Raising Raffi: The First Five Years

by Keith Gessen

“A wise, mild and enviably lucid book about a chaotic scene.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Memoirs of fatherhood are rarely so honest or so blunt.” —Daniel Engber, The Atlantic

“An instant classic.” —M. C. Mah, Romper

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY LIT HUB & THE MILLIONS

An unsparing, loving account of fatherhood and the surprising, magical, and maddening first five years of a son’s life

“I was not prepared to be a father—this much I knew.”

Keith Gessen was nearing forty and hadn’t given much thought to the idea of being a father. He assumed he would have kids, but couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a parent, or what kind of parent he would be. Then, one Tuesday night in early June, the distant idea of fatherhood came careening into Raffi was born, a child as real and complex and demanding of his parents’ energy as he was singularly magical.

Fatherhood is another a place where the old concerns are swept away, where the ordering of time is reconstituted, where days unfold according to a child’s needs. Whatever rulebooks once existed for this sort of thing seem irrelevant or outdated. Overnight, Gessen’s perception of his neighborhood suddenly there are flocks of other parents and babies, playgrounds, and schools that span entire blocks. Raffi is enchanting, as well as terrifying, and like all parents, Gessen wants to do what is best for his child. But he has no idea what that is.

Written over the first five years of Raffi’s life, Raising Raffi examines the profound, overwhelming, often maddening experience of being a dad. Gessen traces how the practical decisions one must make each day intersect with some of the weightiest concerns of our What does it mean to choose a school in a segregated city? How do you instill in your child a sense of his heritage without passing on that history’s darker sides? Is parental anger normal, possibly useful, or is it inevitably authoritarian and destructive? How do you get your kid to play sports? And what do you do, in a pandemic, when the whole world seems to fall apart? By turns hilarious and poignant, Raising Raffi is a story of what it means to invent the world anew.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays, Biography, Audiobook

256 pages, Hardcover

Published June 7, 2022

About the author

Keith Gessen was born in Moscow in 1975 and came to the United States with his family when he was six years old. He is a co-founder of the literary magazine n+1 and the author of the novels All the Sad Young Literary Men and A Terrible Country. He has written about Russia for the London Review of Books, n+1, the Nation, the New Yorker, and the New York Times Magazine, and has translated or co-translated several books from Russian, including Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, and It's No Good by Kirill Medvedev. He is also the editor of the n+1 books What We Should Have Known, Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager, and City by City. He lives in New York with his wife, the author and publisher Emily Gould, and their son, Raphy, who likes squishy candy.

Reviews

[Laura Donovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is exactly what I needed as a mom of two little boys (a little under 4 and 2). A lot of people say boys are more challenging than girls during the early years of parenting (everything I've seen, heard, and experienced seems to prove this is true!), and Raising Raffi validated this notion. It actually makes me resentful of parents with perfectly behaved little girls at the park and hope they'll get their turn in 10 years. Keith Gessen perfectly illustrates the dread of bedtime and morning, which bleed together when your kids go to sleep way too late and wake up before they should. I also understand the impulse to let certain bad behaviors slide at night so as not to wake up the other child (I've never experienced a prison riot, but it's the closest comparison I have to the feeling of powerlessness that hits when both kids wake up screaming). No one has fight in them at 2 a.m. I felt very seen when he described the futility of sitting quietly by his son's toddler bed to help him sleep, only to be assaulted over and over again, leave the room in a huff, and cause his kid to melt down. I had many nights like this before installing a baby gate at my son's door (another thing Emily Gould and Keith Gessen find themselves doing!). I couldn't agree more with the statement that a month of good behavior is always followed by two months of acting out. Everything positive is immediately undone, and one good night of sleep is just a reminder that it won't be long before things take a turn for the worse. Keith Gessen perfectly sums up what it's like to raise little boys in today's world. Keith Gessen is from Russia, which isn't really known for having a soft approach to parenting, or anything for that matter, but he didn't seem to lose his cool as much as I would have (and have!) in similar situations. Raffi is very articulate and expressive for a little boy, telling his dad things like "You aren't nice" or "I didn't used to like you, but now that you're nice, I do." This made me sad in a personal way because I'm raising a son on the spectrum, and Raffi's candor made me consider what my son might say about how he really feels about us if he had the language to do so. Raffi's ability to clearly communicate so many things shows he feels safe enough to do so, and is a reflection of good parenting. I laughed a lot when the author talks about reading kids books hundreds of times, and how some books age better than others. It's pretty impressive he was able to write this book at all given the constant demands of parenting (I'm empty by the end of each day!), and though he might have written a completely different book about raising Raffi after the fact, there's true value and importance in telling this kind of story while you're still in it. The author's fatigue and urgency to finish the book fly off the pages.

