Abstract
Caring fatherhood in very traditional and masculinized environments has been under-researched. This study analyzed the experience of Spanish policemen who used parental leave to care for their babies alone while their partners returned to paid work. The aim was to ascertain whether use of parental leaves under those circumstances favors the development of caring masculinity. The qualitative methodology deployed consisted in semi-structured interviews conducted in 2014 with a sample of 15 policemen who took parental leave alone for at least 4 weeks while their partners returned to paid work. More specifically, the analysis addressed the respondents’ discourse on the justification of their decision to engage in this type of childcare, the workplace reaction to the decision, and their experience when fathering alone. The findings suggest that, even though hegemonic masculinity persisted in part of these fathers’ discourse and experience, engagement in such innovative practice tended to narrow the divide between traditional and caring masculinity. The conclusion drawn is that encouraging fathers to take leave to care for their children alone is a useful tool for furthering caring masculinity in highly masculinized environments.
Introduction
Family and work conciliation policies are increasingly geared to furthering fathers’ use of parental leave as a way of reducing gender inequality in both realms. The measures adopted to reach that aim vary from country to country, as does the success rate. The institution of paternity leave and the extension of the right to other childcare leaves to fathers is an approach widely implemented across European Union countries, Spain among them (Moss, Duvander, and Koslowski 2019). Whereas paternity leave use, which is of short duration and taken immediately after childbirth, has been fairly successful, other leaves involving caring for babies alone when their mothers return to work have been much less so (O’Brien and Wall 2017).
In Spain, although 75% of eligible fathers take paternity leave (Escot, Fernández Cornejo, and Poza 2014), only 0.5% use parental leave full time and 1.8% part time, while around 1.5% take part of the mother’s maternity leave when she consents to the transfer 2 (Meil, Romero-Balsas, and Rogero-García 2018). As fathers normally take leave at the same time as their partners, in Spain at least, the term “shared parental leave” is misleading. Here, fathers on leave while their partners work outside the home are said to be “on leave alone,” “caring alone,” or analogous. Although a minority option, fathers’ use of leaves to care for babies alone when mothers return to work is significant for it may constitute a deviation from the type of paternity associated with hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1993).
Research on parental leave has shown that fathering alone is a very minority experience in nearly all countries, primarily because it has not been an explicit aim of leave policy (O’Brien and Wall 2017). Nonetheless, since the latter years of the last century, northern European countries have encouraged fathers to share parental leave with mothers for significant periods of time as a way of narrowing the gender divide in working and family life. The outcome of that policy is that the vast majority of fathers view such decisions as obvious (Almqvist, Sandberg, and Dahlgren 2011; Duvander, Haas, and Thalberg 2017). Single-handed fathering tends to induce change in families’ gender relationships (Brandth and Kvande 2003; Fernández Cornejo, Escot, Del-Pozo, and Castellanos-Serrano 2016).
Whilst the use of parental leave is being increasingly studied in both Spain and other countries, fathers’ experience in caring for children alone when the mother returns to work has been less fully researched (O’Brien and Wall 2017), particularly in male-dominated professions such as the armed forces and law enforcement agencies. Analysis of professions where female presence is only token in practice and confined to specific niches in the organization (Atherton 2009) may afford helpful insight into the effects of such new practices, not only on the masculinity exhibited by the fathers involved but also on the type that prevails at the workplace.
The majority presence of men in law enforcement agencies is an international norm (Natarajan 2016), and the Spanish police force is no exception. In the Guardia Civil, the agency studied here, 93.5% of the employees are male, and women hold just 2.7% of the positions of power and responsibility (Oficial State Gazzete 2014). A civilian force, the Guardia Civil 3 is nonetheless organized along military lines and performs certain military tasks (Ministerio del Interior 2018). Its mission includes protecting persons and their goods from harm; controlling firearms and explosives; persecuting tax evasion and fraud; ensuring interurban traffic safety; guaranteeing security in communication channels, ports, and airports; and protecting the natural environment.
