Abstract
This study investigates paternal identities among men who are involved in the illegal drug economy in Norway. Using data from life-history interviews, we identified two paternal identities relating to the role fatherhood played in their lives and crimes: struggling fathers and absent fathers. Our analysis demonstrates the structural constraints of fatherhood for crime-involved men, which is rooted in their class positions and enhanced by being situated in hyper-masculine drug markets with little access to hegemonic masculinity. Our study offers a contribution to scholarship on marginalized fatherhood, and highlights the import of paternal identities for understanding the relationship between fatherhood and crime over the life course.
Western societies encompass multiple ways of constructing paternal identities. Traditionally, dominant fatherhood identities included the idea of providing (usually materially) for one’s children and family. The ‘good provider’ role was typically seen as the ideal for fathers, which valued working long hours to provide the necessary resources for the family. In contrast to the good provider was a role associated with being more or less absent from children’s lives, both physically and psychologically (Marks and Palkovitz, 2004). This role was typically criticized and such fathers were stigmatized as being ‘deadbeats’. In recent years, new paternal identities have emerged (Ellingsæter et al., 2013; Marks and Palkovitz, 2004; Pleck, 1998). These new roles expand on the provider role by placing value on having a more active involvement in children’s lives, rather than only providing material resources. Such a role includes fathers who prioritize spending time with family rather than working longer hours.
The extent to which individuals adopt paternal identities varies by structural positions. Whereas newer paternal identities are more accessible for middle-class fathers than for fathers from working or lower classes (Magnus and Benoit, 2017; Marks and Palkovitz, 2004), less involved types of paternal identities remain more common among marginalized groups. This could be because men from marginalized backgrounds have constrained access to legitimate routes to hegemonic masculinity and corresponding paternal identities (Connell, 1987). The gender performances men adopt in such circumstances may be incompatible with complying with normative fatherhood expectations. This could again increase the likelihood of finding different means of accomplishing masculinity, including engaging in crime (Mullins, 2006).
In this study, we examine paternal identities among a group of marginalized fathers in Norway, all of whom used and dealt drugs. Whereas multiple studies have shown how drug-using mothers negotiate motherhood (for example, Baker and Carson, 1999; Grundetjern, 2018; Hardesty and Black, 1999), we know significantly less about how men who are involved in crime and drug use construct fatherhood (but see Magnus and Benoit, 2017; Moloney et al., 2009; Wilkinson et al., 2009). The tendency to focus on mothers rather than on fathers reflects a broader social pattern: the links between society’s expectations of fatherhood and masculinity are significantly weaker and the cultural content ascribed to fatherhood remains less clear than it is for motherhood (Gillis, 2000). In this study, we show that crime- and drug-involved fathers have limited access to new involved paternal identities, which may function to hinder the potential deterrent effect of fatherhood (Moloney et al., 2009; Nielsen, 2018). Our study offers a contribution to scholarship on marginalized fatherhood, and highlights the import of paternal identities for understanding the relationship between fatherhood and crime over the life course.
Fatherhood in the Scandinavian countries
Scandinavian countries are known for being high on global gender equality indexes (Hausmann et al., 2012). In social-democratic welfare states such as Norway, parenthood has been an important part of the politicization of gender equality (Ellingsæter and Leira, 2006). Scandinavian governments support a ‘dual-earner/dual-carer’ model that has dominated parenthood policies since the latter half of the 20th century and encourages both parents to share earnings and childcare (Leira, 2006). Such an approach to parenting is thought to challenge the ‘gender-typing of parental practices and presumes a more egalitarian partnership between mothers and fathers’ (Leira, 2006: 29). Scandinavian countries’ combination of comparatively high fertility rates and high female labour force participation is made possible because of a combination of public childcare services, non-marginalized part-time work, and a generous parental leave programme (Ellingsæter and Rønsen, 1996). Parental leave in these countries includes a specific ‘father’s quota’ that reserves a portion of the parental leave (currently 10 weeks) for the father. From 1992 to 2002, approximately 69 percent of Norwegian fathers took at least some of the parental leave to which they were entitled (Naz, 2010), which shows its widespread acceptance.
These policies have influenced gender norms regarding parenting (Holter, 2005). Specifically, fatherhood in the Nordic countries ‘has been redefined from breadwinning to care’ (Ellingsæter, Jensen, and Lie, 2013: 6). Farstad and Stefansen (2015: 56) describe how there has been a ‘general move towards involved fatherhood in the Nordic region’. Recent studies show new ways of articulating and constructing fatherhood in generous and ‘father-friendly’ welfare states such as Norway (for example, Halrynjo and Lyng, 2010; Stefansen and Aarseth, 2011; Stefansen and Farstad, 2010). Eerola and Huttunen (2011: 225) argue that there has emerged a meta-narrative about the ‘new father’ that emphasizes involvement, engagement, generativity, nurture, responsibility, shared parenting, and ‘mother-like’ care-giving among men. Farstad and Stefansen (2015) similarly describe the middle-class ‘involved fatherhood’ as dominating. Both, however, highlight how this new norm is challenged and combined in complex ways with other forms of more traditional fatherhood, often emphasizing men being secondary care-givers, and providers for the family. This is closely linked to new masculinity ideals and the ways these are negotiated in modern Nordic families (Aarseth, 2011).
