How to Be a Dad (Even If Yours Sucked)

A Survival Guide for Men Who Never Had a Role Model

De: Robert C. Owens

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Most parenting books are written by people who had good fathers—this one's for the rest of us.

What happens when you become a dad but never had one worth copying? Most fathering advice assumes you had decent role models, infinite patience, and emotional resources that feel foreign if you were raised by absent, angry, or just plain awful parents. This isn't another book by someone who fondly recalls playing catch with dad—it's a survival guide for men making it up as they go.

Robert C. Owens knows the struggle firsthand. His critical father left him with an internal voice that found fault in everything, yet somehow he had to raise a child without passing on that poison. Through extensive interviews with over 500 fathers in similar situations—men raised by addicts, workaholics, abusers, or emotional ghosts—he discovered something liberating: most of us are winging it, and that's actually okay. The problem isn't your inadequacy; it's that you're measuring yourself against impossible standards while running on empty.

Using his signature "40% Rule" (you only need to be 40% better than your dad for your kids to thrive), Owens delivers practical protocols that actually work for men who feel like frauds. This isn't toxic positivity or gentle parenting rhetoric—it's real talk for fathers who love their kids desperately but don't always like being dads, who hear their father's worst words coming out of their mouths and need actual strategies to stop the cycle.

Drawing from neuroscience, attachment theory, and brutally honest research, this book tackles the dirty secrets other parenting guides ignore: sometimes you'll resent your children for getting the father you needed, boundaries feel like cruelty when you've never seen healthy ones, and showing affection can feel alien when you never received it. But here's the truth that changes everything: your kids don't need perfect—they need present, predictable, and good enough.

What you'll learn:

• How to show affection when it feels uncomfortable or fake
• Setting boundaries without becoming the tyrant you feared
• Managing triggered moments without traumatizing your kids
• Breaking generational patterns without breaking yourself
• Why "good enough" parenting beats perfectionist parenting every time

This is the manual you never got, written by someone who needed it too. Because being a good father isn't about having all the answers—it's about being willing to learn them, one mistake at a time.