How this works
Two minutes and you will know where everything is.
- Your children, your callsign and your Night Watch setting live in this browser and nowhere else.
- You can read and post straight away. No email, no password.
- Clear your browser data and it is gone, including your callsign.
- Switch to another device and you start fresh.
- Your profile follows you. Sign in on your phone, your laptop, anywhere.
- You get told when somebody replies to you.
- Your stage and preferences stop living on one device.
- You can delete the whole account whenever you like.
Signing up does not make you public. Everything you post is still shown under your callsign only. Your real name is never asked for, so it cannot be shown, leaked or guessed. Other members cannot see your email address, and there is no profile page for strangers to browse.
Nothing is ever sold or shared with third parties. Not your email, not your stage, not what you read, not what you post. There is no advertising network here and no data broker. The point of this site is to help men through the hardest year of their lives, and selling that information out the back door would make it worthless.
One thing worth being straight about. If you have an account and you want to be told when somebody replies, the site has to store a private link between your account and your posts. There is no way around that: without it there is nothing to send the email to. That link is never shown to anyone, never returned to other members, and is destroyed if you delete your account, at which point your posts stay up and become genuinely unattributable. Post without an account and no link is ever created, but then nothing can notify you.
Internally, access is limited to what moderation requires. A moderator reviewing a reported post sees the callsign and the post, the same as you do.
The feed. Articles for your stage, memes, and anonymous posts from other men, newest first.
Start here. Tick "Everything" to see all stages rather than just yours.
Anonymous posts. Say the thing you cannot say on Facebook. No real names, ever.
Type into the box at the top of Dispatches and hit Transmit. That is the whole process.
Pick a stage for each child. A newborn and a teenager is a normal combination, and so are second families with big gaps.
Your feed leans towards the youngest, because that is where the need is sharpest, but you see everything for all of them. Change it any time in your profile.
18 entries on the practical stuff, from hospital bags to safer sleep to paternity pay.
Filter by stage or search. Everything is checklists and short sections, not essays.
Weekly caption competition. One image, your best line, everyone votes.
This is the fun bit. Winners go up the following week.
Gear reviews written by men who have been vomited on, with community ratings.
Check here before buying anything expensive.
Post a Distress Signal. It is anonymous and men further down the road answer. For anything practical, search the Manual first, it is probably in there. If you are struggling with your head rather than the logistics, read "When it is more than tiredness" and take it seriously.
Read that oneReply to signals in your stage. If you are past the first year, your experience is the most valuable thing on this site, and answering one man a week costs you five minutes. Answers marked useful build your rank.
Find someone to answerCaption Duty every week, and memes throughout Dispatches. Dark humour about how hard this is is the house style. The one rule: never at your partner's expense.
Caption DutyOne rule worth repeating
Be honest about how hard it is. Take the mickey out of yourself as much as you like. Never at your partner's expense. That single line is why this place is usable, and it is enforced.