Abstract
Talking one day with Logan sitting down on a bench in Morningside Park in Manhattan, I’m remembering out loud the National Convention for At-Home Dads that I attended the week before that occurred in another state. This is an event that is organized yearly or every two years and that had been going on since the late 2000s. Logan did not go that year. Very much like the previous ones, out of 130 fathers, the large majority was White, middle-class, heterosexual, and married, with a small minority of gay men and an even smaller minority of men of color. I comment on how many fathers approached me during times between sessions, handing me business cards, indicating what they do in addition to being an at-home dad, cards with either the name of their parenting blogs, podcasts, their degrees, or what job they do outside of staying home (see Fig. 3.1). Logan reacts by saying,
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Notes
- 1.
The percentage of married women with a child under six working rose from 39 to 63 percent between 1975 and 2014 (Peoples and Bailey 2018: 265).
- 2.
Twenty-nine percent of married women earned more than their husbands in 2015 (that number was 18 percent in 1987). They are 38 percent to out-earn their husbands when only one partner is employed (Cross 2017: 90).
- 3.
From field notes.
- 4.
Manuel indicated that he prefers the gender pronouns he/him/his, and he prefers the term ‘dad’ rather than ‘father’.
- 5.
Manuel’s quotes come from two Skype interviews.
- 6.
A filmed conference on parenting in New York City in the 2010s that Kyle and his wife were both invited to participate, during which they were part of a panel. The name and date of conference will not be disclosed for anonymity purposes.
- 7.
The concept originally applies to mothers, who face ‘motherhood penalty’: maternal leave, pregnancy, leaving the workplace for periods of time impact women’s “likability, hostility, test score, hiring, salary, and promotion” (Benard and Correll 2010: 630, 617) and career progression; mothers are viewed “as less competent and committed to paid work than nonmothers”.
- 8.
The quotes from Silas are from a Skype interview.
- 9.
At the time of fieldwork in 2016, surrogacy was illegal in the state of New York.
- 10.
Non-published, fictional piece of writing based on his real life that he shared with me and that he agreed I use here.
- 11.
Metaphor for ‘home’.
- 12.
New Girl (2018, May 8) Fox, Ep. 5 ‘Godparents’.
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Gallais, C. (2023). Work, Caring Masculinities and the Work of Fatherhood. In: Fatherhood and Masculinities. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34132-8_3
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