TVScope When Daddy Became Mummy BBC1, June 15th'Steve has become more feminine, he's becoming a mother.'
This throwaway comment summed up the dilemma of When Daddy became Mummy. Can a man parent properly only by becoming 'feminine' and a 'mother'?
This programme did not answer the question; instead it gave us an unsettling insight into how real work/life imbalance is for many men.
Steve, a 70-hour-a-week salesman, spends a week in his wife Martine's role of full-time mother to their four young children. Martine, meanwhile, is installed in a local hotel and monitors his progress, which is recorded for us in the ubiquitous reality TV format.
There is a time warp feel about Steve when we first meet him as he denigrates the work done by his wife. "It will be a doddle," he reckons. Predictably, it wasn't and the jocular, light-hearted tone of the programme was quickly jolted as Steve fell at the first hurdle on day one.
Organising four children, aged from six months to 11, is no picnic by any standards, but Steve, who didn't even know what time school started, launched into heavy-handed tactics to achieve his target. In fact, we never lost sight of Steve as the successful salesman who was determined to achieve his target by whatever means necessary throughout the programme.
"Do you want a smacked bottom?" was his first-line response to his three-year-old daughter, who decided she did not want to go to play school.
Not a good start, given he already had little relationship with her as we were told that she was usually in bed by the time he got home. On day two, he actually hit one of the older girls and shouted at the children that they were stupid and useless.
The terrified three-year-old sobbed inconsolably for her mummy, as the visibly distressed Martine watched from her hotel room. The lack of any commentary or intervention at this stage raised serious issues about the ethics of allowing a 40-year-old man to hit and verbally abuse his children.
Later in the programme, there is another disturbing incident, where Steve, while tucking his eldest daughter, Ellie, into bed, "jokes" with her about her sexual development, showing no awareness of the inappropriateness of this. He was so desperate for some sort of bond with his alienated daughter that he is oblivious to the fact that her laughter was of the embarrassed kind.
Again in the absence of commentary, it is left to Martine to reflect on how Ellie's open conflict with her father is her way of crying out for his love and attention.
Miraculously, or maybe because distressed children don't make for good viewing, on day four, Steve started to negotiate with his children rather than bully them and, to everyone's relief, it paid off. He continued to redeem himself when after day five, instead of his previous smart comments about how cushy his wife's life was, he acknowledged how tough he was finding it and how lonely and isolated he felt.
Through this awareness he was also able to show some insight into the depression that Martine had experienced after the birth of their third child - something, Martine resignedly told us, he had not been able to do at the time. The programme tried to have an upbeat ending.
There was the standard emotional reunion. Steve said family life would now be more important than work for him. However, we were not told how it would be possible in a 70-hour working week.
At a time when there is increased awareness of the important role of fathers in their children's lives, a programme about When Daddy became Daddy would have highlighted the very different but equally valuable contributions of both parents.
Olive Travers is a senior clinical psychologist who works in the North West.