From the Daily Mail in England comes the feel-good story of the year: little Ardi Rizal of Indonesia can smoke like a long-haul trucker (two packs a day!). And he’s only 2 years old! Go Ardi!

The whole story could very well be a parody the likes of The Onion. But the tale is somewhat easy to believe as it comes to us from the land of the 5 year old factory worker. Hell, those little kids need a cigarette break far more than any of us do.

I suppose you’re thinking, “What kind of awful parents…?” But your heart really goes out to them:

‘He’s totally addicted,’ says Ardi’s mother. ‘If he doesn’t get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick.’ Ardi’s father, Mohammed, however, says: ‘He looks pretty healthy to me. I don’t see the problem.’

You’ve got to give dad props for caring real hard.

Never thought we’d ask this, but what are your thoughts on babies who smoke?

From the Globe and Mail in Toronto comes the story of an automotive writer and his son’s costly misstep:

Some moments are lived backwards. The great ones run through your mind like a favourite movie. Then there are the other kind, where you try to roll back the clock – like the afternoon my teenage son launched a brand new Porsche Turbo through our garage door.

Bummer, eh? The car cost $180,000 Loonies and the crash will set the dad back aboot $11K in damages (not including the new garage door). So both parties got off pretty easily, all things considered.

I wasn’t a particularly destructive/stupid teenager. In fact, my parents had it pretty easy as I (unfortunately) didn’t wreak too much havoc. But I do recall an event in one of my dad’s cars growing up. He had a series of used Mercedes-Benz 300SD Turbo Diesels (a fine Teutonic oxymoron). As a teenager, I’d take the local gals around on joyrides in northern Michigan where we went on vacation. On one particular night, I was driving too fast and came upon a T in the road which I certainly wasn’t made aware of. I had to slam on the breaks and slide the car to a halt sideways, barely missing a tree. However, the escapade did put some scratches in the body panels, and we all limped home on a punctured tire. The feeling in the car was: you are a so dead.

When I arrived back home, I delivered the bad news and got the “look of death.” I think there was the “I’m disappointed in you, son” speech, which never failed to take the wind out of me. But beyond that, I don’t recall any monetary settlement or groundings. I’m not sure I’ll be so understanding with my future crash-test dummy.

What things has your kid ruined/damaged in their quest to grow up? What did you destroy as a kid?

I’m always interested to learn about potential parental rip-offs, especially as money’ll be tighter when the wee one comes. So I was glad to read this from Maureen Ferrell at Yahoo! Finance:

The Rip-Off: Is it that hard to mix powder with water to feed your child? Take Enfamil’s Premium Lipil, a popular formula brand. A 32-ounce can that you can crack open and serve might last a day or two. On Diapers.com a 6-pack of 32-ounce cans (192 fluid ounces of formula) costs $45, while a container of Enfamil’s water-mix powder that makes 168 ounces goes for $25. That’s 23.4 cents an ounce for liquid vs. 14.9 cents an ounce for powdered–a 57% markup.

How to Avoid It: Buy a $30 Brita pitcher (to purify the water), add powder, shake.

I’ve heard alot of new parents talk about the cost of a baby, and formula is right up there with the complaints. But this “pre-watered” version is typical of manufacturers—they know customers will pay a premium for any perceived time savings or ease-of-use. But isn’t it more difficult to carry the heavy, canned variety? Doesn’t it create more waste and thus more energy to take out to the recycling bin? Maybe it’s part of some parent’s workout regime. But I hope that more parents wise up to this, because as a society, we seem to be demanding more and more “efficient” products (e.g., concentrated fabric softeners as opposed to the massive jugs that contain so much more water).

Am I full of it? Is pre-watered formula the way to go, or does the powder work just as well?

What other baby rip-offs should dads be aware of?

So I found myself at the camera superstore yesterday. This after weeks and weeks of online research to find the “right” one.

I ended up purchasing a Panasonic GF1. It’s part of the whole ‘Micro 4/3rds’ movement, packing the sensor of a big ol’ digital SLR in a slightly more portable package. My thinking was that I would rarely, if ever, lug a big kit around, especially with a kid. And they say “the best picture is the one you take.”

This is one of my first shots with the camera, of toys my wife got at her baby shower this weekend.

But yes, I legitimized the purchase on wanting to capture pictures of my lovely wife late in her third trimester. That and learn enough about it so I could get nice shots when the baby comes.

So, is it wrong to justify the purchase of expensive electronics by saying it’s for the kid/family? If that’s the case, then I’ll just consider this dad’s little gift to himself for being so damned great/helfpul/sensitive the last nine months.

My wife should be glad I only got the camera…I almost used the baby as an excuse to buy a new car.

What big ticket items did you buy for yourself while saying it was for the kid?

by contributor Matt Winkler (author of 50 Skate Kid)

College students are adults (we keep telling them), and college is expensive. Who is responsible for paying the college bills? As we ramp up to our daughter’s high school graduation, the numbers are coming together for her freshman year of college in the fall. My wife and I counseled and supported her through the college application process, but she decided where to apply and finally where to enroll. Ultimately, it is her professional, adult life that is on the line, so shouldn’t she make those decisions? And shouldn’t she bear the costs?

