Swings and merry go rounds: Transgression and opportunities for fatherhood in pandemic Britain

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on parenting and family life in Britain. While a gendered analysis reveals that mothers have been especially burdened by pandemic mitigation policies, some have suggested that lockdowns have provided a unique opportunity to transgress gendered parenting roles, allowing fathers to spend more time caring for their children. In this paper, I draw from a wider qualitative study about parenting leave take-up in the UK to examine more closely how (and, indeed, whether) these opportunities were taken up by fathers. I concentrate on the narrative of one father, David, to argue that the intersection between race, social class, gender and parenting cultures complicates our understanding and characterisation of this transgression, particularly within a parenting leave landscape informed by maternalism. I suggest that David's lived experience of parenting involves negotiating the transgression of normative messages about modern ‘involved’ fatherhood and economically productive citizenship; a process that is raced, classed and gendered.