Father’s Day is not what it was when first promoted in Australia in 1936 with “Give-dad-a-tie” campaign. Neither are fathers. With one marriage in four ending in separation, step-fathers proliferate, or have their places pass through a succession of “uncles”; sperm-donors, anonymous or not; same-sex households might have two dads, none or take your pick; and more great-grand-dads as male life expectancy exceeds 81 years.

Honouring fathers on a Sunday in June began in the United States in 1909, prompted by a woman whose widower dad had raised six children.

Although the idea reached Australia in the 1920s, not until 1936 did the Retail Traders’ Association recommend the first Sunday in September as Father’s Day. At that time, gifts were likely to be hand-knitted and the special lunch a fricassee of sheep’s head. Rationing and war service set sales back until the late 1940s by when biros were available and Tripe a la crème recommended.

The celebration was left to individual businesses until July 1957 when they formed a Father’s Day Council. Sydney lagged with only 40 metropolitan businesses joining, in contrast to 59 in Perth.

The success in Victoria came from a marketing firm’s linkage of Father’s Day with Legacy, a ploy which brought £125,000 of free publicity in 1960, though it raised only another £650 for War Orphans Day, the preceding Friday.

Belief that over-commercialisation had killed Father’s Day in the US between the wars led Australia’s marketeers to emphasise “spiritual values”. Their slogan for 1961 was “Juvenile Integrity Starts in the Home” at a time when concern about teenagers sought to recreate father as both pal and disciplinarian.

The Fifties was also a decade of religious crusades with Roman Catholics campaigning around the theme “The Family That Prays Together Stays Together”, in which dad led his family in reciting the rosary after dinner.

The Father-and-Son Movement flourished with public lectures and pamphlets that relieved dads of the embarrassments of educating their sons about sex. The Marriage Guidance Council was active as........

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