Customer Reviews

The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips, and Advice for Dads-To-Be

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A quick Amazon search reveals 3,523 pregnancy books on the market. How many of these are written for the mother? About 3,510. A dozen others use sarcasm and exaggerated humor -- often at the expense of the pregnant mother -- rather than useful information to draw the heathen male into the future world of parenting. There has got to be a better way for a father-to-be to learn what he has gotten himself into.

Fortunately there is. The Expectant Father is that 3,523rd book. It is a well-written, month-by-month explanation of what is going on both emotionally and physically with the mother, the baby, and you the father. At 250 pages plus references, it is packed with information while still being portable. It doesn't necessarily go into a great amount of detail on each subject, but it mentions most important things at least in passing, and you can always refer to the Internet or What to Expect... (which your partner will undoubtedly have on her nightstand) for more details.

Be forewarned: this book is slightly new-agey at points. But hey, Brott is just offering suggestions that the reader is free to ignore. Overall this is a useful reference written with the father-to-be in mind as a principal reader, not an afterthought.

My wife bought this book for me during our fourth pregnancy. We both enjoyed reading it - I to read the perspective of another father and her to see if I was doing things the way I was supposed to. All in all, the book provides a broad spectrum of information for fathers-to-be - including everything from the physical and emotional changes occurring to the mother to how to plan for your financial future as a dad. The Expectant Father got me to thinking on many occasions and served as a starting point for many pregnancy-related conversations with my wife. Two other books I highly recommend are: A Child is Born which contains outstanding pictures and explanations of the development of the baby, and We're Pregnant!, a great book to read together because it was written by an expecting couple and provides a true-to-life rendition of the ever-changing life of expecting parents.

The author has the idea that the sooner dads get involved in being parents the better they'll be and that the best time to get involved is during pregnancy. I know this is true for me. I know it sounds funny but I felt like I was a real participant in the pregnancy. Yeah, my wife was carrying the baby but I was going through a lot of psychological stuff too and this is the only book out there that dealt with what my issues at all.

I read this book twice--the first time when my wife and I were expecting our son and then again during the months before the daughter we'd adopted from Korea arrive. Both times I was amazed at how calming and educational and really funny this book was. I'd never been a dad before. Never even held a baby before my wife got pregnant and I wasn't too sure about what to do. Of course it's all pretty natural, but this book really made me realize that all the worries I was having were normal and it gave me lots of great ideas of ways to be more involved in the process. It also got me thinking about the kind of father I wanted to be and whether I wanted to be the kind of dad my dad was or some other kind.

Being a father is really important for me and this book has made me a much better dad. I've been reading the next books in the series and they're just as reassuring and helpful.

Thanks, Mr. Brott!

PS I've caught my wife looking through the book and she's told me that it helped her understand me a lot better and made her see how important it is to me to be a good parent.

My wife just had our first child a few months ago. While she was pregnant two of our friends gave me copies of The Expectant Father, which they recommended highly. I have to agree. I'd been reading my wife's pregnancy books, which were absolutely useless--they barely mentioned dads at all except to say that I should be sensitive to my wife's needs, which I already knew. And I'd checked out a few of the other pregnancy books for dads but they were so condescending and insulting that I practically gave up reading altogether.

This book is completely different. It deals with men's concers in a straightforward, sensitive, funny way. It's filled with very insightful information that helped me make sense of the feelings I was having during my wife's pregnancy and activities that I could do to stay involved. It's not always easy to take the stand to be an involved dad and this book helped me realize that I wasn't alone in what I was going through. I know that this book has helped me be a better father than I ever would have before. I'll be giving it to all my buddies whose wives are expectant. AND, I've already started the next book in the series, The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First Year. It's great too!

My appreciation for "The Expectant Father" grows as I read more fatherhood books. Most authors spend 90% of their book trying to convince new fathers that fatherhood really isn't so bad, that we should be nice to the mother and perhaps show up for a doctor's appointment once in a while. For those of us who are already excited about the prospect of having a child, this tact doesn't cut it.