No study has yet been published on the type of paternity practiced by members of the armed forces. This article analyses the discourse around paternity and masculinity expressed by male policemen who cared for their babies alone after their partners returned to paid employment. The aim is to explore whether that experience furthers caring masculinity or is interpreted as a practical, temporary arrangement with scarcely any effect on traditional masculinity associated with paid work, as suggested by earlier studies (Doucet 2004). The analysis addresses the structure of discourse and whether it embraces elements that challenge hegemonic masculinity. More specifically, the analysis addresses respondents’ justification of the decision to undertake childcare alone; their descriptions of the workplace reaction to their decision; and their experience as carers alone. This study contributes to filling the gap in the literature on alternative paternities in highly masculinized working environments.
Masculinized Working Contexts and New Paternities
Linked to the practices, relationships, and interpretations with which men define their position in the gender order (Connell 2002), masculinity builds on the historic and cultural context. As it may be understood and practiced in different ways in any given culture, its analysis entails the study of all the realms where it is expressed: labor market, family, and State (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Multiple masculinities can therefore be defined, with different degrees of presence and power. Masculine identities flow, that is, change and adapt with the roles played in different domains, embodying what Atherton (2009) dubbed the fluidity of masculinities.
The social reference for the most prominent type of masculinity, associated with authority and cultural leadership, has been labelled “hegemonic masculinity.” Such hegemony refers not only to other masculinities but also to the gender order in the broadest sense. It covers practices, expectations, and identities that allow men’s dominance over women to continue (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), legitimizing the former’s non-participation in unpaid childcare and domestic work. As hegemonic masculinity tends to be more firmly and uniformly entrenched in workplaces with a minority of women, the experience of men who display non-hegemonic behavior in those contexts is particularly significant.
Some studies on masculinity among law enforcement officers contend that hegemonic masculinity can be useful, analytically speaking, if understood as a set of “essential markers” consisting in cultural ideals, social practices, and individual characteristics (Swain 2016). In such professions, the cult to hegemonic masculinity rests on the observance of masculinized rules, values, and lifestyles (Dunivin 1994). The archetypal soldier is male, even though formally women may also play that role (Woodward and Jenkings 2011). The “warrior hero” is perceived to embody such traditionally masculine attributes as discipline, strength, exercise of legitimate violence, rationality, and courage (Atherton 2009; Hutchings 2008; Swain 2016). Recent studies have found, however, that the link between police culture and gender has been oversimplified and calls for more refined analysis (Silvestri 2017). The argument is that while a “police culture” (being tough, not displaying emotions, etc.) exists, it is less directly related to masculinity than often presumed (Farrell, Monk-Turner, Danner, and Scallon 2018). In the armed forces, that oversimplification can be attributed in part to the projection of the image of the arms-bearing soldier onto other military staff, including doctors, engineers, nurses, and administrators, to name a few (Swain 2016). Whilst the advent of paternity for Spanish policemen may be experienced as a reassertion of masculine identity (Brandth 2012), it constitutes a crucial biographical event that triggers practices that may potentially clash with the values associated with workplace masculinity. In the security forces, the demand for full availability for work (Fusulier, Sanchez, and Ballatore 2013), coupled with women’s recent enlistment in these organizations and their scant presence in management positions generates an environment in which women and men find it difficult to conciliate work and family obligations (Tremblay, Genin, and di Loreto 2011). Earlier studies show that work-family life conflicts may lower policemen’s job satisfaction, jeopardize their professional performance, and pose family problems, all to the detriment of their satisfaction with life in general (Howard, Donofrio and Boles 2004).
