I carried both of my daughters, born 1997 and 2000, in slings, and I don't remember that seeming particularly remarkable at the time. I also took time out of work to look after them. I was, like the person quoted, usually the only male at parent and child gatherings, and occasionally felt like I was intruding. What I did discover, though, is that carrying a baby seems to make you public property.
Mostly that's a positive experience—people admiring your child. But it also seems to give licence to some to comment on your parenting skills (or lack of). I'm not sure if being a man made me more of a target for that.
I was tickled by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett's mention of Chris, who was rocking the front sling with his daughter back in 1996. Beat you to it by two years, Chris, and I recall stopping in at a rural Kent pub after we'd been on a bucolic orchard and field walk with friends, one of them also a new dad, also rocking a wearable baby.
Two old boys at the bar looked at us somewhat askance, and one said in the broadest Kentish: I reckon that'll be some of they new men I read about in the papers.
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