Good dad jokes aren’t limited to one format. From playful one-liners to unexpected comparisons, they come in all shapes and sizes.
However, what if I told you that one of the best to ever tell them wasn’t even a real dad? At least not in the traditional sense of flesh and bones.
There’s a character on the internet with a receding hairline and a white shirt who’s actually a comedic genius—second to your old man, of course.
Continue scrolling to check out some of the best posts from the fun social media project, ‘Dad Jokes!’
More info: Instagram | Facebook | X
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As priceless as these posts are, we are ultimately interested in broader family fun—so we got in touch with our parenting expert,Vicki Broadbent.
She’s an award-winning TV broadcaster, best-selling author, and the woman behind the acclaimed blogHonest Mum. She told We that smiles and giggles are part of the day when you’re spending it with your children.
“My kids make me laugh every single day, whether it’s the wise observations my tween and teen say, or my bright three-year-old with her sass, silly jokes, or the sweet ways she tries to get her own way, for example, pretending she’s ‘so thirsty’ [and therefore] ‘needs an ice lolly.'”
“Parenting allows us to reconnect with the part of us that was their age once and which still resides within us,” Broadbent said. “I love that I get to be a fun mom as well as someone who supports, teaches, guides, and loves my kids unconditionally! There’s no one on earth funnier than kids. Well, maybe cats!”
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Some parents worry that acting silly around their children will damage their image as authority figures, but Vicki Broadbent doesn’t see why the two can’t coexist together.
“I think it’s important to show our kids that we are human, and I believe having fun with your children is vital,” she said. “Childhood is such a precious but fleeting time, and it should be filled with as much joy as possible.”
“As long as there are boundaries and you follow through when you discipline, for instance, provide warnings regarding difficult behaviour and then if they persist, ensure you follow through with a tech ban or grounding etc.,” you should be good!
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Broadbent, authorofMumboss(UK) andThe Working Mom(US and Canada), said, “Being consistent with discipline and rules doesn’t mean you can’t laugh with your kids! The most treasured and memorable moments will always be when you’re having fun together!”
As she enjoys the quality time with her family, the mom also sees her and her husband’s sense of humor reflected in their children. The couple tries to be role models for them in every way, so being able to laugh at similar things is an awesome addition to everyday life.
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“I love that I can share shows I love with my teen, for example, and he, at 15, in turn recommends programmes he thinks I’ll enjoy,” Vicki Broadbent of Honest Mum said.
“Our quality one-on-one time is spent watching films and TV, mostly when the younger kids are asleep. At 15, he’s busy with his friends and studies, but we always carve out time to reset and watch a box set together, and those times are so precious for me!”
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Coming back to dad jokes for a second, Marc Hye-Knudsen, who is a humor researcher and lab manager at Aarhus University’s Cognition and Behavior Lab, believes it would be a mistake to dismiss them as bad jokes and, at the same time, accuse dads of not having a sense of humor.
“When considered properly, dad jokes are an intricately multi-layered and fascinating phenomenon that reveals a lot not just about how humor and joke-telling work but also about fathers’ psychology and their relationships with their children,” Hye-Knudsen said.
“Dad jokes work on at least three levels: as puns, as anti-humor, and as a kind of weaponized anti-humor when dads use them to teasingly annoy and/or embarrass their children.”
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According to Hye-Knudsen, puns typically violate the conversational norm against ambiguity.
“In normal conversation, we can safely assume that the person we are talking to will only ever say one thing at a time, with their words thus having a clear, singular meaning,” he explained. “With a pun, we violate this norm by deliberately saying at least two different things at the same time.”
While he considers virtually all dad jokes to be puns, Hye-Knudsen doesn’t think that all puns are dad jokes.
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“The pun is often used as a means of violating another norm of some kind, typically a social norm, as with a sexual pun … Dad jokes are, by contrast, pure, terminally inoffensive puns. This is what makes them wholesome and appropriate for dads to tell around their kids.”
Admittedly, it’s also what makes dad jokes so susceptible to accusations of being stupid, lame, and unfunny.
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“Normally, when someone shifts to the humorous mode of discourse, which is typically signalled through a shift in tone or the use of discursive markers (e.g., ‘have you heard the one about…’), this is because they have something genuinely funny to say,” Hye-Knudsen continued.
“Dad jokes flagrantly violate this norm by following up this shift with a thoroughly tame pun.” A dad joke can thus be so stupid, so lame, and so bad that this paradoxically makes it good.
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And they’re universal! While “dad joke” is the undisputed term for the phenomenon in Anglo-American culture, Hye-Knudsen highlighted that the Japanese have a similar concept, called oyaji gyagu, which can be translated to “old men’s gags” or “middle-aged men’s gags.” Danes also have the term “dad jokes” (far jokes in Danish), but it belongs to a bigger family, including onkel humor (“uncle humor”) and morfar vittigheder (“grandfather jokes”).
“The common denominator here is men of a certain age,” Hye-Knudsen said. “Old enough to have children around them who can scoff and roll their eyes in embarrassment.”
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Finally, another reason why dad jokes have become part of pop culture might be the changing social expectations of men in general. “[They] seem perfectly tailored to the modern father figure, a markedly softer and less domineering kind of patriarch than that of earlier eras,” Marc Hye-Knudsen concluded. “The dad in question has to be willing to embarrass himself – to play the fool – in order to vicariously embarrass his kids.”
For more, check out We’s previous article, 50 Jokes With Punchlines That Ought To Make A Dad Giggle.
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