Doing Fatherhood Online: Men's Parental Identities,Experiences, and Ideologies on Social Media

Online discourse about parenting has grown with the expansion of social media technologies. With a community of “dad bloggers” developing in North America, further investigation into how men write about fatherhood on the Internet is needed. In this article, I present a qualitative analysis of 201 blog posts written by 40 dad bloggers. Adopting a social psychological perspective, I examine how fatherhood is constructed across lines of identity, experience, and ideology. My findings illustrate how dad bloggers reinforce and reshape family discourses in their writing about parental role models, becoming a father, work–family balance, generativity, and “good” and “bad” dads. Social media use is discussed as a part of fathering in everyday life and as a tool to display, promote, and normalize involved fatherhood.     

Exploring the depths of gender,parenting and ‘work’: critical discursive psychology and the ‘missing voices’ of involved fatherhood

ABSTRACT

This paper sets out to capture the missing voices of fathers in discussions around gender, parenting and work. Using Critical Discursive Psychology (CDP), a qualitative methodology that frames discourse, language and action as socially situated, the paper sets out to understand the complexities of involved fatherhood. Using data from two distinct research projects that considered managing tensions around parenting and paid work, alongside the move to ‘involved fatherhood’, we examine the ways in which different discourses are operating in order to construct stories around gender and parenting. We are particularly interested in the ways in which participants use language and, specifically, discourses of parenting, working and caring. Through the interview excerpts we analysed how simultaneously participants position themselves in the discourses and were also being positioned by the wider societal discourses. We consider how CDP can contribute rich insights into the ways in which fathers are arranging sharing parenting caregiving responsibilities, using these insights to inform the policy landscape. We finish the paper by suggesting that CDP methodology can be mobilised by researchers wanting to capture missing voices in shifting policy landscapes.     

Class Differences in Establishment Pathways to Fatherhood Wage Premiums

Organizations have been argued to favor fathers over childless men and skilled fathers over less‐skilled fathers, but group wage inequalities vary across as well as within establishments. This article theorizes class differences in the contribution of being employed in a high‐wage firm to the fatherhood wage premium. Analyses of linked employer–employee data from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey reveal that sorting into high‐wage establishments accounts for 60% of the economy‐wide premium for less‐educated and nonprofessional fathers, whereas high‐skilled fathers tend to work in lower wage establishments but receive the largest net fatherhood premium within firms. Among the subsample of fathers who changed employers in the past 5 years, less‐skilled fathers fared worse, whereas high‐skilled fathers sorted into high‐wage firms. Results thus suggest that employment in a higher wage firm likely enables less‐skilled men to transition to fatherhood, whereas high‐wage employers may discriminate in favor of only high‐skilled fathers in hiring.     

Does Adherence to Masculine Norms Shape Fathering Behavior?

Research suggests that many fathers struggle balancing hegemonic masculine norms with new fatherhood ideals. This study uses data on 2,194 fathers from a national study on fathers of children aged 2 to 18 and incorporates a comprehensive assessment of masculine norms to examine whether adherence to masculine norms is associated with father involvement and whether this relationship is mediated by fathers' adherence to the new fatherhood ideal that promotes engaged, nurturing parenting. Results suggest that fathers who more closely adhere to masculine norms are less involved in instrumental and expressive parenting and are more likely to engage in harsh discipline than fathers who are less masculine. Adherence to masculine norms also reduces the likelihood of embracing the new fatherhood ideal, and adherence to the new fatherhood ideal at least partially mediates the relationship between masculinity and father involvement. Overall, despite changing expectations for fathers, hegemonic masculine norms continue to shape fathers' behavior.     

