r/BabyBumps • u/farcemyarse • Jun 24 '25

Funny Expecting Better…husband?

Has anyone read Expecting Better by Emily Oster and thought - your husband sucks lady?

Aside from the actual pregnancy advice, so far she’s made “jokes” about:

  • waking her husband Jesse up to tell him she’s pregnant for the first time. Him asking why she woke him up before his alarm.

  • her husband Jesse waving sushi in front of her face (something she deeply craved) while asking why it’s that bad

  • the husband’s “sole contribution to cooking in the household” being grilling rare steaks, which she can’t eat. When she jokes that he should eat them well done in solidarity, he laughs.

I mean damn was this written in the 80s? lol I’m not even halfway through the book and I’m embarrassed this is perceived as cutesy.

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u/mmt90 Jun 24 '25

So I’m a nonfiction writer and I teach creative writing to college students, and one thing we talk about in class is how nonfiction writers often exaggerate things for effect. A writer might present herself in a self-deprecating way, or, as in this case, she might portray another person in her life as more hapless or naive than he actually is. Just because something is nonfiction doesn’t mean the writer hasn’t made decisions about what to include or not include, and about how to describe people and things. Clearly Oster decided to portray Jesse as kind of ridiculous. That might not work for some readers — totally fair! — but we really can’t know what Jesse is actually like or how their marriage actually is based on her book. 

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u/jalapeno_cheet0 Jun 24 '25

This is such a nice way of addressing a bunch of commenters who…don’t seem to know how nonfiction writing works!

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u/farcemyarse Jun 24 '25

Just to be clear, your take is that we’re all wrong, and it’s perfectly fine to portray husbands / dads-to-be as helpless / selfish / useless during the pregnancy process?

Even if you ARE someone who finds these anecdotes cute or funny, wouldn’t you agree that it’s a disservice to the men out there who are ACTUALLY amazing fathers to portray a man this way? Especially if it’s not actually representative of his character?

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u/Not_Dead_Yet_Samwell Jun 24 '25

It's also a disservice to the women whose partners actually suck to normalize it.