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

The Fa t her
’
s Book
Being a Good Dad in the 21st Century
David Cohen
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D avid Cohen T he Father’s B ook: B eing a Good Dad in
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Bob O’Connor Living Happily Ever After: Putting Reality into
Your Rom ance
Paula Nicolson
John Coleman
The Fa t her
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Being a Good Dad in the 21st Century
David Cohen
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Contents
About the author xi
Acknowledgement s xiii
Introduction 1
Never too young t o leave home 4
What p sy cho lo gy teaches us about fathering 6
Good enough fat hering 11
12
Answers to quiz 24
1 29
Woody A llen versus history 30
Sacrific ing the so n 31
Honour thy father but don’t expect too much
fro m the old man 35
The involved father 36
Fat hers know best the behav iourist father 38
The useless-at-parties syndrome 40
Quiz
A history of fathers
Cross-cultural 41
Five-star fathers 42
The natural father 44
Savvy kid s 46
D omest ic violen ce and involvement 47
2 I’m going to be a dad 51
The ignorant fat her 53
T he governmen t h elp s 54

‘Your’re pregnant? – how do I feel’ 55
Yo u n ever wanted my child 56
The process of pregnancy 58
Sex 59
The run-up to the birth 59
Human bonding 62
Some surprising abilities of the new born b aby 64
Imitating others it st arts very young 66
Try this during your baby’s first 24 hours 68
The safety of the new bo rn 69
Share the care 6 9
I ’ d murder for a good night’s sleep 71
The bureaucracy of birth 72
Pictures are for ev er 72
3 The growth of the mind 75
The first two stages of d evelopment according
to Piaget 77
The sensorimotor stage – roughly fr om b irth
to 2 years of age 78
Meaning to do things 79
The truth about objects 81
82
Priming the primacy – not the same thing 84
vi Content s
Does memory start in the womb?
Childhood amnesia 85
Learning to speak 86
I really don’t w ant to seem a fool 89
The mysteries of mirrors 89
The personality o f small children 90

Key facto rs in exuberance versus w ithdrawal 91
What’s no rmal ? 92
G ood enough fat hering 93
A good enough walk in the park 94
The egocentric child in th e preoperational
period – 2–7 roughly 95
Ten little buttons 96
Your child’s IQ – does it mat ter? 97
Read, read, read 1 00
Silly photo graphs – an impo rtant b onding
tool 101
My daughter is a princess, my son is a genius 102
4 103
The birth of a p ret ender 105
D ad as a playmaster 106
Lying, pretending and false beliefs 108
My child is a real person – what do I do now? 109
Iwish,Iwant,Ilike,Ithink 111
False beliefs 113
If your child doesn’t play – the mystery and
misery of au tism 114
Getting away with laughter 117
Per sonality 118
Sex r oles 119
How children don’t lie brilliantly 120
A psy cho logist t eaches his daug hter how to lie 122
Have fun with your kids 123
Content s vii
Pretending, playing and lying
5DoasIsay 125

Quiz 128
Bad from birth 132
Mastering the body 134
Mast urbation 135
Individual family 136
The pressure on parents 137
BP sh ares are dow n – thwack 139
The holy slipper and the holy can e 141
A history o f the cane and carro t 142
St yles of discipline 146
The use of authorit ative parentin g 147
Bully ing 150
151
The mousetrap but not by Agatha Christie 153
N o t picking up the clues children give 154
Lessons for fathers 154
Basic anger management 155
Answers to quiz 158
6 161
The No. 15 bus and good enoug h fat herin g 162
166
Brains aren’t for gentlemen 168
The shape of the individual mind 169
Verbal, numer ical, spatial, practical, musical,
performance intelligences all 1 71
Vitamins and intel ligence 174
K eeping tabs on scho ol 174
Attention-deficit disorder 175
Loads of logic 176
T alk is good 178