One issue to be addressed, then, is how policemen who care for their babies alone develop pattern-breaking fatherhood and identify with so-called caring masculinities (Elliott 2015). Studies in countries such as Canada show that policemen of the younger generation devote more time to family activities than the baby boomers (Labrèche and Lavoie 2004 in Tremblay et al. 2011) and are more open to an equitable division of domestic tasks. In qualitative studies on male use of parental leaves in Spain, however, leave-taking is justified more on the grounds of its being “a right” than on the furtherance of a balanced distribution of childcare responsibilities (Romero-Balsas, Muntanyola-Saura, and Rogero-García 2013). Although children’s “right” to be cared for by their parents is an area of growing research interest, in respondents’ discourse, parental leave is identified as a “right” reserved to employees. Policemen’s justification of their decision to others and in particular to superiors and co-workers, their interpretation of workplace reactions, and their experience with childcare may reveal the extent to which caring for a baby alone drives a rift in their perception of masculinity. Analysis of such discourse may also afford insight into where resistance to change primarily lies.
Data and Analysis Strategy
The qualitative analytical strategy adopted for this study consisted of semi-structured interviews. The choice of that strategy was, first, informed by the paucity of statistical data on men’s use of parental leaves alone, not only in highly masculinized professions but among the population at large. Second, analysis of discourse is the most suitable approach to capture the complexity of these fathers’ experience caring for children alone and their ideas about paternity and masculinity.
Snowball sampling, deployed here, is the most appropriate technique for identifying hard-to-reach minority populations (Whyte 1985) such as policemen using leaves to care singly for their babies. The research team gained access to the sample by applying to the Guardia Civil’s Equality Department. Their application requested the collaboration of policemen who in the last 4 years had cared for one or more of their children under parental leave for at least 1 month after their partners returned to work.
The 15 policemen meeting these requirements who ultimately comprised the sample were interviewed by telephone in 2014. That medium, the advantages of which for qualitative methodologies are open to question (Novik 2008), generates trust through non-verbal communicative components (Muntanyola-Saura and Romero-Balsas 2014) and provides for readier location of and contact with the respondents (Schwarz 2007). Nonetheless, as in-depth telephone interviews necessarily preclude visual nuance, they may require more specific and structured questions than face-to-face interviews (Berg, 2007). The mean duration of the interviews conducted for this study was 1 hour and 16 minutes. The sample included policemen from seven of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions 4 .
The script for the interviews was designed in keeping with the research objectives. Discourse analysis, the methodological approach adopted (Gee 2004), sheds light on respondents’ social representations against the backdrop of the socio-historic conditions that inform such discourse (Alonso and Callejo 1999). A semi-structured script was used to organize and fine-tune the question content and enhance the comparability of the subjects broached by respondents (Berg, 2007). Atlas.ti, the qualitative software chosen for analysis, generates theory through systematic hierarchization of categories based on codes, super-codes, families, and networks (Hwang, 2008). The procedure used to analyze respondents’ discourse revolved around three analytical axes: reasons for taking leave; workplace reactions; and experience as sole carer. When preparing the fieldwork, those dimensions were defined to structure analysis and address research aims. Discourse was classified in terms of the three aforementioned axes on a scale ranging from the archetypal to its opposite.
Respondent characteristics.
Source: formulated by the authors. (P) paid leave; (U) unpaid leave; *Only one of the partners is the parent; W/H - mother’s work week in hours.
Results
Reasons for Caring Alone
Unlike paternity leave, leave alone is not routinely taken by Spanish men. Those opting to do so consequently explain their decision in fairly elaborate terms. That contrasts with the pattern observed in northern European countries, where the practice is viewed as an obvious choice requiring very little further explanation (Duvander et al. 2017). The reasons given by the policemen interviewed varied with their personal situations and the type of leave used. Their arguments were based on the parents’ job status, the family life conciliation options available to each member of the couple, and their social representations on how babies should be cared for. In all the cases analyzed the explanation revolved around direct parental care for the newborn.