Although a new perspective of fatherhood is taking hold in Norway, these changes are most pronounced among those in the middle and upper classes. Indeed, full acceptance of these new fatherhood identities and masculinities has not yet occurred among marginalized groups (Wells and Sarkadi, 2012). Scandinavian gender differences in parenting are especially visible after termination of romantic relationships. For example, in Norway children remain living with the mother in most cases, but only a small proportion of fathers reported not meeting their children at least monthly (Lyngstad et al., 2015). 1 Clear class distinctions emerge in regard to fathers who maintain consistent contact with their children: those who have lower education levels and poor health are the least likely to maintain contact (Lyngstad et al., 2015: 5). Although new more gender-equal parenting identities have increased in value, they appear to be less accessible for marginalized and working-class groups, where paternal absence is still a problem (Magnus and Benoit, 2017). The Nordic literature on fatherhood and masculinity seems to emphasize privileged groups, and there is little detailed knowledge of fatherhood identities and associated masculinities among marginalized populations in the Nordic countries and how these may act in concert to constrain or encourage criminal behaviour.
Fathers, crime and drugs
Research on parents who use drugs typically focuses on mothers rather than on fathers owing to highly gendered parental roles (for example, Baker and Carson, 1999; Hardesty and Black, 1999; Moloney et al., 2011), which is true for scholarship on fatherhood more generally (Eggebeen and Knoester, 2001). Still, a small yet significant body of work in criminology has investigated the role of parenting for men. Much of this research is quantitative and is framed within the tradition of life-course criminology. This literature typically focuses on the influence that fatherhood might have on criminal persistence or desistance (for example, Monsbakken et al., 2012). Overall, this body of work offers mixed findings on the role that becoming a father has on crime over the life course (Datchi, 2017; Mitchell et al., 2018; Theobald et al., 2017). Simply becoming a father has little impact on whether a new father desists from crime. Rather, new fathers who also live with their children and who take an active role in parenting are more likely to desist than fathers who are more absent from the lives of their children. This finding is consistent with literature showing that close social bonds with romantic partners can act as a deterrent to offending (Nielsen, 2018). It appears that it is the adoption of traditional roles of fatherhood that leads men to desist rather than simply fathering a child (Mitchell et al., 2018).
A handful of scholars have studied the meanings of fatherhood for men who are involved in crime and drug use, including fatherhood as a potential turning point, from a qualitative perspective. In general, this literature explores the way men incorporate being a father into their identities and how they make sense of their criminal actions in the context of fatherhood. Moloney et al. (2009: 305) found that becoming a father provided gang members with a new identity, which ‘initiated important subjective and affective transformations that led to changes in outlook, priorities and future orientation’. However, becoming a father alone was not enough to lead them to desist. Instead, fatherhood could be a turning point only if men were able to financially support their families with conventional work and if they spent less time on the streets than they did before becoming fathers. Nevertheless, it was their limited access to legal work that led these men to seek status and masculinity via crime involvement, a finding that corresponds with the larger literature on street culture (see Anderson, 1999; Bourgois, 2003). Wilkinson et al. (2009) found that young minority fathers in distressed neighbourhoods who engaged in violent crime used a ‘fatherhood discourse’ when explaining their violence. This fatherhood discourse included an emphasis on providing financial resources, caring, basic needs, spending time together, and being a role model (Wilkinson et al., 2009: 945). The majority of fathers did their best but, from their disadvantaged positions in society, faced structural constraints that made being an active father difficult. Indeed, fathers who engage in violence frequently use this ‘fatherhood discourse’ to account for their violence. However, as Heber (2017: 12) states, ‘Being a loving father constitutes an alternative expression of masculinity that is in line with more culturally appropriate patterns of masculinities, since it does not involve deviance.’ Still, men use the fatherhood discourse to justify violence when protecting family, especially the women in their lives.
Other studies have focused on the general experiences of fatherhood and drug use. Magnus and Benoit (2017) showed that participants tended to present fathers’ parenting role as secondary to that of the mother. Mothers often expressed frustration over the fact that society does not hold fathers responsible for staying drug free in the same way as mothers: low-income men and women substance users’ ‘discourses suggest that the lower expectation for fathers’ abstinence reflects the rhetoric that, especially in the context of socioeconomic marginalization, mothers are fundamentally responsible and fathers are comparatively dispensable in their roles’ (Magnus and Benoit, 2017: 395).
