Parenting and Intimacy

Parenting and Intimacy ● Is the balance of parenting between mothers and fathers changing? - Are fathers and mothers becoming more equal participants in parenting - Are fathers men who mother - With what consequences? ● Are parent-child relationships moving towards equality and ‘disclosing intimacy’ - Are parents (mothers and fathers) and children becoming more like friends? - Does this mean an end of ‘parental authority’ or ‘filial piety’? Intensive Mothering ● Child-centred, expert guided, emotionally absorbing, labour intensive and financially expensive ● The cultural contradictions of motherhood Sharon Hays (1996) Absent Fathers? ● ‘The underlying issue is less the absence of fathers and more the painful lack of emotional engagement by fathers, whether they are continually present or not (hooks, 2004 p104) ● Now heavy pressure on fathers not to be ‘absent’ plus programs like FatherFIRST to help teach being present (YT video) Gender: mothers AND fathers who care? ● Global differences in gender regimes persist ● Divergent understandings of gender difference and equality in academic work ● Some feminist argue men’s narratives of care should not be measured, judged, and evaluated through ‘maternal standards’, ‘feminine practices’ and identities. But it is important not to ‘essentialise’ such standards and practices. Intensive mothering: a middle-class mother, India ● (Moon-Moon, quoted in Donner 2008, 31) Practices of 65 year old mother-in-law, India ● (Donner, 2008, 135) Fathers and intimacy in China ● Softening of hierarchy between parents and children following one child policy; also blurring distinction between ‘strict father’ and ‘kindly mother’ ● Research suggests parenting still gendered - mothers more hands-on childcare and fathers defining themselves as providers, but fathers wanting more involvement and intimacy … (see Xu and O’brien, 2014) ● As a father, he should have a loving heart for his daughter, but he should not display it (father quoted, p316) AUDIO This is a lecture about parenting and intimacy. So starting with these two issues for me, actually this lecture is about these two issues. I'll divide it into two parts. So the first part will be about the balance parenting between mothers and fathers and whether that is changing. And the second part will be more about hierarchy between parents and children, whether that is changing. And the issue of intimacy is actually involved in both of these questions, because if mothers and fathers are becoming more equal participants in. It also have consequences for the kind of intimate relationship that parents have with their children, and you would imagine that that would become more like the same for mothers and fathers. So another way of putting this is our fathers really just made, mother. So are the activities and things that farmers do and the kind of quality of relationship that they have with their children. Much the same as women's so that they are just like main, mother. And if that has changed recently, or relatively recently. What's the consequences are there, wider consequences in terms of the social fabric. Does it change how we wished to repeat employment, the divisions repo family. For example, okay. So, one of the most cited phrases about helium, 10, is this description of intensive mothering that shine is fruit in the 1990s, where she describing, she's describing, and North American parenting, and particularly mothering and talking about how alongside women increasingly being paid workers. When mothering, the greater quality of women's access to paid employment, and women managing to break through into more and more occupations and professions and be equally represented sometimes in the workforce. At the same time as that you have an intensification of the expectations about motherhood and spas, in particular. So these are described by Shan he's talking about America as intensive mothering, and the elements of intensive mothering around the woman head here, child centred expert guided emotionally absorbing labour intensive and financially expensive. So it's a, maybe a quite a class specific understanding of mothering, and yet she was also arguing that this was the normative expectation. This was increasingly the normative expectation that mothers would be very devoted very engaged, consulting experts and putting lots of themselves into this. So in the 90s. There was also still discussion about fathers being more absolute than mothers, particularly in the United States. There's been a history of writing about black families, and absent fathers in particular. Within black family households, various reasons, we'll discuss discussing this in popular culture In North America, like a few years deadbeat dads which also translated across the Atlantic was also used in, in the British context, to some extent. So, here, Bell Hooks straighting about fathering thinking about it on fire. You will known black feminist scholar. Right. Beginning of the 2000s, seeing that the issue wasn't so much absence in the physical sense but a painful lack of emotional engagement. So fathers could be pressed, but emotionally disengaged. Just as well as, as, absent and emotionally absent. So it was the lack of painful lack of emotional engagement by fathers, that Hookes thought was this real problem. And I'm going to show you it No, but I would like, I will put the link separately to this video, I'd like you to come back and look at this video. That is one of the many programmes in the United States but not just in the United States also in this country and across Europe. There are programmes, encouraging farmers to be involved in their children, and trying to give advice and help and support to fathers to not be absent, but to be very present in their children's lives. So when we get to the 21st century in Europe, in European and North American societies and culture. That is actually a very strong emphasis on fathers being as involved in popular expert discourse. But of course, there are significant differences in understandings about mothering and fathering in different cultures. Not only have ideas shifted, so that we have moved away from the idea that there should be a strict division of labour in this country. But understandings of divisions of labour of course they're quite different in different contexts. But as well as that, in the literature. There's a discussion about in appropriately judging fathers by the standard of understandings of mothers, mothers are. And maybe there's a kind of counter argument about accepting that maybe fathers are doing things differently, but they are. Nevertheless, involved in different ways and shouldn't be judged by what might be called material standards. But there's always a bit of a risk of a centralising of seeing that you know men are naturally this women are naturally that. And as sociologists we would always try to avoid that. We would be a, maybe. Seeing gender is very socially and culturally constructed and being agnostic about what's natural. Okay, so