Very few respondents explicitly linked that desire to the idea of caring paternity (Elliott 2015), even though in the social discourse prevailing in Spain, fathers’ active engagement in childcare is highly valued. Only a small number of fathers explained that one of the reasons for using the leave alone was to become more involved in caring for their children. That differs from the explanations given by Scandinavian fathers (Almqvist et al. 2011). With one exception, no reference was made to gender equality as a reason for using the leave. Involved fatherhood need not necessarily be associated with the desire to further gender equality (O’Brien and Wall 2017) or a very elaborate discourse on how paternity should be practiced. Spanish leave policy does not encourage men to take leave alone, and their ability to do so depends on the transfer of part of the mother’s maternity or nursing leave or on using unpaid leave. As a result, the reasons for using such leave had predominantly to do with both parents’ job status and economics (Meil et al. 2018).
One of the job-related reasons that induced fathers to use the available leave was their own job security. As civil servants, no matter how innovative their behavior or whether or not their attitude was shared by superiors and co-workers, these fathers were not at risk of dismissal for taking time off. In addition to such job security, they alluded to the greater flexibility that characterizes State employment. Lapuerta, González, and Baizán (2011) stressed that working in the public sector facilitated the extended use of part-time parental leave.
These policemen attached greater importance to their partner’s job circumstances, however, when explaining their decision. That attitude is not exclusive to their profession. Rather, it has been observed across the board both in countries where only a minority of fathers take parental leave alone (Meil, Romero-Balsas and Rogero-García 2017) and among fathers who take leaves for more than the standard time in countries where their use is routine, such as Finland (Lammi-Taskula 2017) or Sweden (Duvander et al. 2017). The mother’s job circumstances cited by respondents as a reason for assuming childcare alone included responsibility for a business that could not be left unattended, temporary employment contracts, employment in a company where they were asked to return to work in advance, or part-time employment.
My wife manages a restaurant and if she were to take the whole maternity and nursing leave she would have to hire someone to replace her, which would mean losing a lot of money and we’re fortunate enough for me to be able to take it, so that’s what we did. (E9, 42, secondary school diploma, two children, 14 weeks on leave alone)
Overall, the respondents alluded, more than to caring fatherhood, to instrumental or pragmatic reasons associated primarily with the two partners’ working conditions. The aim was to avoid having to pay for formal childcare services. As formal childcare for children from 0 to 3 years old is not guaranteed by the Spanish State, most families must defray all or at least most of the cost. That notwithstanding, in the academic year 2014/2015, 36.7% of 1-year-olds and 57.2% of 2-year-olds (values higher than the European mean) were enrolled in infant schools (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte 2019). That differed widely from Scandinavian fathers, who referred mostly to expressive reasons (having the experience) with no explicit mention of gender equality, which was taken for granted (Duvander et al. 2017).
Reactions at the Workplace
Respondents’ discourse showed that caring for children singly challenges the hegemonic view of masculinity in place in the Guardia Civil, a finding consistent with observations reported in earlier studies on armed forces in the United Kingdom (Swain 2016). The decision elicited a broad spectrum of reactions in co-workers and superiors, which tended to entail some manner of social response, ranging from explicit criticism to open support. Co-workers often couched their opinions about the decision in humorous terms. Such jokes subtly reproached the decision to use the leave, undervalued caring (less than “real (= paid) work”, associated with “doing nothing” or “being on holiday”) or attributed the task to women, thereby relegating female responsibilities to a subordinate position in the gender order (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). The respondents took this jesting as friendly teasing rather than as criticism, an indication that they were fully aware of the ideological context contrary to divergence from the hegemonic masculinity ideal.
They said kiddingly, “oh so you’re going to take three months off to do nothing, holidays,” that sort of thing (laughing), that’s pretty funny. (E5, 35 university degree, two children, 14 weeks on leave alone).