Building on this body of research, we analyse constructions of fatherhood among fathers involved in the illegal drug trade in Norway. We investigate the paternal identities they displayed, how these were linked to class positions and crime market conditions, and discuss what consequences their fatherhood identities had for their interaction with their children and their involvement in crime.
Methods
To explore paternal identities, we rely on data collected from life-history interviews with men incarcerated for dealing illegal drugs. The interviews were from a larger qualitative research project with the overall goal of investigating the hard drug economy in Norway. In total, 70 people who dealt drugs, 40 of whom were men, were interviewed in six prisons in the eastern, western and southern parts of Norway between 2010 and 2013. The interviews were conducted by a team of five researchers, including two of the authors, all trained in qualitative interviewing. The interviews were typically conducted in visiting rooms in prison, and lasted from 1.5 to 2.5 hours. We used two strategies for recruiting participants depending on the prison. Some prisons allowed us in to provide information about the project and to ask for volunteers. Other prisons required officials to describe the project and solicit volunteers. In the latter cases we cannot say whether prison officials facilitated or constrained participation.
Project investigators used broad sampling criteria to locate participants: they should be involved in drug dealing or trafficking and they should speak Norwegian. The latter was because of the scope of the study, which investigated the illegal drug economy in Norway; including, for example, international drug mules would have changed the focus of the study, so they were excluded. The interviews were semi-structured and organized as life-history interviews (Atkinson, 1998), covering participants’ lives from childhood to the present. Despite using a thematic interview guide with key themes, the flexible research design allowed for participants to emphasize the topics most important to them.
We did not initially intend to study the ways men discussed fatherhood, and it was not a major concern for us. Instead, the topic emerged naturally in the interviews. Although parenthood was not a topic initially mentioned in the interview guide, many participants (especially the women in the larger sample) provided information about whether they had children. That the study was not explicitly designed to investigate fatherhood could be advantageous for reducing the potential of cue-related researcher effects (Yule et al., 2015). A limitation of the analysis is our categorization of paternal identities based on limited interviews only. The fathers likely had been through several phases, and might go through more in the future, in the process of making sense of their role as a father, especially regarding dealing with the loss of children. In addition, being incarcerated may have skewed responses because fathers are more acutely aware of their absence than when they are not incarcerated (even if they are still absent).
Interviewers audio-recorded the interviews (with participants’ permission) and then transcribed them. During transcription we removed identifying information (all names included here are aliases assigned by the research team). When analysing interviews, we first coded broadly for a variety of themes; one of these was ‘children’. This was initially a straight-forward category including all forms of talk about their children in the transcripts. The second stage of coding was more detailed and involved categorizing participants’ accounts of contact with children and how they evaluated their own fatherhood involvement and abilities. The final stage of coding consisted of selecting representative quotes that reflect the larger themes.
Out of the 40 men interviewed, 16 reported having children, and these make up the sample of this study. As for the remaining dealers, 6 said that they did not have children, and the rest did not provide information on the topic. The high number of men not mentioning whether they had children was a striking finding. In comparison, all women dealers in the larger sample provided information about whether they had children on their own initiative, and they brought up their children as a topic early in the interviews (see Grundetjern, 2018). This likely reflects gendered expectations of parenthood where the women felt obligated to account for their parental status, whereas the men did not. However, although the interview guide was the same for women and men participants, such expectations might have been strengthening by intra-gender dynamics in the interviews; all men were interviewed by men and women were interviewed by a woman.
All fathers in this study both dealt and used drugs. The largest portion of them were in their thirties, with the median age being 37 years (range 29–48). All but two were ethnic Norwegians. Among them, eight reported amphetamines as their main drug distributed, four reported cannabis, two heroin, one ecstasy and one dealing pills (unspecified). Most fathers said amphetamines was their drug of choice (11); the others preferred cocaine (2), cannabis (2) or opiates (1). All but one were from families of low socioeconomic status. Parental drug abuse, poor parental supervision and living in children’s welfare institutions were common in their histories. They tended to have started using drugs in their early teens, and all were involved in the drug economy when they became fathers. As for their drug market involvement, the sample included those who participated in organized crime groups and those who were individual entrepreneurs. They reported holding positions at different levels in the drug dealing hierarchy: 3 occupied positions at high levels in their market, 12 at mid levels (which for amphetamines was ⩾50 g), and 1 (cocaine dealer) at a low level (see Shammas et al., 2014: 597, for details on how hierarchical levels are classified for each drug type).
