Jean-François Bureau

But if someone jumps on me to find it funny, I have to trust the person.

I mean, I will not accept a complete stranger jumping on me and start tickling me, right?

That is, yeah, absolutely.

I think, you know, what we've seen in research is because mothers spend more time and they also have different roles with the child.

So there's maybe in most families a greater variety of ways to show your child that you love them and that you're there for them, you support them because there's comforting emotional responses, things like that with mothers.

With fathers, because they spend most of their time playing...

Well, maybe it's important for the child to feel that the father is actually enjoying playing with them and they're being playful.

And you know what?

I'm here because I want to be with you.

I want to have fun with you.

So what we found in our paper that you're mentioning is this is more related to child's trust, the child's quality of relationship with the father if father is being playful like this.

You know, in my paper, that research, the kids are younger.

My three-year-old dad jokes, it's not that clear they can really catch it or not.

It's more physical.

It's really about tickling and chasing.

However, we have a second wave when they're like 11, 12, and we're about to look at it.

And just my observation at this point, it's all about dad joke.

They don't chase, they don't tickle the 12-year-old anymore.

It's all about dad joke.

And in my opinion, being a father of two adolescents, dad jokes are amazing in teaching your child that you survive the embarrassment of being stupid, of saying something that's completely off the wall, that nobody found funny, and you survive it.