the father's book being a good dad in the 21st century

Childhood amnesia 85I really don’t want to seem a fool 89The mysteries of mirrors 89The personality of small children 90Key factors in exuberance versus withdrawal 91 A good enough walk

The Fa t her ’ s Book

Being a Good Dad in the 21st Century

David Cohen

JOHN WILEY & SONS, LTD

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The Father’s Book

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Being a Good Dad in the 21st Century

David Cohen

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Woody Allen versus history 30

Honour thy father but don’t expect too much

Fathers know best the behaviourist father 38The useless-at-parties syndrome 40Quiz

A history of fathers

Cross-cultural 41

Domestic violence and involvement 47

‘Your’re pregnant? – how do I feel’ 55You never wanted my child 56The process of pregnancy 58

I’d murder for a good night’s sleep 71The bureaucracy of birth 72

The first two stages of development according

Childhood amnesia 85

I really don’t want to seem a fool 89The mysteries of mirrors 89The personality of small children 90Key factors in exuberance versus withdrawal 91

A good enough walk in the park 94The egocentric child in the preoperational

Your child’s I Q – does it matter? 97

Silly photographs – an important bonding

Lying, pretending and false beliefs 108

My child is a real person – what do I do now? 109

I wish, I want, I like, I think 111

How children don’t lie brilliantly 120

A psychologist teaches his daughter how to lie 122Have fun with your kids 123

Pretending, playing and lyin g

5 Do as I say 125

The pressure on parents 137

BP shares are down – thwack 139The holy slipper and the holy cane 141

A history of the cane and carrot 142

The use of authoritative parenting 147

151The mousetrap but not by Agatha Christie 153Not picking up the clues children give 154

Basic anger management 155

The No 15 bus and good enough fathering 162

166Brains aren’t for gentlemen 168The shape of the individual mind 169Verbal, num erical, spatial, practical, musical,performance intelligences all 171Vitamins and intelligence 174Keeping tabs on school 174Attention-deficit disorder 175

The father–child mismatch disaster 178

How to question children

School and the mind

The absent father syndrome

7 You’re not my real dad – stepfathers and

Too little research into stepfamilies 184

Trust versus mistrust 189The rules of the house 190

Co-parenting problems 195How to survive as a stepdad 195Why socks don’t obey the laws of gravity buttheir movements can also be explained 197

Fathers, sons and relationships 224

Excuse me, I have to snore 226Carry on couple – of clematis and clitoris 230

8 He artache

9 Relationship carry-on

10 The pric e of being a father 233Marketing to kids and stress 235

Children, advertising 238Eat my shorts – the creativity of children in

The outre outer suburbs

Will they ever leave home?

About t he aut hor

David Cohen is a psychologist, writer and film-maker Hehas reported on mental health, immigration, why peoplemake false confessions, sex, marketing to children, cults,finance, cigars and pirates for outlets as diverse as Channel

and theNew Scientist Recent films include one on Grace

Kelly for Channel 4 and T he Madness of Children He is

currently working on a film on nuclear war games Hisbooks include Psychologists on Psychology, T he Development of Play, the best-selling How to Succeed in Psychometric Tests and Fear, Greed and Panic He hopes

one day to write a good poem

He has two children and they, poor sods, were amongthe subjects for his PhD thesis on what makes childrenlaugh He now can’t imagine what life would have beenlike if he hadn’t had children

4, Sunday Business, Discovery, Harper and Queens, I TV

with love

As with all books, thanks are due to many Julia Ross readpart of the MS and made helpful comments Lady PaddyHunt drew my attention to Montaigne Many thanks.David Hunt read the MS and made cracking wisepoints Sam Boyce at Sheilland pushed me on DrVivien Ward at John Wiley was the original begetterasking me to write on fathers Helen Ilter put up grace-fully with my being elusive during the production pro-cess Neil Shuttlewood and his colleagues at Originatoragain did a marvellous job in producing my text

Writing the book brought back many memories ofbeing a young father and I ’d never have been that if ithadn’t been for Aileen L a Tourette, the mother of mysons Respect and love to her! Writing this also broughtback memories of my parents, troubled souls both who, ifthere is an afterlife, are annoying the angels by complain-ing about each other

The other debts are as personal – to Alex and Katy,Julia’s children and to Nicholas and Reuben, my sons.Without them I ’d have had less to write about I still

like being a father and a stepfather, and some thanks forthat must be due to them.

