Half-assed Book reviews

I've been devouring just about every pregnancy book I can get my hands on, which thanks to my friend Karyn is "Just about all of them." Figuring that I needed to bring my testosterone back into balance, I just finished The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott.

Obviously, most pregnancy books are all about the female experience. Best case, they try to throw in a chapter for the guy, but most of the time the advice can be boiled down to: 1. Don't Panic. 2. Keep her happy, if you know what's good for you.

In the worst cases, fathers (partners, WTFever we're called these days) are relegated to sidebar ghettos within the main text, with advice that assumes a "Y" chromosome is incompatible with higher brain functions: "Buy flowers without being asked!" "Foot rubs sure are nice!" "Pregnancy will change your relationship with your partner!" and my favorite, "Maybe you should stop drinking that six pack every night, drop a few pounds and take an interest in your wife, you son-of-a-bitch!"

As much as I'd love to give The Expectant Father a full review, the copy I got from the local library was the first edition, dated in the stone age of 1995. I realized even before I read it that the book would be woefully inadequate (the link above is to a 2nd edition), because it was published before the Internet took off. I might as well try to give you a lecture on European geography using a map dated 1885. I can only assume the new edition (2001) is an improvement in that department.

As if a book that predated Google wasn't enough of an anachronism, I actually found it in the library next to a book subtitled "Raising your child in the '80s." (holy crap, it's actually listed, if not available, on Amazon.) I'm sure this was quite the "rad" title back in the day. Seeing it on the shelf now, no joke the first thought to pop into my head was a mother, wearing legwarmers and sporting the skycraper hair so popular in my high school yearbook, sitting in a nursery singing A-Ha's "Take on me" as a lullaby to her child in his infant-sized "Members Only" jacket.

Whoa, tangent. Anyway...right. The book I actually READ.

It was refreshing to read a book that acknowledged men as having a different set of feelings and concerns from their pregnant spouses, or indeed having any valid feelings or concerns whatsoever. When it comes to pregnancy and birth, we're often looked at as the junior partners, or subordinate to the cult of mommy. In general, he's very good at telling guys not to buckle to pressure from family and friends to do things a certain way.

I also like how honestly he deals with the inevitable pressures put on guys -- this especially comes out in the chapter where he talks about fear of the delivery room. He comes out squarely against conventional wisdom and says that if the father is too creeped out by the delivery room (and can get his wife to go along), he doesn't have to be in the delivery room. After reading it, I was somewhat surprised he lived to release a second edition -- but I admire him for saying it. Outside of safety matters, a family ought to be able to make their own choices.

My plan, when I write my own "Guy's guide to surviving the amusment park that is having kids" (you're soaking in it!), is to convey to guys that there is a rush of different emotions, unique to guys, that they might experience at every point in the process. Guys should revel in the experience and not believe that these strange new feelings are unusual, or make them weak. But I also plan to tell guys that keeping a lot of these feelings to themselves is also a completely healthy part of guy-hood; that we are not, and shoud not, be part of the modern mommy-cult.

Overall, I give the book a solid 3 coffee mugs on a scale of 5. (Yeah, still working on my ratings system. Cut me some slack.) On the one hand, I almost have to recommend it, just because I know of so few books for the daddy-to-be that are serious about his role and view him as more than a bystander. Still, I'm not rushing to drop $10 just to see what improvements might be in the 2nd edition.