"Collective Voices around Partnering and Parenting"
1-2 November 2002

Domesticating masculinity and masculinizing domesticity in contemporary U.S. fatherhood politics

Anna Gavanas
(Stockholm University / SUNY Stony Brook)

Please do not quote without permission

Since the mid-1990s, the self-proclaimed "Fatherhood Responsibility Movement" has managed to establish fatherhood at the center of U.S. national politics. This movement claims that fathers have become marginalized in "the family," with catastrophic societal consequences. Increasing rates of female-headed households as well as shifting conditions for work, family formation and care have allegedly contributed to the redefinition of "the family" into "mother and child." According to the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, fathers are thus marginalized and "the family" has become "feminized." In response to this perceived situation, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement seeks to reestablish the necessity of men in families, constituting fatherhood as specifically male in differentiation from the feminizing connotations of family involvement. However, by "masculinizing" fatherhood, proponents of "responsible fatherhood" engage a century long dilemma that is at the heart of constructing particularly male versions of parenthood: how do you masculinize domesticity and at the same time domesticate masculinity? The Fatherhood Responsibility Movement deals with this dilemma by converging on three longstanding and overlapping arenas for masculinization: heterosexuality, sport and religion. Simultaneously, these arenas are longstanding sites for competition and contestation between asymmetrically positioned constituencies of men. This paper aims to discuss the ways that the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement's masculinization strategies, while allowing constituencies to meet on common ground, also threaten to confuse and divide the movement.

The Fatherhood Responsibility Movement: reinvigorating "masculine" domesticity

The Fatherhood Responsibility Movement constitutes a network of organizations in strategic alliance. The representatives in these organizations assume competing approaches to issues of racial, socio-economic and gendered relations while converging on mainstream political "family values," like "child well-being" and the importance of fathers and family to social order (Gavanas 2002, 2003). Throughout the 1990s, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement has developed a number of bi-partisan federal initiatives under the banners of "family" and "child well-being," seemingly answering the calls of liberal feminists in terms of promoting shared parenting responsibilities. The politically centrist family rhetoric of the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement has proved extremely successful and resulted in a number of federal initiatives on fatherhood. For instance, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement is a principal force behind Vice President Al Gore's "Father to Father Initiative" launched in 1994, as well as a number of federal task forces on fatherhood since 1997, the "Fathers Count Act of 1999" (H.R. 3073) and the "Responsible Fatherhood Act of 2000 (H.R. 4671)." Promoting marriage as a national goal is central to both these acts. However, beneath the unified image presented in public manifestations, marriage is the most divisive issue within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement.

Within fatherhood politics, competing constituencies of men are positioned asymmetrically towards the marital institution, the State and the labor market. I have clustered the perspectives within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement into two wings (see Gavanas 2002). The fragile families wing mainly represents low-income, poor and minority men. The term "fragile families" was coined by Ronald Mincy at the Ford Foundation's Strengthening Fragile Family Initiative, and defined as "a family formed by out-of-wedlock birth(s) to disadvantaged parents" (Mincy and Pouncy 1999:83). While fragile families organizations seek to increase men's "marriageability" through equal breadwinning opportunities, they do not attribute primary importance to marriage rates per se. In contrast, the pro-marriage wing promotes marriage as key to fatherhood responsibility for all types of men, and marriage proponents neither position themselves, nor primarily distinguish between men, in terms of race/ ethnicity or socio-economic class.

Whereas pro-marriage organizations focus on reinforcing notions of gender difference in parenting, cemented in the institution of marriage, fragile families organizations assume relatively more flexible approaches to gender relations and instead focus on structural relations between men. Fragile families organizations particularly focus on poor and minority men's, as opposed to white and middle-class men's, opportunities in education and the labor market. Just like marriage is a key issue for the pro marriage wing, work is a key issue within the fragile families wing of the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement. The fragile families wing consists of national groups like the "National Center for Strategic Nonprofit Planning and Community Leadership," "Partners for Fragile Families" and the "National Practitioners Network on Fathers and Families." There are also hundreds of local fragile families oriented organizations such as the "Baltimore City Healthy Start Men's Services" and "Virginia Beach Fathers in Training." Within the pro-marriage wing, the "National Fatherhood Initiative" is the most significant national organization along with the "National Center for Fathering" and the "Institute for Responsible Fatherhood and Family Revitalization." These groups are assisting hundreds of local fatherhood organizations and initiatives as well as City- and State based fatherhood campaigns.

