This week’s viral paternity-leave campaign stunt, placing baby dolls in slings on statues of men such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thierry Henry in London, has got me thinking about shifting perceptions of fatherhood. Like the Pregnant Then Screwed campaign, which utilised Antony Gormley’s iron men of Crosby beach, Merseyside, in a similar fashion, the message relies on a subversion. We are not used to seeing representations of masculinity like this in our culture. In our minds, great men – at least historically – do not wear their babies, even if the men we love do. Perceptions are changing, but I wonder how long it will be until we see a male MP with an infant attached to him in parliament, as Stella Creasy was reprimanded for doing in 2021.
It has been six years since Piers Morgan lamented seeing Daniel Craig with his baby in a carrier, and Morgan seemed like a dinosaur even then. These days, it is a common sight, and baby-wearing celebrities from John Legend to Gordon Ramsay abound. Humans have been using the materials around them to secure infants to their bodies for thousands of years, and in many cultures have continued to do so, but it’s only in the latter half of the 20th century that the practice has become increasingly normalised in western countries (BabyBjörn launched its first carrier in 1973) – and even more recently when it comes to men.
I spoke to Chris recently, who was rocking the front sling with his daughter back in 1996. He says he was very much out of the norm, especially as he was also, for the first 18 months, the primary carer, and often the only man at play groups. “I think it has changed a lot in the past 28 years, society now accepts we live differently and that care of children is shared between parents. Seeing a man carrying a baby is the norm.”
There is far more awareness of child (and adult) psychology, and of the infant-parent bond, for this generation of dads. The paediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock might have emphasised the importance of touch in 1946, but these days parents have access to a plethora of online resources lauding skin-to-skin contact. In the case of premature babies, “kangaroo care” has even been shown to decrease mortality. The rise of mindful parenting, gentle parenting and attachment parenting is, for some young parents, a departure from how they were brought up.
Though the outdated idea that dads have nothing to contribute in the early weeks still persists, many men are proving it wrong. My husband wore our pre-term son for much of his first year of life, mostly using a purple leopard-print BabyBjorn carrier that was not, arguably, the most masculine style (once the baby had reached a safe weight, in line with established guidelines).
Baby-wearing by fathers helps mothers heal from birth, especially after surgery, and is convenient. In response to a callout, I was inundated with messages from fathers about how much it aided bonding; how they loved the warmth and smell of their babies nestled close; and the interactions it encouraged (one dad, Dominic, wore his son all the way through a Bruce Springsteen gig, a man after my own heart). “It’s possibly one of the greatest joys of my life,” the writer and artist Tom de Freston told me. A father wearing his baby is not something you see represented much in visual art, and Tom made a series of monoprints during the first year of his baby’s life. The intimacy and bodily connection he felt with his daughter Coral, which he thinks triggered endorphins, has stayed with him. “Carrying her has always felt like one of the most extraordinary gifts of fatherhood. It’s such a simple and primal and essential form of daily care.”
Then you have other people’s reactions. For Marvyn Harrison of Dope Black Dads, which supports the campaign for better paternity leave baby-wearing gave him some of his happiest memories of early fatherhood, but he did find it interesting how people would go “gaga” over him in public. “I just remember thinking how rare this feels … it was almost like a permission slip to say: ‘I’m a nice person, come and say hi.’ For him as a black man, it felt different – both he and his wife remarked upon it. “Because [without the sling] people wouldn’t engage with me as a solo male on my own in any way, shape or form, let alone come over and talk and touch and make baby sounds.”
“Walking back from nursery with our seven-month-old in a carrier and pushing our three-year-old in a pushchair led to all sorts of admiring glances I absolutely don’t deserve,” says Dave, pointing out that his wife gets none of the same. My friend Gav said it gave him an ego boost. “It made me feel a bit of a hero, it was nice to think that people would judge that I was doing my share of dadding.” He never felt embarrassed, and said people were always pleased to see him and his daughter Frida.
It’s moving how many of the dads who contacted me expressed sadness at their kids outgrowing the sling. It just goes to show what a central part baby-wearing can play in a man’s early experiences and memories of fatherhood. Long may it continue.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
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