The fat her–child mismatch dis aster 178
Time 179
viii Content s
H o w to ques tio n children
School and the mind
The absent father syndrome
7 You’re not my real dad – stepfathers and
part-time fath e rs 183
Too little research in to stepfamilies 184
Stress and stepdads 186
Trust versus mistrust 189
The rules of t he h ouse 190
A room at the top 194
C o-parenting problems 195
H ow to survive as a stepdad 195
Why socks don’t obey the laws of gravity but
their movements can also be explained 197
The part-time dad 198
Freud and violen ce 199
203
Cracking younger 205
The stat e of young depression 206
Suicide and attempted suicide 207
Vo ices 210
Anger 212
I s it right to label 213
St r ess an d t h e ch ild 2 1 4
Drink and drugs 215
Eating disorders 216
Medication 218

The attraction/distraction of guilt 218
Physical problems 220
221
Marital satisfaction 223
Fathers, sons and relationships 224
Parents and paranoia 225
Excuse me, I h ave to snore 226
Carry on couple – of clematis and clitoris 230
Content s ix
8Heartache
9Relationship carry-on
10 The price o f being a fathe r 233
Marketing to kids and stress 235
P ester pow er 236
Children, advertising 238
Eat my shorts – the creativity o f children in
relation to brands 241
11 Teenage traumas 245
Problems of puberty 246
H ow to be a teenag er according to
masterpieces 248
Erik Erikson 249
Teenagers and to ddlers 250
P ersonal photographs 252
Explaining boundaries 253
Don’t exaggerate the differences? 254
T aboo topix 255
Research on isolation 257
C onclusion 261
12 The dependency paradox 263

´
264
The wish for the replica 268
References 273
U seful addresses 279
I ndex 281
x Content s
The outre outer suburbs
Will they ever lea v e home?
About the author
David Coh en is a psychologist , writer and film-maker. He
has reported on mental health, immigratio n, why people
make false confessions, sex , marketing to children, cults,
finance, cigars and pirates for outlets as diverse as Channel
and the New Scientist. Recent films include one o n Grace
Kelly for Channel 4 and The Madness of Children.He is
currently w orking on a film on nuclear war games. His
books include Psychologists on Psy chology, The
D evelopment of P lay, the best-selling H ow to Succeed in
Psy chometric T ests and Fear, Gr eed and Panic.Hehopes
one d ay t o write a good poem.
He has two children and they, poor sods, were among
the subjects fo r his PhD t hesis on what makes children
laugh. He now can ’t imagine what life would ha ve been
like if he hadn’t had children.
4, Sund a y B us i nes s,Discovery, Ha r per and Queens, ITV
To Alex and Katy,
N icholas and Reuben
with love
Acknow ledgem ents

As with all books, thanks are due t o many. Julia Ross read
part of the MS and made helpful comments. Lady Paddy
Hunt drew my attention to Montaigne. Many thanks.
D avid Hunt read the MS an d made cracking wise
points . Sam Boyce at Sheilland pushed me on. Dr
Vivien Ward at John Wiley w as the o rig inal begetter
asking me to write on fathers. Helen I lter put up grace-
fully with my being elusive during the production pro-
cess. Neil Shuttlew o od and his colleagues at Originator
again did a marvellous job in pro ducing my text.
Writing t he book brought b ack many memories of
being a young father and I ’d never have been that if it
hadn’t been for Aileen L a Tourette, the mother of my
sons. Respect and love to her! Writing this also brought
back memories of my parents, troubled souls both who, if
there 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 for
that must be due to them.
I would also like to thank Mic helle Ros s- Stanton
for diggin g out the United Nations and N SPCC stat istics
as efficiently as ever.
xiv Acknowledgements
Introduction
In 2000, Tony Blair became the first man to become
a fathe r while Prime Minister for 200 years. A year
lat er, the 70-year-old media tycoon Rupert Murdoch

