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Explores the surprising diversity of fathers and fatherhood throughout American history and society The nuclear family has been endlessly praised as the bedrock of American society, even though there has rarely been a time in history when a majority of Americans lived in such families. This book deconstructs the myth of the nuclear family by presenting the rich diversity of family lives in American history from the American Revolution to the twenty-first century. To tell this story, Jürgen Martschukat focuses on fathers and their relations to families and American society. Using biographical close-ups of twelve different characters, each embedded in historical context, American Fatherhood provides a much more realistic picture of how fatherhood has been performed within different kinds of families. Each protagonist covers a crucial period or event in American history, presents a different family constellation, and makes a different argument with regard to how American society is governed through the family.
American Fatherhood: A Cultural History traces changes in what it means to be a dad in America, from the 1960s through today. The book begins with an overview of fatherhood in America from the “founding fathers” through the 1950s and progresses to the role of fathers as they were encouraged to move beyond being simply providers to becoming more engaged parents, navigating complex and changing gender and family expectations. By tracing the story of fatherhood in the United States over the course of the last half-century, American Fatherhood reveals key insights that add to our understanding of American culture. The book argues that, for most of the twentieth century, male parents were urged to embrace the values and techniques of motherhood. In recent years, however, fathers have rejected this model in place of one that affirms and even celebrates their maleness and their relationships with their children. After decades of attempting to adopt the parenting styles of women, in other words, men have finally forged a form of child-raising that is truer to themselves. In short, fatherhood has become a means of asserting, rather than denying or suppressing, masculinity—an original and counterintuitive argument that makes us rethink the idea and practice of being a dad today.
Published just in time for Father's Day, this first history of men's lives as parents fills an important gap in the literature on parenting, the men's movement, and gender studies. Griswold is the author of Family and Divorce in California 1850-1890. Photos.
Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century by Libra R. Hilde Pdf
Analyzing published and archival oral histories of formerly enslaved African Americans, Libra R. Hilde explores the meanings of manhood and fatherhood during and after the era of slavery, demonstrating that black men and women articulated a surprisingly broad and consistent vision of paternal duty across more than a century. Complicating the tendency among historians to conflate masculinity within slavery with heroic resistance, Hilde emphasizes that, while some enslaved men openly rebelled, many chose subtle forms of resistance in the context of family and local community. She explains how a significant number of enslaved men served as caretakers to their children and shaped their lives and identities. From the standpoint of enslavers, this was particularly threatening--a man who fed his children built up the master's property, but a man who fed them notions of autonomy put cracks in the edifice of slavery. Fatherhood highlighted the agonizing contradictions of the condition of enslavement, and to be an involved father was to face intractable dilemmas, yet many men tried. By telling the story of the often quietly heroic efforts that enslaved men undertook to be fathers, Hilde reveals how formerly enslaved African Americans evaluated their fathers (including white fathers) and envisioned an honorable manhood.
Author : Ralph LaRossa Publisher : University of Chicago Press Page : 312 pages File Size : 54,5 Mb Release : 1997 Category : Family & Relationships ISBN : 9780226469041
The Modernization of Fatherhood by Ralph LaRossa Pdf
The period between World War I and World War II was an important time in the history of gender relations, and of American fatherhood. Revealing the surprising extent to which some of yesterday's fathers were involved with their children, The Modernization of Fatherhood recounts how fatherhood was reshaped during the Machine Age into the configuration we know today. LaRossa explains that during the interwar period the image of the father as economic provider, pal, and male role model, all in one, became institutionalized. Using personal letters and popular magazine and newspaper sources, he explores how the social and economic conditions of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression—a period of technical innovation as well as economic hardship—fused these expectations into a cultural ideal. With chapters on the U.S. Children's Bureau, the fathercraft movement, the magazine industry and the development of Parent's Magazine, and the creation of Father's Day, this book is a major addition to the growing literature on masculinity and fatherhood.
How has the modern conservative movement thrived in spite of the lack of harmony among its constituent members? What, and who, holds together its large corporate interests, small-government libertarians, social and racial traditionalists, and evangelical Christians? Raised Right pursues these questions through a cultural study of three iconic conservative figures: National Review editor William F. Buckley, Jr., President Ronald Reagan, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Examining their papers, writings, and rhetoric, Jeffrey R. Dudas identifies what he terms a "paternal rights discourse"—the arguments about fatherhood and rights that permeate their personal lives and political visions. For each, paternal discipline was crucial to producing autonomous citizens worthy and capable of self-governance. This paternalist logic is the cohesive agent for an entire conservative movement, uniting its celebration of "founding fathers," past and present, constitutional and biological. Yet this discourse produces a paradox: When do authoritative fathers transfer their rights to these well-raised citizens? This duality propels conservative politics forward with unruly results. The mythology of these American fathers gives conservatives something, and someone, to believe in—and therein lies its timeless appeal.