Of the 16 fathers, 12 had one child, 2 had two children, 1 had three children, and 1 had six children. None of the fathers was currently in a romantic relationship with any of the mothers of their children, and none was living with their children. All but two had previously lived together with their child and the mother, although it varied for how long. In all but one case (where the child lived with a family guardian), their children lived with their mother.
Paternal identities
The fathers in our sample could be classified into two groups based on how they constructed paternal identities: struggling fathers and absent fathers. These paternal identities related to the extent of physical contact they had with their children and the role fatherhood played in their lives. In what follows we discuss the defining characteristics of these paternal identities and make connections to their participation in drug markets.
Struggling fathers
Among the fathers in this study, eight presented a paternal identity that we refer to as ‘struggling’. The overarching characteristic of these fathers was that they displayed a comparatively strong paternal identity as they accounted for their relationship with their children, despite having relatively limited physical contact with them. For these men, fatherhood largely meant providing material resources for their families (Marks and Palkovitz, 2004). They made direct mention of their role as a provider and had consistent contact with their children and they emphasized how at one time they had lived conventional family lives with the mother of their children and their children. When the romantic relationship ended, the struggling fathers moved out of the home of their children, who in all cases remained with the mother. Although they stayed in contact with their children after moving out and attempted to visit, they typically had court-ordered visiting arrangements to see their children every other weekend, although they usually met less frequently. They nevertheless still sought to provide for the children, even if at a distance.
All of these fathers seemed concerned with being a good parent. Finn underscored that he was successful in his role as a provider: ‘I have my daughter, you know, she gets what she needs.’ For Finn, taking care of his daughter meant reprioritizing how he spent his money. Being a high-level dealer had been lucrative for him, and previously he had spent the money he earned on luxury goods. However, when becoming a father, he downplayed his conspicuous consumption. He said: I wore a lot of gold necklaces and stuff like that. We had the child, and my ex told me: ‘You’ll have to sell that stuff, you can’t go for a walk with a stroller wearing that stuff; you have to understand that.’ ‘Yes, of course I understand that.’
Having a flashy street style and spending what he referred to as ‘gangster money’ did not fit with normative fatherhood expectations, and Finn ‘understood’ that ‘of course’ he had to change his lifestyle to be a better father to his child.
It was common among the struggling fathers to describe making sacrifices for their children. For Rune, sacrifice meant having protected his son from legal consequences by taking the blame for the crimes of his son. According to Rune, this situation was the cause of his current incarceration: This time I am also relatively innocent. It was my son who took some drugs out west, plus he had stored 100 grams in my storage room. Then I had a raid at home by police . . . so that’s why I’m sitting here. So, I am relatively innocent in this case.
Self-presentation as a sacrificing father was also a theme in Stig’s story. He connected his decision to leave the family with the potential psychological damage to his children as a result of witnessing parental conflict: ‘It was a lot of fighting and screaming in front of the children and things like that, things weren’t any good.’ According to Stig, however, terminating the relationship and the family life had severe consequences for him: It became a big personal defeat for me, and my life. Suddenly there was nothing to hold me back, right. The kids, the façade, those things had held me back for all those years. Made me able to be a part-time drug addict. . . . I lost my job and became a full time pusher [English phrasing] and a full time drug addict.
The strong wording of Stig’s ‘big personal defeat’ indicates the extent of this sacrifice, as well as the importance of fatherhood to his identity. He had lived with his girlfriend and their two children for nearly 10 years, while combining sporadic drug sales and controlled drug use with holding down a regular job as a teacher and maintaining his family obligations. He believed this had allowed him to be a functional drug user and maintain parental responsibilities.
The struggling fathers’ self-identity as people who prioritize their families over drug use was particularly explicit as they narrated their lives post break-up, a time characterized by an increase in heavy drug use and crime. Axel said he had quit both using and dealing drugs when he learned his girlfriend was pregnant: ‘I quit right away [snaps fingers].’ Looking back at the years he was living with his girlfriend and son, he said: ‘I probably wouldn’t have been so clear-sighted if it wasn’t for that family. Because I did everything for that family.’ For Axel the relationship with the mother ended because he was sent to prison for transporting cannabis, after he ‘fell for the temptation’ of earning some ‘extra money’ on the side again. When living with his girlfriend and son, he worked as a truck driver, which he had previously used as a cover for his cannabis smuggling. He expressed his identity of father by showing how he gave up crime, for the most part, to prioritize his family.
Similarly, Kenneth described ‘falling back’ into heavier drug use and dealing after the relationship with the mother ended and the family dissolved. He said: ‘Since I had my kid I stayed away from amphetamines. I actually stayed away from absolutely everything for four and a half years – until I was kicked out. We broke up and stuff. Then I fell back into it.’ For the struggling fathers, their identity as a father was tied in part to their decisions to stay clean. When they lost this sense of normality they drifted further into crime and drug use.
