Fatherhood

A sweeping history - from the Bronze Age to the modern day - exploring where our inherited ideas of fatherhood have come from, how the role has changed over the centuries, and what it now means to be a dad.

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What is fatherhood? Where have we inherited our ideas of fatherhood from? What does it mean to be a dad today?

Chronicling the stories and struggles of some of history’s most famous fathers, historian Augustine Sedgewick lays bare how successive generations of men have shaped our understanding of what it means to be a father.

From the Bronze Age fathers whose only use to their families was the food they could hunt, and the moment Aristotle put pen to papyrus and laid the foundations of the patriarchy, to Charles Darwin’s theory of sexual selection and Bob Dylan’s poetic take down of ‘The Man’, Fatherhood is an ambitious exploration of sex, money, power and love, and the story of how men have become fathers and dads in their turn.

An ambitious and thought-provoking history of masculinity and family, Fatherhood dares to offer a more caring and affirmative vision of the roles men currently play in society.
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Praise for Augustine Sedgewick’s Coffeeland:
‘Thoroughly engrossing’ - Michael Pollan
‘Wonderful, energizing’ - The Guardian
‘Gripping’ - The Spectator
‘Eye-opening’ - The Economist