The Manuals Are Useless

It's time to face facts: dad  books are awful.

I mean, every dad gets roped into reading What to Expect When You're Expecting, and every dad is going to have to weigh in on at least one bizarre scare scenario that book lays out. Then you go out and buy a bunch of dad books and it turns out most of them cram first year parenting in with pregnancy so you get two phases of mansplaining and crappy jokes in one book. You're probably going to buy a couple so feel free to check my math, reading the banal Everything Father-to-Be book or the vaguely amusing but equally unhelpful Pop Culture or the Guy's Guide to Surviving Toddlers, Tantrums and Separation Anxiety (Yours, Not Your Kid's!). I did not make the last title up. And if you think that's bad, check out a representative section:

So I volunteered to be the one to change what was not only my first diaper but also my son's very first poopy diaper. At the time, we had a few people in the room with us, and I asked them all to leave. You'll understand this when your time comes, believe me. I was nervous enough; I didn't need an audience at this very moment to intimidate me further.

Fucking seriously? You got performance anxiety over changing your first diaper? Jesus Christ. It's a diaper. Put it on backwards, put it on forwards. Put it on halfassed. You're going to be changing a million of them so you're going to get plenty of practice. And if you're afraid of looking like a stupid asshole in the course of being a parent I got some really bad news for you too. Go ahead and call the audience back in. They probably have good advice. Ignore or yell at them at your leisure, it's one of the perks of the job.

So you run up against two issues in these dad books. The first is that there's no real consensus on what dads are even supposed to be doing. There's just agreement that the job requires more than OUR dads (and thanks for that, our dads?). Most of them have this bizarre fifth wheel quality too, like you're never going to be as queen awesome as Mom because diapers are such a puzzle. Or something. But I can deal with the role fuzziness: no one has any idea what consultants are supposed to do either, least of all the actual consultants. We don't get licensed, and our only professional association is a self congratulation club that charges too much for conferences. If whatever you're doing is working then, well, it's working. If not you figure it out.

The other issue is that manuals are great for low variance situations. For example, when assembling furniture. Prong A, Slot B, Bolt C, apply screwdriver, admire work. There isn't any scenario where the leaning desk vomits right in your face or inexplicably won't eat despite being clearly hungry and furious about it. It's just a desk. Follow instructions and it will work. On the other hand, there's high-variance situations. Then you can learn as much as you want but it's not going to help that much. Take research consulting. There's a lot of stuff you do need to know, like which taxes are public record or what a lien is and when it is bad. Unfortunately consulting means applying this knowledge to campaigns, where the candidates are crazy and the managers are driven crazy. The manuals don't cover what to say when the candidate chickens out of using the three best attacks then yells at you because your last ditch attack is lame and thinly sourced. Or when the candidate "forgot" about a previous divorce.* Beyond staying calm and talking it out with the other grownup in the room, there's not a whole lot to say in advance.

So, uh. Stay calm and talk it out with the other grownup in the room. And stop buying the dad books, it will only encourage them to write more of them.

*The number of candidate v. baby/toddler comparisons is probably infinite.