What is it about?
This article explains the main features of fatherhood in the Georgian era. It reveals that fathers were encouraged to be loving and tender towards offspring, to treat them as companions, to guide and instruct them without resort to physical punishment, and to provide for and protect them.
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Why is it important?
My article is one of the first to focus on the guidance offered to men about their fathering and links changes in fathering styles to shifts in ideas about masculinity.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘A Very Sensible Man’: Imagining Fatherhood in England c.1750–1830, History, June 2010, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-229x.2010.00486.x.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Feeling like a Dad
My blog post on the identity and emotions associated with fatherhood.
Can quality of fathering really be measured by the size of a man’s testes?
I respond to a report that being a father is linked to the body and hormones. I use historical research to suggest that there are some flaws with this kind of scientific assumption.
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page