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Becoming a father is one of the most important events in a man's life, | 0:00:02 | 0:00:07 | |
and the relationship he has with his child will shape both of their lives | 0:00:07 | 0:00:12 | |
for years to come. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:15 | |
Until relatively recently, | 0:00:15 | 0:00:17 | |
very few historical or academic studies have explored | 0:00:17 | 0:00:20 | |
this crucial relationship and its impact on family life. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:24 | |
For too long, negative stereotypes of the father have persisted. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:29 | |
But now, in this three-part series, | 0:00:29 | 0:00:31 | |
we bring together personal testimony and expert opinion | 0:00:31 | 0:00:35 | |
to help us set the record straight. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:38 | |
The image that we have of fathers in the past is absolutely totally, | 0:00:38 | 0:00:43 | |
totally wrong. If you actually look at dads in the past, | 0:00:43 | 0:00:46 | |
the vast majority are loving, warm, fathers. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:50 | |
Beginning at the turn of the 20th Century, | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
this series will examine the social changes that affected dads | 0:00:53 | 0:00:57 | |
in the hundred years that followed. | 0:00:57 | 0:00:59 | |
We will show that despite the tragedy of two world wars, | 0:00:59 | 0:01:03 | |
the privations of economic hardship | 0:01:03 | 0:01:05 | |
and the upheaval of the sexual revolution, | 0:01:05 | 0:01:08 | |
most dads have always striven to do their best for their children - | 0:01:08 | 0:01:12 | |
as provider, protector, teacher and playmate. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:17 | |
He always gave us a big hug and big kisses, | 0:01:17 | 0:01:21 | |
and tell you to grow up a big girl and be a good girl. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:26 | |
Oh, I loved my father deeply. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:30 | |
I just wanted to be in his company as much as possible. | 0:01:30 | 0:01:35 | |
In this first programme, | 0:01:35 | 0:01:37 | |
we journey back in time as far as living memory will allow, | 0:01:37 | 0:01:40 | |
and hear from the children of Edwardian fathers | 0:01:40 | 0:01:44 | |
and from dads who raised families in the inter-war years. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:47 | |
There are many negative images of fathers from this period, | 0:01:48 | 0:01:52 | |
but these are largely exaggerated or inaccurate. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:56 | |
I think why I was so fond of my father | 0:01:56 | 0:01:59 | |
was because I always felt very strongly that he liked me. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:03 | |
That I was a real person who he liked. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:08 | |
These are tales of struggle and sacrifice, | 0:02:08 | 0:02:10 | |
of tenderness, redemption - and above all, | 0:02:10 | 0:02:14 | |
the enduring love that bonds father and child. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:18 | |
This is the extraordinary story of... | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
One of the most enduring stereotypes we have of the father from the past | 0:02:32 | 0:02:37 | |
is of the distant, uncaring patriarch | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
who expected his children to be seen and not heard. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:43 | |
Come here, Florence. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:47 | |
What is the child afraid of? Come here, Florence. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:51 | |
But this image is, for the most part, | 0:02:51 | 0:02:53 | |
a myth - a creation of literature, propaganda and historical studies | 0:02:53 | 0:02:58 | |
which have focussed almost exclusively on the mother. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
Do you know who I am? | 0:03:01 | 0:03:03 | |
Yes, Papa. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:05 | |
And have you nothing to say to me? | 0:03:06 | 0:03:09 | |
Say "good night", miss. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:13 | |
Good night, Papa. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:15 | |
Good night, Florence. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:17 | |
Enough. | 0:03:22 | 0:03:24 | |
Go to Richard's now. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:25 | |
One of the first academics to challenge the negative stereotype | 0:03:25 | 0:03:29 | |
of the father from the past was Professor Joanna Bourke. | 0:03:29 | 0:03:32 | |
We have this idea that fathers in the past | 0:03:33 | 0:03:36 | |
were these rather stern patriarchal figures | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
who sort of bossed everyone around - | 0:03:40 | 0:03:42 | |
bossed the children around, you know, did corporal punishment, | 0:03:42 | 0:03:46 | |
bossed the wife around - and rather tyrannical type figures. | 0:03:46 | 0:03:50 | |
Those images, I think, really do need to be broken down. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:55 | |
When I started to look at fathers in the past, | 0:03:58 | 0:04:02 | |
one of the things that immediately jumped out at me was, | 0:04:02 | 0:04:06 | |
"Hang on here. This sort of negative image of fathers | 0:04:06 | 0:04:09 | |
"simply can't be true. I mean, I have a great dad." | 0:04:09 | 0:04:12 | |
And in fact, all the people I know | 0:04:12 | 0:04:14 | |
have fantastically warm, loving fathers, who are obviously... | 0:04:14 | 0:04:19 | |
My dad, for example, had to juggle lots of things - | 0:04:19 | 0:04:21 | |
he was a medically missionary, he worked very, very, very hard. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:26 | |
But, you know, he was always a hands-on dad. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:31 | |
He was always loving and affectionate. | 0:04:31 | 0:04:33 | |
And I think that that was one of the reasons why I thought, | 0:04:33 | 0:04:37 | |
"Well, is the stereotype... Is that true?" | 0:04:37 | 0:04:40 | |
At the beginning of the 20th Century, | 0:04:43 | 0:04:45 | |
the social landscape of Britain was very different | 0:04:45 | 0:04:48 | |
from what it is today, | 0:04:48 | 0:04:49 | |
with around 80% of the population considered to be working class. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:54 | |
Focusing her research on this section of British society, | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
Professor Bourke set out to uncover the truth. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
Her findings, | 0:05:02 | 0:05:04 | |
drawn from oral histories and autobiographies, were surprising. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:08 | |
When I looked back in the archives and actually looked at ordinary dads, | 0:05:10 | 0:05:15 | |
of the 250 working-class autobiographies | 0:05:15 | 0:05:18 | |
that I used in my work, | 0:05:18 | 0:05:21 | |
for every one who said that their dad did not do childcare, | 0:05:21 | 0:05:26 | |
14 explicitly stated that he did. | 0:05:26 | 0:05:29 | |
This was an era when fathers often worked long hours | 0:05:31 | 0:05:35 | |
in dangerous conditions to earn what was called the family wage, | 0:05:35 | 0:05:39 | |
and mothers were expected to stay at home with the children. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:44 | |
It was a division of labour that would remain intact | 0:05:44 | 0:05:46 | |
in peacetime Britain for the next 40 years. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:49 | |
But although he was away from the family home, | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
the father's main responsibility was to his children. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:57 | |
In Edwardian Britain, | 0:06:00 | 0:06:02 | |
we think very much of fathers being absent from family life | 0:06:02 | 0:06:06 | |
and they're absent because they're in work, being providers. | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
However, historians have tended to think this means that | 0:06:13 | 0:06:17 | |
fathers aren't intimate in family life in any way - | 0:06:17 | 0:06:21 | |
but in childhood memories of their dads, | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
children actually constitute Father's absence | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
as evidence of his presence in family life, | 0:06:27 | 0:06:31 | |
because Father's away working for his children, for his family. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:37 | |
We see lots of images of men leaving, in their hundreds, | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
the mills, the factories, the mines - | 0:06:43 | 0:06:46 | |
often very dirty, often very weary - | 0:06:46 | 0:06:49 | |
and we tend to leave them at the factory gates. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:52 | |
But if you read childhood memories, | 0:06:52 | 0:06:55 | |
children anticipate Father's return home with real excitement. | 0:06:55 | 0:07:00 | |
They know that Father has been away all day, working for them. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:04 | |
But again, what we don't think about | 0:07:04 | 0:07:06 | |
