Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances

"Lucas Mann writes from a father’s perspective, but this essay collection could serve any new parent confronting the joy, exhaustion and “mundane enormous terror of watching a child grow.” As a modern-day parent, you keep two things within arm’s reach at all times: your child and your phone. Both are exquisitely engineered to demand your attention; both leave you unmoored from your sense of self. Until one day, as you fumble through small talk with other parents at the playground, you find yourself performing parenthood. Mann observes himself observing himself, articulating interiorities of fatherhood I hadn’t noticed on my own. Probably because I was too exhausted – or scrolling on my phone."