The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips and Advice for Dads-to-be

Thoughts From Author Armin Brott

In 1989, when my wife got pregnant for the first time, we were both first-time parents and equally ill-prepared for the whole pregnancy process. Fortunately for her, there were hundreds of books designed to educate, encourage, support and comfort women during their pregnancies. But when it finally hit me that I, too, was expecting, and the pregnancy was bringing out all sorts of feelings, emotions and worries that I didn't understand, there weren't any resources for me to turn to.

My wife's pregnancy books had a little (very, very little) information on what expectant fathers were going through, but it was generally incredibly superficial, consisting mostly of advice on how men should support their wives. Parenting magazines were similarly unhelpful.

So why don't we discuss men's concerns as fathers more? In my opinion, it's because we, as a society, value motherhood more than fatherhood and automatically assume that issues of childbirth and childrearing are women's issues.

But for me, fatherhood isn't a women's issue and so I began doing research. My research consisted of talking to dozens of men about their experiences as fathers and reading every piece of scientific data on fatherhood available to find out more about the ways all of us (men, women and society) regard and treat fathers and how that impacts fathers, families and children. What I found was that men's emotional response to pregnancy is no less varied than women's; expectant fathers feel everything from relief to denial, fear to frustration, anger to joy.

This research paved the way for a series of magazine articles on fatherhood and, eventually, my first book, The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips, and Advice for Dads-to-be, which, I'm proud to say, has become as much of a standard for men as the What to Expect books are for women.

Simply put, The Expectant Father guides fathers – on a month-by-month basis – through the emotional, psychological and even physical changes they'll experience during the course of their partners' pregnancies through the first week or so of new fatherhood. They'll learn how and why to stay involved during the pregnancy, how to make sense of their conflicting emotions, how to understand what's going on with their partners' bodies, even how to juggle work and family. The Expectant Father was the first book to explore in depth the experiences, fears, concerns and joys of expectant fathers.

Unfortunately, after becoming a father I quickly found out that there were, perhaps, even fewer resources available for new fathers than for expectant ones. And to fill that gap, I set to work writing two more books: The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First Year and The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the Toddler Years, both of which are available online, as well as in bookstores everywhere.

Want to see more?

• Dads New Role: Should a Worried Father-to-be Share His Concerns?
• Prenatal Panic: When Father Fears He May Not Know Best
• She Won't Break: New Dads With Newborn Fears
• Talk about it!

About the Author: Armin Brott is an author who has written extensively on the topic of fatherhood. He lives with his wife and daughters in Berkeley, California.