DADDY NEEDS A DRINK: An Irreverent Look at Parenting From a Dad Who Truly Loves His Kids -- Even When They're Driving Him Nuts (2005)
I was ready to not like Robert Wilder. There were red alerts flashing as I examined the book cover and delved into the first few pages. Wilder lives in Santa Fe, a town which (admittedly based only on a week long visit there 10 years ago) seems to combine some of the worst qualities of college towns (our politics is pure!) with some of the worst qualities of California (we are just so damn laid back and cool!). Wilder married a woman named Lala, who is an artist (a folk artist even). Wilder doesn’t have cable. He has a very loose disciplinary style. He named his children “Poppy” and “London” and never once feels the need to explain this. The picture on the dust jacket shows a man with longish flowing locks.
And so I was ready for a book that was a little too precious, or that expressed Wilder’s need for a drink because his son was too aggressive or his daughter not earthy enough. And, on balance, the book actually is a bit too precious. For example, there’s a chapter written in mock surprise at how him, him, Rob Wilder! actually shops at Sam’s Club after his father introduces him to it (Really! Can you believe it!? A cool guy like Rob Wilder shops there! OMG!)
But I did like Rob Wilder. Quite a bit, even. I don’t know the man, but I would guess that I liked him because all of the potentially negative signs listed above are outweighed by a simple fact: Rob Wilder is a teacher, a junior high and high school teacher. And I’m sure that contributes quite a bit to his realistic, no-nonsense, grounded, humble perspective on the whole fatherhood thing (and most other topics).
Wilder’s book is divided into around 30 chapters, which are largely independent of one another. In fact, some of the factual background in the chapters is repetitive, so I suspect they were once weekly or monthly magazine pieces or something (I’m too lazy to read real reviews and figure that out). But this makes the book good for travel/bedtime reading, and makes it OK to skip the boring chapters or even put the book down and pick it up a few months later, like I did. Most of the chapters - and all of the good ones - use an anecdotal style, but often step back for Wilder’s look at the big picture, often compellingly, and often about a father’s worries about his children and what, exactly, he’s doing to them. At times, the English teacher within Wilder inspires him to try something different stylistically, with acceptable, but less effective results. (For example, a more "literary" thought piece about crying falls flat). Other stories focus on the nuts and bolts of fatherhood and show Wilder to be an involved and very thoughtful and self-aware dad with some cool ideas worth learning from, like how he had his car painted with chalkboard paint so his kids could draw on it and the aftereffects of that or how he took his toddler son to a burning-man like ritual, but forgot to explain to him that they were going to set fire to what looked to his son like a large person. Wilder draws from odd children outside his own family in three chapters to describe “biters,” kids inclined to poop wherever they feel like it and toddlers that madly run from their parents at every available opportunity, all to comic effect. It rarely makes you laugh out loud, but it makes you smile an awful lot.
Personally, I think Wilder is at his best when he tells a story that involves fatherhood, but isn’t really about the father/child relationship (or at least not primarily about that). For one example, in a chapter about baby monitors, Wilder talks about how (prior to the birth of his first child), he set up the baby monitor in the window, and how it picked up the lovemaking sounds of his neighbors … for the next few weeks. Another chapter talks about his son’s obsession with the word “pussy” and it’s impact on his life during that period. In another part of the book, Wilder talks about the intolerance that other people have for kids on airplanes, and while he spends part of the story ranting about that fact and defending his kids, part of what you get out of the story is how he himself got a bit irrational and overreacted to the entire situation. Lots of the time you can almost picture Wilder looking, hoping even, that fatherhood will be more interesting than it actually is (you can almost picture him getting excited when something bad happens to him), and running with the idea of it becoming interesting perhaps a bit further than is warranted. But his eagerness is what gives him his awareness, and his awareness is what lets him notice quite a bit of good stuff.
It seems to me that most books about fatherhood are largely interesting to fathers-to-be, or are interesting to fathers of small children, where the father can read the book and look forward to or learn about what lies ahead. Many of us with older children live that stuff: we don’t always want to spend our free time reading about it more; we’ve had our fill. Wilder’s book, by contrast, because it focuses on the cool and neat stuff on the margins of parenthood, holds something even for those with kids older than toddlers (But this also means that it is far from a how-to book, and those looking for that should look elsewhere).
The quality of writing is generally good, with interesting (but sometimes baffling) references and sentences that sometimes make you work to unravel. A little too often, Wilder takes it a bit too far and his writerly way of saying things drifts into groaner territory (on page 128, Wilder notes that he said “said 'huh' like a Midwesterner at an authentic Chinese restaurant”… p. 271: “studied so much feminist theory in college and grad school that it made my penis shrink”… yikes!). And at times he seems to be in a contest to see how many punchy details he can pack into a paragraph. But despite the writing missteps, Wilder paints a reliable and authentic picture of the cool stuff about fatherhood, including on an emotional and personal level, and does so in an interesting way.
