Construction Of Fatherhood Research Articles

The Construction of Fatherhood: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights by Alice Margaria, 1st ed.

The Construction of Fatherhood: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights by Alice Margaria, 1st ed.

When Fatherhood, Masculinities, and Structural Factors Collide: Fatherhood and its Complexities

This research intends to explore the complex dynamics between fatherhood and masculinities, and how these dynamics are shaped by different structural factors, which hinder the enactment of involved fatherhood in two generations of Bangladeshi fathers. It accumulates the voices and experiences of older and younger fathers living in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The findings demonstrate how the construction of fatherhood is influenced by Connell’s (1987) “hegemonic masculinity” ideology, where specific male identities – protectors and providers – are valued, at the cost of not performing involved or compassionate fatherhood. In addition, this study illustrates how the social expectations create pressure for men to fit in the prescribed categories; although, an attention is given towards the fluidity of hegemonic masculinity, and the challenges it faces from both generations’ fathers with the changing norms, and due to the practice of alternative masculinities – mostly by the young fathers. This research follows qualitative research methodology employing in-depth interviews and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) to have a deeper insight of what happens when structural factors, masculinity and fatherhood collide. The study concludes that both generations fathers are opening towards involved fatherhood, yet traditional fatherhood still dominates the domestic spheres. Social Science Review, Vol. 39(3), Dec 2022 Page 113-131

Fathers in Europe: Policies, constructions and practices. Introduction to the Special Collection

Objective: To introduce the readers to the Journal of Family Research’s Special Collection about fatherhood-related political frameworks, social constructions of fatherhood and masculinity, and practices of fathers in Europe. Background: Fatherhood research has proliferated in recent decades and reflects that paternal involvement is closely linked to national policies, to prevailing social normative understandings of fatherhood, and also varies in practice. Method: Except for the review article, the contributions of this Special Collection draw on empirical data, including quantitative analyses of large-scale data, such as the European Social Survey, the QUIDAN-Survey, and the DJI “Growing up in Germany” survey, and qualitative analyses of in-depth interviews. Results: The six contributions vary in focus and illustrate a wide range of approaches to the understanding of fatherhood constructions and practices as well as the political frameworks that shape contemporary fatherhood in Europe. The contributions study fatherhood in the context of the transition to parenthood, parenting practices, the composition of working environments as well as in social work practice. Conclusion: The discussion of fatherhood constructions and practices as well as related political frameworks is crucial to understanding which social conditions facilitate and hinder father involvement in Europe.

Gender equality or just more involved fathering? A critical examination of the division of childcare in Hong Kong’s professional middle-class families

ABSTRACT The ideals of paternal involvement in childcare have become evermore celebrated in Hong Kong and elsewhere, but are these signs of a new form of gender equality in the family? Based on in-depth interviews with professional middle-class families in Hong Kong, our findings suggest not. Although mothers’ expectations of paternal involvement, privileged class positions and assistance from domestic helpers have contributed to increased father’s engagement, we are not seeing gender-equal parenting emerging in these families. Instead, compared to mothers, fathers exercise more flexibility over which and when to perform parenting tasks, spend lesser time on childcare, have greater decision-making power in the major aspects of their children’s lives, and their financial provision is considered more important in both parents’ construction of fatherhood. To condone the unequal division of childcare and gender relations, we show couples’ endorsement of an ideology of ‘complementary differences’. Our analysis of the co-constructions and negotiations between both parents underscore the mutual influences that spouses have on each other. Moreover, by paying attention to the class, social and cultural dimensions of parenting, we reveal how well-resourced, liberal Chinese families prioritize family harmony and children’s development to the extent that gender inequalities in childcare are tolerable and trivialized.

‘I am a different father’. An intergenerational analysis of the social transformation of fatherhood in the Islamic Republic of Iran

ABSTRACTThis paper was inspired by Michael Rush’s works on the social construction of fatherhood in non-European contexts. It aims to fill a knowledge gap in gender, family and Iranian studies by exploring both the changing role of fathers and men’s involvement in family life and care in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Adopting an intergenerational approach and a mixed methods design, the paper considers how fatherhood practices and discourses have changed over the last decades and how different generations of men elaborate, describe, and perform the paternal role. Despite institutionalized gender inequality and a patriarchal family structure supported by family law legislation, fatherhood in Iran is anything but static. Instead, it is possible to notice a gradual redefinition of gender roles within the family. Especially urban middle class’s men are negotiating diverse masculinities and, at the same time, delivering non-traditional parenting roles.

