Abstract
Reviewed by: Ana B de Carvalho, Feira de Santana State University, Bahia, Brazil
This book represents an interdisciplinary approach to research about fatherhood in 14 countries/regions, including some of the largest and smallest societies. The authors discuss cultural and historical influence, differences between and within societies, social and economic phenomena and social policies related to fatherhood. It is the second edition—after 25 years—and brings in maps, figures and tables that help us to understand fathering, then and now. It includes contributions of researchers from various countries. Each chapter has the same format, first bringing in a short story about a local father, and then proceeding to analyze what is an interesting way to understand the father’s social and cultural context. Such format of chapters invites the readers into an interdisciplinary understanding of economic, anthropological, psychological and historical perspectives that are involved in the highlighting of the specific roles of men as fathers. Three research orientations run through the whole volume:
Evolutionary, that focus on how father’s and/or children reproductive fitness, in particular ecological and cultural contexts, influences his or her interactions. “Cross-cultural” (better rendered as cross-societal)—analysis of pre-coded data on fathers from a large number of societies and Ethnographic case studies conducted in the field.
In fact, the large majority of studies cited in most chapters were quantitative psychological studies, usually based on self-report measures of fathers in single culture. This is the shared scientific limitation in this field, since quantitative approaches are of limited value when applied to the complex phenomenon of men entering into the social role of fathers.
The objective of this book was to integrate diverse literature and make a cohesive account about the theme and, to reach this objective, the authors used two theoretical approaches what they call “adaptionist” and “cultural”. The adaptionist orientation assumes that father’s roles are functional and that they are adapting to particular social, economic, reproductive, or demographic conditions or contexts. This perspective is implicit in almost every chapter and from a global perspective; the father’s role clearly reflects men’s adaptation to social, economical and demographic trends. The cultural approach assumes a configuration of beliefs and practices that are maintained by conservative mechanisms of cultural transmission, and this approach was also implicit in most chapters. The main message that emerges from the book is that both cultural and adaptationist approaches are helpful for understanding the view of fatherhood. But is being merely helpful sufficient for making full sense of fatherhood?
The contents of the chapters give the readers a very rich picture of the state of affairs of fathers’ role all over the World. Details of each country’s economic and social contexts illustrate diversity of fathering in Japan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Arabia, Central and East Africa, Southern Africa, Caribbean, Brazil, US, Russia, Scandinavia, UK. Fathers in Chinese culture reveal a rough estimate that suggests were approximately 48 million Chinese people leaving for overseas in 2008 is what determines a form of fatherless families in this country. As in the 20th century gained access to education and became involved in extra familiar business, the gender roles within family are transformed. Nowadays, fathers are responsible for the education and teaching, while mothers continue their role in caring. Public policies became to focus on fathers in China. Li and Lamb presented diverse family structures and the existence of 100 million men who leave their families, or never marry as they migrate to major cities in search of work.
Fathering in Japan, characterized by increasing involvement with children (chapter 3), is built on the claim that Japan is a paradise for children. Children are not only treated kindly but also have more freedom than children in other countries. Throughout the 1990s, fathers’ work conditions-remained harsh, which, at first, had a negative impact on their involvement in family life and child rearing. This perpetuated for another decade the primacy of mothers in the house and fathers as providers, despite attitude shifts toward egalitarian roles. Japanese tradition of emotion focused and permissive fathers helps to understand contemporary accounts of nurturing and friendly Japanese fathers.
Fathering is diverse in India (chapter 4), and father’s roles are shared with a wide network of people including relatives, neighbors, friends or household helpers. The traditional fathers in an Indian family system are defined by distance, unending responsibility and unquestioned authority over family members.
Bangladeshi and Malaysia’s perspectives about fatherhood (chapter 5), demonstrates that, although the traditional norm of a joint family system and polygyny are practiced in the villages, such practices are far less common in contemporary urban families. The father is the head of the household and is expected to socialize his children according to Islamic and other socially acceptable values. The main function of Malaysian’s fathers is to provide for their children and family.
Examination of 22 Arab societies (chapter 6) gives evidence that Arab fathering is correlated with specific aspects of child development. There are negative social trends and adverse effects on fathers on immigration, death and divorce. Childrearing has become increasingly difficult for mothers in Arab families, because of the growing number of absent fathers. It is nearly impossible for fathers to develop healthy parenting skills and to contribute positively to child development when so many of them live apart from their families.
Fathering in Central and East Africa (chapter 7) was based in the arguments that diversity, separation, migration and historical change are affecting the African fathers, and other fathers are often assuming and requiring being significant figures in children’s lives. Father’s marriage is not the typical path to fatherhood in South Africa. Pastoral and pastoralism communities tend to have the lowest level of father involvement, followed by farming groups; foragers tend to have remarkably high levels of involvement. Most studies of Central and East African fathers focus on residential fathers. According to the authors, migrant fathers are an important subgroup on which research is needed.