This isn’t a book that will change your life or really teach you anything. But it is a pretty good description of a guy enjoying his kids and his life and noticing the cool stuff that comes his way. To me, that made it worth the read.
And so I was ready for a book that was a little too precious, or that expressed Wilder’s need for a drink because his son was too aggressive or his daughter not earthy enough. And, on balance, the book actually is a bit too precious. For example, there’s a chapter written in mock surprise at how him, him, Rob Wilder! actually shops at Sam’s Club after his father introduces him to it (Really! Can you believe it!? A cool guy like Rob Wilder shops there! OMG!)
But I did like Rob Wilder. Quite a bit, even. I don’t know the man, but I would guess that I liked him because all of the potentially negative signs listed above are outweighed by a simple fact: Rob Wilder is a teacher, a junior high and high school teacher. And I’m sure that contributes quite a bit to his realistic, no-nonsense, grounded, humble perspective on the whole fatherhood thing (and most other topics).
Wilder’s book is divided into around 30 chapters, which are largely independent of one another. In fact, some of the factual background in the chapters is repetitive, so I suspect they were once weekly or monthly magazine pieces or something (I’m too lazy to read real reviews and figure that out). But this makes the book good for travel/bedtime reading, and makes it OK to skip the boring chapters or even put the book down and pick it up a few months later, like I did. Most of the chapters - and all of the good ones - use an anecdotal style, but often step back for Wilder’s look at the big picture, often compellingly, and often about a father’s worries about his children and what, exactly, he’s doing to them. At times, the English teacher within Wilder inspires him to try something different stylistically, with acceptable, but less effective results. (For example, a more "literary" thought piece about crying falls flat). Other stories focus on the nuts and bolts of fatherhood and show Wilder to be an involved and very thoughtful and self-aware dad with some cool ideas worth learning from, like how he had his car painted with chalkboard paint so his kids could draw on it and the aftereffects of that or how he took his toddler son to a burning-man like ritual, but forgot to explain to him that they were going to set fire to what looked to his son like a large person. Wilder draws from odd children outside his own family in three chapters to describe “biters,” kids inclined to poop wherever they feel like it and toddlers that madly run from their parents at every available opportunity, all to comic effect. It rarely makes you laugh out loud, but it makes you smile an awful lot.
Personally, I think Wilder is at his best when he tells a story that involves fatherhood, but isn’t really about the father/child relationship (or at least not primarily about that). For one example, in a chapter about baby monitors, Wilder talks about how (prior to the birth of his first child), he set up the baby monitor in the window, and how it picked up the lovemaking sounds of his neighbors … for the next few weeks. Another chapter talks about his son’s obsession with the word “pussy” and it’s impact on his life during that period. In another part of the book, Wilder talks about the intolerance that other people have for kids on airplanes, and while he spends part of the story ranting about that fact and defending his kids, part of what you get out of the story is how he himself got a bit irrational and overreacted to the entire situation. Lots of the time you can almost picture Wilder looking, hoping even, that fatherhood will be more interesting than it actually is (you can almost picture him getting excited when something bad happens to him), and running with the idea of it becoming interesting perhaps a bit further than is warranted. But his eagerness is what gives him his awareness, and his awareness is what lets him notice quite a bit of good stuff.
It seems to me that most books about fatherhood are largely interesting to fathers-to-be, or are interesting to fathers of small children, where the father can read the book and look forward to or learn about what lies ahead. Many of us with older children live that stuff: we don’t always want to spend our free time reading about it more; we’ve had our fill. Wilder’s book, by contrast, because it focuses on the cool and neat stuff on the margins of parenthood, holds something even for those with kids older than toddlers (But this also means that it is far from a how-to book, and those looking for that should look elsewhere).
The quality of writing is generally good, with interesting (but sometimes baffling) references and sentences that sometimes make you work to unravel. A little too often, Wilder takes it a bit too far and his writerly way of saying things drifts into groaner territory (on page 128, Wilder notes that he said “said 'huh' like a Midwesterner at an authentic Chinese restaurant”… p. 271: “studied so much feminist theory in college and grad school that it made my penis shrink”… yikes!). And at times he seems to be in a contest to see how many punchy details he can pack into a paragraph. But despite the writing missteps, Wilder paints a reliable and authentic picture of the cool stuff about fatherhood, including on an emotional and personal level, and does so in an interesting way.
This isn’t a book that will change your life or really teach you anything. But it is a pretty good description of a guy enjoying his kids and his life and noticing the cool stuff that comes his way. To me, that made it worth the read.
5 out of 7.
