The fathers of Destiny: Representations of fatherhood in a popular South African magazine

Abstract

This study utilised textual analysis to characterise the representation of fatherhood in the eight issues of Destiny Man magazine published in 2014. Stories that pertained to fatherhood and that were related to aspects of contemporary family construction, work, and identity formation were included for detailed text analysis. Our findings suggest that fatherhood is defined by access to wealth, and is inextricably linked to features of modern-day neoliberal capitalism with its bias towards wealth accumulation and economic standards of identity. Additionally, matters such as race and origin seem to be the primary classification criteria when it comes to self-identification as a father figure. From these data, we conclude that the notion of fatherhood is fluid; it changes continuously depending on the social class position of the incumbent male.

Keywords:

• apartheid
• black middle-class masculinity
• fatherhood
• psychoanalysis

Notes

1. The main reason why females are being chosen as the domestic displays the hegemonic male experience before the ‘threat’ of feminisation. This is reacted to by omitting females from the contemporary domestic makeup.

2. Due to the limitations of the research, a fuller exploratory account could not be provided regarding all content related to fathers in Destiny Man.