MMO: You conclude that "Do men mother?" is the wrong question, and suggest instead that men are in the process of redefining what fathering means. You also suggest we should pay more attention to the places where difference creates disadvantages, and where difference is simply difference. In addition to the problem of male embodiment, what are some of the disadvantages men face as primary caregivers?
Andrea Doucet: Some of the disadvantages men face is that their caregiving are the invisible and unappreciated aspects of their care work. One of the things I have sought to do in my work is to bring attention to what it is that men actually do when they care for children. Working around and through the question of men and mothering for about five years, and speaking to over 100 fathers and a small group of mothers, I arrived at the view that studying fathers' caregiving through the question of men and mothering both limits our views of fathers caring and, further, that the question itself is flawed. Listening to men's stories through the question "do they mother?" or even "can they mother?" implies that we are looking at fathering and their experiences of caring for children through a maternal lens. When that happens, other ways of nurturing are pushed into the shadows and obscured.
For example, a maternal lens misses the ways in which fathers promote children's independence and risk-taking, while their fun and playfulness, physicality and outdoors approach to caring of young children are viewed only as second-best, or invisible, ways of caring. Similarly, a maternal lens overlooks the creative ways that fathers are beginning to form parallel community networks, to those that have traditionally existed by and for mothers; many of these networks are set up around their children's sports. As I argue in my book, studying men's practices through female-centered understandings is not dissimilar to scholarship which was strongly critiqued by feminist scholars -- that of studying women's lives through male centered concepts and lenses.
I also think we need to be careful about how and where we talk about men's disadvantage in childrearing. It goes without saying that many fathers' rights groups are already doing a very good job documenting men's disadvantage. As a feminist, there are tensions in researching and writing about fathering. (I have spoken and written about this in several places and I know that others have as well).
Like many fathering researchers, I have made the plea in my book that we need to understand men on their own terms, and not through female-centered approaches. Nevertheless, I also argue that there is a difference between this call and the argument by feminist scholars that male lenses should not be used to study women. Quite simply, the structural backdrop that accompanies these questions is different, asymmetrical and indeed, unequal. Fathers' stories of resistance and change, promise and potential, as narrated throughout my book, must be framed against structural relations between women and men. Women's opportunities in paid work, in education, in politics have certainly widened and increased gradually throughout the last half century. Nevertheless, women continue to face disadvantages particularly in the realms of paid work and politics where their representation at the highest levels in both of these spheres has remained sparse in all countries.
It's also important to recognize that arguing for men's greater involvement in childcare is to encourage men's entry into what is arguably the primary domain where women hold power and responsibility. Quite simply, there are differential costs to this call for greater participation of the other gender. Active fathers, as individuals, may lose some power and authority in the workplace when they trade "cash for care" but men, as a gender, still benefit from what sociologist Robert Connell calls the ever-present "patriarchal dividend." The same is not true for women. While men may come to appreciate, as detailed throughout my book, the joys and rewards of caring, it is still women, as Ann Crittenden beautifully details, who overwhelmingly pay the social and economic price for care in society.
MMO: In your postscript, you specifically note that you don't want your research to be taken as a blanket endorsement of involved fatherhood at any cost -- "not as part of a larger political, ideological struggle between woman and men," but as a contribution to the ongoing scholarship on the benefits of involved fathering to men, children, families and communities. Within that context, what did the study tell you about the benefits of involved fathering to men?
Andrea Doucet: There are so many scholars who have written about the benefits of involved fathering to men. Such writings come from across the political and ideological spectrum, from fathers' rights advocates to feminist researchers to fathering researcher s who emphasize issues of generativity for involved fathers. In Canada, one of the best sites for reviewing some of the most up to date research is the Fathers Involvement Research Alliance, which is led by Dr. Kerry Daly at the University of Guelph.
One of the unique findings that I can highlight here from my own research relates to the political implications that can be drawn from research on men and caring and to the potential role that men could play in the social recognition and valuing of unpaid work. As I highlight in "Do Men Mother?", many fathers come to recognize the value and the skill involved in caring work. They speak about how parenting is the "hardest" or "most difficult" job they have ever done. They slowly come to appreciate how vitally important, yet socially devalued, caring work is. They're adding their voices to the chorus of generations of women who have argued for the valuing of unpaid work. As one Aboriginal stay-at-home father expressed it: "This Mr. Mom business -- here I am complaining about it and women have been putting up with for a hundred years now." Looking ahead to when they will return to paid work, stay-at-home fathers also begin to question what social commentators have referred to as "male stream" concepts of work. These fathers adopt perspectives traditionally espoused by women on the need for work-family balance.
I also think that fathers taking on more of the caring work represents a reversing of a trend which many authors have repeatedly pointed to over the past two decades. This is an increasing pattern whereby middle class families with ample economic resources rely on other lesser-paid women. Paying others to perform domestic services such as childcare and housework is ultimately a passing on of women's traditional domain from one group of women to another and effectively hardens the boundaries that exist around gender and caring. The end result is that work and homemaking remain as devalued "women's work" -- and an ever-broadening lower tier of women are paid meager wages to perform a "modified housewife" role, while other women do work which is considered more socially "valuable." We've seen this theme recur in many of the popular "nanny" books that are now on bookshelves.
Ultimately, I argue that the fathers described in my book can be viewed as responding to Dorothy Dinnerstein's lament a quarter century ago in her classic "The Mermaid and the Minotaur" (1977), where she elaborated on the many societal and psychologicalimbalances that occur in a society when one gender does the metaphoric "rocking of the cradle" while the other gender"rules the world."
Thank you, Judith and Mothers Movement Online, for taking the time to ask and receive my responses to these very important and provocative questions. I am always open to discussing, debating, and conversing about these issues of men and caregiving. Thank you for including a discussion of "Do Men Mother?" on your wonderful and important site.
mmo : june 2007 |
