The Expectant Father

In a book hailed as “revolutionary” and the “ultimate gift,” The Expectant Father is a month-by-month guide of your wife’s pregnancy — from the “father’s perspective.”  The Expectant Father manages to cover all the fatherhood bases in a tidy 250+ pages.  It provides useful summaries of what you should expect mom and baby to be going through physically and emotionally each month, and offers tips on everything from choosing a name to choosing the type of IRA to invest in.  And to top it all off, it’s co-written by a woman, because (irritatingly enough) a fatherhood book written only by a man could only be found under the humor section of your local bookstore.  The month-by-month layout is pretty useless — don’t wait until the onset of the 7th month to read the chapter on the seventh month.   For example, the “Oh my God, I’m going to be a father” section doesn’t kick in until the fifth month for some reason, and I never got around to reading the Ninth Month during my wife’s pregnancy because my daughter was a month early (and on the flip side, most people probably won’t buy this book until at least month 2).   A book broken up topically (Chapter 1: “Why I’m more qualified to be a nuclear physicist than a dad;” Chapter 2: “No sex for you!;” Chapter 3 “Where did all the processed turkey go?;” Chapter 4: “Baby Furniture Ain’t Cheap;” Chapter 5: “Episiotomies and you”) would work better as a resource.  All of that said, this book does a good job of raising dad’s hysteria level to a place that mom wants it to be, and allows dad to be conversant in things that mom wants to talk about.
-Etan Mark 

The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips and Advice for Dads to Be. By Armin Brott. Abbeville Press.