[CJ]

I enjoyed the essays in this book more than a bunch of parenthood essays I've read by women because they were just about being A Parent rather than the tortured landscape of what it means to a A Mother (not that Gessen is ignorant of gender)...which seems like a great metaphor for the different experiences men and woman have of raising children

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this as a eGalley from NetGalley.

I have no idea why I read this book as I am not a parent nor do I have any interest in the history of parenting books- but I do think I'm a sucker for gossip from very specific literari from the 2010s- therein Emily Gould and Keith Gessen.

I did find it interesting though and well written.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some points in this book that are sticking with me-- like when Gessen calls up his old elementary school teacher to ask her opinion on zoom school and she basically tells him to chill out and that the purpose of education at Raffi's young age is just to instill a love of learning. That made me pause the nightly reading lessons I've been doing with Dania where I inevitably get frustrated with her short attention span and make her cry.
Overall I didn't love this book-- maybe because Raffi is so different from Dania it was hard for me to relate to a lot of it. But I did start getting PTSD about what it's like to have tiny babies-- the lack of sleep and the fear of them dying constantly. Not looking forward to returning to that zone! But, as with all things related to parenting, it is a moment that will quickly pass.

[Liv · Rating 5 out of 5]

hey bena i literally might want kids bc of this.

[Ray Kluender · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s a real dearth of quality literature on early fatherhood (correct me if I’m wrong on this!) and I regret to report that this entry made me feel that even more acutely. Gessen quite literally views fatherhood as a list of tragedies and disappointments (“there is no tragedy like the tragedy of parenthood,” he writes more than once). He is beset by weird expectations and poor communication with his wife and an inconsistent approach to parenting (my dad is fond of citing that the only academic evidence about good parenting is that it needs to be consistent), and is then disappointed by the results. All of that would be ok if the tone of the book wasn’t so thoroughly joyless. None of this really resonated with me. Alejandro Zambra’s new entry is a nice counterweight and does a vastly superior job capturing the magic and hope and wonder of the early days.

[Kristenelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up on a friend's recommendation. By the time I picked it up, I couldn't remember why it had been recommended. I falsely remembered it being recommended as a memoir of a parent raising an autistic child. I kept waiting for Autism to show up haha. This ended up being a memoir of a parent raising child (with no diagnoses discussed) for the first five years of the child's life. Despite not being what I was expecting, I LOVED this.

Keith Gessen is a great writer. There are some writers who could write just about anything and it will be engrossing and wonderful to read. Gessen is such a writer. This book is a collection of essays about his first-born child. The essays are at once both relatable slices-of-life and philosophical meditations. We are given a very personal and up-close look at the author's life. We learn that he lives in an apartment in Brooklyn and immigrated from Russia as a child. We listen in on his anxieties about being a father, raising his son bilingual, finding the right school for his son, the pandemic, etc. It was fascinating to get a look into this life which I found to be both so relatable and so different from my own.

I appreciated the academic and intellectual quality of Keith Gessen's overthinking about parenthood. These are high-quality anxieties haha. He has read all the parenting books. He studies child developmental psychologists. He has interviewed a range of people about parenting. He is very earnestly parenting....and yet, he can't seem to stop yelling at his son. This whole process is so relatable as a parent myself. I love how these essays acknowledge the ubiquitous presence of parental anxiety, looking up all the information, and the real life that happens as a result and in spite of every effort. There is something profoundly comforting in knowing this is something we all experience as parents.

This book will appeal to parents, particularly the educated, middle-class variety. I'm not sure that it will be as satisfying for those who are not parents, but I suspect that the quality of the writing and fascinating look into the slice-of-life will appeal broadly.

I listened to the audio which was read by the author and was wonderful. I definitely recommend the audio version.

[Peter Knox · Rating 5 out of 5]

The honest thinking man’s approach to a parenting book, written for New Yorker readers.