is fathers who've worked a very long day - often very, very tired - | 0:07:06 | 0:07:10 | |
being truly excited to return home | 0:07:10 | 0:07:13 | |
and to have their children greet them. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:15 | |
But men can't resist their children. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
They love that tactile involvement with children | 0:07:18 | 0:07:22 | |
and are delighted to be welcomed home with such excitement. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:26 | |
One of four children, | 0:07:28 | 0:07:29 | |
Lily Barron was born in the Welsh mining town of Blackwood in 1912. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:35 | |
That is myself - Lily - | 0:07:36 | 0:07:39 | |
and that's Daddy. | 0:07:39 | 0:07:41 | |
The most important man in my life. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
He really was, and I loved every inch of him. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:49 | |
I think we were the... | 0:07:50 | 0:07:51 | |
apple of his eye, really. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
He really did - he... | 0:07:54 | 0:07:55 | |
I think he worshipped us. | 0:07:55 | 0:07:57 | |
With a young family to keep, Lily's father worked hard - | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
but like most dads, he made sure there were treats, too, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:08 | |
like a trip to the seaside. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:10 | |
On one day out, Lily was paddling in the sea, | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
when she was knocked over by a wave. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:16 | |
We didn't have bathers in those times. | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
perhaps I had a petticoat and a pair of knickers on | 0:08:20 | 0:08:23 | |
and that was it, you know. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:25 | |
So I had to go off and be stripped off | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
and Daddy carried me up the beach - cos I was crying - | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
and got me undressed and put me on the... | 0:08:31 | 0:08:34 | |
put the clothes on the rocks to dry. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:36 | |
But Daddy never grumbled. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:39 | |
He never... I never remember him grumbling at us. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
And we were naughty sometimes, I'll tell you. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:45 | |
This image of the gentle Edwardian working-class father | 0:08:46 | 0:08:50 | |
is at odds with contemporary reformist propaganda, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:53 | |
which often portrayed Dad as a brutal drunk. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:56 | |
Whilst it's true that some men liked to drink, and a few drank to excess, | 0:08:56 | 0:09:01 | |
the idea that many drunken fathers | 0:09:01 | 0:09:03 | |
regularly abused their wives and children is a myth. | 0:09:03 | 0:09:07 | |
These negative stereotypes | 0:09:10 | 0:09:12 | |
are perpetuated by very particular groups in society, | 0:09:12 | 0:09:16 | |
so not surprisingly, one of the key groups that sort of, | 0:09:16 | 0:09:20 | |
er, perpetuates the stereotype is temperance reformers. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
By the early 1900s, the temperance movement, | 0:09:25 | 0:09:28 | |
which advocated teetotalism, was flourishing in Britain | 0:09:28 | 0:09:32 | |
and social reform groups like the Band of Hope | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
were spreading the word against the perils of alcohol | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
and its effect upon the working-class family. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:41 | |
As a direct result, | 0:09:41 | 0:09:43 | |
three million signed the pledge in support of abstinence. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:47 | |
Yet the myth of the brutal, drunken father persisted. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:50 | |
One of the reasons I think they are so keen | 0:09:52 | 0:09:55 | |
to promote this negative image of working-class fathers is that | 0:09:55 | 0:09:59 | |
it justifies their own position within working-class communities. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
For temperance societies to justify their existence, | 0:10:04 | 0:10:08 | |
they have to have a folk devil to target, | 0:10:08 | 0:10:12 | |
and it is the working-class man. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:14 | |
Of course, it wasn't only Edwardian working-class children | 0:10:14 | 0:10:21 | |
who had close relationships with their fathers. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:24 | |
One of seven children, Phyllis Ing was born in London, | 0:10:25 | 0:10:29 | |
where her father was a solicitor's managing clerk. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:32 | |
I'll never, ever forget my father. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:34 | |
He was so kind and loving. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
A man you could snuggle up to. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:46 | |
He was like a cuddly teddy bear. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:48 | |
SHE LAUGHS | 0:10:48 | 0:10:51 | |
During the week, Phyllis's father spent long hours at work, | 0:10:51 | 0:10:56 | |
so at the weekend, there was nothing he enjoyed more | 0:10:56 | 0:10:59 | |
than playing with his children. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:01 | |
It was a far cry from the "seen and not heard" childhood | 0:11:01 | 0:11:04 | |
of popular mythology. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:06 | |
We used to have lots of fun with Dad. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
He was a real funny man. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:12 | |
And on Friday night - always on a Friday - | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
he used to come home with his pocket full of sweets for us. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:21 | |
We used to play chases round the garden | 0:11:21 | 0:11:24 | |
and we'd be shrieking with laughter and that sort of thing. | 0:11:24 | 0:11:27 | |
Even the neighbours used to enjoy listening to us laughing. | 0:11:27 | 0:11:30 | |
Mother said the weekends, it was terrible - | 0:11:30 | 0:11:33 | |
the noise we used to make with Dad and that. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:36 | |
She used to be glad when he went to work. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:38 | |
SHE CHUCKLES | 0:11:38 | 0:11:40 | |
Perhaps the single most significant event to affect fathers | 0:11:45 | 0:11:49 | |
in the first part of the 20th Century was the First World War. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:53 | |
As war fever spread across the country in August 1914, | 0:11:55 | 0:11:58 | |
hundreds of thousands of men took up arms | 0:11:58 | 0:12:01 | |
in the name of duty and patriotism. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:04 | |
But as the threat from Germany grew stronger, it wasn't only | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
the young and reckless that took the King's shilling. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
In 1914, you get this enormous rush to the colours. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:17 | |
In the first instance, young men - unemployed, disaffected, | 0:12:17 | 0:12:21 | |
keen on a sense of adventure. | 0:12:21 | 0:12:22 | |
What you get then is a second rush of older men - | 0:12:22 | 0:12:25 | |
of fathers who've wanted to make sure everything was OK at home, | 0:12:25 | 0:12:29 | |
wanted to make sure the government was going to pay proper allowances | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
to their families when they went to fight. | 0:12:32 | 0:12:34 | |
These men were motivated, of course, by a sort of sense of patriotism | 0:12:34 | 0:12:38 | |
and of duty, but it was more parochial than that. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:42 | |
They had read the newspapers, | 0:12:42 | 0:12:43 | |
they'd seen evidence that Germany threatened not France and Belgium, | 0:12:43 | 0:12:48 | |
but threatened England itself, | 0:12:48 | 0:12:50 | |
and it was their job to stop the Germans overseas | 0:12:50 | 0:12:53 | |
before they came and stood on their own front door. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
Lily Barron's father was one of those who volunteered to fight | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
at the beginning of the war, | 0:13:02 | 0:13:03 | |
and was posted to the South Wales Borderers as a Lewis gunner. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:07 | |
With the expectation that they would help achieve a swift victory, | 0:13:11 | 0:13:15 | |
the fathers who left for France | 0:13:15 | 0:13:17 | |
could scarcely have imagined the horrors that awaited them. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
But as the weeks turned to months, | 0:13:22 | 0:13:24 | |
and the casualty lists grew ever longer, | 0:13:24 | 0:13:27 | |
it's not surprising that their thoughts turned regularly | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
