Ask HN: Best Resources for a New Dad?

Children and their circumstances are so different that it's kind of easy to find yourself in a situation where no one knows what to do. Like everything that matters experience is the only real teacher. Keep trying.

If you can talk to people from your parents' generation that had children. Everyone has a story or a skill to share that helps make it all make more sense.

If you can afford to hire professionals they are generally more helpful than books. Doctors obviously are good to consult. Post partum doulas have lots of random knowledge that they can diffuse to you while they help out around the house. If you are having feeding issues OTs and lactation consultants can be quite useful.

Making friends with new parents will allow you to learn together.

Penny Simkin's book "The Birth Partner" is mostly about birth but had helpful ideas on sleep rotations and early feeding.

Random but I found this less wrong thread helpful for working through antivax ideas in good faith: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oFXXfP88nJrseeoMD/the-litera.... Particularly Lao Mein's comment. It is a very difficult topic to deal with head on since biology is so complicated and the surrounding discourse is all poison.

In the UK there are a few support options, including Dad-specific Facebook and WhatsApp groups run by PANDAS foundation. https://pandasfoundation.org.uk/how-we-can-support-you/suppo... (You can prob access outside UK)

There are also general parenting support organisations such as Family Action and podcasts like First Time Dads might be helpful.

I actually got some useful ideas on previous hackernews threads on fatherhood and parenting. There were usually one or two ideas that resonated with me. I suspect the points that resonate will be different for each of us. Here's one of the older threads with a lot of responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31976803

being a parent has been done to death. hundreds of thousands of morons have raised kids and we are all fine. drop the books, drop “consensus” (do you REALLY want your child like all others???!) and just be there, just be there and be a dad

Playful Parenting; Raising sour Children, Raising Ourself; Unconditional Parenting.

Three books I feel I can recommend.

In Canada they give new parents a book about that. Maybe ask around to see if your gov is doing the same thing?

For newborns I don’t think you need a manual. The baby sucks on moms tit, sleeps, and cries for a year. No blood, fever, or discoloration? Don’t worry about it too much otherwise see the doctor. Do your vaccinations and check-ups.

Once they start to wake up to the world it becomes more complicated. People have all sorts of ideas about how to best raise a child. Listen to your heart. The right way is the way that’s right for you. For example, most people and so-called experts told us to “sleep train” our child, making them sleep in a separate room or bed on a strict schedule. We didn’t. Our child sleeps with us in our bed (he’s 4 now, still sleeping with us). It works for us. Do what works for you.

As far as books go I recommend “Listen: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges” by Patty Wipfler

I found Emily Oster's books pretty informative (she's an economist by training, she does kind of a meta-analysis of research on various topics of interest). Her books should at least give you a good jumping off point if you want to go deeper into studies on particular topics.

That said - all this stuff is a quagmire. Advice that works well for one kid might not work at all for another kid. Any lay-people you talk to will tell you what worked (or not) for them and their kid(s), and they will tell you with great certainty that they are right. But someone else will tell you the opposite with just as much certainty based on their experience.

We all want to do the "right" thing for our children, but on many topics, there just isn't a one-size-fits-all answer.

By virtue of the fact that you're asking this question, here, I assume that you're up on the basics of newborn care/current SIDS prevention recommendations/etc (ie the stuff about which there is consensus across sources), so please allow me to throw out some generalities that have been helpful for me:

- Check in with your partner! More than you think is necessary. New moms are absolutely slammed with hormones, and the relative balances shift around quite a bit in the first few months. Also, she is probably even more sleep deprived than you, and probably has even more of her ego and self-worth tied to being a good parent. Whenever my wife is breastfeeding, I try to make a point to ask her if she needs anything (snacks/water/phone/whatever). Take care of as much day-to-day household stuff as you can for her. Encourage her to take a break/nap while you watch the kid. If she is having a hard time about anything, try to gently remind her that everything she is going through is perfectly normal, and validate that she's doing a good job.

- Check in with yourself! Your testosterone has probably taken a nose-dive, and the effects can sneak up on you. It's likely that approximately zero people are going to ask how you are holding up, so you need to ask yourself.

- Strive to maintain a calm, stable environment. Sometimes the baby is going to be freaking out, and nothing seems to work. Keep calm. When you find yourself getting frustrated, consider this: there will come a time when you will feel that you would give anything to hold your child as a baby again. You will look back and say that you would gladly be sleep deprived, covered in urine, and deafened by crying just to relive the moment. From birth to age 18 is about 936 weeks, so every 9ish weeks, another 1% of their childhood has passed. I keep this firmly in mind, and try to savor every second.

- No plan survives contact with the baby. Be flexible. The river bank guides the river, but the river shapes the bank.

- Kids internalize a lot about their environment. They'll (mostly) do what they see you do, not what you tell them to do. Want your child to eat healthy? You need to eat healthy. Want your child to spend a lot of time reading? You need to spend a lot of time reading. Want your child to call and visit you when they're an adult? Exercise? Language? *Become the person that you want your child to imitate*.

- Practice empathy. Imagine not knowing anything. The first time a newborn gets gas, it must seem like the worst pain in the world for them. Imagine how confusing and terrifying the world is for them. You are an island of love, stability, and comfort while they figure things out. Don't forget empathy for your partner, and empathy for yourself!

Disclaimer: I'm also a new dad, and it's too early to tell if I know what I'm talking about :)

The Home by Jon R Rice

> I am so surprised that in 2024 there still isn't a good consensus on things that are best to raise a child.

Because it’s tough to screw up. Think of all the absolutely moronic people who manage to keep kids alive who then turn into relatively normal adults. There’s not much to it.