I loved this book and don’t know why I was hesitant to start (the title? The cover design? both undersell it). But it feels less like a collection of separate essays (which it is) and more like a chronological progression/documentation of becoming a new parent (in the Brooklyn I know, no less) while successfully diving into well-researched themes that present themselves naturally in child development.

The new parent quickly learns what they do not know only when confronted with the actual parenting in practice. Keith is very self aware and emotionally honest with his own shortcomings and frustrations as he figuratively wrestles with his own upbringing as an immigrant Russian Jew and literally wrestles with his often defiant little son.

The book is at its best when Keith discovers a topic/theme he needs to explore within himself and in the body of research (experts, parenting literature, other parents), which he weaves together in a wonderful New Yorker style as you learn alongside him why parenting is so hard.

These dives include; home births, bilingualism, NYC public school choice, behavior modification, sports, and plenty of cultural baggage. It’s quite refreshing to share in the parenting failures of another so openly, as we all suffer by ourselves each day.

The only missing element was when his second son is born… out of nowhere in the narrative. It’s a common, difficult choice to make and while he elaborates on almost every other choice he makes, he doesn’t spend a sentence on this one.

If you’re fed up with competitive parenting, parenting books, parenting in the city, share a coffee or a beer with Keith and get his experience with it. I already feel better.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

This felt fairly generic. It is readable, and thoughtfully written, but not compelling. Perhaps some humor would have helped.

> Before Raffi, there was nothing that people with more money had that I actually wanted. Now there was. Our friends with money could and did hire infinite childcare, including at night. Some sent their kids to private school. They never worried about their landlord complaining about the noise they were making, because they lived in their own houses. Our lack of money, which had been if not a virtue of ours then at least not harmful to anyone, was now denying our child things that other children had.

[Christie Bane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not exciting, but was enjoyable. The author is a man who became a father and realized how much he didn’t know about being a father until he was one. His son Raffi is both amazing and terrible. The book is a series of essays on fatherhood and raising a child. The end of the book covers the COVID lockdown in New York, and made me so, so grateful that I did not have young children when it was going on. A good book, especially for people interested in parenthood (which I am not really).

[Margo Littell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ashamed to say that literary gossip led me to read this book. I should have stepped away from Twitter instead of diving deeper. I need to just accept the fact that I've read too many parenting-young-children memoirs at this point and should stick to other subjects.

[Louesa song · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this. It’s nice to have a father’s perspective on parenting. So many parenting books are from a mother’s perspective. It was funny to see where his thoughts and my husband’s overlapped.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just more memoiristic slop written for and by the New York media class.

[Nam · Rating 5 out of 5]

cute book
dad literature
modern
true

[Clint · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful series of essays about Gessen’s challenges with early fatherhood. It avoids the common framings of either comedically over-exaggerated incompetence or instruction full of false confidence, instead focusing on the endless uncertainty and frustration and delight of raising his first child in middle age. He presents it all with admirable transparency and self-awareness, and an obviously strong love for Raffi alongside everything else. There’s also the unique circumstances of him wrestling with how much of his first-generation Russian immigrant heritage to pass on, and dealing with COVID right around when his son starts going to school.

I primarily enjoyed this for its emotional storytelling, but an interesting takeaway amidst all his consideration of competing theories of parenting is that every seemingly successful parenting method arose from the necessary habits of a specific time and place and culture, which likely aren’t shared by those looking to mine them for tips. And even if they were, every child is their own unique combination of quirks and charms, so hoping to exactly reproduce someone else’s results is additionally unlikely. Instead, Gessen finds benefit in experimenting with advice that seems broadly applicable and tweaking or abandoning it as necessary in the unending improvisation that is parenting, all the while assured that kids will ultimately develop in their own way regardless of their parent’s intended influence.

“…books don’t tell you, is that time is the only solution. You do eventually figure it out, or start to. But by then it is often too late…That is the way of knowledge, though. In its purest form, it always comes too late.”

“‘The one thing you must not do,’ my friend George had told me, ‘is buy a bag of Milano cookies and eat them all while Emily is giving birth.’ Apparently George, waiting in the hospital before the most active phase of his wife’s labor started, had become a little peckish and gone out to a deli and bought some Milanos. Then while she gave birth, he sort of stood there and mindlessly ate them all. They really are very delicious. Four years later she still had not forgiven him.”