to their wives and children back home. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:32 | |
At the beginning of the war, | 0:13:32 | 0:13:35 | |
the Army Postal Service was handling some 650,000 letters per week. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:41 | |
By 1916, that figure had increased to 11 million. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:46 | |
Many of these letters and postcards survive to this day, | 0:13:47 | 0:13:51 | |
and have provided historians with a rich source of material evidence, | 0:13:51 | 0:13:55 | |
which show that although far away, fathers still took a great interest | 0:13:55 | 0:13:59 | |
in the daily lives of their children. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:02 | |
PROFESSOR BOURKE: One of the things I always loved | 0:14:03 | 0:14:06 | |
when I was reading the letters and diaries of working-class men | 0:14:06 | 0:14:10 | |
is the great, great pride they take in their children. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:14 | |
They take great, great pleasure in, you know, | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
what their child is doing | 0:14:17 | 0:14:18 | |
and you get these letters | 0:14:18 | 0:14:20 | |
sent from fathers in the front lines actually complaining and saying, | 0:14:20 | 0:14:25 | |
"Please! Can you tell me what little Sue is doing?", | 0:14:25 | 0:14:28 | |
and "How is Johnny?", | 0:14:28 | 0:14:30 | |
and "Lots and lots of kisses", | 0:14:30 | 0:14:32 | |
and drawing images for their children. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:34 | |
So children - infants in particular - | 0:14:34 | 0:14:37 | |
are something that fathers were increasingly concerned about. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:41 | |
They took great pride in it. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:43 | |
# Take me back to dear old Blighty | 0:14:44 | 0:14:48 | |
# Put me on the train for London town... # | 0:14:48 | 0:14:51 | |
Perhaps more importantly, the legacy of this correspondence | 0:14:51 | 0:14:55 | |
would be to change both the private and public perception | 0:14:55 | 0:14:58 | |
of a father's feelings towards his children. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:02 | |
When those men came back from the front lines, | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
they were faced with children who actually knew - | 0:15:06 | 0:15:11 | |
they had material evidence - that yeah, Daddy loves you, | 0:15:11 | 0:15:14 | |
Daddy wants to kiss you, Daddy wants to cuddle you, | 0:15:14 | 0:15:17 | |
Daddy will look after you when he comes back home. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:20 | |
Although letters enabled fathers and their children to keep in touch, | 0:15:21 | 0:15:25 | |
more important were the rare days | 0:15:25 | 0:15:27 | |
that dads could spend at home on leave. | 0:15:27 | 0:15:30 | |
For battle-weary soldiers, | 0:15:30 | 0:15:32 | |
a few days respite, spent in the company of their sons and daughters, | 0:15:32 | 0:15:36 | |
must have seemed like paradise. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:38 | |
Lily Barron is returning to her old home town of Blackwood | 0:15:47 | 0:15:51 | |
in South Wales. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:52 | |
It was there that she was reunited with her father | 0:15:52 | 0:15:55 | |
for the first time in three years, | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
when he came home on leave in 1917. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
We were in school, my brother and I, | 0:16:02 | 0:16:04 | |
and when we got home, we had such a surprise - Daddy was there. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:08 | |
And oh, we were all over him then, you know. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:11 | |
He hugged the pair of us in both his arms, around the both of us, | 0:16:12 | 0:16:17 | |
and was kissing us, and then he'd rub Wyndham's hair like this | 0:16:17 | 0:16:21 | |
and, oh, he just was... | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
I don't know. I think he was excited to see that we'd grown a bit. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
We really didn't want to know about the war. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:32 | |
All we cared about was our father coming back | 0:16:32 | 0:16:36 | |
and we wanted to keep him there, but...it wasn't. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:40 | |
Wasn't able to. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:41 | |
Lily's father spent little more than a week at home, | 0:16:43 | 0:16:46 | |
but arranged to have this photograph taken as a keepsake. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:51 | |
The following day he had to say goodbye to his family again - | 0:16:51 | 0:16:55 | |
this time with the full knowledge of just what awaited him in France. | 0:16:55 | 0:16:59 | |
On the morning that these fathers would have left home, | 0:17:01 | 0:17:04 | |
they would have kissed their wives goodbye, hugged their wives, | 0:17:04 | 0:17:07 | |
hugged their children, got their kit, walked to the gate, | 0:17:07 | 0:17:10 | |
Then they were going. They knew what they were going back into. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
They'd been wounded once or were back on leave. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
They understood the nature of the Western Front | 0:17:16 | 0:17:18 | |
what happened to an infantry battalion | 0:17:18 | 0:17:21 | |
when it went over the top, | 0:17:21 | 0:17:22 | |
and that moment when they leave their family for that last time, | 0:17:22 | 0:17:25 | |
they give their child that final kiss, | 0:17:25 | 0:17:28 | |
their wives their final hugs. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:30 | |
Can you imagine what that moment must have been like? | 0:17:30 | 0:17:35 | |
As a father, I can get a sense of, | 0:17:36 | 0:17:39 | |
you know, being away for a week and missing my son, | 0:17:39 | 0:17:42 | |
but at least I have the prospect of coming back and seeing him. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:45 | |
For these men, they had every prospect | 0:17:45 | 0:17:48 | |
of never seeing their family again. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
The children that they'd read bedtime stories to, | 0:17:51 | 0:17:54 | |
taken to the playground, taken to church. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:57 | |
And all of a sudden, | 0:17:57 | 0:17:58 | |
an arbitrary shell or bullet was going to end all that. | 0:17:58 | 0:18:02 | |
Lily's father, John Jones, was killed in November 1917. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:14 | |
His body lay undiscovered for nearly six months. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:18 | |
Regimental diaries reveal that he was shot in the thigh, | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
and left behind as his regiment retreated. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:25 | |
A copy of the family photograph was found on his body. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
The family struggled after his death, | 0:18:30 | 0:18:33 | |
and Lily was sent to live with an aunt in Herefordshire. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
She never lived at home in Blackwood again. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:39 | |
But today, she has returned to the town | 0:18:39 | 0:18:43 | |
and the war memorial where her father's sacrifice is remembered. | 0:18:43 | 0:18:48 | |
Well, I still think, you know, when they all had to retreat | 0:18:51 | 0:18:56 | |
and Daddy was left there alone, | 0:18:56 | 0:18:58 | |
what were his thoughts? | 0:18:58 | 0:19:00 | |
I'm sure he was thinking about us all, you know. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:06 | |
He was lovely. Yes, he was. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:10 | |
It is estimated that 250,000 British fathers | 0:19:14 | 0:19:18 | |
were killed in the First World War, | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
and their loss left a hole in family life | 0:19:20 | 0:19:22 | |
that would last for generations. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:25 | |
But that is only part of the story. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:28 | |
Propaganda films like this one | 0:19:28 | 0:19:30 | |
portrayed a happy homecoming for fathers lucky enough to survive. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:34 | |
# Keep the home fires burning... # | 0:19:34 | 0:19:37 | |
But this too was a myth. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:39 | |
In reality, countless numbers of fathers | 0:19:39 | 0:19:43 | |
found it difficult to settle back into family life | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
after the horrors of war. | 0:19:45 | 0:19:47 | |
And for these men seeing their families again, it was... | 0:19:47 | 0:19:50 | |
It was a very, very difficult experience because all of a sudden, | 0:19:50 | 0:19:54 | |
they'd seen things that no man should ever see and it... | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
They would thrash around at night, they would have nightmares in bed, | 0:19:57 | 0:20:01 | |
the children would now be not quite sure - who was this man? | 0:20:01 | 0:20:03 | |
