Parents Book for New Fathers

by David Laskin

The first complete guide to pregnancy, childbirth, childcare, and child development designed exclusively for fathers -- from America's #1 family magazine.

Today more than ever before fathers share in the practical responsibilities and in the intimate rewards of raising their children. The Parents "TM" Book For New Fathers offers sensitive, sensible guidance for every situation you'll face from your wife's pregnancy through the first year of your baby's life.

You'll learn how

-- decide on the best time to start your family
-- seek help for problems of infertility
-- overcome the common worries of expectant fathers
-- give your wife the support she needs
-- select a birth method that's right for you and your wife
-- master the practical routines of infancy, such as diaper changing, bathing, and feeding
-- gauge the growth and development of your child
-- meet the special challenges of being an adoptive or single father
-- and much, much more.

Based on the latest research and interviews with scores of new fathers, here is everything you need to know to be the father of a happy, healthy family.

407 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 12, 1988

About the author

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Great Neck, New York, I grew up hearing stories that my immigrant Jewish grandparents told about the “old country” (Russia) that they left at the turn of the last century. When I was a teenager, my mother’s parents began making yearly trips to visit our relatives in Israel, and stories about the Israeli family sifted down to me as well. What I never heard growing up was that a third branch of the family had remained behind in the old country – and that all of them perished in the Holocaust. These are three branches whose intertwined stories I tell in THE FAMILY: THREE JOURNEYS INTO THE HEART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

An avid reader for as long as I remember, I graduated from Harvard College in 1975 with a degree in history and literature and went on to New College, Oxford, where I received an MA in English in 1977. After a brief stint in book publishing, I launched my career as a freelance writer. In recent years, I have been writing suspense-driven narrative non-fiction about the lives of people caught up in events beyond their control, be it catastrophic weather, war, or genocide. My 2004 book The Children’s Blizzard, a national bestseller, won the Washington State Book Award and the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and was nominated for a Quill Award. The Long Way Home (2010) also won the Washington State Book Award.

I write frequently for the New York Times Travel Section, and I have also published in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Seattle Times and Seattle Metropolitan.

When I’m not writing or traveling for research, I am usually outdoors trying to tame our large unruly garden north of Seattle, romping with our unruly Labrador retriever pup Patrick, skiing in Washington State’s Cascade Mountains, or hiking in the Wallowa Mountains of northeast Oregon. My wife, Kate O’Neill, and I have raised three wonderful daughters – all grown now and embarked on fascinating lives of their own.