Nevertheless, after the break-up they explained that they made efforts to keep their parenting role separate from their drug involvement. Stig said: ‘Never to this day have I been high in front of my kid.’ Echoing this, Kenneth said he made sure his son was never exposed to his involvement in the drug economy: He has never seen me high, never. When I’ve used drugs for periods, and he was to come for a visit, then I’ve stayed off drugs for three weeks before he came. I don’t want to look tired or have thin cheeks. . . . So that I have been able to play with him, not lying sleeping because I’m drained and things like that . . . So he has never seen me high, and I have never been high when talking to him on the phone.
Axel also said he consistently kept his drug involvement separate from his parenting role. According to him, the new boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend did not hold the same standards. He ran a drug business from their apartment, with Axel’s son present to see customers coming and going. ‘I never acted like that when he [son] was in the house,’ Axel said. Such self-identities are consistent with mothers who emphasize how they prioritize children over drug use as a way to distance themselves from those they portrayed as bad parents (Copes, 2016).
Although these fathers emphasized attempting to be a good father, they frequently struggled with feelings of guilt for not being a good parent, and especially for not being around more. They attempted to meet with their children every second weekend (or whatever was court appointed), but few were able to uphold this arrangement owing to transportation issues or scheduling difficulties. This fostered a sense of failing in fatherhood. According to Stig, his involvement in the drug economy gradually became all-consuming, which made it increasingly difficult for him to balance this facet of his life with living up to parental responsibilities: I tried to keep up that every other weekend-daddy stuff for a while. I wasn’t going to get high in front of my kids and such, but I didn’t deliver on that promise. I couldn’t maintain it. I was too much of a drug addict, to put it straight.
Stig’s sense of failing fatherhood led him to use drugs even more heavily. He said, ‘I miss him a lot and have an awfully bad conscience for letting him down so fucking much.’ The struggling fathers often expressed feelings of guilt due to having used drugs instead of meeting with their children. Raymond said: You put a boy into this world or a kid into this world, in general, they are completely innocent in the whole thing. . . . What have they done to deserve it? Should I go and use drugs to satisfy myself and then he should go wondering about when I will call the next time, and when I will come and . . . ‘Daddy, can you come and watch me play that soccer game?’
As Axel and Kenneth’s stories suggest, it was common to increase their drug use after separating from their children. Axel’s arrangement of seeing his son every other weekend became complicated because of increasing conflict with his child’s mother and her living conditions. Although social services granted him permission to increase visits with his child, his ex-girlfriend and her family stood in the way: ‘Whenever I called, either [they said] he was out, or he was in the shower. . . . They were crystal clear. When I asked if he could come with me to my mom’s funeral; not a chance in hell.’ Eventually he became resigned to the realization that he would not see him any more: ‘Eventually I gave up. I couldn’t handle it any longer. I wasn’t allowed to [see him]. . . . I didn’t bother to pay the bills or anything; I just didn’t give a damn.’
Increased drug use as a means to cope with losing a child is common among those who use (El-Bassel et al., 1996; Grundetjern, 2015). Moreover, Axel’s statement of not being ‘allowed to’ meet with his son indicates an acceptance of a more subordinate parent role. Like the majority of fathers in this study, and in line with the more traditional ideals of fatherhood in the Nordic context (Eerola and Huttunen, 2011; Farstad and Stefansen, 2015), he expressed an acceptance for the mother as the main care-taker and did not seem to consider applying for full custody. Accepting a peripheral parenting role and acknowledging that their lifestyle had come at the expense of living up to fatherhood expectations, yet still seemingly being concerned with being a good father, was at the very core of their paternal identity.
The category of struggling fathers is likely a more general paternal identity among heavily marginalized populations, one that resembles the provider role common among Western working-class men (Marks and Palkovitz, 2004). It refers to fathers who had a consistent pattern of contact with their children, who sought to offer material support to their children, and who demonstrated strong paternal identities when accounting for their relationship to them. This included emphasizing how they cared for the material needs of their children, changing their own lifestyle to be a better parent and taking the blame for crime to protect their children. Tragically, their descriptions of being a good father also included stories about their realization that they were not always a good father because of their absence from their children’s lives and their involvement in drug use and crime.
Absent fathers
A different paternal identity was seen among eight fathers we categorized as ‘absent’. These fathers articulated significantly less involvement in their children’s lives than the struggling fathers. They described a comparatively weak paternal identity, which resembled fatherhood identities previously described as ‘deadbeat dads’ (Marks and Palkovitz, 2004). All but two had previously lived with their children and the mother, yet this tended to be for a shorter time than was the case for the other fathers. Yet, even when physically present, they said they were often psychologically absent from them (Marks and Palkovitz, 2004). Similar to the struggling fathers, not living with their family was associated with more extensive drug use and crime involvement. Unlike the struggling fathers, however, they said that they did not attempt to maintain regular physical contact with their children. Some said, however, that they had phone contact with their children and one reported intermittently supporting his children financially. Overall, these men did not construct fatherhood as important to their identity; they did not talk much about their children or change their offending behaviour as a result of becoming a father.