A group of former gang members come together to help one another answer the question “How can I be a good father when I’ve never had one?” In 2010, former gang leader turned community activist Big Mike Cummings asked UCLA gang expert Jorja Leap to co-lead a group of men struggling to be better fathers in Watts, South Los Angeles, a neighborhood long burdened with a legacy of racialized poverty, violence, and incarceration. These men, black and brown, from late adolescence to middle age, are trying to heal themselves and their community, and above all to build their identities as fathers. Each week, they come together to help one another answer the question “How can I be a good father when I’ve never had one?” Project Fatherhood follows the lives of the men as they struggle with the pain of their own losses, the chronic pressures of poverty and unemployment, and the unquenchable desire to do better and provide more for the next generation. Although the group begins as a forum for them to discuss issues relating to their roles as parents, it slowly grows to mean much more: it becomes a place where they can share jokes and traumatic experiences, joys and sorrows. As the men repair their own lives and gain confidence, the group also becomes a place for them to plan and carry out activities to help the Watts community grow as well as thrive. By immersing herself in the lived experiences of those working to overcome their circumstances, Leap not only dramatically illustrates the realities of fathers trying to do the right thing, but she also paints a larger sociological portrait of how institutional injustices become manifest in the lives of ordinary people. At a time in which racial justice seems more elusive than ever—stymied by the generational cycles of mass incarceration and the cradle-to-prison pipeline—the group’s development over time demonstrates real-life movement toward solutions as the men help one another make their families and their community stronger.
Doing the Best I Can by Kathryn Edin,Timothy Jon Nelson Pdf
Across the political spectrum, unwed fatherhood is denounced as one of the leading social problems of today. Doing the Best I Can is a strikingly rich, paradigm-shifting look at fatherhood among inner-city men often dismissed as "deadbeat dads." Kathryn Edin and Timothy J. Nelson examine how couples in challenging straits come together and get pregnant so quickly--without planning. The authors chronicle the high hopes for forging lasting family bonds that pregnancy inspires, and pinpoint the fatal flaws that often lead to the relationship's demise. They offer keen insight into a radical redefinition of family life where the father-child bond is central and parental ties are peripheral. Drawing on years of fieldwork, Doing the Best I Can shows how mammoth economic and cultural changes have transformed the meaning of fatherhood among the urban poor. Intimate interviews with more than 100 fathers make real the significant obstacles faced by low-income men at every step in the familial process: from the difficulties of romantic relationships, to decision-making dilemmas at conception, to the often celebratory moment of birth, and finally to the hardships that accompany the early years of the child's life, and beyond.
For too long, we've thought of fathers as little more than sources of authority and economic stability in the lives of their children. Yet cutting-edge studies drawing unexpected links between fathers and children are forcing us to reconsider our assumptions and ask new questions: What changes occur in men when they are "expecting"? Do fathers affect their children's language development? What are the risks and rewards of being an older-than-average father at the time the child is born? What happens to a father's hormone levels at every stage of his child's development, and can a child influence the father's health? Just how much do fathers matter? In Do Fathers Matter? the award-winning journalist and father of five Paul Raeburn overturns the many myths and stereotypes of fatherhood as he examines the latest scientific findings on the parent we've often overlooked. Drawing on research from neuroscientists, animal behaviorists, geneticists, and developmental psychologists, among others, Raeburn takes us through the various stages of fatherhood, revealing the profound physiological connections between children and fathers, from conception through adolescence and into adulthood—and the importance of the relationship between mothers and fathers. In the process, he challenges the legacy of Freud and mainstream views of parental attachment, and also explains how we can become better parents ourselves. Ultimately, Raeburn shows how the role of the father is distinctly different from that of the mother, and that embracing fathers' significance in the lives of young people is something we can all benefit from. An engrossing, eye-opening, and deeply personal book that makes a case for a new perspective on the importance of fathers in our lives no matter what our family structure, Do Fathers Matter? will change the way we view fatherhood today.
Between the Civil War and World War I, David Leverenz maintains, the corporate transformation of American work created widespread desire for upward mobility along with widening class divisions. In his view, several significant narrative constructs, notably the daddy s girl and the daddy s boy, emerge at the intersection between paternalist practices and more democratic possibilities for self-advancement. From Mark Twain s Laura Hawkins in The Gilded Age to the protagonist of Theodore Dreiser s Sister Carrie and Willa Cather s Alexandra Bergson in O Pioneers!, Leverenz finds that the image of the daddy s girl constrains the emerging threat of the career woman even as it articulates the lure of upward mobility for women. In surveying the figure of the "daddy s boy," Leverenz examines tensions between young men s desires for upward mobility and older men s desires for paternal control. Paternalism Incorporated also addresses yearnings for individualism and paternalism in various critiques of the emerging corporation. Another chapter links honor and shaming to race in the philanthropic practices of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, framed with narratives by William Dean Howells, Booker T. Washington, and Jane Addams. After showing how a daddy s girl becomes a paternalist in Henry James s The Golden Bowl, Leverenz considers F. Scott Fitzgerald s Tender is the Night as paternalism s elegy, contrasted with the Shirley Temple film The Little Colonel."
