Abstract
This chapter conceptualises the “gender givens” of Danish schools, whereby teachers prefer to interact with the pupils’ mothers, making fathers feel redundant. By extinction, this chapter shows how fathers experience some settings in school as “awkward spaces of fathering,” since the mood and atmosphere are felt to be more “feminine.” Hereafter, this chapter narrows the lens to experiences that are more specific for migrant fathers and show how Muslim migrant fathers are more inclined to feel redundant in school, as feelings of awkwardness intensify due to experiences of being mistrusted. This chapter also includes stories of Muslim migrant fathers explaining how they grew up in cultures where school-related tasks belonged to the “realm of the father,” making the lack of acknowledgement by Danish schoolteachers even more remarkable.
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Notes
- 1.
As the fathers I encountered at Rosendal School were all living in heterosexual couples, other ways to practise gender are not reflected in this study.
- 2.
It is no more than approx. fifty years ago men began to attend childbirths at hospitals, where, incidentally, they were not always well-received. Few places, fathers were forbidden to take part in the childbirth until 1979. In 1999 ninety-five per cent of fathers were present at the childbirth (Madsen et al. 1999).
- 3.
Fathers after divorce or breakup with the mother to their child.
- 4.
Just before our interview, Sharmarke and his wife had chosen to change schools to a private Arabic school.
- 5.
A group of parents who had volunteered to arrange events for the pupils in the class. Each class had their own “well-being-group.”
- 6.
Yet, it was still Jeppe’s wife, who took care of organising the lunch-meal.
- 7.
An economic benefit given by the state to parents until the child is eighteen years. The practice was changed in 2022, whereafter the benefit was shared between the parents.
- 8.
“Foreningen Far” is the largest organisation for fathers in Denmark, advising fathers on topics like children’s health, fatherhood practices, fathers’ rights in relation to maternity leave, divorce, etc.
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Jørgensen, A.H. (2023). Fathers and School. In: Muslim Fathers and Mistrusted Masculinity in Danish Schools. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21626-8_3
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