The absent fathers rarely mentioned their children unless they were directly questioned about them. Lars seemingly randomly mentioned having a 5-year-old daughter late in the interview. When asked about her, he said: ‘I don’t have anything to do with her at all.’ He said that his daughter was the result of a one-night stand and he had not seen her since she was a few months old. Tom had a similar story, as his girlfriend had become pregnant ‘early on’ in their relationship, and they ended the relationship right after their son was born. The mother had later taken the son with her and moved abroad. Tom said: ‘I haven’t seen him [son] since he was two and a half. And now he’s nine.’ Similarly, Leif was overt about his lack of contact with his son. When asked about whether he saw his son regularly, he said: ‘No, not at all. He’s been adopted.’ He was previously in a romantic relationship with the mother, and because both had used heroin their son had lived in the care of family members from early on.
Few of the absent fathers accounted for their lack of involvement in their children’s lives. When asked whether he frequently thought about his daughter, Lars said: No. I don’t. Very little. The times I’ve been there visiting, I haven’t gotten any father’s feeling. You know, I wasn’t there during the pregnancy; I wasn’t there the first three months. I saw her for the first time when she was three months. . . . I sat with her on my lap. It was just as if it was a friend’s daughter I had on my lap. It’s not very exciting with a three months old kid either. If they smile it’s a huge thing, kind of. So I didn’t connect with her in that way. Luckily, I might say.
Lars said his lack of involvement in his daughter’s life was because of his absence of a ‘father’s feeling’ or emotional connection with her when she was an infant. His last sentence, concluding he ‘luckily’ did not connect with her, likely implies that he was not ready to be a father. However, it could also be interpreted as an attempt to manage his sorrow or guilt for not being around his child.
Other absent fathers underscored that they knew that their children were well taken care of where they were living, which typically was with the mother. Raymond said: ‘She’s very good with the boy. She’s been extremely good! I am glad it was her I got a kid with when it first turned out that way.’ Highlighting the fact that the mothers were good mothers may be the absent fathers’ explicit way of legitimizing their lack of presence in their children’s lives.
Fred also expressed having a clear conscience despite not having physical contact with his children, who he had previously lived with for several years until his relationship with the mother dissolved and he moved out. He said: They have a very straight mother, so they are a good family. So I have provided for them in other ways. I bought a [new] apartment . . . The [old] apartment I just wrote in my ex’s name, and of course she’s living comfortably from me having worked on stuff that I’ve earned big money on, you know what I’m saying.
As seen, Fred also mentioned that he ‘did his share’ by continuing to have the traditionally masculine role as the breadwinner of the family, by providing for his children through his crime involvement, but still not being physically present for them. Fred thus justified his absence using traditional ideals of fatherhood still present in the Nordic context (Eerola and Huttunen, 2011; Farstad and Stefansen, 2015) and also often seen in distressed neighbourhoods elsewhere (Wilkinson et al., 2009).
Arnold similarly legitimized his lack of contact by saying he knew his son was in good hands. He briefly mentioned not having any contact with his son during the interview and, when the interviewer later asked him about whether it was difficult to think about his son, Arnold responded: ‘Of course it is [difficult] at times. But in another sense, I know he is fine. He is taken care of in a good way. I know who he is with, I know where he is.’ These fathers argued that being absent was the best thing for the children, which indicates a lack of faith in their own parenting abilities. Contrasting the group of fathers who stated that they struggled with guilt over not seeing their children enough, there was seemingly little explicit guilt among the absent fathers. As Lars said, ‘I don’t feel bad about not being there, because I know they are fine.’
It was common among the absent fathers to express that their lives were not compatible with raising a child. Lars said: This must sound fucking egoistic of me, but I don’t have space for her [daughter] either at the moment. I have enough thinking of myself and my new girlfriend and everything. . . . I feel that it’s a lot for [my daughter], because I know she’s all right. To take the risk of bringing her back into my life, and even if I’m OK now, there’s a lot of stress with come and visit me every other weekend. . . . But my daughter probably will contact me herself, because her mother only speaks nicely of me.
Stating ‘having enough’ with his own life and acknowledging that he may come across as ego-centric can be interpreted as Lars’ way of rationalizing his decision not to get in contact with his daughter. Moreover, rather than taking the initiative, he seemingly indicated that he was waiting for his daughter to make the first contact. This defensive or passive approach was common among the absent fathers and is indicative of a lack of confidence in the men’s own parenting abilities.
