Toby Young
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Fatherhood begins promisingly enough. The first few pages fly by as Berkmann rattles off a series of polished one-liners about beer and sex and contraception. He seems anxious to give the impression that he’s one of the lads, a man’s man. Here’s a bloke who’s going to give it to you straight, you think.
Then, almost imperceptibly, his tone begins to shift. Gradually, the laddish persona is cast aside and a more serious, more didactic voice emerges. For instance, he is very suspicious of what he calls ‘medicalised childbirth’, i.e. having babies in hospital. As far as he’s concerned, babies should be born at home, preferably in a tub of water, and the woman should avoid any method of pain relief other than yoga or controlled breathing. He’s so passionate about this he goes on at length about a ‘malevolent’ midwife whom he holds responsible for the fact that his wife was given pethidine during the birth of their first child. ‘It’s four years on,’ he writes, ‘but if I saw this midwife in the street I still might have to be physically restrained.’ (Why? Because she alleviated his wife’s pain?)
On almost every issue, Berkmann is passionately politically correct. Breast milk, he tells us, is ‘one of nature’s little miracles’, while formula is ‘created by huge, unpleasant multinational companies’. He’s in favour of breast-feeding for at least the first year and rails against those narrow-minded bigots, most of them paid agents of the cosmetic surgery industry, who have the gall to suggest that firm, young breasts are more sexually attractive than pendulous, post-feeding breasts. ‘These people prey on the vulnerable and unconfident and must be resisted, at least until the law is changed to allow us to murder them in cold blood,’ he writes.
From time to time, he remembers that Fatherhood is supposed to be aimed at a lad-mag readership and he pretends to be less puritanical than he really is. But even these attempts at lightheartedness are hopelessly revealing. Listen to him on the subject of nappies:
The big question, of course, is whether to go for disposables, and thus doom the planet, or selflessly use ‘terry’ nappies, and doom yourself and your partner to endless domestic drudgery.
I’m sure I would have enjoyed Father- hood more if I shared at least some of Berkmann’s opinions. But it was as if I’d opened a copy of Private Eye and found myself reading a piece by Polly Toynbee. I just hope I’m never seated next to him at a dinner party. I’ve a feeling Berkmann might regard me in the same light as that ‘malevolent’ midwife.
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