The Velveteen Father: An Unexpected Journey to Parenthood
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.85 (635 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0375501649 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 242 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-02-12 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
The Velveteen Father is his candid, heartfelt, and often hilarious account of the formation and flourishing of a family. In intimate, graceful prose, Green describes his partner's journey from the hedonistic eighties to the realization that he wanted to have a child; his own concurrent journey to find a way to become an adult without having a child; and their journey together to become good parents in a society whose reactions to unconventional families can be both funny and frightening. In the classic bedtime story, a velveteen rabbit is made real at last by a child's true love. Each new living thing in the world each day says: You are alone, and not getting younger.At the age of thirty-seven, the journalist and novelist Jesse Green found his life dramatically changing when he met and fell in love with a man who had recently adopted a baby boy. Having long since made peace with his choice not to be a parent, Green now faced the shock and the responsibility of a fatherhood he had never imagined. The Velveteen Father will therefore interest anyone who has considered--or would consider--having a child.. But this transformation is not just the province of parents, Green writes; only by addressing, in some way, the generations that come before and after us can we face the task of becoming real. E
"Articulate and moving account of parenthood and love--a gift" according to A Customer. The only disturbing part of reading the reviews about this book are the sick and out of place remarks some people feel it necessary to share with those of us who clearly chose to read about this book--and to read the book itself, because we care about what it means to be a parent, and what it means to love a child.The nasty self-righteous and self-satisfied judges of human nature ought to keep their nasty feelings in a more appropriate place where someone might actually be interested in hearing about them--which surely isn't here. Writing such comments in this context is clearly out of place--save it for your dogma conventi. A Customer said Rich portrayal of a journey to parenthood. This book creates the most vivid portraits of the author and his partner and both of their journeys to parenthood. I liked that it was not falsely sentimental--I believed every word. I didn't want it to end.. Velveteen Reading as well In Jesse Green's newly released in paperback, "The Velveteen Father", he spends an entire book waxing philosophic about the joys and pains of rearing a child in today's world. It might be so tempting to pigeon-hole this book into convienient, politically incorrect categories (as several reviews have shown; to which I qiuckly respond: why are you reading this book in the first place?), but in doing so, the true message and meaning of the story is missed. This isn't a book about two gay men adopting a child, this book really is about adopting a child, and the joys and pains and complexities of child-raising. To me, the fact t
Journalist Jesse Green's delightful memoir makes it quite clear that the pleasures and perils of parenting are always the same--even for a gay 37-year-old man who stumbles into it by falling in love with a person who has an adopted son. As Green puts it in a typically well-turned phrase, "fatherhood trumps gayness," which is to say that heterosexual parents at the playground sometimes find it easier to relate to Green, his boyfriend, Andy, and son, Erez (soon joined by baby brother Lucas), than do t