Do some dads just need to lighten up?

No, says Chris Routly. There’s a growing rejection of stereotypes in general — and that should apply to dads as well, he argues.

He’s also concerned that boys and men “see the bumbling dad … and think that’s what’s expected of them,” the stay-at-home father of two told me by phone while baking chips for his kids out of kale from his garden. “They’re not expected to be good, so they rise to the low bar that’s set for them.”

And it can lead girls and women to have low expectations for how their husbands will handle fatherhood, he says.

Part of the problem, Routly says, is that a lot of people believe negative stereotypes really apply to far more dads than they do.

As a dad who cooks, cleans, does laundry, and serves as primary caregiver — all without incident — it’s nice to see a piece that challenges the negative portrayal (and sometimes the outright ignoring) of dads in the media and our popular culture.

We’re not all Al Bundy, Homer Simpson, or Peter Griffin.

When my son grows up enough to appreciate “The Simpsons,” I’m hoping he finds Homer as funny as I do, as much a totally absurdist vision of a father as, say, Lisa is of a little sister. At that point, I’ll know I’ve done my job … both because he’ll have a sense of humor and because he’ll know that dads don’t actually act that way.