Birds and the bees, birth, and vasectomies. ZM’s Clint Roberts and How to Dad YouTube star Jordan Watson chat all things parenting in their new podcast.
When it comes to explaining the birds and the bees to your children for the first time, should you use the words “donga and doo-doo” or anatomical terms?
How to explain where babies come from is one of the topics Jordan Watson and Clint Roberts discuss in their new NZME parenting podcast, The Parenting Hangover.
ZM Radio star Roberts, who co-hosts the Bree & Clint drive show with Bree Tomasel, has been mates with Watson for a decade. Watson is famous for his hilarious How to Dad YouTube channel, which has 1.34 million subscribers.
Now aged in their mid-30s with five daughters between them, they’ve teamed up to talk all things parenting in unedited, quick-witted, dad banter.
Roberts, who grew up in Rotorua, says New Zealand has been lacking a dad-led podcast, and nothing is off the table.
Seven weeks into the podcast, they’ve discussed everything from kids and phones to coping with the death of family pets, dads putting on pregnancy weight (yes, you read that right), vasectomies, and the cringeworthy moment that parents teach their kids about sex.
In the first episode of The Parenting Hangover, Watson, who lives in Pāpāmoa with wife Jody and daughters Mila, 10, Alba, 8, and Nala, 5, tells Roberts that Mila wanted to know how babies are made, so he and Jody introduced her - and by default Alba and Nala - to the children’s sex education book Making a Baby by Rachel Greener, with surprising and amusing results.
Roberts, who’s married to Lucy, with whom he has daughters Tui, 3, and Maggie, 2, says feedback from his mates who’ve listened to the episode was that they could relate.
“The new word in our friend group is donga. Donga is the word de jour,” he shares, referencing the episode where they discuss anatomy terms and memories of how their parents informed them of sex.
For Roberts, it happened on the night of his sixth-form ball.
He recalls: “I was already suited and booted, ready to go… and Dad goes, ‘Can I just see you for a minute?’.
He was led into a bedroom and handed an illustrated, how-to pamphlet, that had a condom stapled to it.
Watson: “They’d punctured the condom?”
Roberts laughs and says it got “really awkward”, but his dad had the best of intentions.
Watson shared a similar experience with listeners.
He was 14 and about to leave for a Saturday night party.
His dad had his eyes fixated on the TV watching Stargate SG-1, but he opened his wallet and without moving his gaze or saying anything, flicked a condom at Watson, which hit him on the shoulder and fell to the ground.
He picked it up awkwardly and bolted.
“I got to the party and blew it up like a cool balloon.”
Times have changed
Reflecting on parenting in the 1990s and early 00s, and how they handle tricky situations themselves, is something they reckon listeners will relate to.
“Once you become a parent it’s that constant state of trying to keep up,” Watson says, referencing the podcast’s “hangover” title.
No one is perfect and we are not here preaching that we are perfect dads but we’re trying the best we can.”
Their podcast is for everyone - mums included - who the pair say will likely giggle and roll their eyes.
The men start each episode by reflecting on the week that’s been and how their kids are doing, and while it’s mainly the inertia of daily life - think children’s TV show CoComelon, your 8-year-old being smarter at maths than you, and the pitfalls of hand-me-downs and lying to your kids - there are meatier topics too.
But they only tackle subjects they have lived experience with, such as attending births.
All three of Watson’s daughters were born via water births.
For the first one, he entered the birthing suite surprised that there wasn’t an actual pool, but a “small spa with no jets” and “no scuba gear required”.
Both men advise dads-to-be to come prepared. Watson suggests packing sandwiches, and Deep Heat to aid your back while you rub hers.
Roberts suggests a phone charger, pillow, toothbrush, a change of clothes and undies, and a Bluetooth speaker.
The birth of his first daughter took 36 hours, and the second, five hours.
He’s since had a vasectomy, whereas Watson hasn’t.
On episode two of the podcast called “Snippity-Snip-Snip”, Roberts talks listeners through the $550 vasectomy procedure he had in Auckland. After Watson’s sceptical reaction, Roberts assures him, “it’s not that big a deal”.
In the podcast, he tries to rally Watson for a future snip, by saying that in Tauranga, there’s a doctor “every guy” in the Bay of Plenty wants to go to for their vasectomy because he has a wall of whiskeys to choose from before the procedure.
Tougher conversations are helped along by a beer during recording on a Tuesday night, and the episode drops on Thursday.
At the end of each episode, they share listener feedback from the previous week. And as they progress, they’d like to get guest speakers on the show, including international “heavy-hitting” dads. They anticipate parenting topics to be endless because everything is relatable.
“You often feel like whatever the crazy, hard bit is that’s happening, it’s only happening to you. It’s not,” Roberts says.
And they’ve got all angles covered except for the teenage years, and the fact “we don’t have any boys”, Watson says.
Who is the easier of the two sexes is debatable.
Boys, they’ve heard, are harder in their younger years but easier teenagers than girls.
“Yeah,” says Roberts. “They’ll need more than a pamphlet.”
Carly Gibbs is a weekend magazine writer for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post and has been a journalist for two decades. She is a former news and feature writer, for which she’s been both an award finalist and winner.
How to listen
New episodes of @theparetnighangover drop Thursdays on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
ZM Radio and iHeart Radio are NZME stations. NZME also publishes the NZ Herald, Bay of Plenty Times Weekend and Rotorua Daily Post Weekend.