Luke Benedictus

A sleep-deprived dad pushing his newborn baby in a pram may not immediately look like he’s channelling his inner Che Guevara. But appearances can prove deceptive. Parental leave for men is a quiet act of social revolution with radical implications for your family, workplace and, indeed, for gender equality as a whole.

For someone who’s known as a beacon of good vibes and positive energy, Joe Wicks is a refreshingly straight-talker. Leaning against the bed in his Surrey home, the 35-year-old known as The Body Coach admits that enduring the isolation of Britain’s lockdown with two small kids – Indie is two and Marley is one – hasn’t been easy and has definitely impacted his mental health at times.

My father taught me that fatherhood is a sacrificial love. Dad was a geologist and a very hard worker and had to travel overseas a lot. Eventually he was just over it, so he moved us all over here to Australia from Malaysia when I was six-years-old. He was constantly away for his job - working for a month, then home for a month - pretty much our whole lives. But we never, ever felt like dad was absent. Because when he was home, he was always really present.

If you were asked to sum up 2020 in one sound-effect what would it be? Perhaps you’d go for the exasperated sigh in tandem with forehead slap and exaggerated eye-roll. Or maybe you'd plump for a full-throttle raspberry accompanied by double V-signs. Bottom line: it’s hard to sum up what a tricky old year it’s been as COVID disrupted our lives with diabolical efficiency.

Editor’s note: Hangovers are a nasty business at the best of times, but if you’ve got small children they're truly unbearable. As a result, you naturally end up reining things in after you become a dad. And yet... Let’s face it, there are still times when you drink a little more than you intended and, as you’re not as “match-fit” in this department as you once were, the effects of even marginal over-indulgence are now more unforgiving than ever. With that in mind, TFH travelled to Las Vegas to interview the world’s only doctor to dedicate his whole career to curing the ill-effects of the morning after. The goal: to find the insider secrets to help you never suffer from another hangover ever again.

When Tatum O’Neal told John McEnroe that she was pregnant with their second child, his response was decidedly underwhelming. “There goes 1987,” he replied. At the time, the couple’s first son was barely seven months old, so McEnroe was grimly aware that small kids leech a ton of attention and energy away from your primary focus. In McEnroe’s case, that was trying to stop Ivan Lendl from hoovering up more Grand Slams.

The photo showed a man on a surfboard. Leaning into the face of the wave with determined intent, he slices through the water with an avalanche of white water crashing in his wake. While I don’t surf myself, I found this picture strangely inspiring. It was less about the surfer’s athletic poise than what it symbolised to a beaten-down dad.

It’s early Monday evening and I’m waiting for the lift in my apartment block. My two-year-old son is clutching my hand, while his baby brother is happily drooling over my left shoulder. We’re heading off to the park.