Brott certainly advocates being involved during the pregnancy, but he spends much more time explaining how to be involved. Topics from when to tell your friends about the pregnancy to financial planning are covered. More unusually for fatherhood books, Brott describes what the mother is experiencing and how the baby is developing. This has been extremely helpful as my wife's pregnancy has progressed.

I keep this book handy, and refer to it at least monthly.

My husband wasn't interested at all in reading anything about my pregnancy. I marked passages out of some of the books I have but I have to admit I'm not surprised that he didn't read them--not a lot there. But when my mom got him this book he changed completely. He'd sit over there on his side of the bed and read and chuckle and not and then we'd have these really amazing conversations about what he was feeling about becoming a dad. Knowing that he cared so much really helped me to be able to talk to him about what I was feeling too.

What was really interesting was that he seemed to be having so much fun that I started reading this book too. I learned so much about him and about what men are thinking about as they become fathers.

I credit this book not only for bringing out the great dad in my husband (I knew it was there all along) but for making our marriage better too. Sounds like a lot but it's totally true.

A wonderful way for men to begin the process of becoming expectant fathers. This book has sound advice on medical and psychological aspects of pregnancy and birth for both mom and dad. It maintains a sense of humor, and a supportive tone that both involves dads in the pregnancy and addresses their hopes and fears about becoming a parent. This is not the most exhaustive book on pregnancy or parenting, but it's not meant to be. The sections on "what she might be feeling" and "what you might be feeling" are tremendously valuable as both reference points and as a basis for communication. It works well as a resource for expectant parents, and a good conversation starter on sometimes sensitive issues of fatherhood.

As an expectant father for the fourth time, I read this book wondering what it would tell me that I didn't already know. For the most part, I felt I had instinctively done many of the things that The Expectant Father seemed to feel I needed to be told to do. In a way, it was reassuring to hear that I was actually a politically correct dad - at times though, I felt like the authors were stating the obvious. Bottom line, I think the idea behind The Expectant Father is great and if men read this book with the thought that it might provide them with some additional good ideas to try while their wife is pregnant, then it can be a very worthwhile book. A book I read right after finishing The Expectant Father was We're Pregnant!, a realistic and often funny look at life as expectant parents from both the father and the mother's perspective. The father-to-be's comments weren't always politically correct but speaking from experience, they were honest. Both books are good resources for father's and father's-to-be. When my first child was born eight years ago, it was hard to find any resources for men and now there are several. Read them and enjoy.

My husband and I have a pile of books on pregnancy. Most of the books written for women dwell on the many problems that can arise (both serious and mundane) during pregnancy. Dreary. Not a single one of the others contains word one about planning for college or any financial issue. In fact, one of my books advises me not to worry about finances because "that's the father's department." Pretty ridiculous since he will be staying at home and I (the mother) will be working full time.

This book, unlike those, does address this issue very competently. It is, I think, one of the best pregnancy books we have (i.e. I can't stand the supremely pedantic "What to Expect When You're Expecting" and think "Your Pregnancy Week by Week," while not pedantic, has no information the other does not.)

This book contains many useful facts for the father to be and is written in such a way as to be helpful to mother and father. My husband has absorbed more dos and don't during pregnancy from this one book than I have in reading 5 other books. It contains an excellent list of questions to ask your obstetrician. Things everyone needs to know but may never think to ask.

Bottom line - we love this book and would recommend it to anyone expecting a baby. It is easy reading while being informative and doesn't overdo the medical lingo (or the whole medical issue).

This is a must buy for a brand new dad. Of all the books that I have bought on having a new baby, this proved to be the most informative and the book that I return to on a regular basis as a reference. It not only addresses the development of the baby, but the development of the new family. I found that it's insight into the emotional changes that my wife and I were experiencing were remarkably synchopated with our actual experience. I also found it to be very easy to read and follow. I would describe it as an ideal companion book to 'the girlfriends guide to pregnancy', and would recommend both new parents to read both books to get the male and female perspective of the experience. If you have to buy one book as a new daddy, have this be the one. I have just purchased the follow-on book, 'the new father' with the hopes that it equally illuminates the first year of the newborn.