Gay Uncle to The Rescue

May 08, 2008

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We’re not anywhere near having babies, but we do have various friends who have decided to make this strange and befuddling life choice. Luckily for them, there’s now professional gay help. Brett Berk, a certified gay uncle and kid expert, has written “The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting.” As a bonus, his sound advice is packaged with wit, sarcasm and humor, making it an easy and entertaining read. He’s like the Tim Gunn or Carson Kressley of the child-rearin’ world.

We asked him a few questions about his motivations for writing this book, why gays give such good advice and how the heck he’s managed to stay in such a long-term relationship. His answers should convince you to go out and buy this book for every single one of your friends that’s even thinking about having kids.

Visit his website for more irreverent musings on parenting and buy the book here.

Outzone: It seems like a big part of the book is about helping parents to remember to be people as well, and not just parentrons. Was that part of your motivation to write the book? Or was it all “for the children?”

Brett Berk: Parents' need to be people for a variety of reasons. For their kids--so they don't end up placing on them too much of the responsibility for their own sense of self worth. For themselves--because it's impossible to do any job with any semblance of proficiency if you're doing it 24/7 every day of your life without any breaks. And for their friends--who, contrary to what they might think, aren't actually all that interested in discussing Jell-o, natural latex bottles shaped like a real nipple, or the quality of their children's poo. I was certainly motivated in a big way by the way my cohorts--my partners in crime, people I'd been close with for ten or fifteen years--seemed to disappear into what I call the Parenting Bubble when they had kids. I was like, "What have you Zombies done with my friends? Now I have to break in a whole new team of drinking buddies and people who love crappy teen comedies." Those kind of relationships become increasingly difficult to come by as one enters their late 30's

Oh, and thanks for catching the book's dedication (which is, as you mention "For the children...") My editor actually wanted it to be "I believe that children are our future" which I'm glad I avoided, not because I hate Whitney but because it's not true. Our future is global environmental collapse, and the correlative fiscal and humanitarian crises.

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