Fatherhood

Fatherhood PDF Author: Peter B. Gray
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674064186
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
We've all heard that a father's involvement enriches the lives of children. But how much have we heard about how having a child affects a father's life? As Peter Gray and Kermyt Anderson reveal, fatherhood actually alters a man's sexuality, rewires his brain, and changes his hormonal profile. His very health may suffer—in the short run—and improve in the long. These are just a few aspects of the scientific side of fatherhood explored in this book, which deciphers the findings of myriad studies and makes them accessible to the interested general reader. Since the mid-1990s Anderson and Gray, themselves fathers of young children, have been studying paternal behavior in places as diverse as Boston, Albuquerque, Cape Town, Kenya, and Jamaica. Their work combines the insights of evolutionary and comparative biology, cross-cultural analysis, and neural physiology to deepen and expand our understanding of fatherhood—from the intense involvement in childcare seen in male hunter-gatherers, to the prodigality of a Genghis Khan leaving millions of descendants, to the anonymous sperm donor in a fertility clinic. Looking at every kind of fatherhood—being a father in and out of marriage, fathering from a distance, stepfathering, and parenting by gay males—this book presents a uniquely detailed picture of how being a parent fits with men's broader social and work lives, how fatherhood evolved, and how it differs across cultures and through time.

Fatherhood

Fatherhood PDF Author: Peter B. Gray
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674064186
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Get Book Here

Book Description
We've all heard that a father's involvement enriches the lives of children. But how much have we heard about how having a child affects a father's life? As Peter Gray and Kermyt Anderson reveal, fatherhood actually alters a man's sexuality, rewires his brain, and changes his hormonal profile. His very health may suffer—in the short run—and improve in the long. These are just a few aspects of the scientific side of fatherhood explored in this book, which deciphers the findings of myriad studies and makes them accessible to the interested general reader. Since the mid-1990s Anderson and Gray, themselves fathers of young children, have been studying paternal behavior in places as diverse as Boston, Albuquerque, Cape Town, Kenya, and Jamaica. Their work combines the insights of evolutionary and comparative biology, cross-cultural analysis, and neural physiology to deepen and expand our understanding of fatherhood—from the intense involvement in childcare seen in male hunter-gatherers, to the prodigality of a Genghis Khan leaving millions of descendants, to the anonymous sperm donor in a fertility clinic. Looking at every kind of fatherhood—being a father in and out of marriage, fathering from a distance, stepfathering, and parenting by gay males—this book presents a uniquely detailed picture of how being a parent fits with men's broader social and work lives, how fatherhood evolved, and how it differs across cultures and through time.

The Modernization of Fatherhood

The Modernization of Fatherhood PDF Author: Ralph LaRossa
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226469042
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The period between World War I and World War II was an important time in the history of gender relations, and of American fatherhood. Revealing the surprising extent to which some of yesterday's fathers were involved with their children, The Modernization of Fatherhood recounts how fatherhood was reshaped during the Machine Age into the configuration we know today. LaRossa explains that during the interwar period the image of the father as economic provider, pal, and male role model, all in one, became institutionalized. Using personal letters and popular magazine and newspaper sources, he explores how the social and economic conditions of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression—a period of technical innovation as well as economic hardship—fused these expectations into a cultural ideal. With chapters on the U.S. Children's Bureau, the fathercraft movement, the magazine industry and the development of Parent's Magazine, and the creation of Father's Day, this book is a major addition to the growing literature on masculinity and fatherhood.

Fathering from the Margins

Fathering from the Margins PDF Author: Aasha M. Abdill
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542275
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Despite a decade of sociological research documenting black fathers’ significant level of engagement with their children, stereotypes of black men as “deadbeat dads” still shape popular perceptions and scholarly discourse. In Fathering from the Margins, sociologist Aasha M. Abdill draws on four years of fieldwork in low-income, predominantly black Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to dispel these destructive assumptions. She considers the obstacles faced—and the strategies used—by black men with children. Abdill presents qualitative and quantitative evidence that confirms the increasing presence of black fathers in their communities, arguing that changing social norms about gender roles in black families have shifted fathering behaviors. Black men in communities such as Bed-Stuy still face social and structural disadvantages, including disproportionate unemployment and incarceration, with significant implications for family life. Against this backdrop, black fathers attempt to reconcile contradictory beliefs about what makes one a good father and what makes one a respected man by developing different strategies for expressing affection and providing parental support. Black men’s involvement with their children is affected by the attitudes of their peers, the media, and especially the women of their families and communities: from the grandmothers who often become gatekeepers to involvement in a child’s life to the female-dominated sectors of childcare, primary school, and family-service provision. Abdill shows how supporting black men in their quest to be—and be seen as—family men is the key to securing not only their children's well-being but also their own.

