Greg Knotts: This abstarct is a synthesis of the back cover.
Green describes his male partner's journey from the hedonistic eighties to the realization that he wanted to have a child: his own concurrent journey to find a way to become an adult without having a child; and their journey together to become good parents. In becoming the father — or rather, one of the fathers — of Erez, Green faced challenges familiar to all parents, from the first bath to the first tooth, along with a host of dilemmas unique to his situation. As he discovered, even in blasé New York City, reactions to his family ranged from the funny to the frightening, the unaccepting to the all-embracing.
Most of all, “The Velveteen Father” is a moving account of the transformative effects parenthood can have on people who least expect to become parents. In the classic children's story, a velveteen rabbit is made real at last by a child's true love. "Letting a child into your life is like letting a monkey into your kitchen," Green writes. "This, I thought in our first years together, would be my biggest problem: how to survive the kids' monkey antics. The monkey is cute, though; when he someday leaves, you will look at your ruined life and not know how to build it again. A child makes you real, if you meet him halfway: if you come to him when he comes to you."
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