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Interestingly, dad jokes might actually be good for kids.
Marc Hye-Knudsen, a researcher of humor and lab manager at Aarhus University’s Cognition and Behavior Laboratory in Denmark, wrote in the British Psychological Society's journal that they are important to help the little ones learn to accept that embarrassment.
"At first blush, fathers’ more aggressive style of physical play and their teasing style of humor with their children might seem cruel, but that would be missing the point," Hye-Knudsen explained. "By continually pushing and challenging their children, fathers’ style of rough-and-tumble play supports their children’s physical and cognitive development in important ways while teaching them to regulate their behaviors and emotions."
"Ideally, fathers’ rougher style of joking fulfills a similar function: by teasingly striking at their children’s egos and emotions without teetering over into bullying, fathers build their children’s resilience and train them to withstand minor attacks and bouts of negative emotion without getting worked up or acting out, teaching them impulse control and emotional regulation," the researcher said.
In light of this, Hye-Knudsen thinks it is worth considering dad jokes as a pedagogical tool that may serve a beneficial function for the very children who roll their eyes at them.
"Telling their children jokes that are so bad that they’re embarrassing, fathers may push their children’s limits for how much embarrassment they can handle," Hye-Knudsen said.
"They show their children that embarrassment isn’t fatal. For a child who is approaching or has entered adolescence, which appears to be a sensitive period for sociocultural processing, this is an immensely valuable lesson. In this sense, dad jokes may have a positive ... effect, toughening up the kids who are begrudgingly exposed to them."
For this reason, Hye-Knudsen suggests that dad jokes are perfectly suited to our era. "In contemporary Western culture, which rewards individualism over traditional conformity, it’s a boon to be able to withstand the short-term embarrassment that comes from violating social norms in order to stand by one’s authentic self despite external social pressure."
"Dad jokes resemble the rough-and-tumble play that fathers have instinctively been moved to engage their children in since before the dawn of our species, without knowing the important function that such roughhousing plays in their children’s development," the researcher continued.
"Among non-human primates, fathers also love playing rough with their offspring. While dad jokes are ideally suited to [contemporary life] and the distinctly modern father figure, the phenomenon thus builds on inclinations that go back literally millions of years."
The term dad joke made it into the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2019 with the definition, “a wholesome joke of the type said to be told by fathers with a punchline that is often an obvious or predictable pun or play on words and usually judged to be endearingly corny or unfunny.”
And thanks to pages like 'Premium Dad Jokes', the best ones will live on the internet for future generations as well.
