Transformations: Gender, Reproduction, and Contemporary Society

1. Transformations: Gender, Reproduction, and Contemporary Society Lecture 5: Masculinity and Fatherhood: Beyond the breadwinner role? Dr Maria do Mar Pereira m.d.m.pereira@warwick.ac.uk

2. The Structure of the Lecture The sociological significance of fatherhood The relationship between ‘doing fatherhood’ and ‘doing gender’ Dominant discourses about fatherhood The ‘good father’ Fear of fatherlessness Redefining fatherhood

3. The Significance of Fatherhood Examining norms, practices and beliefs relating to fatherhood is crucial to sociological analysis of contemporary Western societies, because fatherhood offers extremely rich insight into: processes of historical change (and their elements of continuity) the links between dimensions of social life: public – private, macro –micro, policy – practice, production – reproduction, structure – agency the (very close but non-linear) relationship between social representations, discourses, and practices (Wall and Arnold, 2007) the mechanisms through which structural gender inequalities and particular gender orders arereflected in, and reproduced through, everyday life the complexity of the relation between the social and the biological the cultural specificity and intersectional nature of masculinities and of ideas and practices of fatherhood (Shows and Gerstel, 2009)

4. Doing Fatherhood – Doing Gender As we have been examining, understandings of parenthood are both gendered and gendering. Motherhood ≠ fatherhood Being a ‘proper’, ‘normal’, ‘healthy’ woman or man is seen to require having a particular position vis-à-vis mothering or fathering, and Being a ‘proper’ father (or mother) is seen to require key traits of ‘proper’ (i.e. hegemonic) masculinity (or femininity) – e.g. having a job and providing for the family Thus, parenting is a site for the production and reproduction of gender. class ethnicity age sexuality etc. intersects

5. Fatherhood as Proof of Virility (and thus of masculinity) ‘Fathering is tied to manliness only as a demonstration of virility – the ability to produce a child – not as the [daily] conduct of caretaking and nurturing.’ (Dowd, 2000, p. 183)

6. Traditional Discourses of Good Fathering Provision Protection Authority (Ruddick, 1997)

7. Fear of Fatherlessness

8. Fatherlessness and Social (Dis)order Tyneside 1991 Riots Summer 2011 Riots It is ‘the progressive liberation of young men … from the expec-tationthat adulthood involves life-long responsibility for the well-being of their wife, and 15 or 20 years of responsibility for the well-being of their children’ that is responsible for the crime-wave . ‘…young men who are invited to remain in a state of permanent puerility [childish-ness] will predictably behave in an anti-social fashion’. (Dennis and Erdos, 2000, p. 4) ‘The causes of this sickness are many and complex. But three things can be said with certainty: every one of them is the fault of the liberal intelligentsia; every one of them was instituted or exacerbated by the Labour government; and at the very heart of these problems lies the breakdown of the family. For most of these children come from lone-mother households. And the single most crucial factor behind all this mayhem is the willed remo-valof the most important thing that socialises chil-drenand turns them from feral savages into civili-sedcitizens: a father who is a fully committed member of the family unit.’ (Melanie Phillips, The Daily Mail, 11 August 2011)

9. The Child Support Agency (CSA) • Launched in April 1993, as a fiscal and legal attempt to re-attach absent fathers to their children • It attracted much protest from white, middle-class men: • Affronted by state interference • Resistant to ‘feckless’ suggestion • Angered by association with shame and guilt • Accused the CSA of being incompetent and unjust

10. Redefining Fatherhood • Provision • Protection • Authority • Care-giving • Intimacy • Emotional labour (Dowd, 2000)

11. Obstacles to the Redefining of Fatherhood According to authors such as Dowd (2000), Wall and Arnold (2007) or Shows and Gerstel (2009),this redefinition of fatherhood has been incomplete, slow and inconsistent, because it faces several obstacles: • Norms: contemporary hegemonic masculinity is still not entirely compatible with principles of ‘involved fathering’ • Discourse and Media Representation: caring for children continues to be portrayed explicitly or implicitly as mother’s work • Structure of Labour Market: patterns of horizontal and vertical gender segregation and the gender pay gap foster reproduction of asymmetrical gendered parenting arrangements • Family and Employment Policy: parental leave arrangements can hinder or foster fathers’ involvement in childcare after birth and beyond • Workplace Cultures: have their own system of norms and shape what is acceptable and possible (e.g. Physicians vs. Emergency Medical Technicians)

12. PerformingMasculineFathering ‘Another stay-at-home father is described as not fitting the stereotypes of the stay-at-home dad given that he is “tall. . . husky . . . has muscles on his muscles” and is a “self-confessed jock” (Mitchell 2000c). The article also observes that being a stay-at-home father did not mean he “stopped earning money either”; he runs a business out of his home while he cares for his daughters. That the masculinity of involved fathers needs emphasis in these articles points, on one level, to the acceptance of gendered cultural understandings of caregiving. That masculinity must be affirmed is a nod to the fact that warm, loving, and involved parenting and primary caregiving are still considered feminine.’ (Wall andArnold, 2007, p. 521)

13. Obstacles to the Redefining of Fatherhood ‘Government policy and educational efforts, workplace culture and practice, individual behavior and identity, and taken-for-granted cultural understandings are intimately interconnected.’ (Wall and Arnold, 2007, p. 512)

14. Science, TechnologyandFatherhood New technologicaldevelopmentsandscientific research isalsocontributing to reshapingunderstandingsandexperiencesoffatherhood: • Ultrasound scans (week 8) havetransformedmen’srelationshipwithpregnancy • New reproductivetechnologies (weeks 15 and 18) • Recentscientific research hasshownthatmen’sbiologyisalsoaffectedandchangedbyparenting • http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14880055 • BBC Four (2010), BiologyofDads:http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=32631&view=flash_player

15. RethinkingtheRelationshipbetweenBiology / Society in Fathering Thesekindsoffindings : • disruptestablishedbinariesandassociations • Biology/Society • Motherhood – Nature / Fatherhod – Culture • fosterreconceptualisationofhegemonic Western understandingsof • fatherhood • thenecessity, valueand ‘naturalness’ ofthegenderedstructuringofparentingarrangements • (maternal instinct, biologicalclock) • (breadwinning, lesssuited to childcare: Kaufman, 1999, citedin Wall andArnold, 2007)

16. The Significance of Fatherhood Examining norms, practices and beliefs relating to fatherhood is crucial to sociological analysis of contemporary Western societies, because fatherhood offers extremely rich insight into: processes of historical change (and their elements of continuity) the links between dimensions of social life: public – private, macro –micro, policy – practice, production – reproduction, structure – agency the (very close but non-linear) relationship between social representations, discourses, and practices (Wall and Arnold, 2007) the mechanisms through which structural gender inequalities and particular gender orders arereflected in, and reproduced through, everyday life the complexity of the relation between the socialand the biological the cultural specificity and intersectional nature of masculinities and of ideas and practices of fatherhood (Shows and Gerstel, 2009)

17. SeminarPreparationActivity • Onyourhand-out, make a note ofalltheexplicitandimplicitreferences to fathersandfatherhoodwhichyouencounter (or, alsoimportantly, do NOT encounter) betweennowandyourseminar. • Bringthehand-out withyou to theseminar.