I would also like to thank Michelle Ross- Stantonfor digging out the United Nations and NSPCC statistics

as efficiently as ever

Int roduction

I n 2000, Tony Blair became the first man to become

a father while Prime Minister for 200 years A yearlater, the 70-year-old media tycoon Rupert Murdochannounced his third wife was pregnant Since the1980s, gender experts claim masculinity is ‘in crisis’; themale psyche is wilting as social and sexual attitudeschange too fast for the ballsy ones Women insist onmen who have great pecs and emotional intelligencetoo – the body of Brad Pitt and the soul of SigmundFreud

And the ballsy ones can’t cope The sperm count of theaverage male is falling, probably, doom mongers suggest,because we smoke too much, drink too much, stress toomuch and are exposed to 1,001 noxious chemicals.Under this pressure, more and more men are optingout According to the popular culture reflected in TV

gay, bisexual or opt for long periods of celibacy I nSweden, the birth rate is so low the governm ent has re-cruited Bjorn Borg to head an advertising campaignshows likeSex in the City, most of the best men are now

whose slogan is direct – Fuck for the Future Failure to do

so, will mean there soon won’t be any Swedes

In the rest of this book, in the interests of decency and

be replaced by the b-word So, Swedes, I hope you willborg for your country’s future

Despite all these post-modern angsts, sex still

happens, relationships still happen, children still pen I n 1998, 129 million children were born according

hap-to the latest United Nations statistics The United Statessaw 4.064 million births last year, the EC 4.1 million andBritain around 700,000 Swedes may disappear but thehuman race is safe

Some men in 2000 will have had children by differentwomen but, allowing for the occasionally sperm superhero who became a father twice, three times or more inthe year, it’s a reasonable guess that 120 million menbecame fathers in 2000 AD I ’ve never written a bookwith such a large potential readership

I was 24 years old when Aileen had Nicholas, ouroldest son, and I find it hard to remem ber what it waslike not being a father I t was an event that changed mylife more than any other Before it happened, I was:

f fr ig h t en ed I cou ld n ’t cop e ;

f confused w h at b eco m e a fat h er me no help;

f p lay in g t h e fam iliar m ale g am e o f I ’m t o o in co m p et en t

to cope with squeamish aspects of biology Moi,change a nappy? I have a degree from Oxford;

f stubborn and selfish being a dad was not going tostop me doing anything that I wanted to do

Now I smile when I think back at how scared I was at theprospect of being a father I would not have believed

in honour of (1) tennis and (2) Star T rek, the f-word will

anyone who had told me, when Aileen was pregnant, thathaving children would be one of the great, sustaining, joys

of my life

I have no intention of painting too rosy a picture As afather, you will be scared at times, embarrassed at times,mad at times, like when your partner doesn’t want to makelove in case the kids get bored with the telly and walk intoyour bedroom Often, you’ll be broke and sometimes indespair Why can’t you persuade your 10-year-old thatbeing a human being does not require those £ 79 N iketrainers?

‘But my mates will laugh at me, dad’, he says.

‘Don' t care,’ you say, reduced to the level of a

6-year-old brat

‘W hat if I get beaten up because it' s the Nikes versus the non-Nikes in the playground You don' t understand, dad, it' s war It' s only £ 79.’

You understand why I said ‘despair’ Worse are themoments of panic When Nicholas was born, for thefirst and only time in my life, I heard voices in my head

I was not in control For about 15 minutes, while Nicholaswas stuck in the birth canal, I prayed he would be safe andwell I nner voice replied Yes, he would be safe but hewould also be born speaking – and carrying an importantmessage from God to Greenwich SE10 I ’m a Jewishatheist by the way

I managed to keep news of the divine message toGreenwich to myself, so I was not hauled off to the psy-chiatric ward

Sixteen years later, Nicholas’ birthday party ends upwith at least three underage drinkers in vodka comas But

I don’t hear voices this time

Still, to the day I die, I will never forget the birth ofeither of my children I will not forget the amazing ex-perience of my 6-month-old son and I laughing at eachother for hours I will not forget how proud I felt when myother son, aged three, was given puzzles by the headteacher of a posh kindergarten He looked seriously ather and said ‘Ah, it’s my exam.’ She laughed; I laughed.