Maybe they were too young to remember him pre-war. | 0:20:03 | 0:20:06 | |
Maybe even if they could, | 0:20:06 | 0:20:08 | |
he's now not the father that they could recall. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:10 | |
So all of a sudden, you've got this moment when you should have | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
this elation of family reuniting again but very, very quickly, | 0:20:13 | 0:20:18 | |
that broke up as people began to say, | 0:20:18 | 0:20:20 | |
"You're not really my daddy that I remember," | 0:20:20 | 0:20:22 | |
or, "Daddy's angry, Daddy's violent, Daddy can't get a job, | 0:20:22 | 0:20:25 | |
"Daddy can't look after the family." Equally, Daddy himself is thinking, | 0:20:25 | 0:20:29 | |
"I can't look after my... I can't do well by my family, | 0:20:29 | 0:20:31 | |
"I can't maintain the household. I've got these wounds, | 0:20:31 | 0:20:34 | |
"I've got these mental agonies that I'm going through | 0:20:34 | 0:20:37 | |
"and I've got nobody to help me." | 0:20:37 | 0:20:39 | |
Alec Haines was one of those | 0:20:44 | 0:20:46 | |
whose family suffered in the aftermath of the war. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:49 | |
He was born in the village of Holme Lacy in the Wye Valley in 1920 | 0:20:51 | 0:20:55 | |
and has come back in search of the place where he lived with his father | 0:20:55 | 0:20:59 | |
over 80 years ago. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
Alec's father was gassed and shot in the war | 0:21:03 | 0:21:07 | |
and for a time, his injuries prevented him from working. | 0:21:07 | 0:21:11 | |
He soon began to find comfort in drink. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:14 | |
Like millions of soldiers in the First World War, came home, | 0:21:16 | 0:21:20 | |
their lives had been shattered and so had my poor father. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:25 | |
There was no work available | 0:21:25 | 0:21:28 | |
and he could not work, | 0:21:28 | 0:21:30 | |
but eventually, he did go out to farms | 0:21:30 | 0:21:34 | |
and help in the hay and the corn | 0:21:34 | 0:21:35 | |
and pulling up beet and all this sort of thing. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:39 | |
And he took to drinking home-made cider | 0:21:40 | 0:21:45 | |
and that's what he had at that farm, | 0:21:45 | 0:21:47 | |
and subsequently, wherever he could get it. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
When Alec was five, his mother died, | 0:21:52 | 0:21:56 | |
shortly after giving birth to his youngest brother. | 0:21:56 | 0:22:00 | |
The family were evicted from their cottage | 0:22:00 | 0:22:02 | |
and the youngest children were sent away | 0:22:02 | 0:22:05 | |
to be looked after by relatives, | 0:22:05 | 0:22:08 | |
but Alec and his dad stayed together. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:10 | |
Somebody gave my father an old First World War bell tent | 0:22:12 | 0:22:17 | |
and we two stayed in there | 0:22:17 | 0:22:20 | |
and we were on some ground on a farm. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:24 | |
That's where it would be - up there, | 0:22:25 | 0:22:28 | |
but that don't matter, as long as we get on a green patch, do it? | 0:22:28 | 0:22:33 | |
Here's the style, here. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
Bloody hell. "Heads down, Alec - | 0:22:36 | 0:22:40 | |
"woodpeckers about." | 0:22:40 | 0:22:41 | |
Now we're right. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:50 | |
While Alec went to school, | 0:22:55 | 0:22:57 | |
his dad laboured several miles away in return for cider and food. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:02 | |
They supplemented their diet with fresh eggs collected from birds | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
that nested in a nearby bank, | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
and bread and jam made by the farmer's wife. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
After a brief search, Alec found his old home. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:18 | |
He hasn't been back to this spot since 1925. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:23 | |
This is it. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:27 | |
Yeah. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:31 | |
That's it. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:32 | |
It was here, in this field, that Alec and his dad lived | 0:23:34 | 0:23:39 | |
for nearly six months, | 0:23:39 | 0:23:40 | |
until the onset of winter forced them to leave. | 0:23:40 | 0:23:43 | |
Unable to cope, Alec's dad had to find an alternative. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:51 | |
In desperation, | 0:23:51 | 0:23:53 | |
he decided to send his three oldest children to Muller's Homes, | 0:23:53 | 0:23:57 | |
a large orphanage in Bristol. | 0:23:57 | 0:23:59 | |
The homes operated a strict system of segregation, | 0:24:02 | 0:24:06 | |
and after a tearful last goodbye, the children were separated. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:10 | |
Quickly indoctrinated into a daily routine of prayer, | 0:24:10 | 0:24:13 | |
hard work and cleanliness, Alec and his brother and sister | 0:24:13 | 0:24:17 | |
were only allowed to see one another for one hour a month. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:22 | |
All the time I was in Muller's Homes, | 0:24:25 | 0:24:28 | |
I... I always thought, | 0:24:28 | 0:24:30 | |
one day my poor dad will come down | 0:24:30 | 0:24:34 | |
and rescue us from this terrible conditions we were in. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:40 | |
And of course the time came - | 0:24:42 | 0:24:45 | |
quite unexpected for me - when a master came in. | 0:24:45 | 0:24:51 | |
He said, "I've just had a message. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:53 | |
"Your father's died." | 0:24:53 | 0:24:55 | |
I think I must have taken a deep breath. | 0:24:58 | 0:25:02 | |
He did no more than turn round | 0:25:02 | 0:25:04 | |
and go back to where he was with his hands - I can see it now - | 0:25:04 | 0:25:08 | |
with his hands behind his back. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:10 | |
He didn't know how it would affect me | 0:25:10 | 0:25:13 | |
and it suddenly dawned on me, | 0:25:13 | 0:25:17 | |
"Not my poor dad." | 0:25:17 | 0:25:18 | |
And I fell down on the matting and with that, | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
10 or 12 boys rushed to me and consoled me, | 0:25:21 | 0:25:25 | |
and of course, I was just crying and crying. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:30 | |
Terrible. | 0:25:31 | 0:25:33 | |
I'd lost everything. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:35 | |
Alec remained in Muller's Homes until he was 14. | 0:25:44 | 0:25:48 | |
He had no idea what had happened to his father | 0:25:48 | 0:25:50 | |
until after the Second World War, | 0:25:50 | 0:25:53 | |
when he discovered that he was buried here, | 0:25:53 | 0:25:55 | |
not far from where they used to live. | 0:25:55 | 0:25:57 | |
To my disgust - it hit me terrible - | 0:25:59 | 0:26:04 | |
he was buried in a pauper's grave. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:07 | |
After all that, for this country - | 0:26:07 | 0:26:10 | |
wounded and gassed, came back to England, | 0:26:10 | 0:26:15 | |
could not work, | 0:26:15 | 0:26:17 | |
brought up a family - | 0:26:17 | 0:26:20 | |
and then died and was buried in a pauper's grave. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:24 | |
Yeah, in a pauper's grave. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
During the inter-war years, | 0:26:44 | 0:26:45 | |
a new spirit of optimism gradually began to spread across the country. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:49 | |
After a government promise to provide homes fit for heroes, | 0:26:49 | 0:26:52 | |
the Housing Act of 1919 led to the development of new council housing | 0:26:52 | 0:26:57 | |
on modern cottage estates. | 0:26:57 | 0:27:00 | |
And further legislation, passed in 1930, | 0:27:00 | 0:27:02 | |
paved the way for the demolition of the old slum areas. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:07 | |
Families soon began to leave the inner cities | 0:27:07 | 0:27:13 | |
for a fresh start in the suburbs and by the end of the decade, | 0:27:13 | 0:27:16 | |
one family in three lived in an inter-war-built house. | 0:27:16 | 0:27:20 | |
This was a golden age for the new suburban father - | 0:27:22 | 0:27:26 | |
one where he could enjoy simple pleasures with his children | 0:27:26 | 0:27:29 | |
in a clean and safe environment, | 0:27:29 | 0:27:31 | |
and where his role as a provider could be fully realised. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:35 | |
The council estates and the suburbs of the inter-war years - | 0:27:35 | 0:27:40 | |
very, very different to living in the inner cities. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:44 | |
They were built not with pubs, but with gardens. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:49 | |
They were built a long distance from your work, | 0:27:49 | 0:27:52 | |
so there was a... You know, you had to travel from work to the home, | 0:27:52 | 0:27:57 | |
so home became a separate sphere, if you like. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
The small nuclear family-type idea | 0:28:00 | 0:28:04 | |
