Understanding discursive barriers to involved fatherhood: The case of Australian stay-at-home fathers

Abstract

Western societies are argued to be experiencing a shift to 'involved' models of fatherhood, and representations of stay-at-home fathers are becoming increasingly commonplace in the popular media, which plays a role in discursively producing ideal versions of fatherhood. Policymakers are simultaneously seeking to disrupt engrained gendered assumptions around parenthood in order to accomplish a gender egalitarian division of labour. I adopt a Foucauldian discourse analysis to uncover the construction of fatherhood in the news media and I explore how stay-at-home fathers negotiate these discourses. I find that the media constructs a superior breadwinning 'involved father' alongside an inferior 'househusband' who is coerced into stay-at-home fatherhood and is incapable of nurturing children. Participants embraced and rejected the 'househusband' discourse in ambivalent ways, revealing the struggles they have with discourses of contemporary fatherhood and the challenge that policymakers face in changing gendered patterns of childcare.