There’s little more manly than a babycarrying dad

Iadmire and appreciate anyone in the limelight who isn’t afraid to step off the PC-mandated grid. But when they stray into regressive terrain, I shake my head sadly.

So it was with disappointment last week that I saw Piers Morgan, inveterate lefty-baiter, ridicule Bond star Daniel Craig on Twitter for carrying his few-weeks-old baby in a papoose (below). “Oh 007… not you as well? #papoose #emasculatedBond” he wrote.

Naturally there was an outpouring of anger from men in response, pointing out the many glaring home truths from which Mr Morgan seems estranged: that there is no quantification or strict rule of masculinity, that those who feel the need to measure others’ masculinity may be insecure in their own, that men not only can, but absolutely should, look after babies in the same way they should look after their children – and that it is actually very manly to be a keen babycarer.

Personally, I’d run a mile from the kind of man who wasn’t comfortable or keen on carrying their baby around; feeding, changing it and so on. I would query his decency in the first place, masculinity be damned.

But I’d also wonder about his beliefs about women – does he think it’s our biological destiny, or simply our job (having taken his cue from pregnancy) to do all the difficult and laborious stuff while he swans around, going to the pub with his mates?

Daniel Craig is a man whose masculinity – baby or no baby – is more obvious than that of many.

But to my eyes and clearly those of many others, he has never looked either more manly, or nicer and more human, than he did in that papoose. Long live the baby-toting dad and may the end of the outdated idea that babies are a woman’s business be finally drawing near.