really, really grew in importance. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:06 | |
Birth rates, which had been falling in the early part of the century, | 0:28:14 | 0:28:17 | |
temporarily increased after the First World War. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:21 | |
Yet for most men, | 0:28:21 | 0:28:23 | |
childbirth remained a mysterious and frightening event, | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
an experience from which they were often excluded. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:30 | |
But nothing could overshadow the sheer joy | 0:28:30 | 0:28:32 | |
of becoming a father for the first time. | 0:28:32 | 0:28:35 | |
Alfred Jenkins became a father in the 1920s. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:42 | |
It was a very, er, terrifying experience for me, | 0:28:43 | 0:28:47 | |
because I could hear my wife upstairs | 0:28:47 | 0:28:49 | |
groaning with the pain | 0:28:49 | 0:28:51 | |
and, er, I could hear the nurse encouraging her, | 0:28:51 | 0:28:55 | |
and to be quite candid, very, very upsetting to me. | 0:28:55 | 0:29:00 | |
Although I wasn't going through the pain, | 0:29:03 | 0:29:06 | |
I must have been having sympathy pains, | 0:29:06 | 0:29:09 | |
because, er... | 0:29:09 | 0:29:10 | |
I'm told that I fainted at the bottom of the stairs. | 0:29:10 | 0:29:14 | |
When I recovered, | 0:29:16 | 0:29:18 | |
I remember being presented with this lovely little baby. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:21 | |
And I remember the feeling of elation, first of all, | 0:29:23 | 0:29:28 | |
that my wife - according to the reports I received - was well, | 0:29:28 | 0:29:34 | |
the child was well, | 0:29:34 | 0:29:36 | |
and there I was, holding my own baby in my arms. | 0:29:36 | 0:29:43 | |
And it was a wonderful moment. | 0:29:43 | 0:29:46 | |
But although new dads enjoyed spending time at home | 0:29:48 | 0:29:51 | |
with their young children, | 0:29:51 | 0:29:53 | |
most baby care remained the duty of the mother. | 0:29:53 | 0:29:56 | |
Many men were reluctant to get involved | 0:29:56 | 0:29:59 | |
with the hands-on responsibility of caring for their baby - | 0:29:59 | 0:30:03 | |
particularly those who worked in a masculine environment, like Alfred. | 0:30:03 | 0:30:08 | |
When I got home from work most days, | 0:30:08 | 0:30:11 | |
I helped with the children quite a lot. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:13 | |
There was no question of my changing their nappies | 0:30:14 | 0:30:17 | |
or bathing them or anything of that kind. | 0:30:17 | 0:30:20 | |
The general picture was that men didn't do these things. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:24 | |
That was the general way of life. | 0:30:24 | 0:30:27 | |
It was women's work, men's work. | 0:30:27 | 0:30:30 | |
And if a man did it, he was... | 0:30:30 | 0:30:32 | |
I'm not saying he was baited all the time, but he... | 0:30:32 | 0:30:36 | |
he'd lost a bit of his manliness in the eyes of other men by doing it. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:41 | |
I would nurse them in the house, | 0:30:43 | 0:30:46 | |
but the wife would always push the pram, like, see. | 0:30:46 | 0:30:48 | |
If I went - I wouldn't go to push it in any case - | 0:30:48 | 0:30:51 | |
but if a man did go to push it, | 0:30:51 | 0:30:54 | |
the wife wouldn't accept it. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:56 | |
See, that would... | 0:30:56 | 0:30:59 | |
She wouldn't accept it. It would appear as if she was, | 0:30:59 | 0:31:03 | |
what we called in those days, hen-pecking a man. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:06 | |
Fathers like Alfred were perhaps reluctant | 0:31:11 | 0:31:13 | |
to take a hands-on approach because most were never shown how to do it. | 0:31:13 | 0:31:18 | |
In the first decades of the 20th Century, | 0:31:18 | 0:31:21 | |
welfare agencies and health visitors were on hand to offer instruction | 0:31:21 | 0:31:25 | |
in the basics of parenting, | 0:31:25 | 0:31:26 | |
but their services were provided almost exclusively to the mother. | 0:31:26 | 0:31:31 | |
-DR STRANGE: -You have milk depots, training classes, | 0:31:34 | 0:31:38 | |
health and welfare visitors who come to the working-class home, | 0:31:38 | 0:31:41 | |
all aimed at the mother and teaching the mother to be a better parent. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:46 | |
Fathers are completely - | 0:31:46 | 0:31:47 | |
actively and deliberately - | 0:31:47 | 0:31:50 | |
excluded from this movement. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:53 | |
But all that was to change, | 0:31:55 | 0:31:58 | |
with the creation of a new movement in parenting | 0:31:58 | 0:32:00 | |
that would last into the 1940s. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:03 | |
It was called Fathercraft. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:06 | |
Well, the Fathercraft movement has, until recently, | 0:32:06 | 0:32:11 | |
been completely lost to history. | 0:32:11 | 0:32:13 | |
It started in London in 1920, | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
at the Lancaster Road infant welfare centre in Kensington. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:20 | |
And there were some male doctors who started it, | 0:32:20 | 0:32:22 | |
and they thought it was very important to draw fathers in | 0:32:22 | 0:32:25 | |
to the care of infants and young children. | 0:32:25 | 0:32:28 | |
And the movement quickly spread | 0:32:30 | 0:32:32 | |
and soon, there were centres in Bristol, in Birmingham, | 0:32:32 | 0:32:36 | |
in Glasgow, in Liverpool. | 0:32:36 | 0:32:37 | |
It sprang from developments in child psychology | 0:32:38 | 0:32:42 | |
which had begun to recognise the important role played by fathers | 0:32:42 | 0:32:46 | |
and to understand that when the bond between the father and the child | 0:32:46 | 0:32:50 | |
was fostered very early on, that it was strongest. | 0:32:50 | 0:32:52 | |
This was an absolute turning point. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:56 | |
it was a turning point in the history of modern fatherhood - | 0:32:56 | 0:33:00 | |
the first time that fathers' roles | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
were really recognised by members of the health profession. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:07 | |
Although there were many dads still to be converted | 0:33:10 | 0:33:13 | |
to the joys of childcare, those that took the plunge often enjoyed it. | 0:33:13 | 0:33:17 | |
Tom Atkins moved to London from India in the 1930s | 0:33:20 | 0:33:24 | |
and in the space of the next few years, | 0:33:24 | 0:33:26 | |
met a girl, got married, and became the proud father of a baby daughter. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:31 | |
And from the start, he took the kind of hands-on approach to fatherhood | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
that would have made the instructors at Fathercraft classes very proud. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:39 | |
Well, I remember changing nappies. In those days, it wasn't these... | 0:33:41 | 0:33:45 | |
These little things with the press button at the side | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
which you took off and threw away. | 0:33:48 | 0:33:50 | |
These were the towelling sort of thing, | 0:33:50 | 0:33:54 | |
which you put on and you pinned them at both sides. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:58 | |
There was a special way of putting them on. | 0:33:58 | 0:34:02 | |
It was smelly, and you just folded it up | 0:34:02 | 0:34:06 | |
and put it in a bucket of water. Salty water, I think it was. | 0:34:06 | 0:34:10 | |
Yes, I did that. I did that for her. | 0:34:11 | 0:34:13 | |
It's always been the hope of every new father | 0:34:17 | 0:34:20 | |
that their child succeeds in life, | 0:34:20 | 0:34:22 | |
and even betters their own achievements. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:25 | |
In the inter-war years, | 0:34:25 | 0:34:27 | |
as new babies grew into young children, | 0:34:27 | 0:34:29 | |
many fathers willingly took on one of their most important roles - | 0:34:29 | 0:34:33 | |
that of educator. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:35 | |
This was particularly true in working class communities, | 0:34:35 | 0:34:39 | |
which often had a strong autodidactic tradition - | 0:34:39 | 0:34:42 | |
one which encouraged home education and self learning. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:46 | |
Rather than the cliche of spending hours in the pub, | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
many fathers would prefer to be at home, schooling their children. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:55 | |
There's been this widespread assumption | 0:34:55 | 0:34:58 | |
that working-class fathers haven't been interested | 0:34:58 | 0:35:00 | |
in their children's education. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:02 | |
In fact, historical records have debunked this myth. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:06 | |
It's perfectly clear that working-class dads - | 0:35:06 | 0:35:09 | |
especially more highly skilled workers, such as miners - | 0:35:09 | 0:35:12 | |
were very interested in their children's education. | 0:35:12 | 0:35:14 | |
There was a strong tradition of self education - | 0:35:16 | 0:35:19 | |
