| dc.description.abstract | Research in recent decades has identified a conception among fathers, and others, of
a widespread qualitative change in the potential nature of fatherhood for men. This
widely circulated ideal of contemporary, participatory fatherhood is characterised
as new, intimate, involved and productive of new practices of ‘masculinity’
(Henwood and Procter, 2003). A belief that fathers play a major part in family life
and family a major part in fathers’ lives may, first, change the nature of the life
course transition entailed in becoming a father. Second, ‘new’ fatherhood is new in
that it is distinguished from a model of authoritarian distance associated with
‘traditional’ fatherhood. What is new is that the primary focus of fatherhood is
intimate relationships with children. Third, intimate relationships are generated
through fathers’ involvement in family life alongside mothers in a more equitable
sharing of the responsibilities of parenting. Finally, as distinctions between
maternal and paternal are blurred, some of the lines between ‘masculine’ and ‘not-masculine’
are redrawn. These aspects which the ideal of ‘new’ fatherhood
constructs as arenas of change correspond to the domains in relation to which
diversity among contemporary fathers are explored in this thesis.
Accounts of becoming and being fathers were generated in semi-structured
qualitative interviews with a diverse sample of 31 fathers. The first dimension of
fatherhood analysed is the place of visions of family and fatherhood in the process
of becoming a father. Participants’ situated their orientation to fatherhood in the life
course and in the partner relationship. In examining how participants construct
family’s needs and parents’ responsibilities, I argue that imagined and lived family
relationships are significant for men’s orientations to fatherhood, for their attitude
to having further children and for evaluating the resources, material and otherwise,
for doing so. The second dimension considered is intergenerational legacies.
Participants with different experiences of the father-child relationship engage with
their parenting heritage and characterise the legacy they would like to pass on.
Connections and breaks with the previous generation of fathers are understood in
terms of parent-child relationships, biographical narratives and the relational and
discursive resources and constraints of the present. The relation of fatherhood to
motherhood is the third dimension explored, through analysis of the different ways
in which participants in couples construct, first, the relation between their own
practice and their partner’s in the parenting partnership and, second, the relation
between caregiving, provision, paid work and career in their own practice. I argue
that fathers’ practice is worked through in the lived relationship with their partner,
in terms of the division of labour and responsibilities and in the negotiation of
similarity and difference, equality and authority, and with reference to a range of
discursive resources. Many fathers seek to balance their commitments to the
different dimensions of fatherhood in relation to paid work, but in other dimensions
of personal life. The fourth aspect of the analysis examines accounts where fathers
speak of co-existing contradictory orientations, to freedom and commitment, for
example, and moments of ambivalence in relation to the normative articulations of
‘masculinity’ and fatherhood.
On the basis of this four-fold analysis of diversity in contemporary multidimensional
fatherhood, I argue for a plural focus on the practices of doing family,
doing fatherhood and un/doing gender makes conceptual space for engaging
critically with the diverse practices through which fathers sustain the relationships
and fulfil the responsibilities of multi-dimensional fatherhood. | en |
