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New Danish app for fathers changes the tone of parenting advice
TheCopenhagenPost
March 4th, 2016
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This article is more than 8 years old.
Sports metaphors and locker-room jargon are the order of the day with the FAR app
A new Danish app is about to change the tone in giving advice to new parents. Speaking directly to fathers in ‘locker room’ language, the FAR app aims to tell it like it is when it comes to being a new dad.
Kasper Susaa and Laus Risby, who are behind the father-orientated parenting website DaddyO.dk, have teamed up with the health education body Komitéen for Sundhedsoplysning, and the physiotherapist association Danske Fysioterapeuter to produce the FAR app, which will be launched for IOS on Sunday.
The app will be launched in Danish, but Susaa has not ruled out the possibility of an English version somewhere down the line.
“We had discussions with our backers about the language and decided that the Danish market was the obvious way to go, but we have the content now, so it would just be a case of getting it translated,” he said.
Including dad
Susaa explained to Metroxpress that part of the motivation is to make the subject more inclusive for fathers.
“We would like to develop an app that isn’t written for both genders, but specifically for fathers, and to break from it being a women’s universe” he said.
Jesper Lohse, the head of the support organisation Foreningen Far, has given the project the thumbs up.
“Partly because dad doesn’t know what to do a lot of the time, and it also sends a positive signal, that ‘dad, you can do it’,” he said.
Locker-room jargon
The advice fathers will receive through the app is written in a very different style from conventional parent advice sources, for example comparing the first trimester of pregnancy to the group stages in the World Cup: “everyone’s happy to be in the World Cup, but there are challenges.”
“I think many feel that their masculinity is put to the test when they go in and out of BabySam. So it should be in this locker room jargon, where you can take the piss out of the whole thing a little bit. Shit is shit, and it smells. And fuck that, whether you drink coffee from a fluted porcelain set or not,” according to Susaa.
The app also makes innovative recommendations for interacting with your new baby, such as using it as a weight during your squat workout.
“It can open fathers’ eyes about how much they can contribute. Both during pregnancy and in the beginning, where many perhaps think that it is the woman who breastfeeds, ‘so I’ll go and wash up instead’,” Susaa said.
The app is will launch on March 6 on IOS. It will be free to download for one month, after which it will cost 25 kroner.
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