miners' institutes, libraries, working men's educational groups - | 0:35:19 | 0:35:23 | |
and it was these fathers' greatest joy | 0:35:23 | 0:35:26 | |
to pass on their learning to their children. | 0:35:26 | 0:35:29 | |
And for some of them, it was their greatest dream that their sons | 0:35:29 | 0:35:33 | |
would be able to escape this hard life in the pits, | 0:35:33 | 0:35:36 | |
risking their lives every day, | 0:35:36 | 0:35:38 | |
by being able to go on to finer things. | 0:35:38 | 0:35:41 | |
And so they transmitted their knowledge | 0:35:41 | 0:35:43 | |
not just for the love of knowledge, | 0:35:43 | 0:35:45 | |
but how it could help their children in the future. | 0:35:45 | 0:35:48 | |
George Short, a miner from County Durham, | 0:35:52 | 0:35:55 | |
brought up three children in the 1920s and '30s. | 0:35:55 | 0:35:58 | |
Well, I taught my children, first of all, | 0:36:02 | 0:36:05 | |
the importance of education | 0:36:05 | 0:36:07 | |
and taught them, as I had been taught, | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
how to read and how to write. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:14 | |
I thought it was important because | 0:36:16 | 0:36:19 | |
reading books, as I explained to them, | 0:36:19 | 0:36:23 | |
they weren't just living on their own personal experiences - | 0:36:23 | 0:36:28 | |
or even on my experiences - | 0:36:28 | 0:36:30 | |
but books reflected the experiences of other people | 0:36:30 | 0:36:35 | |
and because of this, | 0:36:35 | 0:36:37 | |
books would give them a wider outlook on life. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:42 | |
George's choice of books for his children | 0:36:43 | 0:36:47 | |
was aimed at widening their understanding of the world, | 0:36:47 | 0:36:50 | |
and its pleasures and problems. | 0:36:50 | 0:36:52 | |
When they got to about eight or nine, | 0:36:52 | 0:36:55 | |
Shakespeare, Jack London, | 0:36:55 | 0:37:00 | |
and Dickens. I was, er... | 0:37:00 | 0:37:04 | |
I always liked Dickens, even when I was younger myself, | 0:37:04 | 0:37:08 | |
because I always thought the stories of Dickens | 0:37:08 | 0:37:12 | |
were such that they were very easy to read | 0:37:12 | 0:37:17 | |
and those that was on the side of the poor people, | 0:37:17 | 0:37:23 | |
in Dickens's books, always came out on top. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:29 | |
By contrast, children of the upper classes were often sent away | 0:37:32 | 0:37:36 | |
to be educated at public schools, | 0:37:36 | 0:37:38 | |
although some younger children - particularly girls - | 0:37:38 | 0:37:42 | |
were taught at home by a governess. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:44 | |
But despite the fact that upper-class fathers might not be | 0:37:44 | 0:37:47 | |
so involved with their child's day-to-day education, | 0:37:47 | 0:37:51 | |
some were inspirational figures, | 0:37:51 | 0:37:53 | |
who taught their children more than scholars ever could. | 0:37:53 | 0:37:57 | |
In the days of Empire, many fathers lived and worked overseas, | 0:37:57 | 0:38:02 | |
while a lucky few travelled simply for pleasure. | 0:38:02 | 0:38:05 | |
The middle daughter of seven girls, | 0:38:07 | 0:38:10 | |
Dick Worcester was born in the New Forest in 1920. | 0:38:10 | 0:38:14 | |
Her father, Tom Longstaff, was a qualified medical doctor, | 0:38:14 | 0:38:19 | |
although he never practised. | 0:38:19 | 0:38:21 | |
Instead, family wealth allowed him to follow | 0:38:21 | 0:38:24 | |
his love of mountaineering and exploration. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
It was an age when climbing at altitude was a dangerous pastime, | 0:38:27 | 0:38:31 | |
but Tom Longstaff had a passion for life, and for living. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:36 | |
Don't be put off because a thing's dangerous - | 0:38:37 | 0:38:41 | |
or supposed to be dangerous, or looks dangerous. | 0:38:41 | 0:38:46 | |
What's the good of your life if you're not willing to chance it? | 0:38:46 | 0:38:51 | |
His adventurous spirit had a marked effect on Dick from an early age, | 0:38:53 | 0:38:57 | |
first becoming apparent when she decided | 0:38:57 | 0:39:00 | |
she no longer wanted to be known by her original name, Barbara. | 0:39:00 | 0:39:04 | |
I didn't like my name Barbara, I didn't like being a girl. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:07 | |
I wanted to be a boy. Of course, I could then travel | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
and explore and do things like my father. | 0:39:10 | 0:39:13 | |
On the whole, there were no women climbing mountains and exploring | 0:39:13 | 0:39:18 | |
that I knew about. | 0:39:18 | 0:39:19 | |
I thought if I was a boy, I could. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:22 | |
Among his many achievements, | 0:39:25 | 0:39:26 | |
Dick's father climbed with George Mallory and Sandy Irvine | 0:39:26 | 0:39:30 | |
on their 1922 expedition to Everest. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:34 | |
It was just one of the exotic and far-away places | 0:39:34 | 0:39:37 | |
to which he travelled during his lifetime. | 0:39:37 | 0:39:40 | |
Although her father could be overseas for months at a time, | 0:39:40 | 0:39:44 | |
the moments they spent at home together | 0:39:44 | 0:39:46 | |
were always special for Dick. | 0:39:46 | 0:39:48 | |
Her favourite treat was to be invited into his study, | 0:39:48 | 0:39:52 | |
an almost sacred place, | 0:39:52 | 0:39:54 | |
which she would hardly dare enter without his express permission. | 0:39:54 | 0:39:58 | |
For an inquisitive child, | 0:39:58 | 0:39:59 | |
it was a place of great wonder and fascination. | 0:39:59 | 0:40:03 | |
Almost everything in the study was from a foreign country. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:09 | |
On the back of the sofa, there was a snow leopard skin. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:13 | |
He'd shot the snow leopard, but there were many in those days. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:16 | |
And over the side, Tibetan saddlebags, | 0:40:16 | 0:40:20 | |
and there was a strong smell of pipe smoke and tobacco. | 0:40:20 | 0:40:24 | |
I loved lifting the lid of his tobacco jar and smelling it. | 0:40:24 | 0:40:27 | |
And there was a narwhal's tusk, and there was a walrus tusk | 0:40:27 | 0:40:32 | |
etched onto it by Eskimos. | 0:40:32 | 0:40:35 | |
Little scenes of Eskimo life. | 0:40:35 | 0:40:37 | |
And heaps and heaps of books, | 0:40:37 | 0:40:40 | |
and I was allowed to take out ones I wanted to. | 0:40:40 | 0:40:44 | |
Despite his frequent absence, | 0:40:45 | 0:40:47 | |
Dick has fond memories of her father | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
and his playful, often relaxed, approach to parenting. | 0:40:50 | 0:40:54 | |
Well, the first thing I can remember about my father was going along | 0:40:55 | 0:40:59 | |
a long passage - it seemed very long to me - | 0:40:59 | 0:41:01 | |
from the nursery to my parents' bedroom and getting into their bed, | 0:41:01 | 0:41:06 | |
with them, where they were having morning tea | 0:41:06 | 0:41:09 | |
and I loved drinking cold dregs out of willow pattern mugs. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:13 | |
And my father used to want to play - | 0:41:13 | 0:41:16 | |
to be a fox hidden under the bedclothes | 0:41:16 | 0:41:19 | |
and then springing out at me, | 0:41:19 | 0:41:21 | |
and he had a big red bushy moustache. | 0:41:21 | 0:41:23 | |
He didn't have a beard in those days, but he did later, | 0:41:23 | 0:41:26 | |
and I enjoyed it very much, and he loved doing it. | 0:41:26 | 0:41:31 | |
I did feel that my father loved me, although he was very undemonstrative. | 0:41:36 | 0:41:40 | |
But I did feel that strongly. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:44 | |
He seemed to understand an awful lot about me without saying much. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:47 | |
But I can't remember any discipline from my father, | 0:41:47 | 0:41:51 | |
except he hated us playing the gramophone. | 0:41:51 | 0:41:54 | |
We used to play the gramophone and roller skate in a big room he built | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
and he could hear the music from his study windows | 0:41:57 | 0:42:01 | |
and he used to come and firmly shut the windows in our room. | 0:42:01 | 0:42:06 | |
We realised he was displeased, but he wasn't cross. | 0:42:06 | 0:42:09 | |
Inspired by her father's adventures, | 0:42:13 | 0:42:15 | |
Dick has always loved foreign travel. | 0:42:15 | 0:42:17 | |
And one place has meant more to her then any other. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:20 | |
I went to Nepal when I was 70 | 0:42:22 | 0:42:26 | |
and then four years later, when I must have been 74, | 0:42:26 | 0:42:28 | |
and I loved it. | 0:42:28 | 0:42:30 | |
Being high up made me feel strongly connected with my father, | 0:42:31 | 0:42:35 | |
which was a very, very nice feeling. Very nice. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:39 | |
I knew he must have loved the same sort of country, | 0:42:39 | 0:42:42 | |
though of course, he went much, much higher up. | 0:42:42 | 0:42:45 | |
One of the best experiences of my life, being there. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:48 | |
Who put that picture there? | 0:42:52 | 0:42:55 | |
