It may be a little early to start thinking about Christmas gifts, but if you have a stay-at-home dad, SAHD-to-be or wannabe SAHD in your life, consider pre-ordering The Ultimate Stay-at-Home Dad manual, by Kansas City Dads Group member Shannon Carpenter.
Subtitled Your Essential Manual for Being an Awesome Full-Time Father, the book uses some of the best advice and wisdom Carpenter compiled from his fellow dads’ group members and other fathers he met along the way. The book, filled with many of his hilarious personal observations from 12 years as a stay-at-home father, aims to compile “actionable and direct advice to fathers … from a father’s point of view” that encourages dads to use their natural talents to become a better parent,” according to a news release from the book’s publisher, Penguin Books.
In a column he penned for The Good Men Project, Carpenter wrote he was inspired to write The Ultimate Stay-at-Home Dad from his own difficult experience trying to find advice for fathers. The little he found, he writes, was filled with “bro talk” and empty platitudes. “I wanted to be involved in every aspect of my children’s lives. That’s the problem with so much of the advice out there written for dads. It treats mom as a problem, the baby as an obstacle, and parenting as a distraction. We are better than that, and we deserve better than that.”
The Ultimate Stay-at-Home Dad, to be released in October, offers advice on everything from learning to cook and clean with children, to dealing with mental health and relationships, all framed by stories taking from Carpenter’s own life. And stories he has plenty of.
In addition to his regular GMP and being a contributor to the City Dads Group blog, Carpenter has been writing about his at-home adventures for years. He started with the blog Hossman At-Home, and has had his social satire and humorous parenting essays published all over the internet. He and some of his KC Dads recently started the Dad House podcast. Redbook named him one of America’s “Adventure Dads” and Buzzfeed recognized him as one of the funniest women of the week in 2020, which he took in his usually humorous stride.
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