Dad jokes are a recognizable style of humor: frequent, deliberately corny, and often delivered with complete confidence. Survey results from The Dad, state-level figures from Betting.us, and published research offer several ways to measure the habit, from daily joke counts to family groans and online participation.
Table of contents
- How common are dad jokes?
- Groans, frequency, and family reactions
- Dad-joke culture across states
- The classic dad-ism
- The wider dad profile
- What research says about dad humor
How common are dad jokes?
The Dad’s survey suggests that dad jokes are not an occasional novelty for most respondents. Some 95.2% of surveyed dads said they make at least one dad joke per day. More than 50% said they tell at least three dad jokes every day, indicating that a sizable share moves from a daily habit into a regular stream of jokes.
The survey also measured how those jokes are received. Nearly half of dads, 49.6%, said most of their dad jokes elicit groans from partners and/or children. At the other end, 3.9% said none of their dad jokes elicit groans. The figures describe a familiar pattern: the groan is not necessarily a sign that the joke failed to reach its audience. It is part of the social response associated with the format.
The Dad also found that 47.0% of dads said they can create basic meals from scratch, while 43.3% described themselves as “Gordon Ramsay” in the kitchen. These figures are not joke-frequency measures, but they show how the survey places humor alongside other recognizable parts of a broad dad identity.
Groans, frequency, and family reactions
The relationship between telling more jokes and receiving more groans is visible in several The Dad results. Among dads who told one or two dad jokes per day, 44.5% said only a few of their jokes elicit groans, while 38.2% said most of their jokes get groans. For dads telling more than six dad jokes per day, 69% said family members groan at most of their jokes.
| Dad-joke habit | Reported reaction |
|---|---|
| One to two jokes per day: only a few elicit groans | 44.5% |
| One to two jokes per day: most get groans | 38.2% |
| More than six jokes per day: most get groans | 69% |
| No dad jokes elicit groans | 3.9% |
The results support a measured description rather than a claim that telling more jokes causes more groans. The survey reports different response levels for different frequency groups; it does not establish a causal relationship. Still, the contrast is useful for writers portraying a dad whose joke habit has become part of the household’s daily rhythm.
Dad humor also appears in practical family rituals. The Dad reported that 81.2% of dads said their kids think money grows on trees. Some 52.6% said they garnish their kids’ fast-food orders on every order, and 34.5% said they do so only when the kids are not looking. Seventy percent said bringing in groceries takes at least two trips.
Car-related threats showed a wider spread. Forty-six percent said they never threaten to turn the car around. By contrast, 25.2% said they make that threat at least once per month, 19.2% at least once per week, and 10% every day. Among dads with one kid, 13.7% said they threaten to turn the car around at least weekly and 9.3% said every day. Among dads with more than five kids, the corresponding figures were 22.8% weekly and 15.7% daily.
Dad-joke culture across states
Betting.us published state scores for dad-joke usage or acceptance on a five-point scale. The highest listed usage score was Pennsylvania’s 4.9 out of 5. Illinois, North Carolina, Missouri, and Tennessee each scored 4.7, while Colorado scored 4.6 and Nebraska 4.5.
The lowest listed acceptance scores were 2.2 out of 5 for Mississippi and Oregon. New Hampshire scored 2.3, while Vermont and West Virginia each scored 2.5. Because the source uses “usage” for some results and “acceptance” for others, the labels should remain distinct rather than being treated as one uniform measure.
| State | Score | Source measure label |
|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | 4.9/5 | Dad-joke usage |
| Illinois | 4.7/5 | Dad-joke usage |
| North Carolina | 4.7/5 | Dad-joke usage |
| Missouri | 4.7/5 | Dad-joke usage |
| Tennessee | 4.7/5 | Dad-joke usage |
| Colorado | 4.6/5 | Dad-joke usage |
| Nebraska | 4.5/5 | Dad-joke usage |
| Mississippi | 2.2/5 | Dad-joke acceptance |
| Oregon | 2.2/5 | Dad-joke acceptance |
| New Hampshire | 2.3/5 | Dad-joke acceptance |
| Vermont | 2.5/5 | Dad-joke acceptance |
| West Virginia | 2.5/5 | Dad-joke acceptance |
Betting.us also identified the most prevalent dad-isms by state. “Hi Hungry, I’m Dad” was most popular in 9 states. “I’m not sleeping, I’m just resting my eyes” was most prevalent in 8 states, and “Back in my day” was most common in 7 states.
