On Mike Austin’s Radio Dad podcast (episode #15), Mike and I discussed a topic I covered in a recent Ask Family Man piece about the anxieties of expectant dads. Listen to the podcast (the third segment of his show), read the article, and check out Mike’s other podcasts and content at his Radio Dad site.

For this week’s Family Matters with Tracey Serebin, Tracey asked me about 5 tips dads might like to have before they have a baby. Listen in and hear about planning for paternity leave, managing all those well-meaning friends and family members who want to visit your exhausted household, and avoiding spontaneous expenditures that come from your overjoyed but non-budget-conscious state of mind. Tracey’s interview with me on her Internet radio program runs 30 minutes, following her segment with a mom expert. Log on to the new installment and click “Listen Now” or “Podcast.”

One of my favorite sci-fi movies of the last 15 years or so is one called Gattaca, a 1997 film (starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Gore Vidal) that imagines a society in which those who are genetically inferior are relegated to the underclass. In this futuristic world, information on the life expectancy and potential diseases of children are registered and used to determine genetic superiority. It’s a creepy premise, but given history’s track record of giving us people who believe in genetic purity, it would be wise for us to be aware of the slippery slope we could head down.

It’s an extremely complicated issue, this topic of genetic examinations. I’m all for prenatal testing (such as the CVS) and newborn screening done on infants that can gauge whether they can get any number of harmful if not fatal conditions. However, I am strongly against picking eye color and other traits that have nothing to do with health. This choice is apparently a current possibility for parents who go to a fertility doctor, who has offices in New York and Los Angeles. The physician, who has been very successful in helping moms and dads select the gender of their children, claims with “80% certainty” that he can help parents choose the eye color of their babies.

Where will all this go? Will we be making custom kids, as if we were playing on a computer game? Are we heading toward a future in which there will be discrimination against those who are considered less perfectly determined by human intervention? What do you all think? What, if any, physical characteristics would you want to pick for your child? Again, my feeling is that once we move beyond the topic of health, we’re going too far.

And where’s the fun in knowing everything about your child before he or she is born? I’m still hoping the make some money on the bet I have with my wife that our only fair-haired son will stay that way through adolescence.

Intimacy after childbirth and beyond is the topic on the new podcast of Tracey Serebin’s Family Matters. Get the dad perspective from me and the mom view from Tracey on this frank, sometimes funny, and frequently helpful segment. Tracey’s interview with me on her Internet radio program runs 30 minutes, following her talk with Wendy Jaffe, who covers the topic from the angle of a divorce attorney, who contributed an instructive piece to this site. Log on to the new installment and click “Listen Now” or “Podcast.” It’s about sex, so you gotta have opinions/stories to share via the comments option.

Tracey Serebin has me back on her “Family Matters” Internet radio show to discuss the dad’s perspective on choosing and interacting with your kid’s pediatrician. Listen to the podcast at www.webtalkradio.net/content/view/598/30/ to hear suggestions about maintaining a good dialogue with the doctor (be it in person or on the phone and via e-mail) and staying in sync with your child’s development. Check out Tracey’s blog for more real and workable family tips at www.traceyserebin.blogspot.com .

Tracey Serebin, author of 101 Questions for Expectant Parents, talked with me about how important commujnication is between new moms and dads before and after a baby arrives in the family. Catch the interview on Tracey’s show, “Family Matters,” by visiting www.webtalkradio.net/content/view/598/30/ .