“‘It’s incredible,’ he said. ‘It’s the greatest thing.’ He seemed truly insane for a second, and then he was off, in search of something for his baby. And who was right, then: the guys who said it was hell, or half-crazed Jeff, who said it was the greatest thing? I didn’t know. I still don’t know.”

“One learned by watching other parents; by reading; by discussing; by developing ideas and aspirations and then testing them against reality.”

“In the end, there was no piece of advice, no matter how wise or well meaning, that could penetrate to the core of our particular situation. Billions of parents throughout human history had gone through what we were going through—but not in quite the same way, with the same resources, on the same street, with the same family backgrounds, and most of all, not with this particular child.”

“I found myself increasingly embarrassed by these strange people, my parents, with their accents, their clothing, their Soviet inability to follow the rules…And now, of course, I am embarrassed at my embarrassment. These lovely people, born in poverty in an annihilated country, steeped in literature but not in fashion, who came to the promised land but could not really taste its fruits: they did it for us, for me, and I had the gall to make fun of them.”

“When your baby is born, you think you are a certain kind of person and are going to be a certain kind of parent. It’s all a fantasy. You don’t know anything about yourself until your baby gets older. You don’t know anything about yourself until the day your adorable little boy looks you in the eye, notices that your face is right up close to him, and punches you in the nose.”

“Yes, I nearly yelled as I read this: yes. Raffi did not want to kill me and marry Emily. It was more complicated and more difficult than that. What he wanted was all her attention even as he also wanted to be his own person. He wanted to re-create the relationship they’d once had, when he was smaller, but in a way that it could no longer be re-created. He wanted the impossible and he knew it and it drove him crazy. It almost literally tore him to pieces. It really was life and death, though mostly it was life, the heartbreak of life.”

“The thing about moral vanity is that it does sometimes lead to justice. You have to believe that your individual choice is significant; that even if it seems to bring about no systemic change, it can make a difference. This is what Russian and Soviet dissidents have shown over and over again through the centuries—that one person doing the right thing can show others that they need not be afraid…the occasionally annoying, strident, self congratulatory dissidents helped bring it down.”

“Children are their own people, yes, but they are also so much at our mercy—at the mercy of our moods, our insecurities, even our dreams.”

“…the struggle for connection, the parent’s wish to teach something, the child’s wish both to learn it and to leave. I think now that there is no tragedy like the tragedy of parenthood. There is no other thing you do in life only so that the person you do it for can leave you. When they leave, that is success; when they do something because they want to do it and not because you want them to do it, then you have done your job. You succeed when you make yourself irrelevant, when you erase yourself. Parents who fail to do that have failed. I feel myself failing in exactly this way every day.”

“I always think that Raffi can be like me. I want him to be better, and freer, and happier—but as a kind of baseline, at least like me. After all, he looks like me; he shares my name. But there’s no way I can re-create for Raffi the experience of our emigration. Nor do I want to! I want him to have a stable, happy childhood, and I want him to stay friends forever with the kids he is friends with now. I want things to be easy for him. But I am beginning to see that this is not an unalloyed good, that it could have, in the end, its own costs.”

[Rachel Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a father and I won't ever be. That's also what Keith Gessen thought before having his first child. I really enjoyed Gessen's humorous and thoughtful reflections on parenting, parenting literature, children's literature, children's literature's authors, and wrestling with what it means to parent within a cultural context. This is such an enjoyable read you may underestimate the amount of research that Gessen did writing these stories. I would recommend to anyone!

[Darran Mclaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this weeks ago, but the demands of fatherhood meant that I haven't had time to review this until now. I have a daughter who is 1 year and 8 months old and a son who is 7 weeks old. I manage a book shop and there are a lot of books about motherhood, many of which are critically acclaimed and many by well known literary authors. I have hosted several book launches for books on motherhood like Matresence by Lucy Jones or Mother State by Helen Charman, and they are always very popular and filled with women who are mothers. There are far fewer books on fatherhood. I looked for a book about fatherhood to stock at the shop and discovered this. I had heard of Keith Gessen years before, as I remember his book All the Sad Young Literary Men coming out, being part of a cool literary scene in Brooklyn alongside a bunch of other young writers. I hadn't read him, but it sounded like this might be a good book to read on the topic of fatherhood from someone that shared some of my interests. I don't really read self help books, so I wasn't interested in reading anything too earnest or obvious.

