Despite growing acceptance of a ''new fatherhood'' urging fathers to be engaged in family life, men's relative contributions to housework and child care have remained largely stagnant over the past twenty years. Using data from in-depth interviews, we describe how identity processes may contribute to this persistent inequality in parenting. We propose that the specificity of men's identity standards for the father role is related to role-relevant behavior, and that the vague expectations many associate with ''new fatherhood'' both contribute to and result from men's underinvolvement. Consistent with this proposal, we find that while all fathers face difficulty living up to expectations of ''new fatherhood,'' those with vague identity standards contribute less to carework and are less committed to the father identity, in part because they are less likely to experience self-discrepancy. We outline the implications of our results for future research in identity theory and for understanding inequality in households.

Productive methods (McDonnell 2014) are one methodological strategy for drawing out and measuring cognitive processes in social research. Productive methods build on methodological advances in the areas of participatory research, arts-based research, creativity research, visual methods, and focus group research, and capitalize on the advantages of attending to embodiment, emotion, and interaction. Productive methods require research participants to work together to create a cultural object, some thing that did not exist prior to the research. By observing this collaboration and production process, and comparing the process with the product, the researcher gains access to difficult-to-obtain data, including implicit and nondiscursive cognition and cultural schemas. Productive methods offer one solution to the widely acknowledged challenge of studying and measuring cognition.

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Identities are comprised of sets of meanings that people apply to themselves. These meanings vary in both content and quality, with important implications for individuals' actions, emotions, and commitment to their identities. In this research, we reveal how men's significant others serve as important sources of identity meanings and are key to how men interpret and enact their identities as fathers. Using data from in-depth interviews with low-income fathers, we demonstrate that fathers whose significant others offer positive examples of parenting, articulate concrete expectations, and provide explicit evaluations of men's performances, have more nuanced ideas of who they want to be as fathers and can more effectively translate those ideas into clear lines of action and engaged parenting behavior.