‘It’s a Whole New Level’

Abstract

In the previous chapter I introduced a group of fathers whom I visited, usually on several occasions, while they were at home caring for their children. I used my observations during those visits, and their descriptions of their activities, to provide a cumulative picture of their caring work as embodied. My main focus, as I noted in concluding that chapter, was on what they were doing. The care they were engaged in was routine, and I argue that for that reason, it can be used as a benchmark; any father, taking on the engaged, hands-on care of a baby, will be bringing the physical capital of his (male) body to the job, and will learn (with few variations) the body techniques of caring that those fathers described. What remains to be explored is what this embodied care means to fathers who perform it. How do they describe the experience of taking time away from their paid employment to embark on this radically different kind of work? What effects do they perceive it to have had, on themselves as fathers, and as men? In this chapter, I move from my earlier focus on the ‘doing’ of care, to consider how it is experienced.