ParentSounds 08: Adam Fletcher
A British author writes the parenting books he wished he'd been given
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Dad Differently
Today is a special day. For the first time since June, we’ve managed to meet our original (naive? overly optimistic?) goal of publishing ParentSounds biweekly. Get lost, inner critic!
For helping us to reach this milestone while keeping half an eye on the mischief-making 13 month-old currently digging his way through the trash can on the other side of the room, we have Adam Fletcher to thank. Adam is the bestselling author of 10 books, including his new series Dad Differently, which was just released last week.
Adam agreed to come and talk to us about his new books, which explore the side of parenthood that he wished he’d known about when he became a dad a little over three years ago.
Spoiler alert: this is another newsletter about emotions.
I met Adam through a Berlin-based parenting app called Mello back in the Spring of 2021, when we discovered that our daughters were born on the exact same day. I later learned that we’ve been connected for even longer than this - his book How to be German in 50 Easy Steps / Wie man Deutscher Wird in 50 Einfachen Schritten was gifted to me on my first Christmas in Germany nearly a decade ago, and stolen by some Airbnb guests just a few years later. If that’s not an endorsement, I’m not sure what is!
Shortly after we met I learned that Adam has actually been a papa for a few hours longer than me, and I’ve been leaning on him for parenting wisdom ever since.
Helpfully, he’s distilled much of that wisdom into his new book series, which he’s going to tell you more about in a moment.
In lieu of a podcast, this issue of ParentSounds features an excerpt from Dad Differently: Babies, which is the second book in Adam’s series.
You can read the excerpt at the link above, which we will also share again at the end of this email.
And if you’d like to give one or both of Adam’s new books to someone special in your life, they’re available in both Kindle and paperback form on all of the Amazons.
Here’s Adam in his own words:
ParentSounds: Hey Adam, we finally got you to do a ParentSounds interview. Tell us a bit more about the big exciting project that’s been keeping you busy lately.
Adam Fletcher: Hello, sure, yes… well, back when my partner, Evelyn (as she’s called in my books), was pregnant with our daughter, Runa (also a pseudonym because I write slanderously), I was gifted several New Dad books, as were many of my friends, probably you also got them too, right, Matt?
They were called something like SUPERHEROFATHERMAN and mostly just full of hacks, facts and checklists. There were a surprising amount of Vietnam war metaphors. The baby was a ticking bomb to defuse, or a secondhand car with leaky radiator quirks to learn, depending on the metaphor of the moment.
I hated them all. I needed help, sure, but with the inside, hard-to-reach parts of becoming a father: thoughts, feelings, fears, and emotions.
So, I promised myself I’d write the book I would have needed. It took longer than I expected, which I should, by now, have expected.
The series is called Dad Differently. The first two (pregnancy and babies) are done. They’re not really advice books, more like attempts to describe universal parenting feelings, experiences and frustrations in novel, illuminating ways.
There’s an excerpt from one at the end of the interview…
PS: We’ve been hanging out on the playground since before our little girls were a year old. What kinds of experiences over the past few years motivated you to work on this series?
AF: It was a fear of forgetting, mostly. I have quite strong aphantasia (no mind’s eye) and so the past is mostly just lost to me. I was afraid I’d forget everything about raising Runa, unless I wrote it down.
So, I wrote it down.
The bigger purpose is that a lot of men aren’t taught to express their emotions in a healthy way. This causes enormous societal problems and, in extreme cases, despots, dictators, and donald-trumps. Fortunately, my family did emotions well, and I hope that through the vignettes in this book (it’s about 50% memoir and 50% fictitious stories of an unnamed couple) people will recognise the very universal, deep joy but also acute suffering that comes with being given stewardship of a tiny, erratic person. I’d like the fathers that read it to feel seen, and thus, less alone.
PS: Let’s talk numbers. Tell us more about the practical aspects of what it’s been like to write professionally with a baby/toddler in your life.
AF: It wasn’t as bad as I expected. Evelyn was off the whole first year (thanks, ridiculously generous German social system!). Runa was pretty chill and since breastfeeding never really worked, by month two or three we’d instigated a strict parenting shift system (8am-1pm and 1pm-6pm). We were incredibly rigid about it. We paused our romantic life in order to get free time to pursue our non-parenting pursuits. I think it was a shock to Runa when she realised her parents actually knew each other. The winters were brutal, of course, because they're sick every other day and so there's no Kita (German daycare). Berlin hibernates, but you can't. On the rare days they are healthy, you have to take them out somewhere or you both go mental. We've spent a lot of time in Ikea the past few years and that's not a sentence I ever hoped to write. I no longer give myself any difficult winter deadlines.
PS: Have you had any moments of despair while trying to sustain writing during this hectic time in our lives?
AF: Many. The shift system worked well, but there was a flaw in my plan for the Dad Differently series. After parenting half the day, the idea that I was going to sit down and write about parenting with the other half was the definition of delusional. I just couldn’t motivate myself to do it. I’d rather have stuck in my head in a hungry bear’s mouth.
Instead, I took (some might say squandered) ten months of the half days of Runa’s first year writing an absurdist comedy crime caper. It’s called The Death of James Jones, sort of. It’s my least successful book by the widest of wide margins. I recognise now that inside of it is a very loud, not always successful cry for help. Or play, maybe, but more on that later…
PS: What do you think about the importance of continuing to develop your writer self while also living your double life as a parent? Or do you feel like you’re just in survival mode at this point?
AF: I introduce myself to people as a writer but it would be more accurate to say, “I’m in the emotions business.” My job is to create stories that move people, even if it’s just to laughter. I believe that having a child is the greatest gift I could have given writer-me. Watching my daughter grow up, I now have a much deeper, more profound understanding of the human experience from which to draw from. Becoming a parent is like an emotional baptism. There’s something truly at stake in my life now, and vastly more love. That’s a much stronger, richer position to write from, even though there’s less time to do so.
PS: Last question - what advice can you give to other parents with young kids who are trying to find time for creative work amidst everything else we’ve all got going on right now?
AF: I’d encourage them to swap out the word work in “creative work” for play. Creative play, creative expression, it’s simply vital. It's obvious from watching our kids do it, right? How it enriches not only their day but also their understanding of the world. How much joy it brings them, and us, vicariously, when we watch, and directly, when we get down on our knees and bark like a dog or neigh like a pony in whatever odd game they're playing now.
The idea that we, as adults, no longer need to play is just absurd. Your friend Tommy Devine, back in ParentSounds 04, had a perfect line for this when he said "I think of creativity as a form of self-care, like exercising and sleeping. Allowing myself that time makes me a happier person, which, in turn, makes me a better dad and partner."
We play because we have to: the successful functioning of our bodies, minds, and families requires it.
A reminder that you can read an excerpted chapter from Adam’s second parenting book at the link below:
If you want to support Adam, why not buy one or both of the Dad Differently books for yourself or someone you love? Perhaps like my first introduction to Adam’s work, it too will get stolen in the future by a pair of Australian newcomers to Berlin who may or may not have also broken some of your glassware and not told you about it (I’m not bitter).
If you’re interested in checking out How to be German or the rest of Adam’s writing, you can find links to all of his books on his Amazon author page, or on his website.
That’s all for this time! Stay warm on these cold grey days and see you again soon.