Life Is Short, Laundry Is Eternal: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad
Early in this book, Benner tells the sweet story of his adoption, and then the sad story of his father abandoning the family on the author’s thirteenth birthday. Those short, clear passages are, however, virtual islets of good writing in a puddle of cliché and syrupy platitudes. This thin book is mainly a chain of tiny, advice-giving chapters that sound like an audition for The View. Yes, stay-at-home dads are rare, but the concept of them is no longer novel. That relegates this book to the shrinking group of parents who are only now finding that men can play big roles in homemaking. In other words, this book is dated. Benner more than meets the exhausting challenge of raising a child with type 1 diabetes. But other than restating the nightly, darkest-hours task of monitoring his daughter’s blood sugar, he does not take us inside this situation or its affect on his family. Worse, the ordeal of childhood diabetes comes across as a tyranny over readers who dare to shy from a lecture on it. --Dane Carr