Both fragile families and pro-marriage organizations seek recognition for the indispensability of fathers to families as men, although the fragile families wing does not primarily focus on gender difference. As mentioned earlier, according to leading representatives of the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, parenting has been feminized by becoming synonymous with motherhood (Blankenhorn 1995:13, Gore 1996). Promoting responsible fatherhood through constituting "masculine" versions of parenthood leads the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement to a dilemma. On the one hand, fatherhood must domesticate masculinity, which is perceived as innately aggressive and "promiscuous" according to socio-biological, pop-psychological and/or Biblical ideas (Blankenhorn 1995:225). But on the other hand, fatherhood needs to be masculinized through, for instance, sport, religion or other "manly" activity and discourse in order to not appear domesticated, i.e. "feminized" or "sissified." These dilemmas between masculinization and domestication in contemporary fatherhood politics can be traced back to the 19^th century.

Domesticity has not always been considered feminine and "domestic masculinity" has not always been perceived as problematic in U.S. family politics (La Rossa 1997). Prior to the 19^th century, family involvement was not necessarily considered contrary to white and middle-class notions of "maleness" - quite the opposite. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries, fathers were thought to have important childrearing tasks, being primary custodians of children, mainly responsible for their instruction and moral guidance (LaRossa 1997:24, Gillis 1996: 186, Griswold 1993). According to historian John Gillis (1996), 17^th and 18^th century fatherhood was not only physically close, but full-time. Furthermore, pre-19^th century Protestant treatises significantly defined fatherhood as work (1996:186).

Not until the emergence of marketplace economy in the 19^th century did domesticity and family involvement become primarily associated with femininity. Fathering increasingly revolved around workplace schedules as opposed to pre-industrial home-based economic conditions, where fathering was part of everyday work (Frank 1998:12, Griswold 1993:2). In the 1800s, fathers' responsibilities thus became mainly defined by breadwinning in the marketplace, whereas mothers became increasingly central to family life, and subsequently viewed as the primary custodians and caretakers of children (Griswold 1993:30, Gillis 1996:190, LaRossa 1997:28, Frank 1998:15, Rotundo 1993). These shifts in the gendered division of labor are inextricably linked to 19^th century racial and socio-economic conditions. The emergence of the "family man" as white middle-class standard, defined by breadwinning and recreation, needs to be contrasted with the conditions of working-class families in the 19^th century, who continued to see themselves as work units (Frank 1998:4). The low salaries of working-class men were combined with the incomes of their wives and children, and long working hours were not conducive for these fathers to spend leisure time with their families (Griswold 1993:42). Moreover, the conditions for 19^th century African American fathers and families were even more vastly different from those of the white middle-class (Frank 1998:5). The legacy of slavery, segregation, racism and discrimination has profoundly impacted the conditions for African American fathers to make decisions about family formation and parenting (Billingsley 1992, Staples & Johnson 1993).

The contemporary Fatherhood Responsibility Movement's contradictions in promoting involved fatherhood build upon the opposing tendencies of 19^th century white and middle-class fatherhood discourse (Frank 1998). On the one hand, fathers withdrew from their homes into the marketplace, and on the other hand, fathers were increasingly encouraged by "experts" and reformers to get more involved with their children (Frank 1998:115, Griswold 1993:120). Since mothers had come to symbolize the home, male domesticity became problematic: "too intimate a relationship with one's children had become unmanly, likely to call into question not only a fellow's masculinity but also his maturity" (Gillis 1996:193). Carving out specifically "male" modes of domesticity, such as after work "fun dads," allowed early 20^th century fathers to be involved in their families while still maintaining their ground as "real men." 1920s notions of fathers as "play-mates" and "frolicsome fatherhood" thus simultaneously signified men's reduced responsibility for children's everyday socialization and their increasing family involvement (LaRossa 1997).

Throughout the 20^th century, there have been waves of attention to fatherhood in U.S. family politics. In recurring campaigns by family "experts" and reformers, the maleness of fathers' family involvement has been carved out in terms of breadwinning, discipline, play, "role modeling" and "protection" as particularly male parenting characteristics, in complementary relation to notions of motherhood and femininity (Weiss 2000). In the 1990s, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement reinvigorated the century-old dilemmas of male domesticity. For instance, Harry, a leading pro-marriage representative within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, argued in an interview that men should be appreciated and recognized for just being men, without having to change or feel ashamed about their "manly ways." In the interview, Harry ridicules "Mr Moms" just like involved fatherhood was ridiculed as "maternal fatherhood" in the early 1900s (LaRossa 1997:86-87):

In the statement above, Harry exemplifies the efforts within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, and especially within the pro-marriage wing, to re-gender parenting into male and female features. Thereby, proponents of responsible fatherhood differentiate masculine domesticity from the "insultingly" feminizing epithet of "Mr. Mom." Just like proponents of "frolicsome fatherhood" and male "role modeling" earlier in the century, organizations within the contemporary Fatherhood Responsibility Movement insist on the irreplaceability of male contributions to child rearing. Without such presumptions, there would be no need for a movement that mobilizes around the importance of fathers as parents. In Harry's view, gendering parenthood allows men to participate in child rearing as men without having to "check their trousers at the door:"

Whereas notions of gendered and familial relations are under contestation within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, Harry's statement above exemplifies the connections that especially pro-marriage representatives tend to draw between specific notions of male characteristics (such as "being physical") and "indispensable" father contributions (such as wrestling with their kids on the floor). Drawing upon early 19^th century notions of fathers as "play-mates" (LaRossa 1997), especially pro-marriage representatives within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement constantly mention so called "rough-and-tumble play" as an important example of why fathers are irreplaceable, and particularly to sons, who learn to control their "aggression" by wrestling with their fathers (Gavanas 2001, 2003).

