Men rock cradles too -Dec 23, 2004

Joseph, said a bishop recently, is the forgotten hero of the Nativity. But now he is being reinvented as a role model for the ever-increasing numbers of stepfathers

By the time a government nears the end of its second term, one is usually well versed in the various forms of marital infidelity its members have embarked upon. Think of Mellor, or Parkinson, or Yeo. Yet, for this latest government, it is paternity rather than adultery as such that has been the big personal issue.

We've been surprised by Blair the new dad and felt sympathy for Gordon Brown, the bereaved father. Alan Milburn epitomised the man torn between career and caring for his children. Most recently, David Blunkett has brought us the Cabinet version of the separated dad, the would-be father, denied contact with a child. Indeed, if you add in Jack Straw's trip to the police station over his son's drug-taking, then the holders of each of the four major offices of state have all seen their paternity publicly paraded.

If we read accounts of these events, it is as if we are witnessing painful changes to male identity, an identity shaped by the stifling confinement of the industrial revolution, which emphasised the roles of provider and worker, rather than nurturer and carer. Until recently, David Blunkett often seemed like such a figure, a one-dimensional, Gradgrind-like man, defined by and totally committed to hard graft. Yet, perhaps his father's death, in a terrible industrial accident, taught him an early lesson that there must be more to a man than his work.

These public dramas highlighting the lives of politicians are part of a more general examination of the private lives of fathers, and a growing understanding that contemporary fatherhood is revealing many complex issues. There are also many kinds of dads, and indeed one child may have more than one.

So it is apt that Christianity is also rethinking an icon of paternity. It is often said that the best indicator of when a social trend has become embedded in British culture is when the Church of England attempts to absorb it within its canon. So feminism has delivered women priests, social liberalism has produced a gay bishop and remarriage for divorcees. Now the paternal revolution is leading Anglicanism to rethink St Joseph.

Mary's husband has been misrepresented in the traditional nativity story, according to the Rt Revd Stephen Lowe, Bishop of Hulme. In his Christmas message to his diocese, the bishop declares that Joseph helped provide Jesus with a secure and happy environment. He adds: "Excluding him from the Nativity and downgrading him as of no significant influence on Jesus seems a great injustice."

The bishop is not the only person to be thinking in this way. This month in a Catholic church in one of Britain's more depressed regions, a small miracle will take place at the nativity scene. Children will, as usual, light candles. They will sing, "The Virgin Mary had a baby boy" and marvel at the infant Jesus. But this Christmas will be different. Instead of seeing his mother hold the child, they will watch proud new dad, Joseph, cradle the newly born baby. After two millennia of child-care, Mary is getting a break.

This is the imagery of the oak carving installed by sculptor Caroline Mackenzie in St Helen's Church, Caerphilly, and it is powerful. In the background is a well-endowed bull, symbol of fierce, sexual, violent masculinity, looking on with devotion. In the centre is a man, Joseph, transformed by a magical experience, by the divinity of this tiny child, into a caring father whom the mother is content to trust with this fragile new life.

The magic of this scene stands out in the Welsh valleys. The estates around Caerphilly can lay claim to record-breaking levels of post-natal depression in women and rates of teenage pregnancy well above the national average. They could use a few modern St Josephs, doing their bit.

Indeed the family in the nativity scene looks so realistic as to be almost unremarkable. Yet it is extraordinary because, for nearly 2000 years, Joseph was frequently presented as, at best, a rather muddled, worried old man, at worst a figure of fun, cuckolded by God the Father. His role has largely been confined to supporting Mary's claim to virginity. Hence Joseph's portrayal as an old man, fitting claims that he was a widower and that the brothers and sisters of Jesus, mentioned by St Mark's gospel, were Joseph's from an earlier marriage.

Only latterly, in the twentieth century, was there an attempt to reinvent Joseph. But that focused on his role not as caring parent, but as a carpenter, the provider. The Vatican saw him as a bulwark against Communism: Paul VI even added to his 19 March feast day by giving him a second day: 1 May.

Deluneau and Roche, the respected French art historians, do record instances in anonymous mediaeval engravings and manuscripts where Joseph is seen in his domestic, caring role. He holds Jesus's nappy up to the fire to dry and feeds the baby from a bowl of milk. But critics of their 1990 study, Histoire des pères et de la paternité, dismiss these images, contending that they were satirical.

Giotto's images are more typical. One might expect from Giotto, a founder of the Italian Renaissance and a pioneer of a more secular realism, at least some insight into caring fatherhood. Yet he still portrays Joseph in The Adoration of the Magi as an elderly contemplative, hardly up to the task of bouncing his son on his knee. In other nativity scenes by Giotto's followers, Joseph is typically a diminutive figure crouched in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture. While countless versions of Madonna and Child have been crafted, Joseph seems to appear only rarely. The joke is that, like a typical father, he was too busy taking the photographs.

Adrienne Burgess, author of Fatherhood Reclaimed, which sets out a hidden history of Western fatherhood through diaries and writings, details how even the few representations of Joseph as a caring father, identified by Deluneau and Roche, disappeared. "By the seventeenth century, childcare has ceased to be his province (he is now shown protecting Mary and working to keep her and the child), but in the occasional painting or engraving he still holds the baby, who is softly touching his face. As time passes, Joseph's domestic involvement vanishes and, by the eighteenth century, he is portrayed as a religious contemplative, praying or studying alone."

One feels in the discussion of the Blunkett case the backwash of this culture that finds it difficult to acknowledge the diversity of fatherhoods and of their importance to children. So the Blunkett case pits the claims of the putative biological father against those of the man who actually changes the nappies. Surely one - and only one - must be the father? Yet surely if Blunkett's paternity test is positive, both are in fact fathers. And, if Kimberly Quinn were to divorce her husband and live with another man, there might be another father figure in her children's lives.

The Bishop of Hulme's championing of Joseph - like the Blunkett case - casts light on the huge and largely ignored cultural phenomenon of stepfathering. If it is confirmed that Stephen Quinn is not the biological father of one or both of his sons, he is adamant that it will not diminish his love for them. And Quinn is a man who should understand the possibilities of love. The child of a single mother, he was raised in Ireland by foster parents in a loving home, never knowing his biological parents. He has, he says, "a passionate disinterest" in discovering their identity, which perhaps helps explain his attitudes in this case.

Stepfathers are in many ways the unsung heroes of our society. There are far more men than women living with and caring on a day-to-day basis for their non-biological children. And yet, like Joseph, they are easily airbrushed out of the picture.

Stepfathers also have few advocates. They have no dedicated lobby group. Fathers' rights groups, representing the frustrated claims of biological fathers embroiled in marital disputes and divorce cases, are often disparaging of stepfathers. They represent them as figures who destroy the bond between child and natural father. Yet there are many instances where a sympathetic stepfather will facilitate a child's relationship with his non-resident dad, even in the face of opposition from the mother.

Let us hope this happens in Quinns versus David Blunkett. Each man is divorced and has three grown-up children, so has a wealth of experienced parenting behind him. Children, when young, adapt easily to what they consider normal. Enjoying the skilled attention of two committed fathers, rather than just one, could, after all this trauma, turn out to be a blessing.

Article reproduced with kind permission of the Tablet. Jack O'Sullivan is co-founder of Fathers Direct, the national information centre on fatherhood. On 5 April, Fathers Direct will, with Ekklesia, co-host a public three-hour forum on Christianity and Fatherhood. Details: 020 8832 7311 info@profileproductions.co.uk