The classic dad-ism
The reasons dads give for using dad-isms help explain why these phrases survive even when the audience knows what is coming. Betting.us reported that 35% of dads said they use dad-isms because they make their kids laugh. Another 15% said they use them because the sayings annoy their kids. For 23%, dad-isms were part of their fatherly duty, while 7% described using dad jokes as a hard-to-kick habit.
The audience is not uniformly opposed. Fifty-one percent of moms secretly enjoy dad jokes, according to Betting.us. That figure adds an important distinction to the familiar groan: a visible reaction can coexist with private enjoyment.
The Dad’s figures on clothing and household habits show how dad humor overlaps with recurring visual and behavioral details. New Balance was selected as the ultimate dad shoe by 46.5% of respondents. Nike Air Monarchs received 13.0%, flip flops 12.1%, Crocs 7.4%, and sandals with socks 4.6%.
Cargo shorts were similarly common. The Dad reported that 83% of dads owned at least one pair. The reported ownership groups included 33.3% with one or two pairs, 38.6% with three to five pairs, and 10.7% with more than six pairs. Dads who chose New Balance had 35% higher odds of owning at least one pair of cargo shorts than dads who chose flip flops or none of the listed choices. At least 75% of dads in every shoe-choice category owned at least one pair.
Clothing longevity was another strong result: 87.3% of dads had a shirt at least seven years old, and almost 40% still wore a shirt that was 16 or more years old. Among dads in their 20s, 10% had a shirt more than 16 years old.
The wider dad profile
The Dad’s survey connected dad identity with food, grilling, sports, drinks, travel, and lawns. Steak preferences leaned toward rare to medium-rare: 62.3% of dads preferred that range. More than 90% of self-described “Gordon Ramsays” preferred steaks rare to medium-rare. Gas was preferred over charcoal for grilling by 55% of dads, and 90.1% said they do at least two test clicks per grilling session.
Sports preferences were varied. Fourteen percent said they do not watch any sports. NFL or NCAA football was the favorite sport for 43.2%, NHL for 10.9%, and baseball for 10.3%. For adult beverages, beer led at 41.9%, followed by whiskey at 25.1%.
Airport timing was also measured: 82.6% of dads said they arrive at the airport two hours or less before their flight. Lawn care produced three broad positions. Some 15.7% said they do not care about their lawns, 56.3% said lawn care is a hassle but they take pride in a well-kept lawn, and 27.8% said lawn care is a way of life. Among the last group, 83.3% said they were at least contenders for the best lawn in the neighborhood.
Thermostat habits supplied another household measure. The Dad reported that 88.6% of dads preferred the thermostat below 70 degrees in winter, while 21.4% preferred it above 70 degrees. Some 54.7% reported having no thermostat security. Among dads with some security, 85.3% said the thermostat was programmed and 4.2% said they used a lockbox.
Family members messed with the thermostat at least occasionally in 70.4% of households with no thermostat security and about 60% of households with some security. The reported share saying family members always mess with it was 12.4% in lockbox households, 11.6% in password-protected households, and 6.0% in programmed-thermostat households.
What research says about dad humor
Dad jokes have also become a subject of online and academic measurement. “Dad Jokes and the Deep Roots of Fatherly Teasing” reported that the r/DadJokes community had 3.4 million members in 2022; the same community was reported at 3.4 million members when cited in the 2021 paper. Google Books listed no fewer than 300 books dedicated to compiling dad jokes. Merriam-Webster added the dad-joke entry in 2019.
The Sciety summary of a 2026 dad-humor preprint described three studies. Study 1 coded more than 32,000 jokes from r/dadjokes. Its model predicting joke upvotes reached a test-sample R2 of 4.02%, while the model predicting comments reached 4.42%. Study 2 used a hypercube subsample of 501 dad jokes and collected funniness ratings from 621 adults. It achieved cross-validated R2 of 28.2%. Study 3 achieved cross-validated R2 of 32.4%, and the study found that dads rated the dad jokes funnier than non-dads. The joke corpus from the 2026 preprint was released for researchers to study humor.
Another experiment, reported by Smithsonian Magazine, tested whether laugh tracks changed reactions to dad jokes. It involved 72 adults and used 40 dad jokes, including 24 autistic adults in the study. These sample sizes matter: the experiment measured responses in a defined group rather than representing every audience or every kind of dad joke.
The supplied research also includes broader humor context. The American Heart Association cited laughter research based on 15 years of health data following more than 53,000 Norwegians. Separately, the humor-norms paper from Springer Nature built norms for 4,997 English words to support cognitive, developmental, and applied humor research. Those figures concern laughter, language, or humor research broadly, so they should not be read as direct measures of dad-joke frequency.