‘I think he’s just passed with flying colours,’ she smiled.And the panics don’t stop This morning my 22-year-old stepson, Alex, doubled with pain from an ulcer – yetagain – and slumped down by the fridge Ten minutes ofterror till he was all right And then the hassle of persuad-ing him to get a doctor to examine him properly

Never too young to leave home

I have wanted to write this book for nearly 20 years butwhen I suggested it to publishers in the early 1980s, theytended to dismiss the idea as absurd We had seen the newlad book but the new dad book? No self-respecting blokewould be seen dead with such self-help junk – particularlynot in Britain, HQ of the stiff upper lip where for centu-ries the UM U classes (upper middle and upper) had beensending their children off as young as possible to boardingschool

When our sons went as day boys to Dulwich CollegePreparatory School, the Headmaster, a superb old-style

‘beak’, Hugh Woodcock told us one parents’ evening, hehad an important announcement A number of kindergar-ten parents had asked him if their offspring could beboarders Mr Woodcock explained he was a fervent be-liever in boarding but even he thought 3- and 4-year oldswere too young to be sent away from home!

Today, fathers are more involved with their childrenthan ever before Statistics show a steady rise in thenumber of men who attend the birth I n 1970, it wasabout 21%; in 1980, it was 42% Some figures issued bythe National Childbirth Trust claim that 96% of fathers inBritain attend the birth of their child I n perhaps 4% offamilies, the father is more responsible for childcare thanthe mother Pressure groups like Gingerbread estim atethat 500,000 fathers are looking after their children bythemselves because of divorce, separation or death Orga-nisations like Fathers Direct and D I Y Dads teach, trainand argue passionately that ‘fathers are important to theirchildren and children important to their fathers I nvolvedfathers result in happier families.’

At the same time, sociologists like Laurie Taylor andhis son Matthew point out the birth rate is falling not just

in Sweden People are asking ‘just why should we havechildren?’ for the first time The narcissistic me culture,the proud gift of our recent past, has made many 20 and 30somethings wonder if children are worth the hassle Willbeing a parent mean less time for my tango classes? Might

I have to devote too much energy to changing nappies and

sterilising bottles which will make me too tired to get mydiploma in web marketing?

I ’ve had those thoughts Maybe, if I hadn’t become afather at 24, I would have made more memorable films, orwritten the novel I like to believe I always had in me .but I don’t mind one bit

What psychology teaches us

about fathering

I n Reassessing Fatherhood (1987), Charlie Lewis argued

the 1970s saw a huge increase in research on fatherhood,partly in response to feminism Yet despite GermaineGreer, Kate Millett, Sheila Rowbotham and many otherpassionate authors, people’s lives had not changeddramatically by the mid 1980s Looking after the childrenwas still seen as women’s work A film I made in 1980,

When Men Become Mothers, followed men who had been

forced to be full-time fathers when their wives left them

T he men were angry; their careers had suffered and theydidn’t know how to cope in a world that expected mothers

to look after the children

Lewis also looked at how much fathers cared for year-olds The details were depressing, especially as re-searchers suspect men often exaggerate what they really

1-do Lewis found that 62% of fathers said they never helpedbathe the child, 53% never looked after the child on theirown, 40% had never changed a nappy L ewis quoted a

1979 study where one father admitted he could notchange a nappy because ‘I would vomit on the spot atthe sight of the pooh.’ He based this on his unhappyexperiences mucking out a guinea pig cage

I had not realised till then that Scots might be pion dads I n 1986, Malcolm Hill, a social work specialist

cham-in Glasgow, found that 40% of men sacrificed an evencham-ing

or two a month to looking after the bairns so their wivescould have a night out I t must be the kilts that lead tosuch true equality, true enlightenment

As new parents, Aileen and I avidly read Dr Spock' s Baby and Child Care which was already then in its 13th

edition Spock devoted about 10 pages out of 500 to therole of the father Children did need fathers but it was nogood the mother forcing her husband (in Spock’s days itwas all husbands) to spend time with babies and little chil-dren if they didn’t want to Better wait till junior was morelike a real person before inflicting him, or her, on dad.Even if fathers were keen, Spock told us, mother mustnot nag and make fatherhood interfere with importantstuff such as doing your duties as a company man I nthe evening, company man should try to spend an hour

in ‘rough-housing’ play with the kids But if work and thecommute had left him too zonked to romp, dad shouldn’tfeel guilty He should have his dinner, relax and veg out infront of the boob tube

