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Here I am concerned about fatherhood and not about paternity. Of course there is sometimes, even nowadays with A.I.D., a connexion between the two; but I shall have nothing to say about paternity in the sense of procreation; I am concerned only with the social role of fatherhood.
How do parents view the role of the father? It is commonplace that in babyhood and for a few years it is only the mother that matters and the father is almost of no account. This is something that we have had reiterated by various wise observers and people of considerable authority, and I think analysts and analytic writers generally have largely concurred. As a friend of mine in Holland has put it, the father has all the fun, he can throw the baby up and catch it—it is only the mother that does the disagreeable things to the baby. I have never quite discovered why the disagreeable things that a mother does do to a baby should seem so numerous, but it is taken for granted (so far as I know them) in a variety of western European countries. Again when the baby is upset, it is the maternal instinct that counts, the mother knows what to do, the father is a bit at a loss and he takes the part just of an auxiliary. What he does, he does not do so well, perhaps not even so well as a nanny. And then for some years infants call all men Daddy, and so only the mother is individualized. All this is well known and completely universally accepted and I do not think I need paint the picture any further. The only thing I have against it is that I think it is totally false.
Associated with this view is a cognate theory of the nature of the infant mind, which need only be painted in briefly as it is fairly obvious. I will call it the 'cabbage theory of the mind'. The baby is only interested in pleasure and pains, and these consist mainly of food, wind, warmth and wetness (and freedom of movement at a slightly later age). Then by continued condi