Dads on TV

They're blooming everywhere at the moment it seems. Well, two programmes in successive nights on the subject of fatherhood counts as a flood in my house. In this case, the programmes covered similar ground with a slightly different approach.

First up was Channel 4's Daddy Daycare, a series where flailing (or should that be failing) dads are given the opportunity to up their game by total immersion therapy. Three candidates, deemed to be slightly slack in the dad stakes, are parachuted into a nursery where they suddenly find themselves in charge of dozens of ankle biters.

Of course the obvious question is why not simply leave them in charge of their own charges for a week? This would give their put-upon other halves some, no doubt, much needed rest, as well as giving the dads a chance to reflect on what they are missing out on. But this is TV and that's probably nowhere near as novel as dropping them into a very busy nursery, where they soon flounder. Hardly surprising really. I don't think I'm a hopeless dad, but I would struggle to be in charge of a whole nursery class. It's not a fair comparison.

In true reality TV fashion, the dads eventually come up trumps, learn a few life lessons, and disappear over the horizon to make way for next week's chumps.

And that's one of my main issues with this type of programme, the way dads are set up to fail before they've even started. There's no show without Punch, and no daddy reality show without dads being made to look a bit foolish, as if they didn't really know what they were doing as a matter of course. Imagine if producers took the same approach with every programme about motherhood. They don't of course. Mothers are routinely presented as having some sort of inner knowledge that clicks into place as soon as baby arrives. The reality is that many mums struggle in the early days and that it is a learning journey for everybody, so why perpetuate these lazy stereotypes?

The second programme in this week's TV Dadfest was BBC's A Dad is Born. Again we are presented with three dads, 'to be' in this case. They were from slightly different backgrounds: a millionaire businessman; a recruitment consultant, and a Hungarian chauffeur. This being TV land, it almost goes without saying that they all live in London, quite possibly within Zone 2.

What was interesting about them was the extent to which imminent and then actual fatherhood levelled out some of the differences between them. Even the most immediately unlikeable of the three, Greg who made his mint from 'greed is good' style motivational, day trader training, became a more sympathetic specimen through the prism of fatherhood.

Hungarian Viktor wanted to be a better father than his own drunken, violent dad. He delivered a really touching piece on how, when his daughter asked him what he did in the parenting wars, he would have an answer. Basically he was nappy changing, singing to the baby and being supportive to his partner who seemed to have a case of the baby blues.

Jamie, the recruitment guy, was the kind of involved modern dad that I suppose many of my generation of fathers see themselves as. He'd done all the classes, read lots of manuals (I can't hold my hand up to that one, but I did listen as my wife precised the important bits), and generally seemed to be approaching the whole experience as one that would be appreciated better if in full possession of the facts.

Of course, these proved to be completely useless in the face of the actuality of labour. Like all of us, I expect, he wasn't prepared for the enormity of the aftermath of the birth. You can't be told, or read up on it, you have to experience it. Nothing prepares you for how tired you will feel, how useless you will feel, or how scared you will feel at times.

But nobody can prepare you for how good it all feels either, although A Dad is Born did a pretty good job of conveying how starstruck these three guys were by their new babies.