Before You

To the Author

Most of this book is for your future kid. But this introduction is for you, the parent-to-be and author-to-be. So if you’re a kid and you’re reading this section, you can stop, because it’s about to get boring for kids!
     Are the kids gone? Great. The first thing we need to establish is that microeconomics focuses on the behavior of individual agents such as consumers and businesses, whereas macroeconomics looks at decision matrices of those agents and the aggregate effects of resultant behavior patterns.
     Okay, now they’re really gone. Listen, here’s the tea: in the very near future, you’re facing a big change in how others see you (and how you see yourself). Right now you know yourself as an individual, with likes and dislikes and pet peeves and priorities and personal traumas and coping strategies and personality traits and a first name. But for the next few years, that person may feel very distant, even imaginary. You’ll spend much of your time being someone named Mama or Dada or whatever term of address you choose, and a lot of people—especially, for a while, your kid—will forget that you’re anything else.
     It’s fine! None of this is bad, and even if it’s challenging, it’ll be outweighed by all the positive parts of parenting. But the last thing you need is another baby book or journal reinforcing the idea that the most important thing about you is your kid. You already know your kid is important! You are about to voluntarily allow them to take over your life, and what’s more, you’re going to love it! But what you might forget, for a little while, is that you’re important too. You’re a real, whole, independent individual, and that’s not going to change. Recording what that person is like right now will make it easier to remember and keep hold of them, even when they feel like a mirage.
     That’s not selfish. Quite the opposite, actually. When your kid is a little older, it’s also going to be really good for them to understand that their parent is a person: someone who had a whole life before they came along, someone who has feelings and makes mistakes just like them. The goal of this book is to help you document your pre-baby self, so you can share that person with your kid.
     You’ll be talking to your child-to-be throughout the book, filling them in on what you were like when you were a kid and what you’re like right now. It may be tricky to figure out how to talk to them, since they don’t exist yet. So before you start, take a moment to picture your kid sometime in the future, when they’re old enough to read. Think about what they might look like, what they might care about, what they might worry about. Imagine them as a real, whole person, with likes and dislikes, anxieties and interests. A fully realized individual.
     Just like you.