Recommended books for fathers to be.

• The Connected Father by Carl Pickhardt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), developed out of the author’s long experience as a family therapist, and underpinned by a good research base, is full of insights and useful strategies. Unlike most ‘parenting’ books and ‘parent’ education, Pickhardt’s gender-awareness is strong. Without exaggerating differences between mothers and fathers or boys and girls, he identifies key issues for fathers (and mothers) in parenting sons and daughters. He is brilliant on ‘fathering a teenage daughter’.

• Putting Children First: a handbook for separated parents by Karen and Nick Woodall (Piatkus Books, 2007) is, quite simply, the best book on separation that we have ever read. Both the authors work at the Centre for Separated Families in York and have a wealth of experience with this client group. In this clever book – and its associated ‘Parenting Plans’ booklet - they guide both mothers and fathers (they have a real understanding of the needs and experiences of both sexes) through the emotional and practical journey of separation and its aftermath. Their explicit aim is to help parents ‘put their children first’, but the authors know this cannot be achieved until both father and mother can manage and understand their own feelings.
  
  
• Different Dads: Fathers' Stories of Parenting Disabled Children edited by Jill Harrison, Matthew Henderson and Rob Leonard (Jessica Kingsley Publishers). It is a collection of personal testimonies written by over 20 fathers of children with a disability. The fathers vary widely, in ethnicity, age and situation (from single to married-adoptive) as do their children’s ages and disabilities. A useful short description of each disability is provided at the end of the father’s testimony, with a website reference to high quality information.
  
  This book will offer invaluable insights for anyone concerned with families with a disabled child. The fathers talk movingly about how they responded when they realised their child was disabled – the grief, the sense of loss, the challenges, but above all the enduring love, the sense of pride and connection to their child, and the stories of what they have learnt and gained along the way. Many of the dads have found their own assumptions about their role challenged profoundly.
  
  
• Birth Fathers and their Adoption Experiences by Gary Clapton (Jessica Kingsley Publishers), recounts the experiences of thirty young men, mainly teenagers, whose children were adopted from birth. What is striking is that, decades on, the events of that period continue to resonate for these men in a way that lends a passion and deep emotional quality to their accounts. A ‘sense of becoming a father’ could be present during the pregnancy even when the young man had rejected the situation and had no contact with the mother. Many continue to experience regular and unexpected thoughts of their child throughout their lives; and for 23 of the 30, the impact of the adoption was deeper and more long-lasting than almost anything else that ever happened to them. Only 21 of the 30 went on to father other children.