Loving Fathers or Deadbeat Dads: The Crisis of Fatherhood in Popular Culture

Abstract

During the last few decades, fatherhood has come under increasing public scrutiny, giving rise to deep confusion over the role of men in family life today. Nowhere is this clearer than in contemporary popular culture, where a proliferation of conflicting representations of fathers perpetuate a vivid sense of crisis in the paternal role. The popular press directly feeds into widespread moral panic about absent fathers, decrying the crisis in traditional values epitomized by ‘fatherless families’. At the same time, it is commonly assumed that fathers are becoming more intimately involved in childcare, and an intense media focus on men’s relationships with their children works to promote this ideal of the ‘new’, nurturing father. This image of the loving father stands at odds with persistent fears concerning male violence and sexual abuse. Given this confused cultural climate, it is no wonder that popular culture has become swamped with clashing images of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fathers (Furstenberg 1988). Indeed, as traditional ideas about fatherhood come under challenge and social pressures mount towards enhancing men’s involvement in family life, popular culture has become a central arena for playing out emerging tensions within cultural constructions of the father’s role and for reinforcing and undermining dominant expectations around what good fathering involves.