Five Reasons Why Other Neighborhoods Want Park Slope Dad

photo credit: colorstalker/flicker.comAmongst the single, female twenty-somethings in New York, Park Slope is known for expensive brunches, the best place in Brooklyn to have a picnic…and hot dads. Yes, the attractive papas pushing strollers down 5th Avenue have made their way onto the list of Park Slope's most enviable characteristics. For the young woman who swoons for Brooklyn's signature creative type, these fathers are the crème de la crème, with their hipster touches of tailored denim button-downs and trimmed beards. Yet, their most attractive feature is their stability. They have things men in Williamsburg joyfully neglect (daily showers), and guys from Bushwick have never heard of (health insurance).  So here are the top five reasons that a Park Slope dad -- with a baby strapped to his chest and a toddler heading for your ankles with a scooter -- makes the girls drool and the boys request to connect with them on LinkedIn:

1. Their careers are things of television fairytales. The proximity of Park Slope to Manhattan doesn't matter to them -- they never leave their block. These freelance writers, graphic designers and web developers fill expensive coffee shops from 11 to 3,  tapping away on their computers once or twice, comforted by the success of their previously published book or their web app that has been downloaded by millions.

2. They dress like the singers of Mumford and Sons. Their jeans fall perfectly to their Chukka boots. The floral pattern of their oxford shirts that peek behind cashmere sweaters are wild enough to remind you of their creative side. But those Warby Parker glasses speak all to their seriousness. And their man bags. Oh, don't even get me started.

3. They know men. Sit in one Park Slope coffee shop for five minutes and all the left-hand-ringfinger-wearing, glasses-donning, child-bearing men will slap each other on the back, ask about the dinosaur birthday party that inevitably happened the week before, and buy each other cups of coffee. And a single gal cannot help but think that they hold the key to all the responsible, health-insurance-having, apartment lease-signing, commit-making men that she has yet to meet. 

4. They play with their kids. Take one loop around Prospect Park and you will find an endless amount of bearded lads throwing a ball with a toddler or two and your heart breaks. If this is the one hour of the week they do so, we'll never know. They look like flawless, loving, selfless dads to us. We hear tales of how they wait in line for hours, if not days, to get their child a spot at the summer camp du jour. These men are paternal. They love something besides themselves. They are responsible enough to be partly in charge of feeding another living thing. All things young women thought men incapable of, all things Park Slopes dads do on the daily.  

5.They're married. They wear their wedding rings proudly (If we're not counting when they check out a young thang on the subway and just happen to keep their left hand safely tucked away in a dark-wash denim pocket for the entirety of the train ride from Union Square to Atlantic). They have said vows. The agreed to paint the walls of their owned apartment yellow. Canary yellow. In a world where a gal can't find a guy who will commit to a coffee date, much less a marriage, seeing a man who has willfully chosen to be with someone for eternity gives women everywhere hope that the rumors are true, men do want to get married