ABSTRACT
As a mother of a two-year-old, I have had an increasing interest in conversations about children and parenting in the last few years. I have participated in more conversations of this sort than I can count; and it was thus that I noticed a distinct pattern in my circle of friends, mostly people in their late 30s, which is that men tend to sincerely express the desire not to be to their children what their fathers were to them. These men want to be something “new,” “different” from what they have experienced. The difference is not something they can precisely express, but they feel it as a necessity. This chapter casts light on “new fatherhood” and the middle class in contemporary Turkey. The two factors of our thematic-“fatherhood” and “the middle class”—signal the fact that this study contextualizes fatherhood in the dynamic that enfolds class and gender, as well as places fathers in their social and cultural background. I discuss the construction of fatherhood by taking local, regional, and global levels into consideration.