Masculinities and fathering

There is a developing body of research regarding fathering, in the UK, but the experiences of African-Caribbean and white working-class fathers, and how their experiences are mediated by gender and ethnicity have been neglected. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap in research by reporting on the similarities and differences within the stories of African-Caribbean and white working-class men about fathering, and to examine the personal and structural dimensions to these experiences using Connell's theoretical framework for understanding masculinities (1995, 2005). Qualitative, semi-structured individual interviews were undertaken with seven white and six African-Caribbean fathers. Findings indicate that African-Caribbean fathers, specifically, their associated practices, regarding children's ‘behaviour’ and learning, with experiences of racism that they anticipated their children may encounter in the future. Both groups of men's stories demonstrated limited reflexivity about the unequal distribution of domestic labour within the home. The study also found that fathers’ experiences were associated with contradictory and differing forms of masculinity. The fathers’ stories provide evidence of changing forms of masculinity, for example, in ways in which fathers conceptualised fathering as enjoyable involvement with children, and the ways fathers negotiated and resisted the constraints of paid work in order to be involved with children. Findings also reinforce the importance of health and social care services reorienting their priorities to engage with fathers, and opportunities for future research, regarding the experiences of African-Caribbean fathers in particular, are also identified.     

Family‐Supportive Organizational Culture and Fathers' Experiences of Work–family Conflict in Sweden

This study explores fathers' experiences with work–family conflict and their perceptions of how supportive the organizational culture at work is regarding fathers' work–family needs, and whether a family‐supportive organizational culture is associated with less work–family conflict. A total of 377 fathers working in private Swedish companies were surveyed. While a modest proportion of fathers experienced high levels of work‐to‐family conflict, less family‐to‐work conflict was reported. Further, fathers perceived little work–family support from top managers, supervisors, and co‐workers. Our results indicate that the cultures in the examined companies have norms that separate work and family from each other. Fathers seem likely to experience work–family conflict as long as the family‐supportive organizational culture, especially at the work group level, is not well‐developed. When fathers experience their work organizations as family‐supportive, they are likely to be better able to combine work and family and thus to help Swedes achieve a more gender‐equal society.     

The transition of Israeli men to fatherhood: a comparison between new fathers of pre-term/full-term infants

The study compared a group of 62 new Israeli fathers of pre‐term infants with a comparison group of 58 new fathers of full‐term infants with respect to parental stress, depression symptoms, mastery, self‐esteem and involvement with the child. Findings indicated that fathers of pre‐term infants had significantly greater stress and depression scores and lower involvement rate with the child compared with fathers of the matching group. No differences were found with respect to the fathers' mastery and self‐esteem. New fathers of full‐term infants, aged 30 years and more, had significantly higher self‐esteem compared with fathers aged less than 30 years. Findings are discussed with respect to practice in neonatal units.     

Moving Out: Transition to Nonresidence Among Resident Fathers in the United States, 1968–1997

This article provides the first individual‐level estimates of the change over time in the probability of nonresidence for initially resident fathers in the United States. Drawing on the 1968–1997 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we used discrete‐time event history models to compute the probabilities of nonresidence for six 5‐year periods. Our sample consists of men (N = 1,388) who are coresident with their biological children at the time of birth. We found that the observed probability of nonresidence doubled over the three decades of the study period, but not linearly. The risk increased substantially in the 1980s and then stabilized in the 1990s. Our multivariate models show that the stabilization was due to changes over time in characteristics such as income; had these remained constant, the likelihood of nonresidence would have increased throughout the study period. Both fathers’ and mothers’ incomes reduce the likelihood of paternal nonresidence, as do mothers’ employment hours.     

When Stepfathers Claim Stepchildren: A Conceptual Analysis

Guided by social constructionist and symbolic interactionist perspectives and a grounded theory method, my conceptual analysis explores stepfathers’ experiences with claiming stepchildren as their own. Using in‐depth interviews with a diverse sample of 36 stepfathers, my analysis focuses on paternal claiming as a core category and generates 10 properties relevant to this social psychological phenomenon: timing, degree of deliberativeness, degree of identity conviction, paternal role range, solo‐shared identity, mindfulness, propriety work, naming, seeking public recognition, and biological children as benchmarks. In addition, I consider how five conditions may influence stepfathers’ perceptions of stepchildren. My analysis reveals a number of sensitizing concepts for studying stepfathers’ efforts to develop a sense of group belonging and a fatherlike identity.