I'm going to shift from speaking about it in European American contexts, to talking about this particular book, which is talking about middle class by Bengali parents in India. And I don't know that you can read the subtitle maternity globalisation and middle class identity in contemporary India. And what's interesting about this is that the idea of the intensive mother is very much alive in the Indian context so although Shannon Hayes was using it to describe a North American phenomenon. It seems very cold pleasant present in India, in middle class households. But, alongside, that is very gender regime. So here the author donor is describing a Bengali housewife in our 30s, who's got a university, a university degree, highly educated and has worked as a school teacher, but then gives up her job. A few years after her marriage. She's married to a man who is from a relatively affluent middle class family, and is working in a private company is in us in sales, and Aaron has a much higher salary then our teaching salary it used to be. So, financially secure, and from a relatively affluent background. And here she's talking about how she spent her time. And she's not spending it on cooking and housework, she's spending it on her child and orchestrating a whole set of activities for the child to maximise the child's education. So here's you know should spelling to computer classes classical dance classical music, drawing and teaching English herself to improve child's English. And her. This is a sorry this is different. Voice, this is the voice of the mother, a mother in law, talking about when she was a young woman, and she was doing more of this. The kind of housework. But, commenting now that her daughter in law is focusing on our time on our son, her grandson. And she's left doing that, domestic work so for that generation of Indian women. The situation has changed quite radically. She no longer is expecting a certain kind of service from her daughter in law and being able to step back from certain houses work. But, either relies on servants or is doing it because the daughter in law is preoccupied with her child. So intensive mothering was definitely a feature of the Indian context so now shifting to a piece of research in China, and I haven't managed to find an equivalent to dollar study of parenting in China, it's not that there isn't research about pm two in China. It has mainly been focused on the little Emperor syndrome, the change in hierarchy between parents and children, following one, the one introduction of the one child policy so for over 20 years in China. People were only allowed to have one child, and particularly it was particularly policed in urban areas. And that radically changed. Some authors argued and demonstrated to think in research to decrease off the hierarchy to parents and children, but also change the gender division between mothers and fathers in that it blurred the distinction between the strict, the strict father and the kindly mother. But the literature that there is. It is accessible to me in English that's talking about parenting. Still, sure there's quite a gendered pattern with mothers being much more hands on in child care, particularly in early childhood, but across childhood. Then fathers fathers still defining themselves much more as providers. So as in India. Maybe not as extreme in that, there's still mother and father pattern is still very alive in middle class Indian family households. It may be that Chinese women are working as well as their partners, but the father is the mean and our provider. And, but at the same time, as, as, wishing to have the authority of the provider, there's research by shoe and O'Brien shows that fathers wanted more involvement with talk about wanting to have a better relationship with their children than they had with their own father, wanting a bit more enhanced on involvement and intimacy with the child than they had with their own father, But at the same time, expressing this view that a father should not be too emotionally expressive, because of the tension between being too emotionally expressive and maintaining some authorities was still his idea. He should maintain some authority, not the strict, not as much as the strict father of their father, soft and to some extent across the generations, but still wanting to have some sense of authority of a father. And that means that a father should have a loving heart for his daughter, but you should not display it that you should be more careful about displaying your emotion. So that was based on that research is based on studies with fathers and doctors in Shanghai from between 2000 to 2009, and it involved. Both interviews and our Jewish survey, starting from schools pupils were recruited into focus groups in schools and asked to take questionnaires for two fathers. And then a small number of were interviewed so it was a combination of methods. So now moving back to the North American context. And here there is a great deal of research looking specifically at divisions of labour between mothers and fathers and looking at this in great detail. Because a lot of feminist research has been interested in whether mothering and fathering are becoming more equal, and whether women are no longer carrying the main burdens that they are doing a double burden because they've now become a nurse, as well as we're both doing the homework and then the air. So there's been interest in how far that's shifting away towards the quality of involvement fathers. And I suppose we could sum it up, to see that the inequalities are not generally completely disappeared. But fathers are much more involved than they were. Perhaps, and what would have intimate relationships with the children so it's not so dissimilar from the Shanghai fathers, but maybe a step or two further on. Or maybe not further on because it's not appropriate to think of this as a kind of linear evolution so in fact that's a completely stupid data centric thing to say, but Esther Dermot who's done research papers on this topic, talked about intimate fathering. So, the main one intimate relationships with their children, but that doesn't necessarily mean they want to carry an equal burden of all aspects of childcare and looking out for children. Kidding for children, thinking for children. So it's primarily about the individual relationship between the father and the child it's not primarily about the quality with the partner. It's not primarily about wanting to share equally with the mother, or with with whomever they are co parenting. But at the same time, this research shows that the more involved fathers with children and the more hands on they get back to it. The less and claiming claim dr to support big change or different differences in divisions. So it may be is having an impact on softening gender. Change roles, even a little fathers are often relatively unenthusiastic about domestic work and spend much less time on childcare and housework tasks and when they do get really involved. The become more sympathetic I think more feminist less prepared to support gender division, so as to determine find that middle class fathers talked about different ways of spending time with children. This is a relatively small scale study. It's interviews with middle class employed, fathers. 