Travelling Feelings: Narratives of Sustaining Love in Two Case Studies with Fathers in Family Separations

Abstract

' (2011) influential concept of 'doing family' not only 'having a family', has yet to be applied to the emotional dynamics inherent in the cultural shaping of fatherhood. Drawing from two case studies, of a Scottish and a Romanian father, I reflect in this chapter on the interconnections between 'doing family' and 'loving', as types of relational and emotional activities which maintain family bonds across borders despite intimate separations (divorce) and work migration. These case studies are taken from a qualitative research project exploring 47 fathers' experiences of involvement and love in their family lives. The specific case studies of Sergiu and Keith, marked by emotional trade-offs and relational give-and-takes in different spaces, illuminate the contradictions of their involvement in their close relationships to their children and expartners. For these two fathers, the process of 'doing family' after separations was a disjointed and renegotiated one, involving the use of emotional reflexivity, developed because of their changing lifecircumstances. In this process, both fathers recount how they began reconfiguring their masculine identity from providing to establishing intimate fathering (Dermott, 2008). These changes occurred when their normative precepts of family life were transformed in situations of emotional upheaval, movement and relocation. As their families were in motion, fathers mentioned instances of changing their communication strategies to express love in more visible ways to their children, directly constructing their 'good fathering' identity (Henwood and Procter, 2003) from renewed positions. Family separations in this context offered the potential to challenge the traditional father's role.

The Role of Love and Children’s Agency in Improving Fathers’ Wellbeing

“…For a lengthier discussion of this concept in relation to the commodification of parenting and emotions, seeMacht (2018b); also for how fathers maintained love during family separations, seeMacht (2019d).3 To help contextualize the quotes, demographic information on each participant concerning their culture, age and occupation is provided in brackets.…”

“…For an in-depth analysis of how worry is part of love as an emotional and relational complex, seeMacht (2019bMacht ( , 2019d.…”