Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Ailsa Wild, Hardie Grant, $24.99.
Bringing a baby into the world can be a “jumble of anxiety and anticipation”, but rest assured, it is also a time of joy. You and your partner are doing something immense together. Take all the time you can to share. It’s going to be marvellous. You’re going to be wonderful. At times, it may even seem unreal.
This book, powered by love and life, is written by award-winning Australian author Ailsa Wild. You’ll Be a Wonderful Dad was once a letter to a dear friend and was quickly passed on from dad to dad.
Now it has become your practical and emotional guide on fatherhood in the lead-up and months following the birth of a baby. Wild’s warm and encouraging words of precious love and excitement have expanded into a beautiful book to be shared on the parenting journey.
Complete with illustrations from Bernard Caleo, this is a kind and important guide on how dads can be proactive in supporting their partners and family through the lead up to birth and new parenting: from practising emotional labour and sharing the mental load to embracing play and connection.
“Women, when they become mothers, are generally told what they must and mustn’t do (far too frequently, by far too many people) and expectations of them are absurdly high. Many cultures hold lower expectations of men’s capacity to parent, although that has been slowly changing.”
As part of that change, this book is a collection of high expectations for you as a dad. It’s about how to love your family in the face of a culture that has historically left women alone with the domestic work and held men separate from the warm hearts of their families.
We learn about some of the practical and emotional aspects of being a great dad, which, in many ways, means being a great partner.
