post and on Mr Routly's own blog, Daddy Doctrines.

You really couldn't make this stuff up, could you?

My new favourite stuff

Sometimes you stumble across a website and it sends a shiver down your spine. Like you've turned a favourite corner. You're in the right place, in safe hands...they're talking your language.

A while ago it happened to me with Pink Stinks, Abi and Emma Moore's awesome campaign about the 'pinkification' of girlhood. Today it's happened again, as I've just found Crystal Smith's Achilles Effect, which argues for a similarly de-stereotyped vision of boyhood.

While I'm on this subject, if you haven't already done so, DO read Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender, which sets out to debunk the supposed science behind sex differences. It's brilliant, and if I had my way it would be on the National Curriculum.

None of this is directly about fatherhood, of course - but then again it IS. As fathers (and mothers) we must navigate across oceans of gendered expectation, both of ourselves (informed by the representations of fatherhood we've grown up with) and of our children (through whom new, more inspiring representations will hopefully develop).

Resources like these are precious. They help us recalibrate our moral compasses as we wend our merry way...