It is some years ago now that my timetable made it convenient for me to break my journey to work & stop off for a proper (bacon & egg) breakfast. I was astonished to find out how popular these had become – everybody from McDonalds to Debenhams were providing them
It also made me realise how many men are in sole charge of toddlers at that time of day. It was pretty obvious that these were men with jobs, who arranged their shifts so that they took charge while Mum was at work. Easier to let someone else do the food prep & washing up though
Just recently I have noticed lots of teenage dads pushing a buggy around on their own. Don’t know of this is a new trend, or just another change in my timetable letting me see what was there all along
I even saw one young man with a very new baby. It was in a newsagents, so he probably had not come very far. He looked quite terrified, not sure how to manoeuvre the buggy & all. But you knew he was the Dad – he had that slightly stunned look & enormous, hovering grin that they all get. I wonder why he had been let, or sent out, alone? Train them early, or something more sad?
Actually I doubt if the way men feel about (their) children has changed very much with time, though practicalities & social pressure put limits on how they can express it. During my childhood it would have taken a brave man to wheel a perambulator in public, on his own
Unless it was being used to transport something too heavy to carry, rather than a baby
Trollope was very good on fathers. In one book he writes movingly of a gaunt, ascetic pastor who loved but also frightened his young children. Trollope sympathises that he was just unable to be one of those avuncular, unselfconscious baby danglers, expert at using his pocket watch to entertain
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