The Dad's Survival Guide

Like a hirsute Lord Reith; his mission: to inform and educate, Ian Banks returns to a bookshop near you. From TV to VD; you name it, he's covered it. The prolific Dr Banks latest offering weighs in at 192 pages, and is presented in the disarming and humorous style that is his moniker. Settling into an armchair, your reviewer elected to approach the project from the perspective of someone with no medical knowledge. "As a radiologist" you chorus, "you're practically there already." Quite. There are chapters dealing with contraception, antenatal care, delivery, and others dealing with the odyssey that is being a father during those early childhood years. Banks' style is never less than engaging, and he writes with the assured style of someone who was that soldier at every stage: a medical man who has been there, seen it, done it, treated it, bought the tee-shirt if not the actual 'kiss-me-quick' hat. The section at the back of the book is styled as the ultimate survival package for childrens' problems and their illnesses. It is well laid-out, immediately accessible, and written in a didactic but logical form. Everything from allergies through vaccination, meningitis, and rashes, to worms is included, with practical help and guidance on teasing out the serious from the trivial. One excellent feature is the fathers' quotation box. Each is located in the book margin and vary in content from the funny to the very moving. I loved the (perfectly true) observation by one father that the worst three things about having a new baby in the house were 'lack of sleep, lack of sleep, and lack of sleep; in that order'. In the chapter "So, who looks after the children?" Banks tackles the very traumatic themes of divorce, single parenting, and the changing role of the father. The accompanying quotations make for grim but thought-provoking reading, and would be, in my view, a sufficient reason in itself to purchase this book. Dr Banks set himself the not inconsiderable challenge of producing a text, which is not just medical, but asks pertinent questions of us as fathers in society. Someone once said "looking for the answers just gives me indigestion, when I spent so much time just dealing with the question." Dr Banks entertains and informs. Lord Reith would approve, I suspect. A crowded undergraduate curriculum means that, in general, doctors on qualification have scant knowledge of …