Dads Petition to Rename “Amazon Mom” Program

A group of dad bloggers is pushing Amazon to rename its “Amazon Mom” membership program to a more inclusive “Amazon Family” in the United States.

The campaign, which started over two years ago, has gained a new momentum this week, following the death of blogger Oren Miller, an early champion of the campaign.

The “Amazon Mom" program, which caters to new parents and caregivers and provides discounts on diapers and other kid-centric items, already is called "Amazon Family" in the United Kingdom, Canada and other countries where Amazon operates.

Miller, a father of two who died on Feb. 28 after a nine-month battle with lung cancer, asked Amazon back in 2013 to call the program what it’s named in many countries outside the U.S.

“It's not about a name and it's not about me personally being offended,” Miller wrote on his blog, Blogger and a Father. "… It's about a company that looks at the U.S., then looks at England, and then decides that over there, parent equals mom or dad, while here, well, we're not ready for that yet.”

The number of dads who stay at home with their children has risen in recent years from 1.1 million in 1989 to up to 2 million in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center.

Miller first drew attention to the name in 2013 when he pointed readers to a petition established by another blogger, Jeffrey Harrington, a dad from Kansas.

On March 3, Miller’s fellow bloggers restarted the campaign, using the hashtag #AmazonFamilyUS and sharing a graphic created by Chris Routly, who publishes the Daddy Doctrines, to ask the company to change the name.

By Thursday afternoon, Harrington's change.org petition gathered over 5,200 signatures.

“This is not a case of dads versus moms,” wrote Carter Gaddis, a member of the 1,000-strong dad blogger community Miller founded, and a “Today” contributor. “We’re not angry. We’re baffled, frankly, because most of us believe that Amazon is better than this.”

As of Thursday afternoon, Amazon has not responded to a request for comment.

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