announced his third wife was pregnant. Since the
1980s, gen der experts claim masculin ity is ‘in crisis’; the
male psyche is w ilting as so cial and sexual attitudes
change too fast for the ballsy ones. Women insist on
men w ho have g re at pecs and emotiona l intelligence
too – the body of Brad Pitt and the soul of Sigmund
Freud.
And the ballsy ones can’t cope. The sperm count of the
averag e male is falling, pro bably, doom mongers suggest,
because w e smoke too m uch, d rink too much, s tress too
much and are exp osed to 1,001 noxious chemicals.
Under this pressure, more and more men are opting
out. A ccording to the popular culture reflected in T V
gay, bisexu al or op t for long periods of celibacy. In
S weden, the birt h rate is so low the government h as re-
cruited Bjo rn Bo rg to head an advertising campaign
show s like Sex in the City, most of the best men are now
whose slogan is direct – Fuck for the Future. Failure to do
so, w ill mean there soon wo n’t be any Swedes.
In t he rest o f this book, in the interests of decency and
be replaced by the b-word. So, Swedes, I hope you will
borg for your country’s future
D espite all these post-modern angsts , sex still
happens, relationships still happen, children still hap-
pen. In 1998, 129 millio n children were b orn according
to t he latest United N atio ns statistics. The United States
saw 4.064 millio n births last year, the EC 4.1 million and
Brit ain ar ound 700,000. Sw edes may disappear b ut the
human race is safe.
Some men in 2000 w ill have had child ren by differ ent

women but, allowing for t he occasionally sperm super
hero who became a father tw ice, three times or more in
the year, it’s a reasonable guess that 120 million men
became fathers in 2000 A D . I’v e never w ritten a book
with such a large potential readership.
I w as 24 years old w hen A ileen had Nicholas, o ur
oldest son, and I find it hard to remember what it was
like not being a father. It was an event that ch anged my
life 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 cop e with squeamish aspects of biology. Moi,
change a nappy? I have a d egree fr om O xford;
f stubborn and selfish being a dad was not going to
stop me doing anything that I wanted to do.
Now I smile w hen I think back at how scared I w as at the
prospect of being a father. I would not have believed
2 Int roduction
in honour of (1) tennis and (2) Star Trek, t h e f- wor d will
anyone who had told me, when A ileen was pregnant, t hat
havin g child ren w ould be one of t he gr eat, sustain ing , joys
of my life.
I have no intention of painting too rosy a picture. As a
father, you w ill be scared at times, embarrassed at times,
mad at times, like w hen y our partner d o esn’t want to make
love in case the kids get bored w ith the telly and w alk into
your bedroom. O ft en, you ’ll be broke and sometimes in
despair . W hy can’t you persuade your 10- year-old t hat

being a human being does not require those £ 79 Nike
trainers?
‘But my mates will laugh at me, dad’, he says.
‘Don't care,’ you say, r educed to the lev el of a 6-
year-old brat.
‘W ha t if I get b ea t en up beca us e it' s t he Nikes
ver s us the non-Nik es in the p l a yg r ound. You
don't underst and, dad, it's wa r. It's only £ 79 .’
You understand why I said ‘despair’. Worse are the
moments of panic. When Nicholas was born, for the
first and only time in my life, I heard v oices in my head.
I was not in co ntrol. For ab o ut 1 5 minutes, while Nicho las
was stuc k in the birth canal, I prayed he would be safe and
well. Inner voice replied. Yes, he would be safe but he
would also be born speak ing – and carrying an important
message fro m God t o Greenwich SE10 . I’m a Jewish
atheist by the way.
I mana ged to keep news o f the div ine message t o
Greenwich to myself, so I was not hauled off to the psy-
chiatric ward.
Sixteen years later, Nicholas’ birthday party ends up
with at least three underage drinkers in vodka comas. But
I don’t hear vo ices this time.
Int roductio n 3
Still, to the day I die, I w ill never fo rget the birth of
either of my ch ildren. I will not forget the amazing ex-
perience o f m y 6-month-old son and I laughing at each
other for hours. I will not for get how p roud I felt when my
other son, aged three, was giv en puzzles b y t he head
teacher of a posh kindergarten. He looked seriously at