The Chosen of God: Interrogating Fatherhood, Hegemonic Masculinity and the “Chosen” Family/Nation in Noah (2014)

Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014) is a Hollywood Biblical epic film, re-imagining the tale of Prophet Noah from the Old Testament of the Bible, who is “chosen” by the Biblical God for a divine quest. Considering the American nationalistic agendas of the 20th century Biblical epic responding to the dominant geopolitical events of the time, this article reads the primary text against articulations of (masculinized) American nationalism in a post-9/11 and “War and Terror” world. With concerns of America going “soft” after the attacks of 9/11, the idea of “manning up” by harkening back to traditional modes of manhood and heteronormative patriarchal gender roles was a method of reclaiming (masculine) power. Religion was also used to articulate American nationalist creeds and belief systems to a global audience by the American political establishment. In the time of President Obama, rooted in Biblical teachings, fatherhood was foregrounded as the bedrock of the nation, illustrating the interplay of masculinity, religion and American nationalism. Through a focus on the politics of the “chosen” man/family/nation in Noah, I attempt to explicate contemporary constructions of fatherhood, masculinity, and nationalism as projected in mainstream American cinema.

Black Fatherhood, Hip Hop, and Inner Life: Reading Rapsody’s “The Man” and Mama Sol and the N.U.T.S.’s “Manhood”

ABSTRACT This article theorizes affect, aesthetics, and black inner life through an analysis of two hip hop music videos: Rapsody’s “The Man” and Mama Sol and The N.U.T.S.’s “Manhood.” The authors deploy Quashie’s notion of “the quiet interior” and Rose’s concept of “(inter)personal justice” to examine the aesthetics through which hip hop fatherhood is forged. Scrutinizing the dynamics of inner life, the article showcases the social construction of fatherhood in complex, urban formations. The authors conclude that these two hip hop videos exemplify the ways in which intimate spaces on public display can create sites of political rupture and cultural recovery.

Alice Margaria, The Construction of Fatherhood: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2019, xiii + 191 pp, £85) ISBN 978-1-108-47509-9 (hb)

The question of gender equality before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)—one of the most powerful human rights bodies in Europe and beyond—is not only underresearched but, to the extent that it has been the subject of research, such research has mostly focused on understanding the status of women and women’s rights, leaving aside questions about men and masculinities.1 Alice Margaria’s book The Construction of Fatherhood: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights2 is the first comprehensive study to inquire into gender equality before the ECtHR from the perspective of men, being a welcome and much needed addition to the literature on gender legal studies. The book starts from the idea that gender equality requires not only changing women’s traditional roles, but also men’s roles, in particular that of breadwinners, which oftentimes limit men’s ability to be involved in childcare and other domestic tasks. Keeping...

Maria Moscati, Review of Alice Margaria, The Construction of Fatherhood. The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

Maria Moscati, Review of Alice Margaria, The Construction of Fatherhood. The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

‘I've got a daughter now man it's clean man’: Heteroglossic and intersectional constructions of fatherhood in the spontaneous talk of a group of young southeast London men

AbstractThis article provides an insight into the heteroglossic and intersectional construction of fatherhood in the self-recorded, spontaneous talk of a group of young men from ethnically and racially mixed working-class backgrounds in southeast London. By adopting an interactional sociolinguistic approach, informed by Bakhtin's (1981, 1984, 1986) work on dialogicality and Tannen's (1989, 2004) notion of constructed dialogue, this article explores the young men's use of voices for their positioning in a range of fathering discourses which are shaped by and shape intersectional and hegemonic masculinities. Intersections of race, ethnicity, and social class inform many of the young men's positions, especially in their talk about the influences of hip hop on their children. This polyphony of voices allows the group to balance traditional discourses of fathers as providers, protectors, and moral guides with contemporary models of intimate and involved fatherhood, but also competing discourses of virile masculinity and bad boy identity. (Dialogicality, discourse, ethnicity, fatherhood, hegemony, heteroglossia, intersectionality, identity, masculinity, race, social class, voice)*

“It’s actually a good diagnosis”

In this article, I offer an autoethnographic examination of unexplained infertility. The narrative is driven by a central question: how does unexplained infertility mean in my life? By exploring the how of unexplained infertility, narrative inquiry emphasizes the long-term impacts of a persistent diagnosis. As an unstable diagnosis, unexplained infertility presents a complicated site from which to consider family planning and gender work. Narrative vignettes occurring over a period of years explore identity. These experiences highlight moments of conflict and upheaval where the abstract diagnosis derails heteronormative and cisgendered constructions of fatherhood and masculinity. This infertility account disrupts codes of silence around experiencing infertility.

Alice Margaria, The Construction of Fatherhood

Alice Margaria, The Construction of Fatherhood

ALICE MARGARIA, The Construction of Fatherhood: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

ALICE MARGARIA, <i>The Construction of Fatherhood: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights</i>

The Construction of Fatherhood: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, Alice Margaria

The Construction of Fatherhood: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, Alice Margaria, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2019, 214pp, £85, Hardback, ISBN 978-1-108-47509-9.

Young people’s discursive constructions of fatherhood in South Africa

ABSTRACT The voices of young people remain, for the most part, under-considered within research on South African fathers. The present study relies on photo-elicitation interviews to explore how isiXhosa-speaking adolescents construct fathering roles and responsibilities in South Africa. Using discursive psychology, it was found that participants drew on the ‘Essential Fathering’ and ‘Social Fathering’ discourses to construct South African fatherhood. The discourses appeared to valorize biological fatherhood situated within the nuclear family, while - at the same time - valuing socialized paternal formations that need not be constituted biologically. It is suggested that although genuine paternal abandonment should not be excused, policy, parental programmes and legislation in South Africa must consider the voices of young people as well as the myriad parenting modalities that exist outside of hegemonic family forms.

