Throughout this book you will hear the voices of real fathers. Over the past ten years, all of them have afforded me the great privilege of studying them as they become dads. Because my work focuses on the early years of a child’s life – the period when a father arguably undergoes the most change and asserts the greatest influence on his child’s development – the fathers you will meet are speaking during the first five years of their child’s life. The nature of my studies means that I have known some fathers for only brief periods of time, while others have let me follow them and their families for the entire five years. Because of this, some took part in interviews more than once. Where this has happened, I have told you how old their child or children were at the time of that particular interview, so you can understand their thought processes at that specific stage of their fathering journey. All of the dads’ names, and the names of their children and partners, have been changed to protect their anonymity. I am indebted to the dads who volunteer for my studies and offer them my eternal thanks.