Sugar milk press press kit and questions

PRESS KIT Sugar Milk: What One Dad Drinks When He Cant Afford Vodka By Ron Mattocks Press Contacts: [email protected]

SYNOPSIS The rigid family roles when mad men ruled supreme fifty years ago seem almost ludicrous by todays standards where mothers now direct boardrooms and fathers manage playrooms. While many families have consciously made this choice, many more were forced to do so as a result of the economy. In his book, SUGAR MILK: What One Dad Drinks When He Cant Afford Vodka (March 30, 2010), writer Ron Mattocks shows that he understands the personal impact of this situation as well as any man in the same positionand there are many.

In July 2009, the number of unemployed males jumped 77% year-over-year Of the 11.3 million preschoolers with working mothers, 25% are cared for primarily by fathers Reuters reported that in July 2009, 1 million families had a working wife, a child under 18 years old

and an unemployed father. As an executive in the homebuilding industry, Ron sees the coming economic downturn and, as a precaution, relocates away from his three sons to take a more secure position. En route, he meets his eventual wife and her two little girls through an odd internet experiment. But, when he unexpectedly loses his new job and cant find work, Ron suddenly finds himself thrust into the unfamiliar role of a stay-at-home dad to his stepdaughters while living apart from his own children.

ENDORSEMENTS & PRESS On one hand, Sugar Milk is a series of funny stories; I laughed aloud every three pages or so. But underneath the jokes, Ron Mattocks has a serious story to tell about men and fathers in transition, trying to hold their spirits and families together in an economy and society that is shifting under their feet.

- Jeremy Adam Smith, editor of Shareable and author of The Daddy Shift: How-Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family

Sugar Milk captures with real American Man of 2010, and the American family, with honesty and humor not found in the stick figure portrayals so prevalent in popular culture. As men across the country struggle to balance work and family, divorce and remarriage, kids and step-kids, love and just getting by, they need this book to reassure them that they are not crazy or unique. They are actually just like Ron Mattocks and just like me and just like just about every guy.

- Tom Matlack, Founder, The Good Men Project

On the surface, Ron Mattocks seemed like any other successful, ambitious corporate layer. But a series of professional and personal developments transformed this one-time award-winning sales exec into a stay at home dadone who relentlessly pursued his dream of becoming a writer. This just in...it's no longer a dream. Anyone who reads Sugar Milk will quickly realize that Mattocks is a writerone who is blessed with an intelligent brand of humor as well as an uncanny ability to turn a phrase. His impressive debut effort will keep his readers laughing from cover to cover as they quickly devour his collection of stories which define him far better than any six-figure job ever could.

- John Cave Osborne, author of Tales From the Trips: How Three Babies Turned Our World Upside-Down


Former Wall Streeters take on new parenting roles Thu, Jul 30 2009 By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former project manager Bob Short has a ready answer to describe which job is more difficult -- his old post at Nuveen Investments or his current position as stay-at-home dad. "This is harder," said Short, one of the victims of a U.S. recession that has hit men harder than women in the job market. The suburban Chicago father of three is part of a new wave of stay-at-home dads who lost jobs in the financial sector turmoil and now grapple full-time with making lunches, organizing playdates and chauffeuring children to activities. Unemployment has affected more men than women, with men accounting for three out of every four U.S. jobs lost, and the number of families in which wives are primary breadwinners has jumped sharply since the recession began. There's no official tally of Wall Streeters turned at-home parents, and stay-at-home dads overall are hard to count because many will not admit it, said Ron Mattocks of Houston, a stay-at-home dad and former analyst for hedge funds. "They say, 'I'm out of work. I'm actively seeking work. It's just a matter of time before I find a job and get things back on track the way they were before,'" said Mattocks, author of a stay-at-home dad blog and a soon-to-be-published book "Sugar Milk: What One Dad Drinks When He Can't Afford Vodka." In the first five months of this year, 5.4 percent of working wives had an unemployed husband, compared with an average 2.4 percent over the first five months of 2007 at the peak of the last economic cycle, according to economist Heather Boushey at the Center for American Progress.