Dick's experience of a having father who was reluctant | 0:42:55 | 0:42:57 | |
to discipline his children is not unusual, | 0:42:57 | 0:43:01 | |
but it contradicts an enduring stereotype - the violent father. | 0:43:01 | 0:43:06 | |
Whilst it's true that some men did use corporal punishment | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
against their children, the image of the brutal disciplinarian, | 0:43:09 | 0:43:13 | |
popular in contemporary films and novels, is largely inaccurate. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:17 | |
Daddy. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:18 | |
You'll hit me too hard, Daddy, and they'll hang you. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:21 | |
I'll learn you. | 0:43:21 | 0:43:23 | |
They'll hang you, Daddy. Don't do, Daddy. | 0:43:23 | 0:43:27 | |
-I'll learn you. -Look... | 0:43:27 | 0:43:29 | |
You dare turn my picture to the wall. Your own dad... | 0:43:33 | 0:43:36 | |
Most fathers disliked punishing their children, | 0:43:36 | 0:43:39 | |
and their involvement in discipline was often seen as a last resort. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:42 | |
You good-for-nothing little madam. I'll learn you. | 0:43:42 | 0:43:45 | |
PROFESSOR BOURKE: If we look, for example, | 0:43:45 | 0:43:48 | |
at the role of discipline within the home, | 0:43:48 | 0:43:50 | |
what becomes very, very clear | 0:43:50 | 0:43:53 | |
is that it really was - it remained - | 0:43:53 | 0:43:55 | |
the mother's job to discipline the children. | 0:43:55 | 0:43:58 | |
The mother was responsible | 0:43:58 | 0:44:00 | |
for the day-to-day disciplining, | 0:44:00 | 0:44:03 | |
controlling, ensuring that everything went, if you like, according to plan. | 0:44:03 | 0:44:08 | |
Evidence of dads' reluctance to discipline their children | 0:44:11 | 0:44:14 | |
is supported by the observations of many social commentators, | 0:44:14 | 0:44:19 | |
and in particular, a district nurse turned author called Margaret Loane, | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
who wrote about her experiences in working-class households in London. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:28 | |
And Margaret Loane says that | 0:44:28 | 0:44:30 | |
a lot of mothers' discipline | 0:44:30 | 0:44:32 | |
is actually undermined by indulgent fathers | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
who are so pleased to see their children, they don't want to be | 0:44:35 | 0:44:39 | |
the one who has to use their special time with their children | 0:44:39 | 0:44:44 | |
to be disciplining them. | 0:44:44 | 0:44:46 | |
Margaret Loane also comments that | 0:44:46 | 0:44:49 | |
one of the reasons mothers use "wait till your father gets home" | 0:44:49 | 0:44:53 | |
as a threat is because children desperately don't want | 0:44:53 | 0:44:58 | |
to disappoint their dads and so, actually, | 0:44:58 | 0:45:02 | |
the "wait till your father get home" threat is quite an empty threat. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:08 | |
It's very useful because children don't want Father to know - | 0:45:08 | 0:45:11 | |
not because they're frightened he's going to beat them, | 0:45:11 | 0:45:14 | |
but because they don't want to disappoint him. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:16 | |
Of course, there were exceptions. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:20 | |
In fact, middle-class dads, even loving ones, | 0:45:20 | 0:45:24 | |
were the most likely to use harsh methods of discipline. | 0:45:24 | 0:45:27 | |
Phyllis Ing's father loved playing with his children, | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
but was prepared to use corporal punishment | 0:45:32 | 0:45:34 | |
when he felt it was necessary. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:36 | |
I know that he was a very loving, kind father, | 0:45:37 | 0:45:41 | |
but very strict. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:42 | |
I mean, I can remember there was always a cane hanging up | 0:45:42 | 0:45:45 | |
in the larder. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:47 | |
But never on the girls. | 0:45:47 | 0:45:49 | |
I think he occasionally gave the two elder boys | 0:45:49 | 0:45:52 | |
a tap on the backside now and again. | 0:45:52 | 0:45:54 | |
Like when my brother - eldest brother - went to the cup... | 0:45:55 | 0:46:00 | |
He had a very sweet tooth, which he'd had all his life. | 0:46:00 | 0:46:02 | |
Anyway, he went to the cupboard and he saw a tin of condensed milk open | 0:46:02 | 0:46:07 | |
so he got a spoon and he dipped it in | 0:46:07 | 0:46:10 | |
and he, filled... Had a whole spoonful of condensed milk | 0:46:10 | 0:46:14 | |
and then he took the spoon to the scullery to put in the sink. | 0:46:14 | 0:46:19 | |
But it also dripped all the way along the floor, | 0:46:19 | 0:46:23 | |
not knowing he'd done that. | 0:46:23 | 0:46:25 | |
And Dad came in, so he said, "Who's been to the cupboard?" | 0:46:25 | 0:46:28 | |
So Bill said, "I have, Dad." | 0:46:28 | 0:46:31 | |
"Get a cloth, wipe it up, and then get the cane." | 0:46:31 | 0:46:34 | |
And he got the cane for that, I remember. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:37 | |
SHE CHUCKLES | 0:46:37 | 0:46:38 | |
You see, you couldn't do anything without asking. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:42 | |
Miner George Short, however, was one of those fathers | 0:46:44 | 0:46:48 | |
passionately opposed to the cane. | 0:46:48 | 0:46:50 | |
Just as he had with his children's education, | 0:46:50 | 0:46:53 | |
when it came to discipline, he took an enlightened approach. | 0:46:53 | 0:46:56 | |
I didn't believe in corporal punishment - | 0:46:58 | 0:47:02 | |
either for them or for any other children. I thought... | 0:47:02 | 0:47:07 | |
that was no way to teach kiddies, | 0:47:07 | 0:47:10 | |
to bring them up. | 0:47:10 | 0:47:12 | |
Even when they were naughty, then I realised | 0:47:13 | 0:47:17 | |
that was not a failure of them. | 0:47:17 | 0:47:20 | |
I realised it was a failure of me. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:22 | |
So if you want to train children, | 0:47:24 | 0:47:26 | |
the big thing is to win their confidence. | 0:47:26 | 0:47:30 | |
And if you win their confidence, | 0:47:30 | 0:47:33 | |
then they'll do whatever you tell them. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:36 | |
A father's ability to fulfil his role as provider | 0:47:39 | 0:47:42 | |
has always been dependent upon his employment. | 0:47:42 | 0:47:46 | |
In the first half of the century, many jobs were physically demanding | 0:47:46 | 0:47:50 | |
and often dangerous, | 0:47:50 | 0:47:51 | |
but the threat of unemployment was of far greater concern. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:55 | |
In the late '20s and '30s, | 0:47:58 | 0:48:00 | |
the North East of England was devastated | 0:48:00 | 0:48:03 | |
by the effects of the Great Depression. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:05 | |
Mines, shipyards and heavy industry closed down, | 0:48:05 | 0:48:08 | |
and men were laid off in their thousands. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:11 | |
In some places, as unemployment rose as high as 70%, | 0:48:11 | 0:48:15 | |
men joined queues at soup kitchens | 0:48:15 | 0:48:18 | |
and scrabbled for scraps of coal on slagheaps | 0:48:18 | 0:48:21 | |
in an attempt to provide food and warmth for their families. | 0:48:21 | 0:48:25 | |
It was harrowing time to be a father. | 0:48:25 | 0:48:28 | |
Fathers strive to provide for their families. | 0:48:29 | 0:48:33 | |
If they are unemployed it's a huge source of anxiety for them, | 0:48:33 | 0:48:38 | |
because they see their role and their relationship with their family | 0:48:38 | 0:48:43 | |
as kind of defined by their ability to provide for their family. | 0:48:43 | 0:48:48 | |
It's a language of love for an awful lot of fathers | 0:48:48 | 0:48:52 | |
who never verbalise their sentimental feelings. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:56 | |
And this is thrown into relief when men are unemployed | 0:48:56 | 0:48:59 | |
and the huge self-recrimination and guilt that men express | 0:48:59 | 0:49:04 | |
at not being able to provide for their families | 0:49:04 | 0:49:06 | |
offers us a window into seeing what that means for them. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:10 | |
In County Durham, George Short was one of those fathers | 0:49:12 | 0:49:15 | |
who had to cope with the misery of unemployment. | 0:49:15 | 0:49:19 | |
Here you were. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:20 | |
Your family needed things, they needed new clothes. | 0:49:20 | 0:49:26 | |
The average man - particularly the men of my class - | 0:49:26 | 0:49:31 | |
they always had believed that they were the breadwinner | 0:49:31 | 0:49:36 | |
and they were the one that, er... | 0:49:36 | 0:49:39 | |
that kept the wheels turning. | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
And the fact that his wife might get a job | 0:49:42 | 0:49:46 | |
didn't help, you see, because that helped take away | 0:49:46 | 0:49:51 | |
from the man the sense of importance which was his. | 0:49:51 | 0:49:56 | |
It was a terrible feeling. | 0:49:56 | 0:49:58 | |
Despite the hardships fathers faced during the Depression, | 0:50:01 | 0:50:05 | |
there was one unexpected benefit. | 0:50:05 | 0:50:08 | |
With no work to go to, | 0:50:08 | 0:50:09 | |