Fred’s way of accounting for fatherhood was similar. He said: ‘I don’t have very good contact with [my ex-girlfriend and children], but it’s OK kind of. So it works. It is more than good enough.’ This way he demonstrated only limited desire to increase the contact. Despite being open to have more contact with his child upon his release from prison, Fred revealed his reluctance to do so. His statement shared similarities with that of Lars, in that they would wait and see if they managed to take care of themselves first. They believed that their lifestyles were not compatible with raising a child.
Another major theme in the absent fathers’ stories was that they were not ready to become a parent at the time. Tom expressed having been upset when he learned that he was going to be a parent. He was 18 and had just completed drug treatment when he met a girl at a party and she got pregnant: She became pregnant really fast. I didn’t want the kid, [I] said it was too early. ‘I have just come out of drug treatment, I need time.’ And, ‘OK, then we won’t have the kid’ [she said]. But then she changes her mind and says, ‘I want the kid.’ Then I say, ‘What can I do about that?’ Then she’d just keep the kid. And then I started using drugs [again] when she was pregnant.
Still, Tom gave the relationship a try after they had the son but it quickly went ‘straight to hell’ because of ‘too much pressure, and too much stress, a lot of fighting in the relationship, and things like that, so I chose to start using drugs again’. He explained further: I started taking pills again. Doing pills and some coke and things like that. And I started hanging with criminals again, which I had completely stopped with at the time. I started doing things. . . . I didn’t give a damn about anything basically. Two months after I became a dad, I got arrested.
Tom’s story was in clear opposition to those of the struggling fathers. Instead of viewing fatherhood responsibilities as a rationale for staying out of extensive drug use and crime, Tom saw fatherhood and relationship responsibilities as what pushed him back into crime and drug use. Similarly, Raymond, whose girlfriend also had become pregnant when they were in their teens, tried to stay with them after the birth but he eventually could not handle it due to being ‘home all the time’. Because of his young age at becoming a father, he saw parenthood as too much responsibility early in life.
Per had tried to exit the drug economy together with his girlfriend upon learning that she was pregnant. ‘But it was kind of for the wrong reasons.’ He reduced his criminal involvement and got a regular job, but ended up working too ‘damn much’ and neglected to take care of himself, so he ‘hit the wall’, started using amphetamines again, and eventually moved out from his girlfriend and daughter. He legitimized staying away from his daughter by his drug use, saying he had promised his ex-girlfriend to stay away unless he was sober. This is also in opposition to the struggling fathers, who connected living with their families to their ability to stay out of drug use and their efforts to separate fatherhood and drug use/dealing from their fatherhood roles post break-up.
Absent fathers had minimal contact with their children and demonstrated comparatively weak paternal identities in our interviews. Although some had supported their children financially, they showed little emotional interest in their children and little interest in talking about them. We do not wish to imply that these fathers had no interest in their children. Their presentations as uninterested may have been the way they coped with the sadness or regret for not being around. This presentation of self as stoic or aloof could also be a product of the hyper-masculine drug market of which they were a part. Although these interviews do not necessarily reflect their overall social identities, or their involvement with children throughout their life, it was nevertheless striking how differently fatherhood was constructed among these fathers as compared with the struggling fathers. We interpret this as being indicative of highly distinct social identities related to fatherhood.
Discussion
Western societies encompass multiple paternal identities (Marks and Palkovitz, 2004). In Scandinavian countries, policies in support of gender equality have enabled emotionally involved ‘new fatherhood’ identities (Ellingsæter et al., 2013; Pleck, 1998). These identities, however, remain less accessible for working-class and marginalized fathers than for middle-class fathers (Magnus and Benoit, 2017). Farstad and Stefansen (2015) and Eerola and Huttunen (2011) describe the ‘involved father’ as the dominating fatherhood ideal in the Nordic context, but both the struggling and the absent fathers in our sample primarily related to a more traditional role of fathering, usually as a provider of material resources. In cases where participants described taking care of their children, this was usually based on providing for their children and being present, yet always in a secondary role to the mother. The main difference between the two paternal identities was that the struggling fathers expressed shame and remorse for not being more around, whereas the absent fathers seemed less concerned about their absence. As such, the struggling fathers in our study shared similarities with fathers who define fatherhood on the basis of the material resources they provide, whereas the absent fathers resemble those labelled ‘deadbeats’, who tend to avoid interactions with their children (Marks and Palkovitz, 2004).