Fathering in Southern Africa (chapter 8) depends on the country’s special history. Apartheid was formalized following the election victory of the National Party in 1948, it was almost impossible for African men to both support and to live with their children. In fact, many fathers continue belonging to different households than their children and being physically distant in order to work, and children continue living apart from their fathers, while sharing householders with adult male relatives. More than a century of white domination, labor migration and racial segregation have separated families. Nevertheless, the finding from a national survey showed that, in 2002, only 37% of African children under 16 in South Africa were living with their fathers of 13% had died.
The matrifocal family in Caribbean Cultural Communities (chapter 9), with extended female network, was predominant among poor women and persisted over time. At the same time, values of male dominance and traditional conceptions of woman’s roles as caregivers have contributed to low levels of paternal involvement. The concept of diversity was mentioned about Caribbean and African Caribbean fathers. Caribbean history of immigration and emigration can be viewed usefully to the comparison to the contents of the US, Indian and African chapters.
Fathers in Brazil (chapter 10) is embedded in the 500-year-long history of colonization and patriarchy; the challenge for researchers in Brazil is to understand multiple levels of father absence and to identify their social and psychological antecedents and effects. As noted in this chapter, many new Brazilian fathers feel increasingly lost and confused as expectations rise for their involvement. In the particular case of the USA, researches reflect the North-American ideology and policy goals, which are also becoming common in works on fathering in other countries. Many American’s fathers devote substantial time to child caring, and a growing number of men are taking on the primary caregiving or “stay-at-home dad”. Other men assume other combinations of parent roles, engaging directly with the children as playmates or disciplinarians. Overall, the majority of men also continue to endorse the importance of financial provisioning, but with the high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births in the US, many fathers provide for their children from outside the household.
Russia presents one of the saddest portraits of fatherhood in the book, increased disconnected from their families in the Post-Soviet era, when fathers became objectively freer to opt out of this paternal involvement. It was observed that more problems than opportunities for fathers (alcoholism, inability to earn enough money to be a provider and negative public image of fathers) are real in Russian.
Fatherhood and social policy in Scandinavia (chapter 13) focuses on the evidence that police makers and fathering researchers can work together to change fathers’ behavior. According to these chapters, the father’s roles in Scandinavia changed dramatically about 40 years ago in response to social welfare and family polices and that policies related to fathers reflect political priorities and ideologies. Fatherhood in Scandinavia was showed that Denmark, Norway and Sweden have developed social policies designed to promote a family pattern often called the dual-earner/dual-caregiver model, where both fathers and mothers are responsible for breadwinning and childcare. All these three nations are characterized by the Scandinavian welfare state model, where all citizens have equal rights to social security services and benefits are financed by relatively high taxes on individuals and corporations. Scandinavian men have more autonomy and more choice than women when it comes to sharing childcare, concerning the types of childcare they provide. Men can be considered to be good fathers even if their share of childcare is under 40%, and mother remains more responsible for meeting children’s needs.
Cultural diversity and change in UK was presented as a multi-disciplinary perspective that has uniqueness in contrast to other countries. There is a great amount of British research on fathers, but because of its multi-disciplinary nature it is less visible than research on fathers in the US. Notably, the research in UK shows how fathering is the product of men’s relationship with the mothers, of their children and their own commitments to the labor force. Fathers in UK have been more involved in childcare than many social observers had been given them credit for, and British researchers show that men have particular and strong influence on their children’s development.
Fathers in Australia (chapter 15) considered the diversity and mobility of Australian population and considered how climate and temperatures encourage outdoor activities with children. It was emphasized how hard Australian fathers must work because of the high costs of living. The authors concluded that, regard the global emergent father, they recall that change and diversity were dominant subjects in almost every chapter and that fathers is still ignored by researchers outside North America and the Western Europe.
The work in this book demonstrates that policy makers and fathering researchers can work together to change fathers’ behavior as the practices in Scandinavian’s countries demonstrate. It is evident (Table 1.1, p.5), that these countries have the most elevated per capita income in the world. New surveys should answer why fatherhood is still unnoticed by researchers outside North America and Western Europe, in a historical political perspective. While the international’s researchers do not change their conservative approach about fathers’ political importance, it is interesting to see whether in another 25 years this scenario will be the same.
This book is a great contribution for understanding fatherhood in contemporary society and would be suitable for students at both the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels of study of family, fatherhood, gender equality and family’s policies. Further, the topics covered and the depth with which they are reviewed would equally make the text relevant to specialists, educators or researchers interested in father involvement as they relate to social management, psychology, sociology, anthropology, education and gender studies. Fathers in Cultural Context is appropriate text that provides insight into an important subject, which is on the border of greater understanding and discovery.