Excerpts from Home Game by Michael Lewis

So in an attempt to understand what goes on inside the male mind I rented a book I had recently heard about on the Today Show about an author's experiences as a father.

Some of what I read could be Mark-like qualities, but for the most part I did not see a resemblance between the author's experience and the dad's I have met and know through my own life.

I read the entire book in one evening (If there is one perk to lazing around on the couch, it is being able to read a book an evening...I know I will not be able to even dream of doing that once I become a mom)

Here are some excerpts that made me stop and think:

"Memory loss is the key to human reproduction. If you remembered what new parenthood was actually like you wouldn't go around lying to people about how wonderful it is, and you certainly wouldn't ever do it twice"

"Five months pregnant with our first child, Tabitha (his wife) pointed out that the feeling of being weighed down by adulthood wasn't likely to improve anytime soon. Parenthood loomed. there was a time when I suspected this wouldn't have much effect on me. I figured that the chemical rush that attended new motherhood might get me off the hook-that Tabitha would happily embrace all the new unpleasant chores and I'd stop in from time to time to offer advice. she'd do the play-by-play; I'd do the color commentary. Five months into the pregnancy that illusion had been pretty well shattered by the anecdotal evidence. One friend with a truly amazing gift for getting out of things he did not want to do wrote to describe his own experience of fatherhood. "Remember that life you thought you had?" he wrote. "Guess what. it's not yours anymore." "

"The language of parenthood is encoded. When a mother says to a father, "I want to take her to the hospital," she is really saying "WE are ALL going to the hospital, and if you whisper even a word of complaint, you will have proved yourself for all time a man incapable of love." Maternal concern is one of those forces of nature not worth fighting."

"The thing that most surprised me about fatherhood the first time around was how long it took before I felt about my child what I was expected to feel. Clutching Quinn after she exited the womb, I was able to generate tenderness and a bit of theoretical affection, but after that, for a good six weeks, the best I could manage was detached amusement. The worst was hatred. I distinctly remember standing on a balcony with Quinn squawking in my arms and wondering what I would do if it wasn't against the law to hurl her off it. I also recall convincing myself that official statistics dramatically overstated the incidence of sudden infant death syndrome-when an infant dies for no apparent reason in her crib- because most of them were probably murder. The reason we all must be so appalled by parents who murder their infants is that it is so easy and even natural to do. Maternal love may be instinctive, but paternal love is learned behavior.
Here is the central mystery of fatherhood, or at any rate my experience of it. How does a man's resentment of this....thing....that lands in his life and instantly disrupts every aspect of it for the apparent worse turn into love? A month after Quinn was born, I would have felt only an obligatory sadness if she had been rolled over by a truck. six months or so later, I'd have thrown myself in front of the truck to save her from harm. What happened? what transformed me from a monster into a father?...The simple act of taking care of a living creature, even when you don't want to, maybe especially when you don't want to, is transformative. A friend of mine who adopted his two children was asked by a friend of his how he could ever hope to love them as much as if they were his own. "Have you ever owned a dog?" he said. And that's the nub of the matter: All the little things that you must do for a helpless creature to keep it alive cause you to love it. Most people know this instictively. For someone like me, who has heretofore displayed a nearly superhuman gift for avoiding unpleasant tasks, it comes as a revelation. It's because you want to hurl it off the balcony and don't that you come to love it."