“A succession of identity crises spanning thousands of years”: seven things you didn’t know about the history of fatherhood

The idea that ‘Father knows best’ stems from an ancient Babylonian text

The earliest laws about fathers can be traced back to the ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurabi. This monumental legal text – inscribed on a seven-foot pillar of black basalt – set out 282 laws detailing crimes and punishments.

But more than just a collection of rules, it established the father as the central authority figure in society.

• Read more | Your guide to the ancient city of Babylon

Within its dictates, fathers were granted significant power – along with a demand for acquiescence. As Sedgewick points out, "Fathers were granted privileges and responsibilities, including a measure of protection for women and children – as long as they obeyed the father."

If family members failed to comply, the code threatened severe punishments, even public impaling. It was this blend of care and coercion, he argues, that sits at the root of the paternalistic ideal.

Fatherhood and penises went hand-in-hand in ancient Rome

In ancient Rome, the patriarch of the family – usually the oldest surviving male – wielded absolute authority. But fatherhood was not just a family matter: it was the very foundation of social and political power.

In Rome, you were either a father or subject to the power of a father. This dynamic shaped not just family life but the entire structure of Roman society. A man’s influence could be measured, in part, by how many people in their extended family referred to them as ‘father’.

And Roman society was so invested in the power of the father that it developed a fascination with phallic symbols.

"They made phalluses into necklaces, lamps, even placed phallic sculptures on dangerous corners of cities,” says Sedgewick. “Everywhere there was danger, Romans tried to ward it off with the power of the father."

• Read more | How the Romans "reversed circumcision" and 5 other shocking medical realities from the ancient empire

Roman Britain | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy

Member exclusive | In this four-week course, discover everything you need to know about Roman Britain, guided by Rob Collins, professor of frontier archaeology at Newcastle University.

Explore the course now

Christianity recast fatherhood as sinful

The arrival of Christianity in the Roman world marked a dramatic shift in the meaning of fatherhood. No longer was the earthly father the ultimate authority; instead, God was recast as the supreme patriarch, and human fatherhood became associated with sin and imperfection.

It began with St Augustine, who was born in Roman North Africa. He was a professor in Milan, converting to Christianity and entering the church somewhat reluctantly, becoming the bishop of Hippo.

• Read more | When did Christianity first arrive in Britain?

“Augustine's Christian Church was much different from the Christian Church of today. It was a small and relatively precarious institution that was threatened to split internally and threatened externally,” says Sedgewick.

“One way Augustine tried to expand and fortify the power of his Christian Church was by arguing that everyone, even babies, needed to be reborn as children of God through baptism.”

Whereas the Romans had seen fatherhood as a virtue, Sedgewick argues that in Augustine’s theology it represented a source of evil. And his justification was the notion of original sin.

“For Augustine, original sin was a patrilineal inheritance passed down from Adam to subsequent generations of men who passed it down to their children through the very act of sex,” says Sedgewick.

Henry VIII made fatherhood into a political weapon

Few figures in history have made fatherhood as politically charged as Henry VIII of England. His desperate quest for a male heir led to a personal and national crisis, ultimately transforming the laws and powers associated with fatherhood.

The Tudor king is not usually cited as a paternal role model: he set aside both the future Mary I and Elizabeth I once he had the legitimate son he craved, the boy who would become Edward VI.

But before Edward was born, there was another child whom Henry laid his hopes on, his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy.

“The boy was no secret,” says Sedgewick. “Even before he got together with Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII was exploring possible avenues for elevating Fitzroy to the status of a legitimate heir to the throne.”

Doing so meant clawing back power from church law, Sedgewick notes, and this shift led to a new form of fatherly authority.

"He established for fathers the ability to pass on their assets and status by force of will ... their word became a kind of reality."

The United States was born from a revolt against a 'Bad Dad'

The American Revolution was a political uprising steeped in paternal imagery, with the colonists seeing themselves as children rebelling against a tyrannical parent – King George III – whom they cast as a ‘bad dad’.
Sedgewick observes that the colonists drew on the ideas of English philosopher John Locke, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment.

As they saw it, “the power of a father is only temporary and preparatory” and it was “the job of a father to prepare his children for their own maturity, not to dominate them forevermore”.

• Read more | George III: why his reputation as the mad king who lost America needs to be re-evaluated

This Lockean principle informed the nature of the American Revolution, the colonists imagining themselves claiming their inheritance.

“They thought of themselves as brothers who had banded together … to assume their rightful place in the world they had earned when they gained their maturity,” says Sedgewick.

Still, even those revolutionaries like Jefferson – who with some irony would become known as Founding Fathers – retained paternal dominance over others.

“He claimed indefinite paternal power over those he judged inferior, including Indigenous Americans and enslaved Africans.”

Boston Tea Party: Igniting a Revolution

Member exclusive | Discover the causes, tensions, and violent origins of the Boston Tea Party. Join leading experts as they explain the key players involved in the plan – and why tea was so important to the story.

Listen to all episodes now

Fathers have long been providers, but beings ‘breadwinners’ is a modern concept

The image of the father as the protector and provider is a familiar one that stretches back through millennia – but the idea of fathers as breadwinners is a much more recent invention, shaped by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of wage-based economies.

“Traditionally, fathers had been expected to pass down something tangible – land, status, skill or a craft, all things that are devalued by the Industrial Revolution,” says Sedgewick.

“The family is no longer primarily an economic unit because work now takes place outside the home. It’s concentrated in cities and factories, and people are leaving to go work for a wage rather than grow their own crops or make their own products.”

• Read more | How war sparked the industrial revolution

Bread is the opposite of tangible in this sense. You can’t pass it down.

“It's something you can go out and bring home, and then it gets eaten or it goes bad, and you have to go out and get it again,” he says. “It's a product of the marketplace and it represents this a shift of the economy.”

Even the term ‘breadwinner’ changed in meaning.

“It originally meant a marketable skill,” says Sedgewick. Only in the 19th century did it become a common way to describe a man’s responsibilities.

“A man was now someone who was expected to go out into the world and work, while his family stayed largely at home,” says Sedgewick. And that brought with it a new set of expectations, not least the possibility of failing to a be a ‘winner’.

Freud thought hating your dad was as natural as lusting after your mother

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, saw fatherhood as a necessary obstacle, and that conflict with one’s parents was not only natural but essential for healthy development.

At the centre of this is the Oedipus complex: Freud’s idea that it was universal for children to experience attraction and rivalry with their parents —particularly for boys, who would be attracted to their mothers and compete with their fathers.

“For Freud, this wasn’t a bad thing at all,” says Sedgewick. “Freud said that it was good to hate your father because that’s how you learn to be yourself.”

Augustine Sedgewick’s book Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power is available now. He was speaking to Dr David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast: listen to the full conversation from 15 June.