Men’s Choices and Masculine Duties

Abstract

This article analyzes the debate among family experts about fathering in Finland from the 1980s to recent years. The controversy is whether shared parenting between women and men is good for children and for men themselves or whether a gendered division of parenting should be advocated instead. Both discourses perceive men as important as fathers but disagree on the care of babies and very young children. Irrespective of position, experts stress that the choices made by men regarding fatherhood are individual and have wide-ranging consequences in their lives and the lives of their children, especially of boys. Experts view motherhood as a societal duty, and fatherhood as personal and elective. If fathers’ choices are stressed as a moral issue, it is because fathers are seen as masculine actors, not as nurturers. The author argues that the radical societal ethos of shared parenting seems to have weakened, or even disappeared.

Psychological Regimes of Truth and Father Identity: Challenges for Work/Life Integration

“…In Finland, the knowledge and expertise on male parenting tends to be organized around two competing regimes of truth or rationality that can be observed in the texts on fathering that we analyse in this study (Vuori 2001(Vuori , 2009Eräranta 2005). These rationalities share the same psychological vocabulary but represent the field to be governed somewhat differently, identifying and defining different ethical principles, explanatory logics, facts, problems, and ends for the government of fathers and male parenting.…”

“It was Necessary at the Beginning to Make This Whole Revolution”

“…Its instruments are addressed to special group of people-parents, yet the gender dimension ought not to be omitted here. Jaana Vuori (2007) distinguishes two types of parenting discourses adopted in family policy: (1) the exclusive mothering discourse and (2) the shared parenting discourse. In the first discourse, women are perceived as innately nurturing and consequently as primary caregivers in parental relationship.…”

"She's My Baby": How Recently Incarcerated Fathers Experience Their Relationship with Their Daughters

“…Scholarship on father involvement and paternal impact on children has expanded significantly over the last 30 years (Brotherson, Yamamote, & Acock, 2003;Flouri & Buchanan, 2003;Lamb, ed., 2010;Leidy et al, 2011;Lewis & Lamb, 2003;Vuori, 2009;Williams & Kelly, 2005). The notion of responsible fathering has become a conceptual staple for both research and programming (Doherty, Kouneski, & Erickson, 1998;Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb, 2000).…”