TRADITIONALLY FEMALE AT-HOME PARENTING Some 1 million U.S. families have a working wife, a child under 18 and an unemployed husband, the center said. With so many jobs shed in occupations dominated by men, from Wall Street to construction, the switch to traditionally female at-home parenting can be jarring, said Andrea Doucet, professor of sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and author of "Do Men Mother?" "It's a challenge if someone gets the slip and is losing that traditional masculine identity," she said. The loss of identity is powerful, said Mattocks. "At home, you don't get a performance review. There's no happy hour at the end of the day for making a big deal, no making projections, not a lot of people saying 'Thank you.'" For dads from Wall Street, much depends on how much they got in so-called walkaway money, said Jeremy Smith, author of "The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family." With a big payoff, "they can tell themselves they're in semi-retirement, they're spending more time with family and they're taking a break before getting back in the game," he said. But those burdened by debt face as many of the same, if not more, stresses than do unemployed fathers with less money, although their trappings may be far different, he said. "People in the working class are accustomed to insecurity," he said. "A lot of these guys might have gone to Ivy League schools, have MBAs and have more of a sense of entitlement about what to do with their lives."

RANDOMNESS" OF DAYS Short said the hardest part of being a stay-at-home dad is the "randomness" of his days after his job at Nuveen. "There's a lot of logistics to work out. Somebody's at skating practice, somebody's at gymnastics, somebody's at soccer," he said. Roger Vandewater, who cared for two teenage sons in Duxbury, Massachusetts, after losing his job as a financial services database consultant in May, said he finds it much harder to concentrate with so many domestic interruptions. "I thought I was going to have a little time on my hands to get things done around the house or work on my golf game," he said. "None of that has happened yet." While Short said he would prefer a full-time paying job, he enjoys his new role. "It's a window into life that most men never see," he said. (Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Ed Stoddard in Dallas) Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.


Daddy's lost his job now he's got a blog By Sarah Boesveld Published on Sunday, Jun. 14, 2009 7:51PM EST, last updated on Tuesday, Jun. 16, 2009 2:56PM EST

A cruel twist of fate morphed Ron Mattocks into a daddy blogger. The 37-year-old and his wife, Ashley, 31, both lost their jobs on the same day in February, 2008. Faced with a life of zero income, the Houston, Tex., couple pondered starting a freelance writing business. But in June, when Ms. Mattocks landed a job, the former vice-president of sales and marketing for a residential builder was left at home with his stepdaughters, Allie, 7, and Avery, 6. That's when Clark Kent's Lunchbox, the blog he started in June, 2007, evolved into a chronicle of his new life as a stay-at-home dad. You're used to networking within your profession and now you're isolated at home. There's nobody there except for two kids and you're breaking up fights, you're doing laundry and you're finding Barbie doll heads clogging up the toilet, he says. It's completely unglamorous, but you can't sit there and pout about it. There are a lot of guys out there trying to understand that and trying to reconcile that new role. Unemployed fathers have been hitting up daddy blogs and Web forums in recent months to pick up pointers and find some kind of community while grappling with the tough and, at times, isolating transition to the home front. Men between the ages of 24 and 54 have seen their employment plummet by more than 170,000 jobs since last October four times more than for women, Statistics Canada reports. And the Web's provided housebound dads with a parenting gateway that simply didn't exist during the recession of the early 1990s, when a stay-at-home dad's best role model was Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom. The burgeoning world of daddy blogs offers an outlet for dads who've recently met the axe and are wading into a sphere dominated by moms, says Jeremy Adam Smith, the father behind the Daddy Dialectic blog and author of The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family . I think when something bad happens to you and being laid off is bad it helps to talk about it, to turn it into a story that you tell people. That helps you grapple with this reality [of the] job loss, he says. Then you run into this new role at home. Taking care of kids is no picnic, as these fathers discover. It can be grueling. When the kids are napping or late at night, it really kind of helps to get online and bitch or share stories. While many are excited to take on the new role of primary caregiver, some dads are equally terrified. The transition from being the breadwinner to the afternoon playground chaperone can be tough a lot of identity gets tied up in it, Mr. Mattocks says. All of a sudden all of that [got] sucked out from underneath me. All the ways you kind of measure your own success, promotions, raises that's all gone. Nobody's patting you on the back, nobody wants to take you to lunch. The rise of daddy blogs, especially as a resource for men trying to cope with the way the economy has affected their families, is a step in the right direction for giving stay-at-home fathers more confidence and community, says Andrea Doucet, author of the book Do Men Mother? Fatherhood, Care and Domestic Responsibility and a professor of sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa. Though there are more stay-at-home dads now, men are not as likely to join neighborhood parenting groups, still dominated by moms. Cyberspace makes it easier to reach out to other men, she says. [Dads] are less likely to go to the infant groups and the toddler groups and the playgroups. That is changing. But technology is something men feel very comfortable using and being part of, so it makes sense that they would feel comfortable connecting with other men that way. The Web offers distance and anonymity to fathers who may want to keep their anxieties separate from their day-to-day lives, thus transforming other daddy bloggers into advice gurus by proxy. Doug French, the man behind the blog Laid Off Dad, has been peppered with e-mails from dads who've been laid off during the current downturn. They seem to enjoy the humor and candor with which the Manhattan father of two approached his job loss back in 2003 from a Wall Street equity research company and his subsequent role as stay-at-home dad, he says. They would say, I read your blog and I could tell you were obviously nervous, but for whatever reason there was an equanimity about it,' he says. They seem to draw strength from the fact that someone else could do it and then react in this way. Now a math teacher at a private high school in New York, Mr. French says he was freaked out yet thrilled by the prospect of becoming primary caregiver to his sons, Robert, now 7, and Luke, 4. Blogging about his transition into staying at home helped him find his voice as a writer, he says, and he's met many great friends through the site.