Spock really did live in a different universe I can find

no mention of child abuse in the 1970 edition of his book

I can also find no mention of what has become an issue inAmerica – the way many men feel they were abandoned bytheir fathers as children Anthony Astrachan in his book

How Men Feel paints a dismal picture of the relationship

between fathers and sons One reason many men are fident, ambivalent and often poor fathers is that theirfathers did not teach them anything about being a father

dif-I nT he Emperor' s Embrace (1999), the critic of

psycho-analysis, Jeffrey Masson argues that humans have a lot tolearn from species such as wolves, lions and, especially,emperor penguins No beast apparently makes a moredevoted dad than the emperor penguin who warms theegg on his feet for months, so protecting nipper penguinfrom the icy Antarctic gales While warming the egg, dad

also has nothing to eat and drink This is heroic fatherhoodindeed! Masson compares the experience of the infantpenguin with that of the unfortunate writer Franz Kafka.One of Kafka’s works is a bitter letter to his father inwhich he complained that his father mocked him, bulliedhim and, certainly, did not love him No penguin makeshis kids suffer such trauma On the other hand, if Kafka’sdad had been an emperor penguin, we probably wouldn’thave got Kafka’s masterpiece,T he Trial I ts hero, Joseph

K is on trial for an offence he doesn’t know; some criticsargue the book has its roots in Kafka’s unhappy relation-ship with his father Undaddied, Kafka felt he had toprove himself worthy, worthy of being loved, worthy ofjust being alive

Psychology should have studied fathers and fatheringmore than it has One of the most famous concepts inpsychology – Freud’s Oedipus Complex – argues everymale child unconsciously wants to kill his father andsleep with his mother Psychoanalyst No 2, Carl Jung,developed the ideas of the father archetype The fatherarchetype was all-wise, all-powerful and, of course, all-imaginary And a major player in the unconscious, ac-cording to Jung

Relatively few psychologists, however, have focused

on research on fatherhood The best known exceptionsare Michael Lamb in America and Charles Lewis inBritain who has written a report for a number of charitiescalled W hat Good A re Dads? (2001) Blendis (1988) also

wrote an interesting PhD thesis on different types offathers

From 1945 until the 1980s, research on fatherhoodconcentrated on the so-called absent father Childrenwhose fathers had been away for long periods during the1939–1945 war were less smart and less good I n thejargon, they had poorer academic performance andpoorer emotional adjustment I t is a powerful image

Today, black clergymen in Boston claim that 95% of thedelinquents in that city have ‘fatherlessness’ at the root oftheir problems.

I n Britain, at least, we have a paradox Statistics showfathers have been more involved with their children in thelast 10–15 years than ever before So why is there morecrime more mental health stress among children than everbefore? A British government report out in 2001 claim sthat one child in five suffers from mental health problems.There are a number of possible explanations for theparadox:

1 F athers may be around more but the quality of timethey spend with children is still poor

2 Fathers are not really around much more Whenpsychologists survey them or video them ‘interactingwith children’, the fathers play up to the camera.They exaggerate how much they do with their kids

3 Fathers still make children feel they don’t really careabout them They project indifference even whenthey are around A father who is always down thepub or at the health club is unlikely to make hischildren feel good about themselves

4 Changes in society encourage children to be assertiveand some fathers do not cope with that well Theresult is tension, and that stresses children out

5 The expectations we have of children are changing

I t is easier for children to feel failures than everbefore If you haven’t got the Nikes, haven’t gotthe exam results and haven’t lost your virginity bythe time you are 15, you’re sad Fathers are not good

at helping children cope with these pressures

There’s also an academic oddity Many of the most esting writers on masculinity have approached the topicfrom a gay perspective And fatherhood is not a topic theyusually focus on Historically, women have written more

inter-on fathers than men Ursula Owen, for example, haslooked at the relationships between fathers and daughters.Academics, especially, don’t usually write dispassionatelyabout fathers M y favourite fem-on-fathers text is bytwo Dutch psychotherapists Unravelling the Father in-

cludes a chapter titled ‘Father is a money bag’ (I knowthe feeling – an emptied out money bag)

The Dutch authors stress many fathers admit theyhave ‘negative qualities as a father’ because they have ‘alack of relational capacities, a lack of involvem ent’ Dutchdad has no time, no personal skills and spends his life at

T he Clog and Rembrandt

Quoting Sylvia Plath’s famous poem:

Daddy I have had to kill you

Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I' m through.

