Subjects Between Legacies: How Fathers Construct the Relation Between Their Childhood Past, the Present of Parenting, and Their Child(ren)’s Future

Sharani Osborn

Sociological Research Online, 2020, vol. 25, issue 3, 333-349

Abstract: This article brings to the discussion of change in the meaning and practice of fatherhood a consideration of fathers’ position between generations and between legacies. Conceptualisations of temporality in the work of Schütz and Mead are applied in analysing a father’s dual position, as both parent and child, as a particular instance of the subject’s position in a present from which the relation between pasts and futures is (re-)constituted. Drawing on qualitative research with a diverse sample of 31 fathers, I argue that the responsibility to lay down a positive emotional and psychological legacy for their child draws fathers into an engagement with their own experience of being parented. The resources for interpretation, and even transformation, of a father’s parenting heritage are situated in terms of contemporary discourses of fatherhood and family and of persistent inequalities in the conditions under which fatherhood is forged.

Keywords: family; fatherhood; gender; generations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socres:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:333-349

DOI: 10.1177/1360780419891176

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