It is a convenient fiction that men working in tough jobs took little interest in the day-to-day lives of their children, and that women shouldered a dual burden of looking after their menfolk as well as their children. The truth is far more complex, as Strange’s study helps to point out. Men understood that their family’s basic needs – to be housed, warmed and fed – had to be met, even if it meant doing hazardous and gruelling work. But they were also concerned for their children’s emotional and educational needs, and enjoyed spending time with them.

In seeking to correct these fatherhood myths, the book will I’m sure be a useful sociological insight. More than this, it might help to illuminate the sad betrayal of the British working class family by a lethal combination of feminism and ill-conceived welfare policies. By scorning the working class father as an unfeeling brute and displacing his breadwinning role with benefit cheques, he has been left high and dry without a role.