Making moves: involved fathers experiences of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside family walking program

ABSTRACT

The relationship between physical activity and fatherhood in communities in which people experience marginalisation is not well understood in qualitative research. This is particularly the case in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver, Canada, where there are few services to meet the unique needs of fathers. To address these gaps, we developed Make a Move (MaM): A six-week family walking group pilot program for mothers, fathers, and their children who were living or accessing services in DTES. Informed by a community-based participatory research approach and intersectional poststructuralism, we conducted semi-structured interviews with nine fathers pre- and post-program to understand how their lived experiences as involved fathers in DTES shaped their participation in MAM. Our analysis revealed the ways that the men challenged dominant discourses related to masculinity, physical activity, and fathering, especially within the context of occupying marginalised and subordinate masculinities.

KEYWORDS:

• Fathers
• fatherhood
• masculinity
• marginalisation, physical activity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the UBC Partnership Recognition Fund (Grant PRF # 0718.24.32) received by JW and FD; Vancouver Foundation (ID# UNR16- 0254) FD; and a Banting Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (ID# 393666) FD. JLO is supported by a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair (2020-2027).

Notes on contributors

J. M. Webb

Jessica Webb recently obtained a Master of Arts in the School of Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa. She is also the co-founder of Taking Steps: Warrior Women’s Wellness program and Make a Move: Family Walking program – two trauma- and violence-informed physical activity programs that were piloted in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

F. E. Darroch

Dr. Francine Darroch’s participatory action research focuses on equity-oriented health promotion with populations experiencing marginalization. Her work specifically examines social determinants of health, maternal health, and the intersections of sex, race, gender, and violence. Her current research aims to address inequities in physical activity for pregnant individuals and parents with the goal to improve quality of life and overall health.

A. R. Giles

Dr. Audrey Giles is an applied cultural anthropologist who conducts research with Indigenous communities – primarily in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic. Her research has three main foci: i) injury prevention (particularly drowning prevention in the Canadian North); and ii) health promotion (particularly Indigenous peoples’ engagement in physical activity, with a particular emphasis on gender, and the cultural adaptation of resources); iii) sport for development in Indigenous communities.

J.L. Oliffe

Dr. John Oliffe is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Men’s Health Promotion. Founder and lead of the UBC’s Men’s Health Research program his research program focusses on the psychosocial prostate cancer and male depression and suicidality. Taking a gender relations approach his work is purposefully applied to advance the health of men and their families.