Rosalind Miles inT he Children We Deserve (1994) argues

most men, not just Kafka’s dad, cannot fulfil the basicrequirement of parenting Jealous sex-mad little boysthat we men are, we cannot give what Miles reckons ismost important, unconditional love Children alwayshave to prove themselves to the ‘old man’ Worse, theold man sets up obstacles because unconsciously, he is

so jealous of the child for, once the child is born, the

‘old man’ will never be No 1 again

Miles is a distinguished and effective writer But heranger sometim es distorts her argument Throughout thisbook, she is a voice I argue with and I might as well startthe argument now I am not sure what unconditional lovemeans I think I know what loving children through thick

and thin involves – spending time with them, talking tothem, never not returning their phone calls, giving reas-surance, telling them they look great when they do and,sometimes, when they don’t, endless practical as well asemotional support Jam es Watson, the son of a great psy-chologist, John B Watson told me the best and closesttimes he had with his father were when they did wood-work together.

I am not suggesting doing woodwork is enough toshow love, but it’s exactly the kind of joint activity Italk about in this book as part of what makes goodenough fathering

Good enough fathering

Perhaps the most useful psychoanalytic ideas on parentingcome from the late D W Winnicott (1896–1971)

Winnicott argued babies and children did fine as long

as they had good enough mothering He wrote relativelylittle about fathers, however, though he stressed the needfor the father to give both mother and child emotionalsupport I have adapted some of his ideas to develop theconcept of the good e nough father The good enough

father is not perfect But he tries, he is there and he doesnot commit the terrible sins – being abusive to children,denying emotional warmth, being indifferent

One of the pleasures of writing a book is ferreting outlong-forgotten sources I have discovered a fiery 1930sbook Common Sense and the Child I t had a preface by

A S N eill who started the radical free school at hill where children attend the classes they want to andhave a real say in the running of the place Every British

government since the 1930s has tried to close Summerhilldown at one time or another!

Neill was not an analyst himself but Freud’s writingsinfluenced his approach to education Neill warned menagainst wanting their sons to be like them and he stressedthe need for fathers to be aware of their faults He wrote

‘the man who sadistically gets an unconscious pleasure out

of walloping his son’s behind with a slipper will fail tobenefit by the Chapter on sadism His resistance will

at once prompt him to dismiss the chapter as damnednonsense (and filthy stuff at that) and to bolster up hisrationalised belief that a good whacking does a boy good.’

I hope readers will not be so blind to their own faults

I n the pursuit of self-knowledge and to get men to thinkabout how they feel about becoming or being fathers, Ihave included questionnaires at three places in the book Ihave myself questioned the scientific validity of psycho-logical questionnaires (see Shelley and Cohen, 1987) But

my purpose here isn’t scientific but to get men to analysetheir feelings and to be honest with themselves

T he great German writer, Goethe (who was ironicallyone of Freud’s heroes), famously said: ‘ If I knew myself,

I ’d run away.’ Many women snipe men find it hard to behonest with themselves Now be a real man and proveGoethe and many women wrong with a virtuoso display

of honesty

Box 1 A Few answers please

There are no right or wrong answers in this test,

so it is genuinely not worth cheating

1 Which of the following statements applies best

to you? Do you think

(a) I like routines

(b) I enjoy new experiences

(c) I have a tendency to panic

2 When you are faced with unusual events orthings, which of the following is most likely

to be your reaction?

(a) I always cope

(b) I get extremely anxious

(c) I worry but I handle it usually quite well

3 Which of the following best describes yourrelationship with your own father?

(a) I know he loves me but he’s never said(b) I have always tried to please him

(c) H e was cold and distant when I was upset(d) He’s good fun and we love each other

(e) None of the above I n which case writedown your own description

4 When was the first time you thought of being afather?

(a) in your teens

5 I n your present relationship is having a baby

(a) a joint decision

(b) your decision

(c) her decision?

6 Which of the following statements describesyour feelings most accurately? ‘When I discov-ered I was going to be a father, I was

was going to be a father, I was

(a) scared I would not be able to afford it

(b) scared that it meant the end of my youth(c) scared by the responsibility

(d) scared my mum would keep moaning Ihad no idea how to be a father

Ú(e) s car ed it w o u ld in t er fer e w it h m y car e er

Ú

’

(Úfo r ex am p l e, if y o u co u ld b e fr ig h t en ed o f t h eimpact on your career and about your mum, tickboth d and e).

