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The 40-Year-Old Version: Humoirs of a Divorced Dad
Author: Joel Schwartzberg
“In short, it took divorce to make me a better father,” writes Joel Schwartzberg early in The 40-Year-Old Version, a collection of forty insightful and humorous essays about fatherhood and life. The topics of these brief essays vary widely over a range of fatherhood experiences, and many of them deal with how he is learning to reinvent himself as a newly divorced father. They range from adjusting to his son’s disinterest in playing sports or watching the Super Bowl (“’Nachos help,’ I told him.”), to his first time dropping his kids off at school as a divorced dad (“Does something about my demeanor shout ‘part-time parent!’”), to his encounters with children’s television (“One fateful afternoon, Charlie and I came upon ‘little boy catnip’ – Power Rangers.”) He also writes about many of the other idiosyncrasies of modern life, including greeting cards (“Birthday cards are probably the most popular of all greeting cards, but why do so many of them treat aging past 40 as something that deserves sadistic ridicule?”), his British-accented GPS (“She once disappointed me by suggesting a sudden left turn across a four-lane highway – and a concrete median – to get to a children’s bowling party.”), and Valentine’s Day (“At one Target store, I saw Spiderman valentines, Darth Vader-themed valentine chocolates, and military camouflage tattoo valentines.”). The 40-Year-Old Version is filled with honesty and wry humor about the unexpected roads that life and fatherhood can take us down.
Although he touches on it only briefly, Schwartzberg also discusses an issue which is still relatively little-known yet can have an overwhelming and unexpected impact on new fathers: depression. After his son was born he fell into a deep depression that contributed in part to the breakdown of his marriage: “I remember sitting on the hard wood floor next to my son, both of us exhausted and craving a more comprehensible reality. Charlie started crying; then I did. We didn't just cry – we bawled.” In time, Schwartzberg and was able to give his depression a name: Paternal Postnatal Depression (PPND). PPND affects 1 out of every 10 new dads (studies suggest that it may be as high as 1 out of every 4 new dads), and is a serious clinical condition that can be crippling. If you suspect that you may be experiencing PPND, there is no need to feel ashamed or to suffer alone. You can go to www.postpartummen.com, where you can find more information about PPND, take an assessment test to find out if you have PPND, and find an online community of supportive men.
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written by WeaselMomma, September 03, 2009
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written by PensivePapa, September 03, 2009
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written by BellaDaddy, September 03, 2009
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