When I read a book from a parent, I don’t want to hear them glorify themselves. I want to hear about their struggles and the uglier moments of parenting. Parenting has many wonderful moments, but getting to those wonderful moments isn’t an easy road. It is a road filled with mistakes and detours. Scott Benner’s book, Life is Short, Laundry is Eternal: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad, is a book that proves the family route is one paved with bumps and washed with tears, but filled with fun and love.
Although I’ve never met Scott Benner, I felt a sense of community after reading his book and immediately hoped for a sequel. Like Benner, I am a stay-at-home dad. I have gone through many of the situations and feelings that he has faced. I felt so connected with this book that I was certain my name would be found in his acknowledgments.
From the first page, I knew he and I were swimming in the same bottomless laundry basket. I was riding in the car while reading the book, and had to read aloud to my wife, “There is no more thankless task than making another’s clothes clean again.” The truest thing to ever be written. Cleaning the house and picking up after family members are some of the many difficult tasks of being an at-home parent and he captured those difficult and gross tasks beautifully.
Scott Benner also tackles gender stereotypes in Life is Short, Laundry is Eternal. He discusses the many mothers who have taken upon these thankless tasks and encourages men not to view chores as women’s work. Instead, men need to share the load themselves.
“There is no such thing as gender specific when it comes to being a part of your family,” he writes. As I read those statements, I could hear rallying cries from the parental mountaintops.
There are many great examples in Life is Short, Laundry is Eternal of what a stay-at-home parent faces daily, and the journey that took him from being a normal guy in his 20s to an involved dad. That journey was not always smooth, and Scott Benner shares deeply personal moments and how they’ve shaped him, like when his adopted father walked out on him on his 13th birthday. “The lesson I learned that day was simple. I never wanted to be a man who could or would make his family feel as awful as he made us feel.” His world was turned upside down again when his daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
Life is Short, Laundry is Eternal is a great book about being a stay-at-home dad and about parenting generally. The stories and anecdotes guide you through what it is like to love and care for a child with a serious illness, and then lift parents with encouragement and hope, whatever the parenting challenges they face.
The road to being a good parent isn’t glamorous, and thankfully Scott Benner is honest and open enough to show us that you can make those mistakes and, with the right sense of humor and desire to learn, still come out on top.
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