Men’s Health Australia is proud to be able to present to you a series of three weekly excerpts from Steve Biddulph’s The New Manhood: The handbook for a new kind of man (with many thanks to Finch Publishing, Sydney).

The third excerpt comes from Chapter Seven of the book and is titled “Being a real father”. Biddulph starts the chapter by asking “What is a father?”:

What does fathering mean? Listen to the language we use every day and it will tell you a lot. If we talk of ‘mothering’ children, we get a picture of nurturing and spending long hours in close, sensitive contact. The word ‘fathering’ means something quite different. You can ‘father’ a child in two minutes in the back seat of a car! At its most extreme, a father is just a sperm donor, nothing more. Lately, though, we have begun to challenge this idea: research is finding that active fathers make a huge difference in the lives of children. Today the idea of a ‘male role model’ is widely embraced. But it was a close shave; we are pulling fatherhood back from the brink.

You can download Being a real father as a PDF document from here.

Click here to purchase a copy of The New Manhood: The handbook for a new kind of man.

Source: The New Manhood – Being a real father (http://mhaweb.squarespace.com/storage/files/The%20New%20Manhood%20-%20Being%20a%20real%20father.pdf )