This travesty of working-class family life encapsulates an established sociological view of the father in the ‘past’; the past is then used as a history-as-progress analysis to show that a more equal partnership exists in the present. We have questioned this view elsewhere and our informants' evidence denies the generality of that account. This evidence is quite crucial in relation to the debate on male domesticity because the results stand in such sharp contrast to Tunstall's study of the Hull fishermen of the 1950s. And while not questioning the validity of his findings that in the 1950s ‘Some fishermen quickly come to regard their wives merely as providers of sexual and cooking services in return for a weekly wage’ (1962: 162) our evidence refutes the thesis which links tough male-only occupations with heavy drinking, domestic indifference and brutality.

The difference in period, place and work patterns prevents any detailed comparison between this study and Tunstall's. My impression from reading his book is that his fishermen resented the comparatively easy lives of their wives compared to their own, whereas the East Anglian fishermen were quick to acknowledge the heavy burden of domestic work and responsibility shouldered by their wives and mothers.