Dads carrying a flower-printed messenger bag filled with diapers, bottles, towels, blankets and a pacifier or two? We’ve all been there.
Adam Harr, a father of two boys and a girl, was fed up with poorly designed, ridiculous looking diaper bags, so he said no more. He didn’t walk away from his parental responsibilities of, literally, shouldering part of the load. Instead, he created a line of diaper bags for men who want to be involved but comfortable dads.
Adam, our Lead Dad of the Week from Seattle, created Fifty Fifty Gear in 2021, drawing on his knowledge of running Amazon’s baby registry division when he was a new dad in 2015. “I was very frustrated that there were not products out there, specifically a bag that I would be excited to buy and use every day,” Adam said. “If it was out there, it was on Amazon, and I saw it. I bought this dude dad bag and it was terrible. I felt like wearing a giant military backpack was a bit much.”
He recently started working as a senior product director at Capital One (What’s in your wallet, er, diaper bag???) He remains 100 percent committed to 50/50 – both the bags and his role as a Lead Dad. His wife is a clinical psychotherapist who can’t cancel appointments when a child gets sick.
“I have leaned into the fact that my wife’s career is not flexible, so I need to be more flexible,” he said. “What I’ve come to accept is that it’s going to create a period of time when I have to do work during the day and at night or in some ways it can be professionally limiting. I’ve come to terms with that tradeoff.”
And a cool 50/50 bag doesn’t hurt. “No one would notice if you were rocking this bag on the train,” he said. “It’s also a great hiking bag. And it’s a great diaper bag. I had to rock a zebra printed bag with gold zippers for years. It wasn’t very comfortable. It had bad straps. And it showed that overall parenting products don’t consider the role dads play.”
Welcome, Adam, to The Company of Dads – and thanks for offering a 15 percent discount to any Lead Dads buying some gear. Just enter code “leaddad15” at checkout.
