Recently, I was queuing in a large department store in a nearby city when I noticed that a sizeable crowd of people had gathered in a circle just beyond the checkout. When I craned my neck to see what had caused this amount of interest I was met with the sight of a father sitting on a chair bottle feeding his young baby. The crowd, mostly older women, were smiling admiringly and making enquiries as to the age of the infant, whilst I was struck by how invisible this activity would have been if it had been a mother sitting on the chair bottle feeding her infant: it would hardly have registered as people went about their shopping. But then fathers seem to be everywhere at the moment in the UK – in the press, in political party pledges, in policies and in public places and spaces – as visible displays of doing fathering become more common place and everyday. Ideas of more emotionally expressive men have become associated with ideals of involved, caring fatherhood as conjured up in media images of fathers such as David Beckham and Brad Pitt. Yet ideas and practices around fathering, just like mothering, have always been subject to change, and research has illuminated its diverse historical, cultural and social dimensions. But continuities, too, can be traced.