Can you learn parenting from a book? In Defense of Book Smarts | #8

A Review of Armin Brott's Expectant Father and New Father

When I started telling people my wife was pregnant, the vast majority of replies from other parents came in two flavors. Many people's face would soften and they would tell us how lucky we were, and how much joy was in store for us. At least as many people (and many of the same people) would laugh sarcastically or get a concerned look on their face and say something like, "buckle up, buddy."

I would always follow up with some version of an innocuous question like, "any advice?" What I heard from most people was that you can't really prepare to be a parent, and you especially cannot prepare by reading books or taking classes. This worried me, because when my wife told me she was pregnant, I went a little overboard and ordered 25 books about babies and parenting. (To her credit, she said she planned to tell me in the morning, since she knew I'd want to spend all day reading and researching.) 

Getting this advice and looking at my pile of books made me wonder, “can a book make me a better parent?” This idea that you cannot learn from books or from study, but that you have to learn from experience or from doing, is actually something I deal with a lot as a professor. In education, this is framed as conventional, classroom-style learning with experiential learning. Outside the classroom, this is usually framed as book smarts vs. street smarts. 

At work, I say that it’s complicated: book smarts and street smarts are both important. I have run a successful experiential learning program for five years, and have traveled all over the world coaching other programs and presenting at conferences on experiential learning. However, I am still measured, and say that you can learn a lot from books, and the best process is probably a feedback loop where you alternatively rely on book smarts and street smarts. 

Looking back at my pile of pregnancy and parenting books, I offer a strong but qualified yes–a book can make you a better parent. I am putting my money where my mouth is, and building up my book smarts to make me a better Dad. 

When I bought the books, I skimmed them all and found two big surprises. The first surprise was that I found most of the books useless. Almost all of the books for new dads come in one of two flavors. The first type of book is very clinical, and it's essentially, "this is a list of all the things that could go wrong with your wife or your baby at every point in the pregnancy." I found these useful but not super reassuring, and reading them just made me anxious. The canonical example is What to Expect When You're Expecting. It's a useful reference for sure, but not exactly bedtime reading.

The second type of book is aimed specifically at new dads. It essentially says, "listen up idiot--you may have to stop shotgunning beers with your bros for five seconds now that the baby will be here soon." As opposed to the first type of book, which assumes you are a cold, clinical machine just looking for serious errors, this second type of book assumes you are a complete idiot man-child.

The best book I found is the one that doesn't follow either of these formats. It's called The Expectant Father by Armin Brott. Each month of the pregnancy has its own chapter. Each chapter is divided into the following sections:

• What's happening with your wife

• What's happening with your baby

• What's happening with you

• Practical considerations that follow from the first three sections

The tone of this book is amazing. It is practical, but not clinical. Empathy, understanding, and kindness are built into the book, but it is principally a "how to," book. It assumes the best of the Dads reading it: they want to be present, helpful, and effective, but they can also be scared, ignorant, and insecure. It is so good I bought the follow-up book, The New Father, which is very similar except it is about the first year after childbirth. Each chapter is about a month in the child’s life, and the order of the baby section and wife section are switched from the order they are in above. 

The New Father has a similar structure and tone, and is organized around the months of the new child's life. My daughter was born on the 12th, so around the 3rd or 4th, I start reading the chapter about the next month. There are great new helpful facts in every chapter, although that's not even the best thing that I've learned, which leads me to my second big surprise. 

The second big surprise was that, even though I found most of the books useless, this book specifically made me realize how valuable book smarts can be even in situations where the conventional wisdom is that they’re useless. 

When I say “street smarts,” what do you think of? If you’re like me, you probably think of toughness, savvy, wariness, cleverness, possibly a little aggression, ruthlessness or opportunism, maybe even moxie or chutzpah. Stay with me for a moment though–in general, when you think of street smarts, do you think of people making long-term plans, or researching something? I don’t. I think of people who can react well on their feet, who can execute under pressure, and most importantly, who can protect themselves. 

Street smarts seem great for handling oneself, but don’t lend themself to forward thinking. Book smarts seem the opposite: like someone who spends a lot of time preparing, and possibly has a plan that is too brittle. One of my favorite pieces of street smarts is Mike Tyson’s observation, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The main difference is that street smarts value the urgency of needing to know, whereas book smarts value the depth of knowing something. 

Having an infant will test your street smarts. Sometimes, you’re out and about and forget to pack the diaper bag correctly and have to improvise. Or, you’re in a public place and you have to keep at bay the people who are acting weird, taking too many liberties with how close they get to the baby, and whether or not they think they’re entitled to touch her hands or face.

Parenthood also requires book smarts. There are a lot of decisions which, to do them right, require a lot of thinking ahead and research. The one I’m dealing with now is preschool. To get your child into a good preschool, you have to be on a waiting list almost a year in advance, which means that if you want to get your child into an infant class, you have to be able to research the schools in your area and make a decision then put down a deposit around the time you get pregnant. 

I realized how valuable book smarts were because I kept defaulting to things I had learned in The New Father when most people would think that I’d need to think on my feet, or use street smarts. One way book smarts have proven valuable is that they have taught me how to look things up. I think that this is the linear fashion which most people think of when they think of learning from books. Books are just long, contextualized lists of facts. People who lionize street smarts think that people with book smarts are essentially eggheads full of useless facts, unprepared for what happens in the real world. They think that book smarts are ineffectual and removed from day-to-day life. People who lionize book smarts think that people with street smarts are vulgar opportunists just trying to survive, uninterested in anything not directly in front of their face. They think that street smarts are superficial and limited to what’s right in front of their face. 

For example, when my daughter was born, the chapter of The New Father for the first month of life had a lot of great, simple reminders that I wrote down and referenced often:

• “There’s no real need to bathe the baby more than once or twice a week–any more than that could unnecessarily dry her skin.” 

• “Try to spend at least twenty minutes a day (in five minute installments) doing something with the baby one-on-one.” 

• “As a general guideline though, you’ll want to give your baby 2-2.5 ounces of formula per pound of body weight every day. Then divide that into 6-8 feedings.” 

• “You should burp your baby at the middle and the end of every feeding, more often if necessary.” 

However, even more than the list of facts, the way the book laid everything out and the tone that it used changed the way I think about parenting. Albert Einstein once said, "Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of minds to think." I think this is half true. I learned some great facts from this book, but the structure of: “what’s happening with the baby, what’s happening with your wife, what’s happening with you, here are the practical concerns,” helps so much when I encounter parenting-related problems that are not in the book. I just think: “baby, wife, me, tasks,” and a solution is obvious.