Trust the Boston Herald’s Lauren Beckham Falcone to craft a trend piece out of Neal Pollack‘s just-published memoir ALTERNADAD, Steve Almond‘s daddyblog for Nerve and other upcoming books like MACK DADDY: MASTERING FATHERHOOD WITHOUT LOSING YOUR STYLE, YOUR COOL AND YOUR MIND. Because – guess what! – daddy diaries are the new mommy memoirs, as the millennium’s first-time fathers confront the ultimate antidote to cool – a kid. “I’ve never been lumped into a genre,” said Pollack. “When I turned my blog into a daddy blog, I got this sense that there was a vast universe out there with similar concerns and interests.”
Of course, fatherhood led to bestsellers by Bill Cosby and Paul Reiser in the late 80s and early 90s, but as Publishers Weekly’s Karen Holt points out, “what you’re seeing now is the genre of the cool dad – people who always thought they were much too cool to be parents – trying to figure it all out. There’s a built-in conflict that makes for an interesting book.” But will the trend be successful, or will it suffer the same fate as its fictional cousin, lad lit? Holt admits the latter trend “didn’t work” but “this is more of an authentic experience that appeals to an older man in his 30s and 40s. It’s also a way for all of those men out there breaking new parenting ground – the hipster who still goes out, who has a career, who is a good father. They can see themselves reflected in books.”