Who was the Victorian patriarch, and what kind of father was he? In this richly documented study, Stephen M. Frank presents the first account of nineteenth-century family life to focus on the role of fathers. Drawing on letters, diaries, memoirs, and other primary sources, Frank explores what fathers thought about their family responsibilities and how men behaved as parents. His findings are often surprising. Beneath the stereotype of the starched Victorian patriarch, he discovers fathers who were playful, demanding, uncertain of their authority, and deeply anxious about their children's prospects in a rapidly changing society—men with strikingly modern attitudes toward parenthood. Focusing on Northern, middle-class families, he also uncovers the social origins of the "family man" ideal and explores how this standard of middle-class propriety found its way into practice. Life with Father looks beyond the well-known nineteenth-century fascination with motherhood to discover a social order that valued a "father's care" no less than a "mother's love" as a basis for stable family relationships. This compelling social history engages readers with the story of how families in the past struggled with economic and social changes that required fathers to reassess themselves as parents and as men.
Engaged Fatherhood for Men, Families and Gender Equality by Marc Grau Grau,Mireia las Heras Maestro,Hannah Riley Bowles Pdf
This aim of this open access book is to launch an international, cross-disciplinary conversation on fatherhood engagement. By integrating perspective from three sectors -- Health, Social Policy, and Work in Organizations -- the book offers a novel perspective on the benefits of engaged fatherhood for men, for families, and for gender equality. The chapters are crafted to engaged broad audiences, including policy makers and organizational leaders, healthcare practitioners and fellow scholars, as well as families and their loved ones.
Author : William Marsiglio,Kevin Roy Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation Page : 311 pages File Size : 52,7 Mb Release : 2012-01-01 Category : Social Science ISBN : 9781610447768
American fathers are a highly diverse group, but the breadwinning, live-in, biological dad prevails as the fatherhood ideal. Consequently, policymakers continue to emphasize marriage and residency over initiatives that might help foster healthy father-child relationships and creative co-parenting regardless of marital or residential status. In Nurturing Dads, William Marsiglio and Kevin Roy explore the ways new initiatives can address the social, cultural, and economic challenges men face in contemporary families and foster more meaningful engagement between many different kinds of fathers and their children. What makes a good father? The firsthand accounts in Nurturing Dads show that the answer to this question varies widely and in ways that counter the mainstream "provide and reside" model of fatherhood. Marsiglio and Roy document the personal experiences of more than 300 men from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and diverse settings, including fathers-to-be, young adult fathers, middle-class dads, stepfathers, men with multiple children in separate families, and fathers in correctional facilities. They find that most dads express the desire to have strong, close relationships with their children and to develop the nurturing skills to maintain these bonds. But they also find that disadvantaged fathers, including young dads and those in constrained financial and personal circumstances, confront myriad structural obstacles, such as poverty, inadequate education, and poor job opportunities. Nurturing Dads asserts that society should help fathers become more committed and attentive caregivers and that federal and state agencies, work sites, grassroots advocacy groups, and the media all have roles to play. Recent efforts to introduce state-initiated paternity leave should be coupled with social programs that encourage fathers to develop unconditional commitments to children, to co-parent with mothers, to establish partnerships with their children's other caregivers, and to develop parenting skills and resources before becoming fathers via activities like volunteering and mentoring kids. Ultimately, Marsiglio and Roy argue, such combined strategies would not only change the policy landscape to promote engaged fathering but also change the cultural landscape to view nurturance as a fundamental aspect of good fathering. Care is a human experience—not just a woman's responsibility—and this core idea behind Nurturing Dads holds important implications for how society supports its families and defines manhood. The book promotes the progressive notion that fathers should provide more than financial support and, in the process, bring about a better start in life for their children. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology
The fatherless black family is a problem that grows to bigger proportions every year as generations of black children grow up without an adult male in their homes. As this dire pattern grows worse, what can men do who hope to break it, when there are so few models and so little guidance in their own homes and communities? Where can they learn to “become Dad?” When Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Pitts—who himself grew up with an abusive father whose absences came as a relief—interviewed dozens of men across the country, he found both discouragement and hope, as well as deep insights into his own roles as son and father. An unflinching investigation, both personal and journalistic, of black fatherhood in America, this is the best, most pivotal book on this profoundly important issue.