ABSTRACT
Fathering is changing. High levels of maternal employment are eroding men’s position as breadwinners; increased breakdown and reconstitution of families means that growing numbers of fathers are living separately from their biological children; and concomitant rises in remarriage and co-habitation are seeing an increasing proportion of men joining new households as stepparents. Higher levels of childbirth outside marriage have reduced fathers’ automatic rights to involvement with their children unless asserted through legal process, and it is now less certain than in previous generations that fathers will live with their children and remain in their household. Yet at the same time as fatherhood appears to becoming more precarious, expectations about the fathering role are rising. A growing social consensus suggests that today’s fathers should be, and want to be, more actively engaged with their children than previous generations have been (e.g. Brannen, Lewis, Nilsen and Smithson, 2002; Lamb, 2004; Fletcher, 2008; Palkovitz, 2002).