Redefining Fatherhood

Redefining Fatherhood PDF Author: Nancy E. Dowd
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814719252
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Down (law, U. of Florida) offers a progressive discussion of the economic, social, and legal aspects of fathering, making a case for greater emphasis on the social, nurturing behavior involved in parenting to redefine the role men play in the lives of their children. She also explores the barriers to such redefinition, including concepts of masculinity, the interconnections between fathers and mothers, male violence, and homophobia. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century

Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Libra R. Hilde
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469660687
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
Analyzing published and archival oral histories of formerly enslaved African Americans, Libra R. Hilde explores the meanings of manhood and fatherhood during and after the era of slavery, demonstrating that black men and women articulated a surprisingly broad and consistent vision of paternal duty across more than a century. Complicating the tendency among historians to conflate masculinity within slavery with heroic resistance, Hilde emphasizes that, while some enslaved men openly rebelled, many chose subtle forms of resistance in the context of family and local community. She explains how a significant number of enslaved men served as caretakers to their children and shaped their lives and identities. From the standpoint of enslavers, this was particularly threatening--a man who fed his children built up the master's property, but a man who fed them notions of autonomy put cracks in the edifice of slavery. Fatherhood highlighted the agonizing contradictions of the condition of enslavement, and to be an involved father was to face intractable dilemmas, yet many men tried. By telling the story of the often quietly heroic efforts that enslaved men undertook to be fathers, Hilde reveals how formerly enslaved African Americans evaluated their fathers (including white fathers) and envisioned an honorable manhood.

Doing the Best I Can

Doing the Best I Can PDF Author: Kathryn Edin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520283929
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Across the political spectrum, unwed fatherhood is denounced as one of the leading social problems of today. Doing the Best I Can is a strikingly rich, paradigm-shifting look at fatherhood among inner-city men often dismissed as “deadbeat dads.” Kathryn Edin and Timothy J. Nelson examine how couples in challenging straits come together and get pregnant so quickly—without planning. The authors chronicle the high hopes for forging lasting family bonds that pregnancy inspires, and pinpoint the fatal flaws that often lead to the relationship’s demise. They offer keen insight into a radical redefinition of family life where the father-child bond is central and parental ties are peripheral. Drawing on years of fieldwork, Doing the Best I Can shows how mammoth economic and cultural changes have transformed the meaning of fatherhood among the urban poor. Intimate interviews with more than 100 fathers make real the significant obstacles faced by low-income men at every step in the familial process: from the difficulties of romantic relationships, to decision-making dilemmas at conception, to the often celebratory moment of birth, and finally to the hardships that accompany the early years of the child's life, and beyond.

Fatherhood Politics in the United States

Fatherhood Politics in the United States PDF Author: Anna Gavanas
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252028847
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Gavanas analyses the processes, the internal struggles within the powerful movement Fatherhood Responsibility Movement (FRM) in the mid-1990s, founded to put fatherhood at the center of U.S. national politics.

Fatherhood

Fatherhood PDF Author: Ross D. Parke
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674295186
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
In this new book, Parke considers the father-child relationship within the "family system" and the wider society. Using the "life course" view of fathers, he demonstrates that men enact their fatherhood in a variety of ways in response to their particular social and cultural circumstances.

Paternity

Paternity PDF Author: Nara B. Milanich
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674980689
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
“In this rigorous and beautifully researched volume, Milanich considers the tension between social and biological definitions of fatherhood, and shows how much we still have to learn about what constitutes a father.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity For most of human history, the notion that paternity was uncertain appeared to be an immutable law of nature. The unknown father provided entertaining plotlines from Shakespeare to the Victorian novelists and lay at the heart of inheritance and child support disputes. But in the 1920s new scientific advances promised to solve the mystery of paternity once and for all. The stakes were high: fatherhood has always been a public relationship as well as a private one. It confers not only patrimony and legitimacy but also a name, nationality, and identity. The new science of paternity, with methods such as blood typing, fingerprinting, and facial analysis, would bring clarity to the conundrum of fatherhood—or so it appeared. Suddenly, it would be possible to establish family relationships, expose adulterous affairs, locate errant fathers, unravel baby mix-ups, and discover one’s true race and ethnicity. Tracing the scientific quest for the father up to the present, with the advent of seemingly foolproof DNA analysis, Nara Milanich shows that the effort to establish biological truth has not ended the quest for the father. Rather, scientific certainty has revealed the fundamentally social, cultural, and political nature of paternity. As Paternity shows, in the age of modern genetics the answer to the question “Who’s your father?” remains as complicated as ever.

American Fatherhood

American Fatherhood PDF Author: Jürgen Martschukat
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479892270
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Explores the surprising diversity of fathers and fatherhood throughout American history and society The nuclear family has been endlessly praised as the bedrock of American society, even though there has rarely been a time in history when a majority of Americans lived in such families. This book deconstructs the myth of the nuclear family by presenting the rich diversity of family lives in American history from the American Revolution to the twenty-first century. To tell this story, Jürgen Martschukat focuses on fathers and their relations to families and American society. Using biographical close-ups of twelve different characters, each embedded in historical context, American Fatherhood provides a much more realistic picture of how fatherhood has been performed within different kinds of families. Each protagonist covers a crucial period or event in American history, presents a different family constellation, and makes a different argument with regard to how American society is governed through the family.