Cory Jenks’ comedic background has come in handy as the father of three young children.
He shares his insights on childrearing in his humorous book “I Guess I’m a Dad Now: A Humorous Handbook for New-ish Dads Who Don’t Want to Suck.”
A Tucson native, Jenks who lives between Oro Valley and Tucson, released the book in May.
Jenks has worked as a comedian, pharmacist, speaker and author. In February 2022, he released “Permission to Care: Building a Healthcare Culture that Thrives on Chaos,” which is about applying comedy to health care.
“The first one was definitely geared toward health care professionals and leaders in health care,” he said.
“I can’t say it was going to solve our terrible health care system, but it was trying to make the experience better for the providers and patients. This one, the niche is newish dads. The cool thing is I’ve had some friends who are dads of older kids, and they say they learned stuff from this book even though their kids are now teenagers. I think there are some good universal dad lessons,” said Jenks, a Canyon del Oro High School graduate.
Jenks has three children: a 1-year-old daughter and 4- and 6-year-old sons with his wife, Cassie Jenks.
A few years ago, Jenks cut his hours as a pharmacist to help care for and spend more time with his kids.
When he was out with his children, he could observe other dads. This inspired him to write a book on raising kids from a dad’s perspective.
“I had more time with my kids at the park,” Jenks said.
“I noticed some observations of less-than-great fatherhood traits, and I actually wrote a joke down on my phone about how dads shouldn’t be on their phone, which I found ironic. I called it out in the book. I said, ‘I literally wrote this on my phone as I ignored my kids, so make sure you don’t ignore your kids as you’re reading this.’ From there, I just kept a comedic eye open to the observations I’ve had as a dad the first six years. I just kept writing down ideas, jokes. It was about a year and a half ago that I said, ‘Yeah, I have enough for a book here.’”
Jenks said not much was left out of the book.
“Readers will hopefully find it refreshing to hear the honest truths of the challenges I’ve faced and some of the mistakes I’ve made so that they don’t have to make them,” he said.
“And some of them are things I observed in other dads in my travels in life. I don’t think I held back much in this. It’s pretty honest and raw in some places.”
He mentions the men in his life, including his dad, father-in-law, grandfather and friends.
“You certainly can’t know or do it all,” Jenks said.
“So, building a tribe of people around you, that’s going to help you. It goes back to the adage of ‘it takes a village.’ It really does. Sometimes, I think men’s egos prevent them from asking for help, seeking help and talking about their feelings, but those are all things that have helped make me far from a perfect dad but as the subtitle of the book says, ‘a dad that sucks less.’”
He organized it like a handbook, with sections related to having and raising kids. He hopes that dads, including himself, can use it as a guidebook.
“That’s what I want dads to do. I want them to make notes, dog-ear pages, return to it,” Jenks said. “Today, we are heading out for a week’s vacation. I’m going to the travel chapter right now to make sure I don’t mess up.”
He thought of himself when he was writing the book.
“It almost feels a bit like a journal. I joke that I wrote this book for me,” Jenks said.
“I’ll talk to other dads who are struggling in the moment with whatever it might be, whether it’s their kids are not behaving or not sleeping well and how they are dealing with it. If I’m having that struggle, I should just go read my own book. There’s probably something about that. It’s a lot of admittedly the mistakes I’ve made in my first few years as a dad, the things that I wish I had known, that if I was a new dad I wish somebody had told me.”
He commiserates and shares with other fathers in his neighborhood his experiences as a dad.
“When we get together, we share something that is a struggle, and you realize that you’re not alone,” Jenks said.
“Other people who’ve read this book have reached out to me and said, ‘I thought I was the only one dealing with X, Y or Z. It’s so nice to hear I’m not the only dad who struggles with bedtime, traveling with my kids or the grandparents spoiling the kids too much and giving them too many toys…' When we talk about it with other dads, it doesn’t fix the problem with your kids, but it helps to get those feelings out in the open.”
“As a new dad, you can feel really alone sometimes…This is a book meant for contemplation up to age 5. So, if you are thinking of having kids up to age 5, then it makes sure you don’t feel alone in some of those feelings or challenges that you have.”
He penned the book before his daughter was born, so it is focused on raising two young boys.
“I basically finished the rough draft of the manuscript right before my daughter was born last year, which was an artificial deadline I imposed upon myself because I realized once she came along, my limited free time would shrink even more,” Jenks said.
“Unfortunately, when she goes back and reads this, it won’t be as much about her. I apologize to her in the book.”
Jenks said he felt that he could reach a wider audience by using a comedic tone.
“Comedy is a way to reach an audience that might not otherwise want to read a parenting book or a fatherhood book, to help something stick,” Jenks said.
“I can say I can remember more quotes from “Saturday Night Live” than I can of (information on) the Krebs cycle from pharmacy school,” Jenks said.
Leading up to fatherhood, Jenks read a handful of parenting books. He said they helped as a guide, but he and his wife had to learn as they went along as well.
“It provided some good tools for having a baby and then a toddler,” Jenks said.
“The downside is the baby doesn’t read the parenting book. So, a lot of the things that the book says to do doesn’t always apply to your kid.”
He said one of the biggest surprises with his first child was how much his wife was responsible for his care during the first year. He tried to help in other ways.
“I picked up the slack everywhere else,” Jenks said.
“My wife calls me ‘the laundry fairy’ and the ‘dinner fairy’ because I do all of the cooking, the laundry and things like that. That was the shock to me was there was less hands-on stuff to do with the newborn and more of just everything around the house. It’s been a great team effort with my wife.”
Jenks said that his background as an improv comedian — he performs occasionally with the Tucson Improv Movement — has been helpful with parenting.
“I’m used to adjusting on the fly. That’s on-brand for me. That’s all parenting is is adjusting in the moment to the challenges you face,” he said.
Cory Jenks
coryjenks.com
