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.