8 Who was the first person you told you weregoing to be a father?

(a) your other children

(b) your parents

(c) your ex-wife

(d) your current wife who didn’t knowthere was another woman in your life

(e) your lawyer

The following question is just for those whoalready have children

9 Write down five things you like about being afather if you have a child or children

_ _ _ _ _

The following question is just for prospectivefathers

10 Write down up to five things you don’t likeabout having children

_ _ _ _ _

11 If you are not yet a father, write down fivethings you are looking forward to abouthaving children

_ _ _ _ _

12 For prospective fathers, write down up to fivethings that make you anxious if you were tohave children

_ _ _ _ _

13 Which of the following statements is nearestthe truth for you? ‘Now that I ’m going to be

a father

(a) I expect my life will change totally

(b) I expect my life will change and it worriesme

(c) I have no intention of letting some babychange my life’

14 Which of the following statements are trueabout your relationship with your own father?

(a) my own father is – or was – easy to talk to(b) my father was often not around when Iwas a child

(c) my father is – or was – always very distantwith me

15 If I am confronted with a dirty nappy, thefollowing is what I do or think I will do

(a) say to the mother it needs to be changed(b) ring my mother

(c) do it myself

(d) summon the butler

(e) say I ’m sorry I know it’s wrong but I justcan’t face it

16 Which of the following statements expressesyour attitudes best?

(a) I hope my children will learn not to makethe same mistakes that I have made

(b) I hope my children will realise I knowmore about life than they do

(c) I get very anxious about my children

17 You have just shouted at your 5-year-olddaughter Which of the following is yourmost likely response?

(a) you do nothing – you feel she deserved it –that’s it

(b) hope that you did not frighten her toomuch

(c) check to see how she is feeling

(d) check to see how she is feeling and if sheunderstands why you had to shout at her

18 Your child refuses to eat her/his fish and chips

Do you tell her?

(a) I ’d like to know why – you always likedfish and chips

(b) you’re lucky to have any food when somany children in the world are starving(c) worry she is developing finicky eatingpatterns which can lead to eatingdisorders

(d) you’re not getting any sweets till youfinish your food

19 You hate swimming but your 8-year-old wantsyou to take him/her to the pool Do you?

(a) stop whatever you’re doing and take him

20 Next door comes to complain that your childhas been throwing stones at their cat Do you?

(a) tell the neighbour to borg off

(b) tell your child to stop doing it – beingcruel to animals is wrong

(c) smack your child to teach them what thecat feels like

21 Which of the following statements is closest toyour own views about child welfare?

(a) I ’m not surprised some children getabused – they ask for it

(b) I know children can drive you mad butthat’s no excuse for hitting them

(c) People who are sick enough to abusechildren should be thrown in jail for ever(d) children need to be protected butsomehow you have to let them run somerisks or they’ll never really be able to takecare of themselves

22 Sometimes, I have to cook for my children.When I do

(a) I worry about whether they are gettingthe right diet

(b) I resent having to do it – it’s theirmother’s job

(c) always find it’s really fun

The answers to the quiz are on p 24

Other tests are to be found later in the book The answersare at the end of this chapter.

By the time you have done the other two naires you should have a good sense of your own viewsabout being a father, and what aspects of fatherhood makeyou both happy and anxious

question-I n the chapters that follow, question-I use research, reportageand personal experience to give an up-to-date account ofthe art, science and human condition of being a father Itry to give advice in some areas without being too preachyand I also suggest games fathers can play, since we areoften a little inhibited One can’t do that without somehumour The practical advice is the hardest

Chapter 1, ‘A history of fathers’, starts with the lical story of Abraham and I saac, a tale many psychoana-lysts think is powerful as it expresses the ambivalence inthe father–son relationship Today, when there are somany concerns about child abuse, we can’t help seeingbeing schlepped to the top of a hill to be sacrificed tothe Lord as a fairly extreme form of abuse The chapteralso looks at how social attitudes about fathering havechanged dramatically over the last 400 years

Bib-Chapter 2, ‘Becoming a dad’, covers the time fromwhen you learn you are becoming a father to just afterthe birth I t examines the anxieties men feel, the experi-ence of being present when your child is born, prepara-tions for the birth and the feelings – good and bad – whichbecoming a father can trigger This chapter also looks atwhat needs to happen for babies and parents to bond Ialso explore attachment theory, the surprising skills of thenewborn and work which claims you can tell your child’sbasic personality by 4 months of age

Chapter 3 is called ‘The growing mind’ To be a goodenough father, it helps to know something about childdevelopment I examine the work of the eminent Swisspsychologist, Jean Piaget, at children’s memory, at recent

work which suggests children today have a higher I Q thanchildren did 50 years ago and what the implications are forfathers.

