Fathers and intergenerational transmission in social context

Abstract

This article takes an intergenerational lens to the study of fathers. It draws on evidence from two economic and social research council-funded intergenerational studies of fathers, one of which focused on four-generation British families and the other which included new migrant (Polish) fathers. The article suggests both patterns of change and continuity in fatherhood across the generations. It demonstrates how cultural forces and material conditions need to combine to facilitate change in fathers’ exercise of agency and how social class and the conditions of being a migrant shape fathers’ practices. It argues that in seeking to recast the public debate about parenting, it is necessary to penetrate below the discursive level of talk about parenting to examine the habitual nature of many family practices, an endeavour to which an intergenerational approach is well suited. This approach enabled us to tease out the horizontal pull of within-generation influences on fathers, the vertical pull of inheritance from older to younger generations and the material and cultural conditions of fathers’ current locations, all of which shape their practices. This analysis also alerted us to changes in conceptual language – not only from fatherhood to fathering – but also to the historical resilience of the concept of childcare as reserved largely for the role and practices of mothers.

Keywords:

• fathers
• fatherhood
• parenting
• intergenerational studies

Notes

1. This is a variation of the biographic-narrative approach (Wengraf 2001) in which each interview was divided into three parts. In the first, respondents were invited to give an account of their lives from childhood onwards, with a minimum of guidance and intervention from the interviewer. This provided an opportunity for the respondent to present his or her own gestalt. In the second part, the interviewer invited the respondent to elaborate on salient events or experiences that had figured in the initial narrative. Finally, using a more traditional semi-structured interview approach, additional questions were posed relating to the specific foci of the study. Interviews lasted on average 3 hours.

2. Great-grandfathers’ life expectancy was lower than great-grandmothers’ and so many had died.