25 middle class and employed farmers. It's very detailed long in depth interviews. And so, of these ways of spending time. The intensive time the being there, the family time. We're probably the most engaging for fathers but the, we're also able to list, other forms of caring for them and doing housework has us ways of spending time with the children. But overall, they didn't think that the total amount of time, should be the measure of how involved they were in their children's lives. When they compared themselves to the road fathers they had much more emotional involvement than their own fathers. So again, a bit of an equal with the Shanghai study but the or the Shanghai study is a Korean less maybe because this was published first. But the. It's the emotional quality of the emotional relationship but they do the stress is significant rather than the time they put into these tasks or any of these tasks. But the work of Tina Milan and others, old social shows that inequalities between men and women are set up by the different time that people put in, spent at an early childhood print an infant, an infant is small children are young inequality in times often at its most extreme because it's a common pattern for women to take maternity leave from their employment and fathers to take truly relatively little leave and be back at work, then a pattern is established of women doing much more than men. And that then has consequences for how people feel about the kind of relationship that they have with their children also sets a pattern that tends to carry on as it becomes a path that it's easy to fall. And here on this court, that is a father talking about, because the mother has been for the last nine months. She's got a different level of bonding with the, with the child. But some fathers also still think that women are naturally better killers. But more often. That notion of women being naturally better at clearing the name isn't repeated. But the practice of how parenting started off, often results remain feeling that well the world does actually know better. However, there's some made to try to resist us so well. You find still find many meaning. In, the British context in the study, who position themselves as helpers, a secondary caters to the, to the women who are doing the 24 724 hours, seven days a week thinking for the child. There are some new We'll see. But it's just to see that they are the same, and some men are trying to be very very involved, and some men, of course want to give up working be full time, parents, and in some family household social role reversal. With the women earning more or having a more secure job, and being there for the person who is not working, is working sorry, fathers, is not working. So this is a study by Gartner rather than demo. And this is juki couples with the school aged children. And here, there's some fathers who think of good fathering in terms of intimacy and being equal, equal in emotional closeness to children to the mother. Yes, talking about. Basically, mothering and father will be exactly the same thing so for him, fathers are like a mother still isn't a majority study, she interviewed 34 Canadian fathers in the two devices at exceptional situation I was interested in being very very hands on the way that they were would be, they would be able to be like pioneers. Have a kind of ripple effect or another main Help. The leader of social change. And she found that the bodily practices, you know, being looking after a very small infant falls off all day and touching it necessarily involves quite a physical. A lot of physical contact. That in itself, felt very significant for these men. So she is arguing that if men can become as competent in these practices as women, and they can, and she speaks to men who are, it changes their relationship, not just for children but also with the partners and maybe with, with the world like they have a different kind of insight into healing work that she thinks is consequential. And the would be able to emphasise empathise with the way that mothers sometimes feel like they know, they will understand that mothers don't naturally always understand what a baby wants that they have to learn that there is a struggle, but it can be a great big stress and effort to understand how to look after the baby. And to know what to do when a baby is crying. And the, you know, going through that emotionally draining experience. Gives completely different perspective. But at the same time. It isn't exactly the same. Because fathers don't have the same sense of being under surveillance and required to live up to an expectation of naturally knowing what to do. Men are still seated there still is this cultural thing, that there's still a bit of a cultural lag of this idea that of intensive mothering and being thing that women should be doing, rather than me. And insofar as these expectations are around, then it gives me more of a sensible choice, concerning their level of involvement and it gives women a sense of failure. If they're not living up to the expectations that men don't have to take on that sense of failure because they're making a choice is going against the kind of four faults expected of them. And they could get instead a sense of reward. However, the culture is shifting so here is just as you look at the video about trying to teach fathers to be involved in children, encouraging fathers to have skin to skin contact is also something that crops up in kind of popularised expert to father's images newspaper The Irish Times running that kind of mindset to feature the importance of skin to skin contact. So Ranson giovinazzi here is talking about some father's experiences through what she calls body capital, like the way that the parents have to use the body to look after a very young child, but father's bodies of course are of particular male many different. Obviously, fathers can breastfeed but the feed in other ways. can become distressed by children goals or learn attentiveness learn how to work. Positive fine for bV. Is that kind of detailed work to do. The experience of doing that is shifting subjective understandings. And so here's Steve articulating how he feels is taking his relationship with his children, to a whole new level. A different kind of emotional engagement altogether. Obviously if you have more intensive fathering, as well as more intensive mothering when relationships break down and a chorus and father leaves the family household. That can be a very painful. Father and the child. And some of the lectures is talking about that. The kids the children come back to this next lecture. So, okay, I want to stop here basically so with the. So what we've. This transcript was generated by https://otter.ai