Ahhh, yes – car seats.

If there’s one item dads have no business meddling with, it’s the car seat.  Leave that up to mom, marketers say, because they’re the ones who will be shuttling baby along to appointments, shopping trips and day care centers.  Dad doesn’t even visit baby stores, and when he tries, it turns into utter chaos, right KSN?

But is this trend changing?

Here we have an email ad from Babies R Us, who doesn’t just give dad his due once, but twice – and almost exclusively by way of hiding a mom in the fuzzy background.  This wasn’t necessary, but it certainly sends a strong message as to who this store wanted featured in its marketing.  To be sure, we’ve seen plenty of mom-and-dad photos before, but this ad almost wholly features dads.

Babies R Us proves that dads belong in baby ads, and that they parent, too.  It isn’t afraid to buck the old fashioned trend that it formerly perpetuated, when we wrote about its Big Baby Book.

However, that was almost two years ago, so we’ll ask it again:  are things changing for the better?

We like to think so, and kudos to the creative team at Babies R Us for its inclusion of dads as the rightful parents they are, substantiating the fact that dads shop and parent, too.