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Despite growing recognition of fathers’ involvement in family life, dominant narratives still marginalise men’s caring roles. Caring Fathers in the Global Context addresses a pressing gap in our shared understanding: how care is practised and experienced by men across diverse cultural, social and policy settings.
Drawing on wide-ranging, international research, this timely edited collection offers a rich, comparative exploration of how men become ‘caring fathers’ and the pathways leading to this. It connects fatherhood studies with care scholarship to provide new theoretical and empirical insights into how care is shared, negotiated and made meaningful in everyday life.
A vital and interdisciplinary resource for anyone studying families and social change, this book invites readers to rethink care, masculinity and intergenerational relationships in a rapidly changing world.
“Caring Fathers in the Global Context provides a unique and nuanced understanding of fathers’ caring practices, identity work and parenthood. This extensive volume contributes to a well-needed update on global and diverse fatherhood in contemporary times. Combining empirical case studies in different countries, with a reflexive theoretical approach, the volume advances our knowledge of contemporary families and fathers’ caring practices. It presents an excellent contribution to family studies as well as to critical studies on men and masculinities.” Thomas Johansson, University of Gothenburg
“An impressively wide-ranging book that provides fascinating new empirical material on fathering practices in many different national contexts. Its focus on the experiences of minoritised fathers is particularly compelling.” Rachel Brooks, University of Oxford
Petteri Eerola is Senior Lecturer of Education (Family Research and Qualitative Methods) at the University of Jyväskylä and Honorary Associate Professor at the Social Research Institute, University College London.
Katherine Twamley is Professor of Sociology at the Social Research Institute, University College London.
Henna Pirskanen is Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Lapland.
Pedro Romero-Balsas is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Foreword (Margaret O’Brien, University College London)
Part I: Introduction to Caring Fatherhood
1. Why study fathers and care? - Katherine Twamley, Petteri Eerola, Pedro Romero-Balsas & Henna Pirskanen
2. The who, what and how of care in caring fatherhood: an ecological care ethics approach - Andrea Doucet
Part II: Understandings and Practices of Good Fatherhood and Care
3. ‘He is our handyman’: young people’s narratives on caring fatherhood and family life in the Faroe Islands - Firouz Gaini
4. Changing fatherhood and gender roles in Somali families: experiences of being fathered in Somalia and in the diaspora - Marja Tiilikainen
5. Moving beyond the narrative of marginalised fatherhood: Russian fathers' accounts of nonresident fathering after family separation - Ekaterina Ivanova
6. Hegemonic, caring or hybrid fathers? The case of Polish fathers of adult children in ‘the empty nest’ - Magdalena Żadkowska, Radosław Kossakowski & Bogna Dowgiałło
7. Berry-picking fathers and burdened mothers: parenting modes in dual-income households of urban China during the COVID-19 pandemic - Guanli Zhang, Bingyi Zhang & Lichao Yang
Part III: Exploring What Facilitates or Inhibits Fathers' Care
8. Fathers on the ‘night shift’? Understanding caring fatherhood through parents’ interpretative repertoires of night-time care - Petteri Eerola, Armi Mustosmäki & Henna Pirskanen
9. What happens when fathers are at home? Learning from families’ accounts of COVID-19 lockdown in the UK and South Africa - Katherine Twamley & Sadiyya Haffejee
10. ‘Being there’ as providers and caregivers: caring masculinities in parenting and partnering among young fathers in the UK - Anna Tarrant, Linzi Ladlow & Laura Way
11. Gendered framings of responsibility for care and the availability of leave policies for fathers from a global perspective - Alison Koslowski
12. Gender role attitudes, perceptions of parenthood and father’s parental leave use in Finland - Miia Saarikallio-Torp, Johanna Lammi-Taskula, Anneli Miettinen, Johanna Närvi & Ella Sihvonen
Part IV: Minoritised Fathers and Care
13. Syrian refugee dads in the UK: gendered practises of ‘involvement’ - Tina Miller & Esther Dermott
14. Reconstruction of fatherhood in a strange land: exploring fathering practices of Chinese migrants in Spain - Mengyao Wu & Alberto Del Rey Poveda
15. Refugee fathers’ parenting to protect, nurture and train under resettlement in Sweden - Disa Bergnehr
16. Queer fathers and parents’ caring path to parenthood in the Netherlands and Switzerland - Carole Ammann
17. Fathers caring in families with children with disabilities - Jesús Rogero-García, Gerardo Meil & Pedro Romero-Balsas
18. Accounting for lack of emotional engagement: adults reconceptualising fatherhood - Ann Phoenix
19. Conclusions: Towards more nuanced understandings of fathers’ care - Petteri Eerola, Henna Pirskanen, Pedro Romero-Balsas & Katherine Twamley