her and said ‘Ah, it’s my exam.’ She laughed; I laughed.
‘I think he’s just passed with flying colours, ’ sh e smiled.
And the panics don’t stop. This morning my 22-year-
old stepson, Alex, doubled with pain from an ulcer – yet
again – and slumped down by t he fridge. Ten minutes of
terror till he was all right. And then the hassle of persuad-
ing him to get a doctor to examine him p roperly.
N ever too young to l eave home
I hav e wanted t o w rite this book fo r nearly 20 years but
when I suggest ed it to publishers in t he early 1980s, they
tended to dismiss the idea as absurd. We had seen the new
lad book but t he n ew dad book? No self-respecting b loke
would be seen dead with such self-help junk – particularly
not in Britain, HQ of the stiff upper lip where for centu-
ries the UM U classes (upper middle and upper) had been
sending their children off as young as possible to boarding
school.
When ou r sons wen t as day boys to D ulwich College
Preparatory School, the Headmaster, a superb o ld-style
‘beak’, Hugh Wo odcock told u s one parents’ evening , he
had an important announcement. A number of kindergar-
ten parents had asked him if their offspring could be
boarders. M r Woodcock explained he w as a fervent be-
liever in b oarding b ut even he thought 3- and 4-year old s
were too young to be sent away from home!
4 Int roduction
Today, fathers are mo re involv ed with t heir children
than ever before. Statistics show a steady rise in the
number of men who at tend the b irth. In 1970, it w as
about 21%; in 1980, it was 42%. Some figures issued by

the N ational Childbirth T rust claim that 96 % of fathers in
Britain attend the birth of their child. I n perhaps 4% of
families, the father is more responsible for childcare t han
the mother. Pressure groups like Gingerbread estimate
that 500,000 fat hers are lookin g after t heir child ren by
themselves because of div orce, separation or death. Orga-
nisations like Fathers Direct and D IY Dads teach, t rain
and argue passionately that ‘fathers are important to their
children and childre n impo rtant t o their fat hers . In v olved
fathers result in happier families. ’
At the same time, sociologists lik e Laurie Taylo r and
his son Matthew point out the birth rate is falling no t just
in Sweden. People are asking ‘just why should we have
children?’ fo r the first t ime. The narcissistic me culture,
the p roud gift of our recent past, has made many 20 and 3 0
somethings wonder if children are worth the hassle. Will
being a parent mean less t ime for my tango classes? Might
I have to devote too much energy to chang ing nappies and
Int roductio n 5
sterilising bottles w hich will make me t oo tired to get my
diploma in web marketing?
I ’ve had those thoughts. Maybe, if I hadn’t become a
father at 24, I would have made more memorable films, or
written t he novel I like to believ e I alway s had in me
but I don’t mind one bit.
What psychology t eaches us
about f atheri ng
In Reassessing F atherhood (1987), Charlie L ewis argued
the 1970s saw a huge in crease in research on fatherhood,
partly in response to feminism. Yet despite Germa ine

G reer, K ate Millett, Sheila Rowbotham and many other
passionate authors , p eople’s lives had no t chang ed
dramatically by t he mid 1980s. Looking aft er t he child ren
was still seen as w omen’s work. A film I made in 1980,
When Men Become Mother s , followed m en who had been
forced to be full-time fathers when their wives left them.
T he men w ere angry; their care ers h ad suffered and they
didn’t know how to cope in a wo rld that expected mothers
to look after the children.
Lewis also looked at how much fathers cared for 1-
year-olds. The details were depre ssing , especially as re-
searchers s uspect men ofte n exag gerate w hat they r eally
do. Lewis found that 62 % of fathers said they never helped
bat he the ch ild, 53% never looked aft er the child on t heir
own, 40% had never changed a nappy. Lewis quoted a
1979 st udy where on e father admitted h e cou ld not
chang e a nappy because ‘I would vomit on the spo t at
the sight of the pooh.’ He based this on his unhappy
experiences mucking out a g ui nea pig cage.
I had not realise d till then that Scots mig ht be cham-
pion dads. In 1986, Malcolm Hill, a social work specialist
6 Int roduction
in Glasgow , fo und that 40 % of men sacrificed an evening
or tw o a month to looking after the bairns so t heir wives
could have a night out. I t must be the kilts that lead to
such true equality, true enlightenment.
As new parents , Aileen and I av idly read Dr S pock's
Baby and Child C are w hich w as already then in its 13th
edition. S po ck dev o ted about 10 pages out of 500 to the
role of the father. Children did need fathers but it w as no

