I’m writing a book on men, masculinities, children and care, to be published by Routledge in 2017 (all being well). The idea for the book grew out of the research I’ve done over the past decade or so with fathers, male childcare workers, and most recently with vulnerable young men.
Although research on fatherhood has expanded in recent years, much less has been written about men as professional carers for children, and there’s been very little work that brings the two together. What’s more, I’ve felt for some time that discussion of both topics has lacked a proper theoretical underpinning and has often been characterised by muddled thinking. And I’ve lost track of the number of emails I’ve received from students wanting to do an undergraduate or Masters dissertation on some aspect of men’s care for children, and asking me to recommend a good general book on the subject. I wasn’t sure there was one: so I decided to try to write it myself. I’ve edited or contributed to a number of books in the past, most of them published as part of Open University courses, but this will be my first attempt at a single-authored book.
Father and son (via all4desktop.com)
My plan for the book is that it will begin by posing the question as to why the subject of men and childcare has become such a hot topic, in both policy and popular discourse, in recent times. Why is there so much focus on fatherhood in our time, whether it’s moral panics about absent fathers, or government initiatives to encourage men to take paternity leave and take an equal role in childcare and family life? And what lies behind the repeated initiatives, both in the UK and elsewhere, to recruit more men to work with children, and the accompanying anxieties about the supposed lack of men entering teaching, particularly in primary and the early years? By examining policy documents, news stories and media representations, I intend to identify some of the key strands in dominant discourses about men and childcare. More specifically, I want to explore the tensions and contradictions between a discourse of gender equality, which represents men as equally able (and indeed, increasingly, as morally obliged) to care for children, and the equally powerful discourse of men as a risk to children, which has been fuelled by a number of high profile sexual abuse cases, including some in childcare services. How have these often competing discourses framed public policy, professional practice, and popular ‘common sense’ in relation to men’s care for children?
Moving on from discourses to theories, the book will explore and critique some of the key perspectives that underpin current debates about men, children and care. At this stage, I’m unsure which perspectives I’ll focus on, but it’s likely this section will include an examination of the debate between traditionalist models of family life, which draw on essentialist notions of gender identity, and progressive or egalitarian models, which suggest that gender identities are socially and historically constructed. The latter tend to be influenced by sociological or social constructionist thinking, but I also want to look at the insights that psychoanalytic theory, and particularly the ideas developed by psychoanalytic feminism, might provide into these issues. I’ll probably end up making the case for a psychosocial – or even a biopsychosocial – approach that attempts (perhaps over-ambitiously!) to resolve some of the tensions and differences between these different schools of thought.
Male childcare worker (via http://www.spiegel.de)
Having set out the discursive and theoretical terrain in this way, I’m hoping that the book will then focus on some key issues that I don’t think have been tackled adequately elsewhere. One of those issues is the meanings that children have for men. A lot of writing about fatherhood tends to focus on the impact of father involvement (or alternatively of father absence) on children’s development and wellbeing. There’s been much less work on men’s subjective and affective experience either as fathers, or as paid carers for children, though this has been rectified to some extent in recent years by some landmark empirical studies (such as those by Miller, Doucet, Dermott et al). But I think we still lack a deep enough understanding of either the social or psychic meanings of children in men’s lives, or the influence of those meanings, whether explicit or unconscious, on men’s capacity or willingness to care.
Another key issue that I want to explore in the book is the factors that influence men’s intention or desire to be involved in the care of their, or indeed other people’s children. What part is played by early experiences and relationships, and what role is there for education, in developing ‘caring’ masculinities? Here, I’ll probably draw on some small-scale research that I did some time ago on boys’ relationships with their mothers, as well as on the findings of our recent Beyond Male Role Models study.
I’ll post more details about the book, and provide updates on my progress, as I go along. I’d certainly welcome feedback on my ideas, particularly if anyone is working in similar areas, or is aware of other interesting work in this field, either in research or practice, that you think I should be aware of.
Martin Robb 