I loved this book. It is written in the form of a series of essays, in chronological order but also addressing different themes, such as children's picture books, raising a bi-lingual, bi-cultural child, getting your child into the right school etc... Gessen expresses many of the same concerns and worries that I have experienced. It was enjoyable to get another perspective on these issues. He also reads and digests lots of books on parenting and shares his perspective on them, which means it's a good survey of different parenting approaches or child psychologist's concepts.

I highly recommend this book to any fathers, or mothers, and it has left me wanting to check out some of his fiction.

[Erin Bomboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

After seeing this reviewed everywhere, I succumbed to the hype and purchased Raising Raffi: The First Five Years, journalist and novelist Keith Gessen's collection of essays about raising his spirited son.

Parallels abound between Gessen and my family. Like him, my husband is also an Eastern European Jewish emigre who grew up in the burbs before moving to New York City. I'm artsy and from Virginia. We have one daughter who is the same age as Raffi, and, like him, she is a lively, opinionated handful (we've often counted our blessings that she is a girl and not a boy).

Because of our backgrounds, our parenting styles differ although we're on the same page about the big things. My husband is a product of a Russian upbringing, and I had to laugh when Gessen describes his responses to Raffi's naughtiness because he sounds exactly like my husband.

I've read plenty of parenting books and blogs that opine on this or that strategy, but Raising Raffi was descriptive rather than prescriptive. Gessen's curiosity, clear prose, and journalistic rigor serve it well. Gessen has no compunction about presenting himself in an unflattering light although he positions his wife, Emily Gould, also a journalist and novelist, in a rosy spotlight.

The essays range from pregnancy to pandemic parenting, from choosing a school to teaching Raffi Russian. Gessen weaves in advice from experts and anecdotes from his childhood to keep the narration from feeling claustrophobic. What resonates most is how unprepared all of us are for the burden of bringing a child into a crazy world. I did appreciate how Gessen is honest about his failings while not hurtling into major shame spirals like many of us moms do.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first, and sometimes most important, relationship in our lives is with our parents. However, rarely do we read works that show that relationship from both points of view: that of a child about a parent and then a parent about a child. That’s what made reading “What’s So Funny? A Cartoonist’s Memoir” by David Sipress (Mariner Press) and “Raising Raffi: The First Five Years” by Keith Gessen (Viking) for this review so much fun. While the two memoirs don’t completely mirror each other, Sipress’ difficulties with his parents were in some ways answered by Gessen’s issues when dealing with his young son. I could imagine Sipress’ father talking about his son in the same way Gessen speaks about Raffi, and wondered how Gessen’s son will view his father’s essays when he is as old as Sipress.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/past...

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to this book in a rather odd way...by reading the author's wife's New York Magazine essay about whether or not she should divorce him. I don't remember now what it was in that essay that made me want to read this memoir--probably that it was about being a parent of a young child. Anyway, it is absolutely lovely: beautifully written, putting words to some of the moments as a parent that just completely knock you out...e.g. "The idea of anything happening to him was intolerable. No book captured that feeling as well as The Runaway Bunny. It was too much for me." (I hid that book for years so that I wouldn't have to read it.)

There's nothing earth-shattering, but I have a pretty insatiable appetite for parenting memoirs, and this one is a bit different in that it's written by a (clearly very engaged) dad and also in its focus on bilingualism, as he raises his child to speak Russian. Recommended to anyone with young kids.

[rachel nevers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this as someone who works in the edtech space and gives a lot of thought to how parents, especially parents with younger kids, have felt and managed during the last few years, without actually being a parent. To quote someone I work with, "I've long been fascinated by the author and his wife (Emily Gould) as prototypical Brooklyn power couple" and part of what most interested me in this memoir was Keith's account of his clashes with Emily over their parenting styles across different theories of parenting, and how they interact with/perceive other Brooklyn parents (especially in the same neighborhood I live in!) Also found the accounts of trying to get Raffi interested in specific sports and learning Russian interesting- would recommend to anyone trying to understand the modern bougie-but-not parent

[Chandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first third of Raising Raffi held me enraptured, and in laughter. Birth to age two told by a modern Dad? It's refreshing, self-effacing (Gessen enjoyed a funny sitcom while his wife dealt with labor pains--oops), and it cast a welcome spell: a return to the early years of parenting. Gessen's exploration of the difficulties of his first child's unique personality (he hits! he calls his parents stupid!) is also refreshing. Unfortunately it's interwoven with rather weak attempts at journalism and super smug reinforcement of Gessen's politics. This includes cursory readings of Pamela Druckerman's "Bringing up Bebe" and, of course, Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother". I don't really need to know what some Dad thinks of all that, or how evolved he is when it comes to school choice. Gessen really falls short when it comes to the evolution of his writing, as Raffi ages. Ah, well. Perhaps early years are the best.

