This article examines how men's involvement in the care of aging parents is accounted for in relation to discourses of masculinity and femininity. The article draws on semi-structured interviews with Swedish men and women caring for elderly parents. Using the concepts of doing, re-doing, and undoing gender as a theoretical tool, both reproduction and renegotiation of gendered understandings of caregiving were found. When accounting for men's lack of involvement in care, gender was often resorted to as an explanation. As men took on care responsibilities, the meaning of both care practices and masculinities were renegotiated, either by re-doing gender through distinctions of “new” hegemonic masculinities, or even by undoing gender through making gender irrelevant in care arrangements. Gender equality discourses were surprisingly absent from accounts of eldercare arrangements. Since policies on gender equality in Sweden have focused more on parenthood than other caregiving relationships, “caring masculiniti...

Tina Miller, Making Sense of Fatherhood: Gender, Caring and Work.

Doing, Re-doing or Undoing Masculinity? Swedish Men in the Filial Care of Aging Parents

In this paper I use ethnographic fieldwork conducted at four museum sites to explore gendered parenting in one type of middle- and upper-middle-class public setting. I introduce public parenting as an understudied topic, review literature on family-oriented leisure and consumption, and then frame the study’s methods and goals as they relate to these same themes. Comparing mothers to fathers, I show how fathers typically emphasized playfulness with their children while mothers tended to focus on managing their children’s activities; how fathers were more likely to symbolically indulge their children while mothers were more likely to symbolically deprive them; and how fathers generally romanticized family museum visits by regarding them as special and sentimental while mothers were more apt to rationalize those same visits as ordinary and routine. I discuss three factors which help to explain these patterns: contemporary cultures of motherhood and fatherhood, the structuring of paid and unpaid work, and the distinctive social context represented by family-oriented museums. I conclude by addressing the study’s contributions and implications and suggesting opportunities for future research.

Mundane Mommies and Doting Daddies: Gendered Parenting and Family Museum Visits

This article analyzes the interconnections between masculinity and migration in the work Hemos perdido el sol, by Angel Maria de Lera. The novel depicts the challenging experiences of Spani...

/pdf/displaced-spanish-men-masculinity-sexuality-and-migration-in-2bktmjrf52.pdf

Displaced Spanish men: Masculinity, sexuality, and migration in Hemos perdido el sol (1963), by Ángel María de Lera

Faderskap og familieliv under hospitalisering af hjertesyge børn

/pdf/tina-miller-making-sense-of-fatherhood-gender-caring-and-2u5idb543f.pdf

Tina Miller, Making Sense of Fatherhood: Gender, Caring and Work.

Citations

Doing, Re-doing or Undoing Masculinity? Swedish Men in the Filial Care of Aging Parents

Mundane Mommies and Doting Daddies: Gendered Parenting and Family Museum Visits

Displaced Spanish men: Masculinity, sexuality, and migration in Hemos perdido el sol (1963), by Ángel María de Lera

Faderskap og familieliv under hospitalisering af hjertesyge børn

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