A Century of Fatherhood - Episode Guide

The opening part explodes the popular myth of the tyrannical Victorian-style father, whose children were seen and not heard. The majority of men did not harshly punish their children: they were good and devoted dads who took their job as provider and protector of their family seriously.

The Second World War took a generation of fathers away from home to serve in the war effort. They returned home strangers to their own families, some of them disabled and broken men. But in time many did adjust, and the deprivations of war made the simple pleasures of family life and fatherhood all the sweeter.

The final episode reveals how the experience of being a father was transformed between the 1960s and the present day and looks at the lives of a fascinating cross-section of fathers from all walks of life over the past fifty years.