Some respondents reported that their superiors and co-workers were surprised and put up some resistance. At the same time, being a policeman made taking long-term leave easier in some ways. Several respondents noted that as the decision was based on an individual worker’s right, it was not questioned by their superiors. The corps’ highly bureaucratic military hierarchy facilitated negotiations. In some cases, respondents claimed not to know their bosses’ opinion, for the administrative proceedings could be handled without negotiating the leave with them directly. Such unawareness on the part of superiors, which would be odd in other types of work, is less so in this highly bureaucratic and hierarchical scenario. Given that policemen are in charge of enforcing the law, rules and regulations lend powerful legitimacy to decisions involving the exercise of lawful rights. The bureaucratic rationality assumed by army employees (Hutchings 2008) consequently serves to endorse this new practice as natural. Even so, some bosses questioned the legitimacy of such a provision for men. In those cases, workplace-specific rules based on hegemonic masculinity clashed with a new right associated with alternative masculinity. No unit is going to deny a voluntary leave of absence to care for a child because it’s a right you have by law. (E3, 38, secondary school diploma, two children, 25 weeks on leave alone)
Even though in general respondents mentioned some disapproval, a few were enthusiastic because they encountered positive attitudes among co-workers and bosses. Some received explicit support from their superiors and others were praised by their co-workers for challenging traditional childcare patterns. Their discourse included terms like “courage,” a typically masculine value in the army (Hutchings 2008) to legitimize leave. These fathers proudly claimed to have served as an example, an indication of the depth of the rift their behavior made in the hegemonic masculinity prevailing in the Guardia Civil. The inference is that novel regulations and behaviors induce fluidity (Atherton 2009) toward caring masculinities (Elliott 2015), even in predominantly male professions.
My co-workers: the women delighted with the decision and the men a little like the boss, surprised, courage for doing it, but wholehearted support from them all. (E12, 37, university degree, two children, 4 weeks on leave alone)
Caring Alone: The Experience
On the whole, the fathers interviewed cared for their babies alone, starting early in the morning when their partners left for work. While they were on leave alone, they did not take their children to day care and, although variable, grandparental presence was not significant as a rule. Shared caring resumed when their partners returned home, normally in the afternoon or evening. The respondents explained the tasks performed in a good deal of detail.
Well at eight they would wake up, I
The fear of having to undertake childcare alone was defined as the most daunting challenge by most respondents. They recalled feeling fatigued and overwhelmed, and relieved when the mother came home from work, when they could rest. Some explained that stress and fear were more intense at first and then waned. Those who used leave alone after sharing time off with their partners deemed the earlier period to be a training grounds that made things easier when they were left on their own.
More or less implicit in these fathers’ discourse was the idea that mothers did a better job of caring and therefore ranked higher as carers. Unaided time management was recurrently perceived as an enormous responsibility.
In those first 2 weeks of paternity leave, with your partner there you have support for everything; little by little you discover things and you’re backed, you have the peace of mind of knowing that, well if something happens there’s someone there to help. And when you’re alone he’s all yours, you’re responsible: he eats if you feed him and he’s clean if you change him, if he’s tired you put him to sleep. (E1, 37, secondary school diploma, one child, 18 weeks on leave alone).
Fathers expressed insecurity in the absence of the mother’s supervision. They missed their partners to coordinate activities, delegating in her the responsibility for organizing care for the baby and for the home. When caring alone, they felt the weight of responsibility and experienced doubts about how well they were performing the task. In stark contrast to the tenets of hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), fathers acknowledged feeling weak and fearful in this unknown situation.
Well pretty scared, because I didn’t really know how to calm him down, because his mother did that better. Always a little afraid, but on the second day we were alone, I handled him perfectly well. (About caring alone, E6, 32, secondary school diploma, one child, 10 weeks on leave alone).
