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.
Foreword - Margaret O’Brien Part 1: Why Fathering and Caring? 1. Caring fathers in the global context: Introduction - Katherine Twamley, Henna Pirskanen, Petteri Eerola, Pedro Romero-Balsas 2. Feminist care ethics and care ecologies: An ethico-onto-epistemological approach to studying caring fatherhood - Andrea Doucet Part 2: Understandings and Practices of Good Fatherhood and Care 3. Father’s care: A three-generation portrait from Urban China - Jieyu Liu 4. How do breadwinners care? Russian fathers doing good parenting after separation. - Ekaterina Ivanova 5. Fathers on the ‘night shift’? Understanding caring fatherhood through parents’ accounts of night-time care in Finland - Petteri Eerola, Armi Mustosmäki, Henna Pirskanen 6. The “good” Fijian father - Priyam Singh-Maharaj 7. ‘Daddy makes everyone smile’. Young people’s perspectives on caring fatherhood and family life in the Faroe Islands - Firouz Gaini, University of the Faroe Islands 8. Experiences of fatherhood among young Somalis - Marja Tiilikainen 9. Hegemonic, caring or hybrid fathers? The case of Polish fathers of adult children in ‘empty nest’ – Magdalena Żadkowska, Radosław Kossakowski, Bogna Dowgiałło Part 3: The Influence of Policies on Fathers’Care Practices 10. Concepts of care and the availability of leave policies to fathers in global perspective - Alison Koslowski 11. Full-time leave, part-time care?: Fathers’ uptake of parental leave in South Korea and children’s age as leave eligibility criteria - Youngcho Lee 12. Fathers’ care practices during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa and the UK - Katherine Twamley, Sadiyya Haffejee 13. Fathers becoming full-time carers after child protection processes in England - Lee Sobo-Allen 14. Capturing the parenting journeys of young fathers in the UK: exploring their parenting ideologies and practices against a backdrop of policy and welfare change - Anna Tarrant, Linzi Ladlow, Laura Way, Izram Chaudry Part 4: Minoritised Fathers 15. Syrian refugee fathers in the UK: practices of gendered fathering care - Esther Dermott, Tina Miller 16. Reconstruction of fatherhood in a strange land: Exploring fathering practices of Chinese migrants in Spain - Mengyao Wu, Alberto del Rey Poveda 17. Caring GBTIQ+ Parents in the Netherlands and Switzerland - Carole Ammann 18. Changed times – changed fathering: Refugee fathers’ caring practices under resettlement - Disa Bergnehr 19. Fathers caring in families with children with disabilities - Jesús Rogero-García, Gerardo Meil, Pedro Romero-Balsas 20. Accounting for lack of emotional engagement: Adults reconceptualizing fatherhood - Ann Phoenix 21. Fathers and care: Concluding thoughts - Pedro Romero-Balsas, Henna Pirskanen, Katherine Twamley, Petteri Eerola
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.
Reviews for Caring Fathers in the Global Context
“A remarkable book in both depth and scope – each chapter written by a truly international expert who has provided insights into caretaking by fathers in diverse contexts. An ‘open access’ publication, Caring Fathers in the Global Context is a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in this important topic with which, as is increasingly acknowledged, both child wellbeing and gender equality are closely intertwined.” Adrienne Burgess, The Fatherhood Institute “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