dads could spend more time in the company of their children. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:13 | |
George saw his free time as opportunity | 0:50:14 | 0:50:17 | |
to further his children's education, | 0:50:17 | 0:50:19 | |
and took them walking and camping in nearby woodland. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
We used to go into the woods and in the woods, of course, | 0:50:24 | 0:50:29 | |
there was every form of wild animal. | 0:50:29 | 0:50:33 | |
Rabbits used to run almost tame | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
and, er, not only rabbits but hares, and they would be... | 0:50:36 | 0:50:42 | |
And then crawling about, you'd find hedgehogs and things like that, | 0:50:42 | 0:50:46 | |
so we would stop and look at these | 0:50:46 | 0:50:49 | |
and the bairns used to enjoy going for walks with us like that. | 0:50:49 | 0:50:54 | |
Fathers like George were an inspiration to their children | 0:50:57 | 0:51:01 | |
and in the inter-war years, | 0:51:01 | 0:51:03 | |
it was common for sons to want to follow in their footsteps, | 0:51:03 | 0:51:06 | |
by taking up the same occupation. | 0:51:06 | 0:51:08 | |
For many dads, this rite of passage | 0:51:08 | 0:51:11 | |
came with significant emotional responsibility. | 0:51:11 | 0:51:15 | |
For a dad training one's son up in your skill - | 0:51:16 | 0:51:22 | |
in your occupation - is one of the greatest gifts | 0:51:22 | 0:51:26 | |
you can give your son. | 0:51:26 | 0:51:27 | |
In a sense, your knowledge, your skill, | 0:51:27 | 0:51:31 | |
your experience as a working father is your capital. | 0:51:31 | 0:51:36 | |
It's your son's inheritance. | 0:51:36 | 0:51:39 | |
And so, giving this to your son | 0:51:39 | 0:51:41 | |
is not just about providing him with an income | 0:51:41 | 0:51:46 | |
and an occupation for his future - | 0:51:46 | 0:51:49 | |
it's very much about giving him something of yourself. | 0:51:49 | 0:51:53 | |
One of six children, | 0:51:54 | 0:51:56 | |
John Salinas was born in Liverpool in 1919. | 0:51:56 | 0:52:00 | |
Oh, I loved my father deeply. | 0:52:01 | 0:52:03 | |
I just wanted to be in his company as much as possible. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:08 | |
He was a very powerful man - | 0:52:08 | 0:52:10 | |
very strong, broad, and athletic - | 0:52:10 | 0:52:14 | |
and he used to take me to the swimming pool | 0:52:14 | 0:52:19 | |
and I could get on his back and ride on his back. | 0:52:19 | 0:52:23 | |
And it was a great feeling and a great closeness between us. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:28 | |
Unfortunately I didn't see a great - | 0:52:29 | 0:52:32 | |
as much of him as I would have liked - | 0:52:32 | 0:52:34 | |
because he was a seafarer. | 0:52:34 | 0:52:36 | |
And so he came and went and I saw him between voyages. | 0:52:36 | 0:52:40 | |
He was a ship's bosun and he was a leader of men, | 0:52:43 | 0:52:47 | |
and I was proud of the fact that he was the man | 0:52:47 | 0:52:52 | |
that went about the ship and told other people what to do. | 0:52:52 | 0:52:56 | |
He was an authoritative figure, | 0:52:57 | 0:52:59 | |
but not an unkindly authoritative figure. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:04 | |
He was my father. He was my father. | 0:53:04 | 0:53:07 | |
He was the head of the family. | 0:53:07 | 0:53:09 | |
He was a man of experience, and clever and... | 0:53:09 | 0:53:14 | |
able to take care of us, and equally missed when he wasn't there. | 0:53:14 | 0:53:19 | |
In 1927, while working on a ship in dock, | 0:53:21 | 0:53:25 | |
John's father was badly injured in an accident. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
With his dad confined to bed, John took full advantage | 0:53:29 | 0:53:33 | |
of the extra time they could spend together. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:35 | |
I was eight years old at the time | 0:53:36 | 0:53:39 | |
and I used to read the paper to him - | 0:53:39 | 0:53:41 | |
would be the Liverpool Echo then - | 0:53:41 | 0:53:45 | |
and I couldn't get my mouth around some of the words, | 0:53:45 | 0:53:48 | |
such as "policeman" was "polisman" | 0:53:48 | 0:53:52 | |
and "needless" was "needles". | 0:53:52 | 0:53:55 | |
But he loved me reading to him. | 0:53:55 | 0:53:57 | |
I think... I can imagine now how touched he would have been | 0:53:57 | 0:54:02 | |
that I should stay in the quiet, semi-lit room | 0:54:02 | 0:54:06 | |
reading to him, than out playing with the other children. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:10 | |
Those precious evenings were the last John would ever share | 0:54:12 | 0:54:17 | |
with his father, who died from his injuries. | 0:54:17 | 0:54:20 | |
it was a sad and confusing time for John. | 0:54:20 | 0:54:23 | |
I can remember him lying in the, er, | 0:54:25 | 0:54:28 | |
tiny parlour that we had. | 0:54:28 | 0:54:32 | |
The coffin on two trestles. | 0:54:32 | 0:54:36 | |
And kissing his forehead | 0:54:36 | 0:54:38 | |
and finding it icy, like marble. | 0:54:38 | 0:54:42 | |
And there were lots of people coming to the house | 0:54:43 | 0:54:46 | |
and they were praising my father. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:48 | |
BELL TOLLS | 0:54:48 | 0:54:51 | |
When my father was buried, we went in a... | 0:54:51 | 0:54:56 | |
A coach and horses, | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
and the horses' hooves rattled on the cobbles | 0:54:59 | 0:55:03 | |
and the tyres slid silently over them. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:07 | |
When I looked out of the window, | 0:55:07 | 0:55:10 | |
I could see people coming to attention and raising their hat, | 0:55:10 | 0:55:15 | |
touching their forehead and it impressed me greatly. | 0:55:15 | 0:55:18 | |
And they were respecting my father. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:22 | |
And even to this day, | 0:55:22 | 0:55:24 | |
if I see such a cortege moving along the road, | 0:55:24 | 0:55:28 | |
I behave in the same way, just in case there's some little boy... | 0:55:28 | 0:55:32 | |
..like me, who would get similar satisfaction from it. | 0:55:37 | 0:55:42 | |
When we got to the cemetery of course, | 0:55:46 | 0:55:49 | |
the coffin was lowered into a deep grave. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:52 | |
I never thought that graves could be so deep. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:56 | |
And... | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
when I threw the handful of soil onto the shiny coffin lid | 0:55:59 | 0:56:03 | |
and it rattled on the lid, | 0:56:03 | 0:56:05 | |
I was filled with horror that my father was down there. | 0:56:05 | 0:56:10 | |
After that, I used to look for him everywhere. | 0:56:15 | 0:56:19 | |
I never... I never felt that he'd gone away for good. | 0:56:19 | 0:56:23 | |
I always felt that he would come back | 0:56:23 | 0:56:25 | |
like he used to between voyages, | 0:56:25 | 0:56:28 | |
but he never did. | 0:56:28 | 0:56:30 | |
With the sea in his blood, | 0:56:31 | 0:56:33 | |
John joined the Merchant Navy when he was just 15 | 0:56:33 | 0:56:36 | |
and later sailed on convoys to Malta during World War II. | 0:56:36 | 0:56:41 | |
But wherever he was, | 0:56:42 | 0:56:44 | |
he always tried to live up to the example set by his father. | 0:56:44 | 0:56:48 | |
I wanted nothing to be said of me that would... | 0:56:48 | 0:56:51 | |
That my father would be ashamed of. | 0:56:51 | 0:56:54 | |
I always wanted to behave that he would never be ashamed of me. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:59 | |
And when I eventually went to sea myself, | 0:56:59 | 0:57:03 | |
I met some of his shipmates and they used to say, | 0:57:03 | 0:57:06 | |
"Oh, I remember your father. | 0:57:06 | 0:57:08 | |
"Fine man, your father." | 0:57:08 | 0:57:10 | |
They were very kind. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:13 | |
The love and respect with which John remembers his father is not unusual. | 0:57:17 | 0:57:23 | |
There's little doubt that dads in the first half of the century | 0:57:23 | 0:57:26 | |
often had close relationships with their children. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:30 | |
They might have spent long hours at work, been scarred by the war | 0:57:30 | 0:57:34 | |
or sometimes stern, | 0:57:34 | 0:57:37 | |
but to their sons and daughters, | 0:57:37 | 0:57:38 | |
they're also remembered as kind, devoted and inspiring. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:44 | |
In the inter-war years, health and welfare authorities | 0:57:46 | 0:57:49 | |
at last began to take seriously | 0:57:49 | 0:57:51 | |
the importance of a father's role in bringing up his children. | 0:57:51 | 0:57:55 | |
And whilst the idea of the hands-on, stay-at-home dad | 0:57:55 | 0:57:58 | |
that we recognise today was still some way off, | 0:57:58 | 0:58:01 | |
it's clear that the true picture of the father from the past | 0:58:01 | 0:58:05 | |
is vastly different from the negative stereotype | 0:58:05 | 0:58:09 | |
of popular mythology. | 0:58:09 | 0:58:11 | |
Next time, we reveal the effects of the Second World War | 0:58:16 | 0:58:20 | |
and the teenage revolution | 0:58:20 | 0:58:22 | |
on Britain's fathers and their children. | 0:58:22 | 0:58:25 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:50 | 0:58:53 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:53 | 0:58:56 |