Many respondents took these difficulties as a challenge that was symbolically rewarded with “feeling capable,” which lifted their self-confidence and made them “proud to say that I did it alone.” Traits such as ability and self-improvement characteristic of the hegemonic masculinity prevalent in the police force were cited (Dunivin 1994). In such cases, the values and models of a masculinized environment were used to justify the performance of female tasks, including childcare in reformulated hegemonic masculinity (Branth and Kvande 2018). Archetypical military jargon (Woodward and Jenkings 2011) was likewise observed in the expressions used by some respondents, such as frontline, duty, or obligation adapted to childcare.
It’s satisfying to face a challenge and get to know from the front line what it means to bring up two kids at once, or in this case I can say to care for just one, I mean to get hands-on knowledge of the everyday, the difficulty, be able to talk to any mother about everyday caring and at the same time the satisfaction that they’re your kids and it’s you who’s with them. (E3, 38, secondary school diploma, two children, 25 weeks on leave alone)
The trade-off for these problems was always the bond generated with the baby. Fathers realized that their relationship with their children was strengthened because they had cared for them alone. Another advantage mentioned was not having to resort to day care or other external assistance.
Respondents’ discourse applied professional values such as justice, objective discipline and responsibility to masculine caring and child rearing. Those values were set against ideal motherhood in which love and affection prevailed. Although these attitudes are typical of the male breadwinner model, other notions related to the profession were also highlighted. Like the notions of capability and challenge analyzed earlier, they constituted a logical continuum between the military profession and child-rearing, as observed by Atherton (2009). The notions favoring fluidity between hegemonic masculinity and childcare included objectivity, responsibility, justice, and discipline. Respondents adapted traditionally masculine rules, values, and lifestyles to more caring behaviors (Farrell et al. 2018).
Kids need to be told things the way they are; they need discipline, and I think that’s being a good father, instill in children self-discipline, self-organization. […] their mother often has to be the good cop, she’s more a mother and that’s why they’re different and I think that should stay that way. (E12, 37, university degree, two children, 4 weeks on leave alone)
As the analysis shows, respondents applied some professional values typical of the police force to childcare. The profession formed part of their identity at all times, whether on or off duty. As revealed by research conducted by Tremblay et al. (2011) and Fusulier et al. (2013), the 24-hour component of police service may be an obstacle to engagement in fatherhood. That idea was expressed by E3 (38, secondary school diploma, two children, 25 weeks on leave alone):
Well, I personally can’t, outside of my job as a military public official and policeman, I can’t perform tasks other than those of a policeman, I’m a policeman 24 hours a day and, with a few exceptions and concessions, I can’t do anything else.
The idea of the importance of self-care was present in these policemen’s discourse. In contrast to other studies (Atherton 2009), however, it was not associated with the military domain, but with having lived alone and a certain degree of socialization in their parents’ families.
No, because before living with my partner I lived alone for a long time, so I was pretty used to domestic tasks and everyday planning. (E1, 37, secondary school diploma, one child, 8 weeks on leave alone)
Although these masculine values closely related to strict discipline and hierarchy were prevalent in respondents’ discourse, the emotional components of fatherhood were also present. Nonetheless, although affection and emotional intelligence were expressed as ideals by some fathers, as a rule they were interpreted as characteristics more typical of mothers.
Well, I don’t know, spend more time with them and take care of them, love them more, be with them, not leave them alone so much. (And a good mother) I think she does a better job of mothering, she’s more affectionate, she’s with them more when they’re ill, me too but less. The mother gets more involved, because of maternity or whatever, but it’s different; I don’t see myself in that role. (E8, 41, secondary school diploma, two children, 25 weeks on leave alone)
Discourse denoted not only adaptations of hegemonic masculinity to caring alone but also indications of challenges to that attitude and paternities built around traits traditionally attributed to women (Barbeta-Viñas and Cano 2017).
On being asked whether his partner was concerned about his fathering alone, one respondent said: “Her full trust in me made me feel very loved.” (E1, 37, secondary school diploma, one child, 18 weeks on leave alone). According to Abril (2011), one of the ways to challenge hegemonic masculinity is to break the habit of structuring time around paid work. The respondents challenged such structuring not only by using parental leave, but by assuming that they had to organize their own time in terms of their babies’ needs.
