Book summary

Calling having a child "the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit," Bill Cosby expounds on the pleasure and pain of fatherhood in this collection of humorous anecdotes, lending his inimitable warm, slightly bemused style to a vexed question that parents have been asking themselves since time immemorial: why did we do this to ourselves? Using his own family as an example, Cosby counts the ways children can torture their parents, highlighting their irrationality, sudden mood swings, outbreaks of mindless violence against their siblings, expense, and sheer bloody-mindednes. But after all this, he still comes to the conclusion that fatherhood, while it couldn't be exactly called enjoyable, is a vital experience. With Cosby's worldly-wise sense of humor as its main component, the book is less a how-to guide than a series of sympathetic conversations with a man who's seen extensive action in the trenches of kid warfare. Its ultimate message is: we may drive ourselves crazy, but we'll get through this.