In 1984 American journalist Bob Greene published Good Morning, Merry Sunshine: A Father's Journal of His Child's First Year. A celebrity endorsement on the book's cover nominated Greene for honorary membership in the company of mothers. Another, by talk-show host Phil Donahue, described the book as ‘the most honest and personal account of the first year of fatherhood’. In the book, Greene described ‘magical days’ with his baby, Amanda, and returning home at night to his sleeping wife and baby: ‘All that matters is that when you come home, this is waiting. It's a notion as old as mankind, and yet on nights like this it strikes me like the newest and clearest vision on earth.’ But in fact Greene spent very little time with his baby, and much time on the road for journalistic assignments. He seemed never to have changed a diaper, and ate ‘adult’ meals alone in one room while his wife fed the baby and herself ‘mushed-up fish’ in another. As one reviewer observed, Greene, for an experienced reporter, had spent little time with the ‘subject of his book contract’ (Owen 1984).

New Father accounts of this kind were neatly satirised by Gary Trudeau in his cartoon strip Doonesbury in March 1985. One frame showed a man seated at his computer. A child has come into the room and is standing behind him. In earlier frames readers had learnt that the man was a journalist recording his experiences for a column on ‘the new breed of involved, hands-on fathers’.