I learned (while caring alone) that I had to get better organized because even then it wasn’t possible because…it wasn’t the oven that set the time…it was the baby. (E2, 38, secondary school diploma, once child, 14 weeks on leave alone)
Conclusion
This study explored whether taking parental leave to engage in childcare alone challenges the hegemonic masculinity prevalent in policemen’s highly masculinized, military environment. The analysis revealed how childcare alone is interpreted from the perspective of hegemonic masculinity, helping fill the gap in the literature on alternative fathering models in working environments characterized by firmly entrenched hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). The intertwined presence of traits challenging such masculinity is also observed, however. The decision by men in highly masculinized working atmospheres to engage in childcare alone therefore gives rise to ambivalent discourse where traits associated both with hegemonic masculinity and with its challenges can be identified (Swain 2016).
Three dimensions were defined in the analysis of respondents’ discourse to meet the research objective pursued: the reasons for using leave to care for children alone, workplace reactions, and the carers’ experience alone. Initially, the reasons wielded for single-handed care were essentially instrumental. Although exhibiting pioneering behavior in terms of gender equality, these policemen expressed no desire to diverge from hegemonic masculinity, nor was their decision explicitly related to action intended to foster intra-partner equality. They did nonetheless mention, implicitly or explicitly, that parental childcare is preferable to non-parental childcare (day care, grandparents, or nannies, for instance).
Their discourse around workplace reactions was ambivalent. Some respondents recounted co-workers’ more or less subtle objection to a decision that deviated from the norm. The inference to be drawn from such reactions is that fathers caring alone for their children challenge the hegemonic masculinity prevailing in that work environment. Those taking the leave justified it on the grounds of bureaucratic rationality, legitimizing the decision from the standpoint of compliance with the rules and the exercise of a lawful right. Importantly, some respondents found explicit support from their co-workers and proudly claimed to have served as an example, perhaps driving a rift in the predominance of a type of masculinity that denies men a carer status.
In their narratives around single-handed care, respondents invoked hegemonic masculine values to interpret and imbue their caring behaviors with meaning as well as to justify their engagement in care: rising to a challenge, discipline, a sense of objectivity and justice, and responsibility. Other features typical of traditional masculinity, such as associating mothers with affection, subjectivity, and unconditional dedication, were also observed in their discourse.
This study is subject to a limitation that merits comment. The empirical material used is apt for analyzing how respondents balance their masculine identity with engagement in childcare. It does not capture the change in that identity before and after the carer alone experience, however, for interviews were conducted a posteriori. Contrasting the discourse of men in highly masculinized professions before and after caring singly for their children would further the understanding of change in masculine identities.
This research nonetheless contributes significantly to the understanding of the construction of masculinity in contexts where hegemonic masculinity is deeply rooted. Single-handed care by men is a powerful tool for change to more egalitarian parenthood (Brandth and Kvande 2003; Fernández Cornejo et al. 2016; O’Brien and Wall 2017). The present findings show that caring masculinities also takes place in highly masculinized environments, where innovative caring generates discourse that narrows the divide between traditional hegemonic and caring masculinity. The fluidity of masculinities (Atherton 2009) exhibited in these fathers’ discourse chips away at the hegemonic masculinity traditionally present in law enforcement environments and suggests that change to other types of paternities is possible. Consequently, although the use of leaves to care for children alone would not appear to suffice by itself to generate an alternative to hegemonic masculinity, the discourses analyzed reveal a weakening of its hold on social values and a significant redefinition toward fatherhood characterized by caring masculinity. That, in turn, may induce small cracks in hegemonic masculinity. Public policies geared to encouraging men’s engagement in childcare alone may be particularly effective in such environments by contributing to normalize fatherhood patterns associated with such engagement while driving a rift in hegemonic masculinity.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
