The news that a man at the helm of a parenting publication was news to the New York Times is nothing short of depressing. So he's a dad, and he's interested in parenting issues. And?
Come on, is that all there is here? Because we've got several dads who write for Babble on a regular basis (and one who outfits his daughter in some natty duds off his own sewing machine . . . I'll leave it to you readers to fight it out over which 'Derby Dad could double for Dior).
The point is, dads who know their parenting stuff are there - and they deserve credit for something other than what's hanging down between their legs.
Maybe I'm just cranky because I just put down a novel by a stay-at-home-dad about a stay-at-home-dad's brush with feeling too feminine simply for staying at home. Man of the House is Ad Hudler's follow-up to Househusband, a book I confess I never read.
Main character Linc Menner is Hudler in novel form, an anal-retentive (character and author both started coloring clubs in elementary school, then kicked the other kids to the curb for straying over the lines . . . they make medicine for that kind of thing these days) guy who decides he'll stick to the house to raise his daughter while his wife continues climbing the corporate ladder. The emasculating part isn't in letting their wives bring home the bacon but in a brush with home construction on their Florida home - when a man who spends all day with a daughter roiling with the hormones of puberty and all night with a wife roiling with the hormones of menopause is suddenly face to face with the uber macho man most of us just call the contractor.
I was all set to mock the storyline - guy emasculated by being a stay-at-home - until I started reading. As the daughter of a contractor, who, by the way, cries during chick flicks (sorry Dad), I get this. To this day, I am the only one in my family who has to think "righty tighty, lefty loosey" before I fit the screwdriver into the appropriate slots and start spinning. I take careful thwacks with my hammer - at least four or five to their one capable whaaaaaack. What should be my birth right as the daughter of a contractor somehow has passed me by - hopefully to my daughter.
The problem is, Linc Menner isn't any better at hanging drywall than I am - the difference in our "down there parts" be darned. So why should that separate our parenting skills? Why shouldn't a book about a guy making fun of the idiot mothers who have to have their own special parking spot in the school pick-up line be considered as snarky and fresh as it would coming from a mother herself? Man of the House isn't a book about a guy who steps into being the "mother" of the household. It's the book about a guy, who stays home with his kid, makes her eat three squares and do her homework and drives the van to the mall with a bunch of teenagers gabbing in the back.
In short, it's a book about a parent. The fact that it's not earth-shattering news makes it all the more worth reading.
Image: Amazon
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