Australian news media constructions and categorisations of primary caregiving fathers

Increasing cultural and academic attention is being paid to fathers who assume the primary caregiving role, stemming from interest into whether contemporary masculinity is evolving away from traditional, hegemonic ideals. This study utilises a Discourse Analysis informed by Membership Categorisation Analysis to explore how this relatively new category – primary caregiving father – is discursively constructed in 193 Australian newsprint media articles. The analysis identified that the category of ‘primary caregiving father’ was defended and discursively managed so as to remain consistent with the activities and predicates typically associated with the category ‘normative man’. This was routinely achieved in two ways. First, descriptions of traditional uninvolved fathers were contrasted unfavourably against the ‘new’ primary caregiving father, working to position primary caregiving fathers as the new norm. Second, accounts of men’s decision to take on the primary caregiving role routinely relied on the category-tied predicates of rationality and stoicism, thereby working to position primary caregiving fathers as normatively masculine. Overall, this article concludes that, despite fathers taking on roles inconsistent with normative gendered categorisation, constructions of fatherhood in news media routinely work to align (or re-align) primary caregiving fathers within hegemonic ideals. Therefore, while masculinity is evolving and shifting, it remains within the bounds of what is considered hegemonic.

“Hey Dad, I just wanna say hello”: Digital Leisure among Nonresident Fathers

Geographical separation of nonresident fathers from their children creates multiple constraints to their involvement with their children. Many interactions nonresident parents in the United States have with their children occur in a leisure context. Therefore, mobile technology and digital leisure may mitigate limitations associated with fathers’ nonresidency. This study presents findings from eight interviews with African-American and Caucasian nonresident fathers about the use of digital leisure in their fathering. Findings from this study suggest that nonresident fathers both dislike and appreciate use of mobile technology by their children. Moreover, digital leisure and mobile technology represent a part of their generative fathering practices, and appear to have some symbolic meaning in their construction of fatherhood. We further discuss these findings in the context of social justice issues associated with fathering.

“Being a father”: constructions of fatherhood by men with absent fathers

ABSTRACT Family dynamics and parenting styles are influential on children's wellbeing [Walsh, F. (2016). Strengthening family resilience (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Press]. Additionally, childhood experiences and how an individual experienced being parented can impact on how individuals as mothers and fathers choose to parent their own children [Herland, M. D., Hauge, M.-I., & Helegland, I. M. (2015). Balancing fatherhood: Experiences of fatherhood among men with a difficult past. Qualitative Social Work, 14(2), 242–258]. However, growing up in a home with an absent parent may create challenges associated with parenting for individuals, due to not having these experiences themselves. Therefore, the article reports findings on men who grew up in a father-absent household and how their experiences influenced their understanding of fatherhood and becoming a father. Twenty-one men participated in this qualitative study. Findings revealed that although men felt unprepared for fatherhood they attempted to learn to be a father and expressed the importance of not wanting their children to experience father absence. The study findings provide important insights in the provision of support for fathers who have experienced father absence.

Masculinity and fathering in the lives of rural men with a disability

This paper contributes to the literature on masculinities and rurality, and masculinities and disability through interviews about fatherhood with 16 rural men with an acquired disability. In the context of shifting notions of fatherhood in broader society, and dominant discourses of rural and disabled masculinity, we explore interviewees' understandings and enactments of being a parent. We address the question of how rural fathers with a disability define fatherhood through reference to Gerschick and Miller's (1995) typology of reliance, rejection and reformulation. The majority of the men in the sample understood fatherhood via discourses of breadwinning, physicality, and the outdoors. We argue that these strategies of reliance on traditional discourses of masculinity have particularly negative implications for men with a disability living in rural areas, due to the nature of the rural economy, poor service provision and limited accessibility to facilities. In the final section of the paper, we turn to constructions of fatherhood articulated by four participants. These men adopt strategies of both reliance and reformulation. They incorporate dimensions of hegemonic masculinity into their definition of parenthood, while simultaneously encompassing more normatively feminised practices and spaces.

‘Children, families and the conundrum about men’: Exploring factors contributing to father absence in South Africa and its implications for social and care policies

ABSTRACTSouth Africa has an exceptionally high number of absent fathers. Approximately half of the children in the county are living without daily contact with their fathers, which is assumed to have dire social and economic consequences for them, their families and communities. Despite growing societal interest in the phenomenon of absent fathers, social and family policies are silent about the role of men or fathers in a highly feminised, familial and community centred welfare and care regime. This article explores factors that contribute to father absence from their own standpoint. It draws on focus group discussions with absent fathers in four urban communities in Johannesburg, South Africa. Factors, such as materialist constructions of fatherhood and masculinity, as well as socio-economic, cultural and relational factors, provide some insight into the phenomenon. Although the findings were exploratory, they nevertheless raise important questions about reforming care policies in both the private and public spheres to meet the dual challenges of care and gender equality in a Southern context.