Working-class fathers and childcare: the economic and family contexts of fathering in the UK

Abstract

This paper reports on a UK-based study that explored the ways in which working-class families living in the inner city negotiate and resolve childcare and domestic responsibilities between mothers and fathers and how men balance employment and family demands. Drawing on interviews with 70 families with pre-school children, including interviews with 16 men, we explore how the respondents practice fathering roles in their particular economic, social and family contexts, contrasting a group of ‘active fathers’ with those we have termed ‘background fathers’. The domestic arrangements for caring for young children identified in this study and an earlier study of middle-class families overwhelmingly follow traditional gendered divisions, irrespective of social class background. The pervasiveness of discourses that construe a ‘good’ family man as financially successful means that the men in this study, whose link to the labour market can be tenuous, are vulnerable to charges – by themselves and others – of not being a ‘good’ father. We suggest that beyond the provider discourse, there is a lack of alternatives to conceptualise possible understandings of being and doing fatherhood, which renders fathering an individualised practice, highly dependent on contextual factors.