The True Story of One Man's Inability to Let Go of the Teenage Angst That Has Been Haunting Him Throughout His Entire Adult Life

So far, I have been extremely unimpressed with Neil Pollack, Alternadad. His tone often strikes me as a little self-mocking - he's quick to make fun of himself, and to offer up a rhetorical, "why do these things always happen to me?" At least, I assume this is rhetorical and that he's not honestly wondering this. I think if we were to read a story written from a mother's perspective about a husband who was consistently out smoking pot and getting drunk, he would certainly not be a protagonist. And if the mother was trying to rationalize it as well, he just needs to do it, I think we would feel bad for her, and maybe she's in denial about some serious problems that he might have.

But in Alternadad, its not that he has any personal problems, its that he has a "punk-rock lifestyle." And I'm going to have to agree with Jana that he exhibits a lot of "wrong behavior for a dad like symbol." Its like he's on a constant journey of self-discovery, but he doesn't really like to discover anything significant about himself. So he knows he loves his family, and then he leaves that family (with an extremely young infant) to go on a rock tour, because pretty soon it'll be too late to be a rock star! Oh no! In my opinion, its already too late. You don't spend your child's infanthood learning that you really want to be with your child during that phase. I don't buy his 18-34 demographic idea, where he seems to think that you can be as young as dumb as you want. The 30+ year old guy at concerts isn't cool, even if he thinks he is, and even if he smokes a lot of pot.

I think that Amanda has pretty low standards for fathers, to be impressed with Pollack. I imagine most of the fathers in the essays we've read would acknowledge that the world demands a lot from mothers, and put up with a lot from their pregnant wives without seriously complaining because, they realize how cool it is that this woman is going to be giving birth to their child. That's the easy part. But what happens when Pollack has an infant? 1. Rock tour 2. Complaining, "Why don't you stop trying to hold me back?" when his wife asks him to take care of the baby for two hours. Seriously? Stop trying to hold me back? Hello, everyone, I'd like to introduce you to the teenage angst of a 30 year old man! We could sub-title this book, "I Refuse to Grow Up, But My Kid Makes Me Feel Good About Myself."

I don't want to judge the values of Neil and Regina in general, because being able to have your own values matters a lot. But one instance, Regina's inability and refusal to even get trash into a trash can, and Neil's acceptance of this, really troubles me. This is why: it's one thing to raise a kid with different values, its another to raise that kid with values that are inevitably going to come in conflict with pretty much everyone he meets. I'm imagining a 20 yr old Elijah, who has never cleaned up after himself, though has never had anyone clean up after him, moving with several roommates. And I'm imagining their resentment build as he just creates more and more filth and has absolutely no awareness that it might bother other people.