The Oxford English Dictionary defines baby-daddy as ?the father of a woman?s child, who is not her husband or (in most cases) her current or exclusive partner.? The baby-mama entry follows the same template with the genders reversed. But some gossip writers have been adopting the first part of the definition and ignoring the second. Salon recently called Tom Cruise ?Katie Holmes? baby-daddy,? even though the couple is engaged. And Gawker refers to Keven Federline as ?Britney Spears? baby-daddy,? even though the couple has been married for more than a year.
?These days, the terms no longer seem ?chiefly African-American??they?re everywhere, the latest bits of hip-hop lingo to gain widespread use. Baby-daddy is the new bling. Online, you can buy ?Jesus is my baby-daddy? magnets, tote bags, and beer steins. There is a drink called the ?babymama.? Scott Hoffman, the bassist for the glam rock band the Scissors Sisters, goes by the stage name ?Babydaddy.? Some of this cultural paraphernalia retains the old, loaded sense of the term: You can, for example, download a ?Salty Baby Mama? ringtone so that when people call, your phone will jangle and thrum while a woman?s voice says, ?Baby, I know you hear this damn phone ringing. I?m going to beat your ass, as soon as I see you.? But just as often, the connotations are strictly biological. Baby-mama has even made inroads in Japan, where it?s being used on a Web site that appears to sell strollers.
Who knows why these terms became catchphrases? Perhaps it?s just that they?re metrically pleasing: Baby-mama and baby-daddy are undeniably fun to say. But it?s the novelty factor that explains how the words lost their negative connotations. Sure, there are many gossip writers who still use the terms in their original senses (calling dancer Carlos Leon ?Madonna?s baby-daddy,? for example) because they?re useful, reducing a complex chain of possessives?Madonna?s daughter?s father?to a nice, comprehensible noun. But it seems there are also plenty of writers who just like the way the words sound and don?t care much about the stigma once attached to babydaddyhood. When news came last week that Anna Nicole Smith may be pregnant, it was no surprise that bloggers immediately began speculating about the identity of the ?baby daddy.? It may be a long time before you hear a quaint, old-fashioned ?Who?s the dad??
