Adapted fathering for new times: refugee men's narratives on caring for home and children

ABSTRACT

This study explores Middle Eastern men's narratives on how they adapt their fathering to new circumstances during resettlement in Sweden. It is based on individual interviews and diary notes collected over three years. Swedish policies encourage mothers as well as fathers to participate in paid labour and to be involved in household and child-care duties. Migrants who have been granted residency as refugees are entitled to extensive social welfare benefits, but they are also required to participate in language studies, accept trainee positions, and actively search for employment. The results of the present study suggest that the refugee fathers come to share daily chores and childcare with their spouse more equally than prior in their home countries. This new fatherhood is referred to in several ways: as a necessity to make family life work; as positive for the father–child relationship; and, as very time- and energy- consuming. Emerging masculinities and caring masculinities evolve in the analyses, and the results show comprehensive fathering, that is, fatherhood characterized by care, intimacy and love that are the result of hard, straining (reproductive) work that takes place with limited financial and/or cultural resources.

KEYWORDS:

• Migrant
• reproductive work
• masculinities
• longitudinal qualitative data
• narrative analysis

Acknowledgements

Many thanks go to the fathers who participated in this study. I would also like to thank the reviewers for constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The study of masculinity, and fatherhood, is here connected to practices rather than to cultural ideals and norms, although norms and practices to a great extent are intertwined.

2 Mothers and adolescent children also participated in the project, and were asked similar questions, but the mothers were asked about their mothering and not their spouse's parenting. Analyses of the children's narratives are presented elsewhere (Bergnehr et al., 2020). The mothers’ narratives are in part analyzed (Bergnehr, 2018), and other Middle Eastern refugee mothers’ talk have been explored (Bergnehr, 2016a, 2016b, 2017).

3 In Sweden, a refugee is allowed to own a car the first two years after having been granted residency, when she or he is granted the, so-called, settlement benefit. If still unemployed after this time, she or he becomes dependent on the social assistance and is no longer allowed to have any financial and material assets.

4 For a discussion of the complex relationship between men's care and gender equality, see Scambor et al. (2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, under grant number 2015-00581.