Paternity is as old as the sexual reproduction of species.

But patriarchy, fatherhood, those are ideas invented by cultures and their meanings

have evolved with time.

From KERA in Dallas, this is think.

I'm Chris Boyd.

Even if human fathers have always had the capacity for affection toward their offspring,

for a very long time, Western culture treated fatherhood as a title of ownership.

To be the father of another person implied a certain level of

control over the life of that person. Later, fatherhood came to entail a set of responsibilities.

And the idea of a dad, a parent we expect, will be available for carpool and backyard ball games

and goofy jokes and emotional as well as material support, that is a thoroughly modern invention.

Historian Augustine Sedgwick traces how we got to now in his new book,

Fatherhood, A History of Love and Power.

Augustine, welcome to think.

Thanks for the introduction. I'm happy to be here.

You open the book in a surprising way.

You write about the painter Norman Rockwell, who is probably associated with these idealized

images of family life, although it turns out he didn't paint families as often as we remember.

In any case, his personal reality was very different.

What is the Rockwell paradox?

Right.

Thanks for noticing that.

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