Joe Swash: Forgotten Young Dads review – a shoddy hour of useless television

There are so many vital questions to ask these four young men who became fathers in their teens and early 20s. Joe Swash asks none of them

I grew up surrounded by children having children. My all-girls school was known locally as “the pram pushers” – the first person in my cohort to get pregnant was 13; in my sister’s it was an 11-year-old – and my mother worked as a family planning doctor in the 16th-poorest borough of the country. The girls she met, the stories she heard, were – like those of the pregnant girls at school – stories of deprivation, vulnerability, gullibility and predation by adult men or older teenage boys.

All of which means that I grew up not giving much thought to the fathers of these children’s children (except it being pretty clear in my mind that the adults needed to be in prison). The young mothers were the focus, they and their imminent children the lives in most urgent need of intervention. The men could and did walk away, for many obvious reasons. The boys could too, and largely did. It has been that way since time immemorial. The one who doesn’t grow the baby can leave it much more easily. On this, physics and emotions are for once in perfect agreement.