Description

An ambitious history of masculinity and family, from the Bronze Age to the modern day, Fatherhood dares to offer a more caring and affirmative vision of the roles men currently play in society.

‘Superbly intelligent . . . a rewarding Sapiens-style big history’ – The Sunday Times

‘A lightness of touch that recalls Bill Bryson or Craig Brown at their non-fiction best’ – The Observer
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What is fatherhood, and where did it come from? How has the role of men in families and society changed across thousands of years? What does the history of fatherhood reveal about what it means to be a dad today?

From the anxious philosophers of ancient Athens and Henry VIII’s obsessive quest for an heir, to Charles Darwin’s theories of human origins, Bob Dylan’s take down of ‘The Man’, and beyond, Sedgewick shows how successive generations of men have shaped our understanding of what it means to be and have a father, and in turn our ideas of who we are, where we come from and what we are capable of.

Publisher Review

Fathers’ role in upholding the social order and their struggles with unruly sons are probed in this winsome and erudite study of patriarchy . . . Sedgwick teases out the contradictions between patriarchy as a doctrine of benevolent control and its reality as a form of constraint and domination that often breeds resistance. He plays on these ironies in elegant, evocative prose. It’s a fresh and insightful meditation on the paternal dilemma. * Publishers Weekly * Intelligent . . . The author is an undeniably talented prose stylist with estimable dot-connecting abilities. — Kirkus