Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power

“Superbly intelligent…[a] rewarding Sapiens-style big history.” —The Times (London)

A bold and original history of the invention and transformation of masculinity’s most important institution, from the Bronze Age to the contemporary “crisis of men”, told through a collective portrait of emblematic fathers who have helped to define our fundamental ideas of familial love, political power, and what it means to be a man.

What makes a father? At least since the beginning of the written historical record five thousand years ago, ideas of paternity have shaped basic human understanding of who we are, where we come from, and what we are capable of—identity and inheritance in all its forms. Yet we know little about where and why the concept of fatherhood arose in the first place, or how it has changed over time.

In this acclaimed book, prizewinning historian Augustine Sedgewick, celebrated for his “literary gifts and prodigious research” (The Atlantic), traces for the first time the origins and evolution of fatherhood in Western culture, from the Bronze Age to the contemporary “crisis of men”. With intimate detail, Sedgewick reconstructs the lives of some of history’s most famous fathers—Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Henry VIII, Thomas Jefferson, Darwin, Freud, Bob Dylan, and more—to show how, in moments of historic crisis and conflict, men developed new ideals of fatherhood that helped sustain their power and authority within the family and beyond.

Yet the history of fatherhood is not just the story of patriarchy, arguably the oldest and most widespread form of social inequality. Nor is it simply the story of paternal care and affection. Instead, it is the story of how these twin strands became so entangled that they are often indistinguishable. Fatherhood takes us on a journey across hundreds of generations to uncover the roots of modern masculinity and help us see one of the most meaningful parts of our lives in a new light.