Chapter 4 is called ‘Pretending, play and lying’ Since

1890, psychologists have tried to define the purpose ofplay Play allows children to practice various skills androles and, through that, children realise that otherpeople have other ideas and feelings F athers sometimesdon’t find it easy to play, to get down on the floor andpretend to be an elephant Social inhibition, stress andthat very important psychological motive ‘I ’ll just looktoo silly if I do that’ paralyses some men Learn how toplay with your children, how to cope with their lying – ifthey pretend, they lie – and to grow in the process I alsolook at the latest research on autism which some link to theinability to pretend

The infant philosopher

Chapter 5, ‘Do as I say’, examines rules and discipline.Both parents have to deal with discipline but, in the past,the great threat was, ‘I ’ll tell your father’ That is nolonger so much the case, but fathers are still crucial inmatters of discipline Research makes it clear what themost effective techniques of discipline are, yet millions

of parents refuse to listen Why?

Chapter 6, ‘A mind to school’, covers what fathers can,and can’t, do to help their children to learn Parents have animportant part to play in teaching their children key skillssuch as reading But this can be a difficult area for tworeasons First, some parents can be too pushy Second, aschildren get older, they may become lazy and try to per-suade dad not just to help with their homework, but to do itall for them I also look at attention-deficit disorder.Psychologists and biologists have debated for over acentury whether heredity and environment, nature andnurture, are more important Everything suggests there

is no such battle Nature and nurture work together.Children are biologically wired to be born into a socialenvironment which should help them adapt and grow.Chapter 7, ‘Heartache’, deals with how to handleserious psychological and health problems including de-pression, attem pted suicide, anorexia and the guilt thatparents often feel if any of those happen

Chapter 8, ‘You’re not my real dad’, examines divorce,stepfamilies and socks These are, of course, different butthey are linked There are over 3 million stepfamilies inBritain; only 41% of children live in traditional familieswith their biological parents I t’s not easy to be a goodfather when you only see your child once a week or evenless, when you only see your child at an access centre I t isalso not easy to be a good father to someone else’s chil-dren What help does research offer teaching us to cope?Finally, the social significance of socks will be revealed.But only right at the very end

Chapter 9, ‘Relationships carry on’, examines thepressure babies and young children create on relation-ships Most couples expect that having a child will makethem happier, will be the icing on the cake True, some-times, but having a child is, according to stress indexes, asstressful as having to cope with a death.

Chapter 10, calculates ‘The price of being a dad’ Thecost is getting higher every year partly because childrentoday are more exposed to marketing than ever before andvery conscious of brands I also look at the tangled ques-tions of pester power and phone and I nternet bills WoodyAllen wrote a piece for the New Yorker about a fam ousphilosopher’s laundry list I go one better and on p 241 Ireproduce part of our phone bill Analysis of this terrify-ing document will provide real insight into the battle ofthe generations and suggest tactics on what to do if your14-year-old (who understands better than you how toprogram a computer) is accessing softporn sites throughthe web I t’s a moral issue, sure, but Porno-Phone alsocosts 50p a minute

Chapter 11 quakes before ‘Teenage traumas’ agers are a relatively recent phenomenon They don’tseem to have existed before the 1950s when James Deancatapulted them into being Then came the mods, theskins, the rockers, the flower children, the punks, thedeadheads For a father, it’s again a fine line betweenletting them get away with murder and being too heavyhanded How do you help children become individualsand individuals who will challenge you? This chapteralso deals with sex I get personal too My own teenageexperiences were strange My parents left me in a flat inthe West End just before my 13th birthday My schoolnever found out I was living on my own

Teen-Chapter 12 looks at ‘Replicas and the dependencyparadox’ While children grow up quicker than everbefore, we are also seeing more and more dependence