Ebook Changing Fatherhood in the 21st Century: Incentives and Disincentives for Involved Parenting
Based on in-depth interviews with fathers in two-parent households in the San Francisco Bay Area, this paper explores how fathers’ perceptions of different aspects of workplace and family encouraged and discouraged their involvement in child rearing. Disincentives included: (1) assumptions about complementary marriage and intensive motherhood; (2) families’ financial needs; (3) workplace structures, including inflexible, long hours and fathers’ perceptions of their ability to be replaced by another worker; and (4) workplace cultures that ignored workers’ family lives and defined work as the most important aspect of life.
Incentives included: (1) advanced scheduling of care work; (2) a critical stance on marriage as an institution; (3) workplace structures including flexible schedules and the ability of fathers to take advantage of them; and (4) workplace cultures that encouraged talk about family at work and that equally valued family and workplace matters. In the contemporary United States, the term “fatherhood” conjures up two contradictory ideas. One popular perception is that fathers are more involved with their children than ever before.
This “new father” spends quality time with his children, is nurturing and caring, and prioritizes family over all else. Popular media increasingly portray fathers as actively involved in their children’s lives, as creating organizations centered on fatherhood (including those geared toward helping fathers win custody cases), and employers as increasingly offering “parental leave” rather than maternity leave. At the same time, the public seems to have a growing concern for “deadbeat dads,” who fail to support or spend time with their children. T
hus, on one side exists the popular conception that many fathers are more involved with their children than ever before; on the other side is the realization that many fathers virtually “abandon” their children. How do these disparate views coexist in U.S. society? The reason these two contradictory orientations exist is that there is truth to both of them. Fathers spend more time caring for children than they did just three and a half decades ago (as do mothers (Bianchi 2000). Overall, however, fathers still spend less time caring for children than mothers (Bianchi 2000; Yeung et al. 2001).
Fathers are also unlikely to take parental leave, even when it is offered (Pleck 1993). And it is true that most noncustodial fathers spend very little time with their children (Lareau 2000; Maccoby and Mnookin 1992; Marsiglio et al. 2000). Recent research has pointed out the need to pay attention to what fathers do rather than where their presence is lacking. Although research finds that fathers do not have a central role in child care, it shows they are important in families and in networks of care (Hansen 2001; Laureau 2000). The questions remain, what inspires fathers to be more involved in child care? And what keeps them from participating in child care as much as they might? How men define and participate in family life reflects how they see themselves in relation to larger organizational contexts.
That is, men’s perceptions of external influences affect how they participate in fatherhood. “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 1928:571-572). For example, different aspects of workplace culture act to either reinforce fathers’ involvement in care work or diminish it. Workplace culture is not simply an objective reality from fathers’ experiences of it. Fathers’ subjective experiences of workplace culture—and contributions to it—also influence how it will affect their behavior. This paper examines how men’s experiences of different aspects of the workplace and family can act as disincentives and incentives to fathers’ more active involvement in child care.
Disincentives included: (1) assumptions about complementary gender roles in marriage and intensive motherhood; (2) families’ financial needs; (3) workplace structures, including inflexible, long hours and fathers’ perceptions of their ability to be replaced by another worker; and (4) workplace cultures that ignored workers’ family lives and defined work as the most important aspect of life. Incentives included: (1) advanced scheduling of care work; (2) a critical stance on marriage as an institution; (3) workplace structures, including flexible schedules and the ability of fathers to take advantage of them; and (4) workplace cultures that encouraged talk about family at work and that equally valued family and workplace matters.
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Ebook Changing Fatherhood in the 21st Century: Incentives and Disincentives for Involved Parenting
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