How Much Does the Modern Father Suck?

Lizzie Skurnick reads the Foer and the Chabon alike in search of understanding what’s gotten so hideously annoying about modern dads. “Foer’s unhinged screed against the dangers of the modern meat-industrial complex takes ‘me too’ fathering to a new level…. There is nothing wrong with falling into wonderment at one’s own child. (It is contraindicated over the long term.) There’s also nothing wrong with being against the wholesale ripping of beaks off innocent chickens to keep Tyson Foods in business, an image Foer returns to frequently. Who, after all, is for a food system that, among other things, routinely releases a geyser of fecal matter into the air to spray neighboring crops? The problem is that Foer suddenly cares-and, by extension, so must we-because some day one micrometer of that shit might fall on the head of Jonathan Safran Foer’s son.”