The role of fathers has been more complex. On the one hand, the conventional nuclear family is less the rigid norm. On the other, fathers are increasingly involved with their children, from water births and dirty nappies, to spending quality time with their offspring. This anthology explores the relationship between father and child, spanning 2000 BC to AD 2000 using a wealth of sources, from fiction to personal letters, Roman temple rites to 18th-century childcare manuals to modern-day sitcoms. "Fatherhood" reveals the surprising truth that paternal love is not a modern invention and celebrates paternity past and present. This anthology is both a celebration of the joys of fatherhood and a more sober exploration of the responsibilities and vulnerabilities that go with it. Divided into sections as diverse as First Love, Fathers and Sons, Daddy's Girl, The Sins of the Father, and Experience and Patrimony, it includes entries by, among others, Fergal Keane, Laurie Lee, Peter Carey, Bob Dylan, Samuel Coleridge, Alexander Pope, Franz Kafka, Mark Twain, Kirk Douglas, Blake Morrison, George Eliot, Angela Carter, Euripedes, Irving Berlin, Shakespeare, Auberon Waugh, Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Darwin, Arthur Miller, Bill Cosby, Sigmund Freud, Tony Parsons, Phil Hogan, John Fowles, Roald Dahl, Groucho Marx, Homer Simpson and George Bernard Shaw.