Daddy's lost his job now he's got a blog (continued) San Francisco Bay-area blogger Mike Adamick says he recently reconnected with a childhood friend who had been laid off and was looking for a little help in his new role as primary caregiver. Though he's no newbie in the daddy blogosphere, the author of the blog Cry It Out: Memoirs of a Stay-at-Home Dad, says he still learns new things from creative dad bloggers something he hopes discouraged laid-off dads may tap into. You can also read dad blogs and even mom blogs and just get a better idea of Oh wow, I'm having a really frustrating day that nap didn't go well.' It may be mundane and boring, but you give it a read and you're not alone. Seeing a boost in demand for daddy blogs, Joe Schatz started up dad-blogs.com in January. When it started, the site ranked in the top five or six million websites by Google PageRank and Alexa Rank, sites that measure how often a page is linked. Now it's in the top 80,000, says the Havre de Grace, Md., dad a pretty quick rise for a niche site. The father of three has seen a lot of chatter among dads about how they've been affected by the recession much of it about how dads can save cash. Mr. Mattocks says he hoped to make a little money when Clark Kent's Lunchbox became a daddy blog. Though he never made enough to support his family, he did create a book, a collection of essays about his transition from an executive to a stay at home dad called Sugar Milk: What's One Dad Drinks When He Can't Afford Vodka. to be published next spring. Writing about the startling switch and sharing it on his blog was therapeutic, he says. And like many laid-off dads, Mr. Mattocks doesn't plan to be housebound for long. He recently received accreditation for becoming a high-school English teacher and is looking for jobs in the Chicago area to be near his three biological sons. [I'm] hoping to turn it around to where I'm back being the primary breadwinner.


RON MATTOCKS BIO

Ron Mattocks is currently a freelance writer and father of five. Graduating from St. Edwards University in 1998 with an English Literature degree, Ron served as an Infantry Captain in the United States Army and Texas National Guard. After transitioning to corporate America, Ron worked for two leading national homebuilders from 2001 to 2007; his titles included President of Operations (Houston), Vice President of Purchasing (Houston), and Vice President of Sales (Chicago). Following his departure from the corporate world, Mr. Mattocks turned to writing as he joined the ranks of being a stay-at-home dad to his two stepdaughters and started a blog called Clark Kents Lunchbox. The blog is now ranked as one of the Top 20 Daddy Blogs according to PostRank.com in addition to being listed among AllTops leading sites in its niche. Currently, he is a leading contender for a Bloggers Choice Award in the categories: Hottest Daddy Blogger, Best Humor Blog and Best Parenting Blog of 2010. In March 2010, Mr. Mattocks released his book, Sugar Milk: What One Dad Drinks When He Cant Afford Vodka, based on a number of his earlier blog posts that chronicled his progression from traditional working man to stay-at-home father. The book has earned mention in Reuters New, The Globe and Mail and The Bund-Pic. Mr. Mattocks is a regular contributor to Houston Family Magazine and his freelance work can be found in a number of publications including, but not limited to, Babble.com, Sloth Jockey, Prodigal Magazine, Errant Parent, The Father Life and The Good Men Project. Mr. Mattocks has also had his writing featured on public radio, and his essay Death Wish was awarded a semifinalist nod by HumorPress.com. A native of North Western Pennsylvania, Ron now lives in Houston, Texas with his wife Ashley, and his stepdaughters, Allie (age 7) and Avery (6). His sons Noah (11), Harrison (8), and Sawyer (5) live with their mother out of state.


SAMPLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Tell us how Sugar Milk came about. Did you end up writing the book you sat down to write, or did something unexpected emerge?

It was originally based on older posts from my blog, Clark Kents Lunchbox (www.clarkkentslunchbox.blogspot.com). I noticed this progression recording my transition into my new role and as more fathers started losing their jobs I thought, You know theres something here that might help other guys to know theyre not alone. The end product didnt quite come out as I planned but it was close, and Im happy with it.

What was your goal in writing this book?

There were several: 1) it was a project to keep me focused while out of work. 2) I thought maybe my story could help other guys in the same situation. 3) I wanted to leave something tangible for my kids to know that I loved them.

What are some common misconceptions about stay-at-home dads?

The two biggest are the Mr. Mom image and that were lazy. The general misconception is that men as fathers are incompetent and cant handle kids. The second is that we sit around in our boxers eating cold pizza and watching Sportcenter until the wife gets home to cook dinner. All of the stay-at-home dads I know are nothing like this, and we are disappointed that the media continues to perpetuate these stereotypes.

What has been the reaction to the book from early readers/reviewers?

All positive thus far. I dont expect that to stay that way, but for the moment I get a lot of emails and comments telling me how hilarious the stories in the book are and also how much its helped them. Im happy to hear both but especially that others are finding it a help.

What has been the reaction of it from your ex, your wife, and others who are referenced in Sugar Milk?

My wife now is probably almost as sick of reading it as much as I am, but seriously, shes been my unofficial editor and I think she got the book right where she wanted it. As far as my ex, I dont know. I expect that shell read it, but she wont say anything to me either way. Theres very little in the book about her and that was intentional.

How did you balance--and how do you balance--writing while also managing the responsibilities of being a stay-at-home dad?

Balance? There is none. They say writers should follow a disciplined routine, but as a full-time parent thats impossible when midday a kid is sick at school or has an appointment to be taken to. Some days are more productive than other, but mostly i just get as much done with the time you have.

In the face of this pain and these parenting challenges you face, you write with a lot of humor and levity. What advice do you have for dads in this situation where theyve lost their job and find themselves in this new role of primary caregiver? What can they do to pull themselves out of a dark place into a brighter place for themselves, and for their kids?

Just like death and divorce, losing a job requires a grieving period so get it all out constructively. Then start looking for the funny in it all. That could take a while and it might be an up and down thing, but if you can laugh about whats happening then you still have hope. And kids are always good for a laugh.

The concept of the "blended" family can be misleading because it makes the process sound easier than it actually is. What advice do you have for new couples and for co-parenting partners who are bringing together two sets of children and parenting across 2 or even 3 households?

I think blended family should be changed to mixed up family, because thats how things are most times. Theres a lot of confusion for everyone. The thing Ive learned is not to force things. Ive spent time educating myself on the issues involved, but even knowing the answers, I really cant make the kids learn them. It all just has to happen naturally and I have to keep a close eye out to recognize those opportunities for facilitating the mixing processes.


BOOK SPECIFICATIONS Title: Sugar Milk Subtitle: What One Dad Drinks When He Cant Afford Vodka Author: Ron Mattocks ISBN: 978-1-4502-0401-9 / 978-1-4502-0403-3 / 978-1-4502-0402-6 Category: Memoir/Parenting/Humor Length: 179 pages Retail: $26.95 / $16.95 / $9.99 Binding: 5.5 x 8.5 / hardcover / paper bound / e-book FOR ANY ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT [email protected] 281.250.9218 832.364.1312

Former Wall Streeters take on new parenting rolesDaddy's lost his job now he's got a blogDaddy's lost his job now he's got a blog (continued)

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Sugar milk press press kit and questions