good the mother forcin g h er husband (in Spock’s days it
was all husbands) to spend time with babies and little chil-
dren if they didn’t want to. Better wait till junior was more
like a real person before inflicting him, or her, on dad.
Even if fat hers were keen, Spock told us, mother must
not nag an d make fatherho od interfere with important
stuff such as doing your duties as a company man. I n
the evening, company man should try to spend an hour
in ‘rough-housing’ play with the kids. But if work and the
commute had left him too zonked to romp, dad shouldn’t
feel guilty. He should have his dinner, relax and veg out in
front of the boob tube.
Spock really did live in a different universe. I can find
no mention of child abuse in t he 1970 edit ion of his book.
I can also find no mention o f what has become an issue in
America – t he w ay many men feel they w ere abandoned by
their fat hers as children. A nthony Astrachan in his book
How Men Feel paints a dismal picture of the relations hip
between fathers and sons. One reason many men are dif-
fident, ambivalent and often poor fathers is that their
fathers did not t each them any thing about being a father.
In The Emperor's Embrace (1999), the crit ic of ps ycho-
analysis, Jeffrey Masson argues that humans have a lot to
learn from species such as wolves, lions and, especially,
emperor penguins. No beast apparently makes a more
devoted dad than the emperor penguin who warms the
egg on h is feet for m o nths, so protecting nipper p enguin
from the icy A ntarctic gales. While warming t he egg, d ad
Int roductio n 7
also has no thing to eat and drink. This is heroic fatherhood

indeed! M asso n co mpare s the experience of the infant
penguin with that of the unfortunate writer Franz Kafka.
One of Kafka’s works is a bitter letter to his father in
which he co mplained t hat his father mo cked him, bullied
him and, certainly, did not love him. No penguin makes
his kids suffer such trauma. On the other hand, if Kafka’s
dad had been an emperor penguin, we probably wouldn’t
have g ot Kafka’s masterpiece, The Trial.Itshero,Joseph
K is on t rial for an offence he d oesn’t know; some cr itics
argue the book has its roots in Kafka’s unhappy relation-
ship with his father. Undaddied, Kafka felt he had to
prove himself worthy, wor thy of bein g loved , worthy of
just being alive.
Psychology sh ould h ave st udied fathers and fathering
more than it has. One of the most famous concepts in
psychology – Freud’s Oedipus Complex – argues every
male child unconsciously wants t o kill his fat her and
sleep with his mother. Psychoanalyst No. 2, Carl Jung,
developed t he idea s of the father ar chetype . The father
archety pe w as all-wise, all-powerful and, of course, all-
imaginary . And a major player in the unconscio us, ac-
cording to Jung.
R elat ively few psychologist s, however, have focused
on r esearch on fatherhood. The best known except ions
are Michael Lamb in America and Charles Lew is in
Britain who has written a report for a number of charities
called W hat Good Are D ads? (2001). Blendis (1988) also
wrote an interesting PhD thesis on different types of
fathers.
From 1945 until the 1980s, research on fat herhood

concentrated on the so-called absent father. Children
whose fathers had been away for long periods during the
1939–1945 war were less smar t and less good. In the
jargo n, they had poorer academic performance and
poorer emot ional adju stment. I t is a p ow erfu l image.
8 Int roduction