The paternal identities we have presented are likely more complex than our analysis suggests. For example, the two ideal-typical categories of paternal identities will sometimes overlap, and fathers will likely move between them in different phases of their lives and in various social contexts. Still, the struggling fathers highlighted fatherhood as important to their identity and sought to minimize their criminal behaviours when they were able to fulfil their paternal role. Their emphasis on being good care-takers could have been a psychological defence mechanism to reduce some of their sense of guilt. Though it was stronger for mothers, men also experienced the stigma of having had less contact with their children after moving away from their family. Still, their desire to be a good father, and the expression of guilt for failing to live up to these desires, separated them from the absent fathers.
The absent fathers, on the other hand, articulated a weaker paternal identity. They expressed little guilt about their lack of involvement and said they were not ready to give up their lifestyle for the sake of their children. Becoming a father had little impact on their drug use or criminal behaviour, other than becoming reasons for why they should stay away from their children. These presentations of fatherhood may be due to their indifference to being fathers, but it may also be a way to account for their absence using a hyper-masculine storyline that might find resonance in a criminal environment.
Fatherhood influenced these men’s drug use and crime involvement to various extents. Our findings indicate that active parenting in the context of living together as a family led to less crime and drug use, especially for the struggling fathers. Fathers who had lived together as a family, which was the vast majority of the fathers in our study, described this as a time characterized by less crime and drug use, yet all fathers seemingly viewed fatherhood and crime/drug use as incompatible. Taking into account the hyper-masculine crime environment they operated in, this is not surprising. The cultural norms of street masculinity, which they embraced, are not concerned with living up to society’s overarching parenting expectations (see Mullins, 2006). Thus, these findings speak to insights from life-course criminology. Namely, fatherhood alone is not enough to lead to desistance, but it might have the potential to initiate such change (Moloney et al., 2009). Having a strong paternal identity, for example, may act as a deterrent to crime and drug use. This was evidenced by the struggling fathers whose drug use and crime involvement increased when they were no longer with their children. A broader implication of this finding is that it highlights the importance of identity relating to fatherhood to the life course of crime and drug use.
Beliefs about mothers being more important care-givers than fathers can constrain a father’s decision to desist. The culturally available idea that fathers are less important than mothers facilitated both struggling and absent fathers’ involvement in crime and drug use. Despite adverse individual-level consequences of emotional distress and increased drug use and crime involvement in the context of passive parenting, the seemingly limited fatherhood expectations that these fathers experienced provided them with the opportunity to select their continued life path. In contrast, among women involved in drug use and crime, a similar freedom has been observed only among mothers who rejected femininity for themselves and instead took on a masculine identification (Grundetjern, 2018). The fathers in this study could prioritize a lifestyle that did not involve parental responsibilities, including street life and its acceptance of crime and drug use (Shover, 1996), with little threat to their masculine identity.
This latter opportunity to more easily forsake fatherhood for a criminal lifestyle is related to their escaping of the gendered social stigma relating to parenting. In general, fathers who have a limited role in their children’s lives are less stigmatized for this than are mothers (Linnemann, 2010). As shown by multiple studies, mothers do not have the same options as do fathers for escaping motherhood ideologies and the stigma applied to those with limited access to live up to those expectations (for example, Baker and Carson, 1999; Hardesty and Black, 1999). Fathers are offered more opportunities for justifying having little or no physical contact with their children. The reduced stigma from not adhering to expectations of parenting can facilitate continued involvement in crime and drug use, which is also supported by quantitative studies of fatherhood as a turning point (Datchi, 2017; Mitchell et al., 2018; Theobald et al., 2017).
Drug- and crime-involved fathers are situated in precarious structural contexts. On the one hand, they have a clear structural advantage in the context of the crime markets in which they operate (Maher, 1997; Miller, 2001). This provides them with opportunities to gain respect and to earn money. On the other hand, it is their social marginalization and lack of opportunities for accessing hegemonic masculinity, including new fatherhood identities, that leads them to embrace the street masculinity that is favoured in crime markets and constrains their ability to be an active father. Access to fathering and access to significant crime positions are likely not compatible. This suggests that developing larger social programmes that are designed to enourage those in marginalized communities to accept the new fatherhood roles as dual earners/carers may prove useful for deterring crime and drug use. Access to new paternal identities may offer marginalized men ways to perform masculinity that do not involve crime and other illegal behaviour.
The social structures that inhibited an active paternal identity enabled involvement in crime and drug use. An avenue for future studies will be to further investigate the extent to which fathers’ class positions, perceptions of paternal and maternal identities, and crime market conditions act to limit their navigational space for constructing fatherhood, and particularly inhibit their ability to adopt new paternal identities. Investigating the intersections of these larger structural factors with the ways that men construct paternal identities will prove useful for further understanding the role of fatherhood in crime over the life course and its linkages to patterns of persistence and desistance. Ultimately, this would provide us with a better understanding of what remains a major social problem and a source of devastation for many marginalized parents and their children.