This sounds ugly. I feel like “the bad dad” when I take this line, because in many cases it is tantamount to selling your child into slavery. How can I justify indenturing my kid to eternal student loan payments? Rising college expenses are universally denounced, but every year more families shrug and sign up for six figure debt, unwilling to deny their child a college-educated career, yet equally unable to cover the expense. There is a lot of social pressure to march thoughtlessly into this bondage, and I resent it. The alternative is to send our children into this trap themselves?

There are basically three ways to pay for college: (1) gifts (grants and scholarships), (2) cash, (3) debt. The FAFSA calculators spit out a student aid report defining your Expected Family Contribution (EFC), and each college’s financial aid office in turn serves a personalized offer to your student, varying the ratio of those three ingredients. A small group of colleges have boldly put their endowments where their mouths are, pledging to reduce or eliminate college debt, but college costs are still daunting.

Even if you accept the legitimacy of the EFC figure, there are material considerations (specific to each individual student and family) which will dictate where that money comes from. What I’m asking for is a principle that these practical decisions should rest on. Are parents duty-bound to cover 100% of the costs? (To my mind this prolongs childhood to age 22.) Should students contribute “as much as they can reasonably earn” before and during college, so that they have some skin in the game? Or, should parents contribute zero dollars but lots of analytical counseling about return on investment, career path earning potential, and student loan amortization spreadsheets? On second thought, should this principle, itself, rest on the student’s demonstrated scholastic ambition in high school (are dedicated honor roll students more entitled to parental collage funding than their goof-off siblings)?

How are you planning for your child’s education? What’s your opinion on them sharing some or all of the costs?

Some men do not have to attend the modern North American baby shower. But I know many who’ve tried valiantly to evade them, but have fallen prey. Let’s take a moment to remember our fallen father brothers…

I somehow managed to kaibosh a plan to have a “couples” baby shower by asking a multi-dude focus group if they’d want to attend. Like me, they had less than zero interest. After all, what’s more emasculating than opening up onesie after onesie and attempting to sound sincere in your thank-yous?

Dads do, however, have to unload/store all the loot that comes from a baby shower. And it can get cumbersome. So it was refreshing to see an article in Yahoo Finance refuting the status quo by listing just the necessary items for taking care of an infant.

And no, a $50 baby bottle drying rack is not on the list.

1. Clothes

2. Diapers

3. Car Seat

4. Crib

5. Stroller

6. Bouncie Seat

7. Baby Bottle(s)

That’s it. All the rest is superfluous and designed to prey on new parent’s insecurities—and to make companies rich. Like the baby safety helmet…

What’s the most ridiculously useless thing you got at a baby shower?

You thought our sophomoric effort at blog design was less-than-optimal? Well get a load of this professionally designed layout we’ll be implementing over the next few weeks. Eternal thanks to our friends at digital agency The Material Group.

Congratulations to Band of Fathers regular contributor Matt Ledoux and his wife Steph.

These first-time parents gave birth to a healthy baby girl this morning.

If we weren’t so damned cheap, we’d send an edible arrangement or a diaper cake. Or an edible diaper cake.

Brought to you by The Huffington Post, the ‘Drudge Report of the Left’

Here’s a slideshow of some parenting “fails.” Some of these parents are guilty of being grossly negligent. Some are guilty of far worse. And while it’s obvious that several of these shots are faked, they’re still pretty amusing.

So go ahead, feel better about your parenting skills today: see the full slideshow.

If you’ve never even heard the word “doula” before, the Doulas of North America website defines it thusly:

A birth doula is a person trained and experienced in childbirth who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to the mother before, during and just after childbirth.

My wife and I have secured the services of a doula for our firstborn. I’ve done some research but was unable to discover the statistics of their use (i.e., where they’re used more, east vs. west, etc.). I’ve got a hunch it’s more of a coastal thing as there’s lots of ‘touch-feely’ action going on with the whole process.

There are some unsubstantiated numbers I found that describe the benefits of using a doula, but by no means take them as gospel:

• 50% reduction in the cesarean rate
• 25% shorter labor
• 60% reduction in epidural requests
• 40% reduction in oxytocin use
• 30% reduction in analgesia use
• 40% reduction in forceps delivery

Even if those numbers are inflated, if I were a woman, any kind of reduction in the duration of labor would be reason enough to go with a doula.

Granted, the services of a doula do not come cheap—especially as it’s totally out-of-pocket (I don’t believe any U.S. insurance company offers coverage for them). Our doula works on a sliding-scale basis, but even so, ours is costing in excess of $2,000. I know that sounds crazy to most of you (it did to me at first), but if we’re going to attempt a natural childbirth, this is a way of making it a possibility. Not only that, but I already view the kid as an “investment” and figure it’s a tiny fraction of what we’ll be spending on it in the months and years ahead.

We had a 2.5 hour get-to-know-each-other meeting the other day with our doula. She is quite knowledgable, which inspires a lot of confidence. After all, she’s been present at hundreds of births. And I’m excited to see how she makes things easier not just for my wife, but for me as well. Our doula is a soothing person to be around, and I suspect that will come in very handy come labor-time.

I will write another post post-birth to let you know how it worked out for us and if I’d recommend one or not. But it all depends on what you want from a birth and, of course, what you’re willing to spend.

Did you use a doula? Was it a positive experience? If you didn’t use one, tell us why we’re crazy to spend this kind of money.