[Lisa]

When this came out, I'd actively decided not to read it, but actually got pulled back in from following Emily Gould and reading her references to it (I've always been more interested in her than him, and in Masha Gessen than Keith!), and realizing that Raffi is weeks older than my son, and that our younger sons are also similar ages. I listened to the audio, which Gessen reads, and which I appreciated (especially for the Russian parts).

I think I've probably read too many of this type of book now - when I was having kids, I would pick up any book like this and devour it. And as that stage of my life is over, I think my reading of this type of parenting book may be over as well (maybe I'll do some nostalgic reading in the future). Anyway, this one was...ok?

[Erhardt Graeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through this series of essays, Keith Gessen accurately describes my experience during the last five years of new fatherhood. I laughed aloud during several identifiable anecdotes and insights. Although, I'm not the Russian in my family—the connections to the culture and language of my in-laws is a constant negotiation—and I really appreciated relating to those dimensions of the bilingualism chapter. A part of me wishes I had this book years ago as I was starting my parenting journey. But then the book wouldn't be as relatable as it is—including the pandemic experience—and wouldn't have offered me as profound an opportunity to reflect on my experiences and my identity. I will be recommending this to other fathers of my vintage and fathers-to-be.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a ton of fun reading this early-fatherhood memoir by Keith Gessen, the Russian half of the Brooklyn literary super-duo (he founded N+1, wrote a novel called Terrible Country) with Emily Gould (also a novelist and a semi-famous early Gawker alum), but I'm not sure how universal it is, unless you, too, raised a kid in NYC, and know and can picture different Brooklyn neighborhoods. I'm also an Emily super-fan, and have been following the life of Raffi via Keith's and her socials since he was born. But Gessen is smart, honest and open, observant, vivid, curious, and occasionally lol funny, so if you think you, too, are predisposed to enjoying Raising Raffi, you probably will.

[Alicia Fenney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honest and entertaining essays. I appreciated the topic of bilingualism, although it was memoir heavy and less research than I know to be true. At other points I found the research unnecessarily heavy, like when Gessen catalogs the lives of different children's authors, to what point I'm still not sure. Reminded me of what I did when I needed to make a higher word count in a high school essay... Overall, I listened to this with high interest and only a few sittings despite its faults, so give it four stars.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing this review at 5:42 AM from my 3.5 year olds bedroom, who has been up for the last hour and can seem totally passed out but then wake up and shriek at the slightest movement I make to leave. Suffice it to say Raising Raffi is a relatable, thoughtful, and amusing look at modern parenting, told from the lesser voiced perspective of the dad. Every kid is so singular yet every parent can laugh and wince at the universal oddities of our roles.

[Naomi Blackburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book, I wanted to press it into the hands of every parent I know. I kept bringing it up in conversations, especially his essay about his mixed emotions about teaching his child Russian and his relationship with Russia.

It was also a perfect kindle read, in the dark, while putting my kid to bed (who has a lot of Raffi’s exuberant energy). I wish now I had the paperback so I could lend it to other parents.

[May-Ling · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I have a child of about the same age, so this memoir was an interesting read to hear about someone else's experience. the narrative sometimes deviates strangely to me like the picture book chapter going into the lives of children's book authors... mostly, you get insight into being a dad during a pandemic and middle class mental struggles like whether or not to speak another language to your kid and how to think about picking schools when you have the privilege of doing so

[Jinna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t remember how I started reading this book, and at one point while reading it I couldn’t think of why I was reading it. I didn’t need another book on raising a toddler.

But then somewhere along the line this became my favorite toddler raising book. Because it isn’t a book of advice, it’s a book of reality. He captures the earnestness, the hilarity, the adoration, but he also captures the anger, the anxiety, and the failures.