Heterosexuality, Sport and Religion as masculinizing tools in fatherhood politics

Many researchers have traced contemporary masculinity politics to a long tradition of white and middle-class men's movements characterized by "fears of feminization" in response to feminist politics (Donovan 1998, Kirkley 1996, Kimmel 1996, Messner 1997, Muesse 1996). In these contexts, athletic organizations, religious/ spiritual societies and other exclusively male organizations serve as 'compensatory' institutions where heterosexual masculinity can be fostered despite the "feminization" of parenting, education, church and parts of public life (Messner 1997). At the end of the 19^th century, in response to the profound political, social and economic transformations that took place at the time, "masculine" arenas for male bonding provided tools for men to grapple with their shifting positions in families. The end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th century was the golden age of (white) Protestant evangelical men's movements as well as a range of male-exclusive athletic and homosocial organizations, such as the Boy Scouts, YMCA and fraternal orders (Bederman 1995, Kimmel 1996). Sociologist Alan Petersen locates a "vogue for physical culture" as part of the increasing popularity of Darwinism at the second half of the 19^th century where "the valorisation of qualities such as competition, physical strength, and physical aggression - inversions of 'feminised' Victorian society - can be explained in part as a response to the growing penetration of the public sphere by women" (1998:47). In these contexts we may identify the ways in which sport, religion and heterosexuality are historically interconnected in U.S. gender politics as arenas for masculine ideals. For instance, the U.S. tradition of "sports evangelism" merges sport and religious discourses into a common masculine endeavor based on male bonding in differentiation from women and anything else considered sissy-like, including gay men (Garber 1999:284). Drawing upon such century-old traditions, fragile families and pro-marriage oriented organizations converge on three overlapping terrains that provide tools for masculinizing fatherhood; heterosexuality, sport and religion.

Heterosexuality:

Although expressing a variety of approaches to gender relations, representatives within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement generally seem to believe in notions of a fundamental, more or less essential, gender difference that manifests itself in sexuality and is more "basic" than socially and culturally constructed gender relations. For example, representatives commonly draw upon hydraulic metaphors comparing male sexuality to "water dammed up," or "saving" and "spending" energy. Conjuring up male sexuality as a promiscuous and aggressive "force" that needs to be controlled, such metaphors have been used in medical, legal and political contexts since the 1800s in order to draw and re-draw boundaries of "natural" sexuality (Petersen 1998, Weeks 1985). Hydraulic notions of masculinity were constructed in differentiation from what was considered "feminine" in the 1800s, such as sexual restraint and family orientation. The Fatherhood Responsibility Movement occupies itself with the "problem" of innately promiscuous male sexuality and draws upon century old hydraulic notions. At the same time, the "problem" of male promiscuity defines masculinity as polarized from femininity, and is considered "natural" and good if practiced "responsibly," i.e. leading to an economically and morally viable heterosexual family unit. While converging on the grounds of masculinity as defined by heterosexuality, notions of male sexuality have different meanings to various constituencies within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement. For instance, racist stereotypes of African American men as "hyper-masculine" sexual predators have been prevalent in U.S. public and political discussion since slavery (Majors and Billson 1992, Duneier 1992, Staples 1982). Subsequently, Fragile Families representatives tend to frame the "male problem" in socio-historical and economic terms, whereas the marriage proponents emphasize moral imperatives to control men's sexual urges (Gavanas 2001, 2003).

In response to a new set of social and economic shifts, the contemporary Fatherhood Responsibility Movement reinvigorates century-old fears that men will become replaceable by women in family, government and labor market. Simultaneously, the very traits thought to represent the uniqueness of men are perceived as problematic in fatherhood organizations. Throughout the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, hydraulic notions of masculinity are considered as natural as they are threatening as practitioners at fatherhood programs seek to "channel" men's "lowlier" impulses into nobler activities like parenting, marriage, athletic endeavors and moral leadership. During my fieldwork in local and national fatherhood organizations, I often heard practitioners address the participants in their fatherhood programs with expressions like "You can't be like a dog in a meatpacking factory wanting a bite out of everything," "You've got to think with the big head, not the little one," and "Just having a penis doesn't make you a man." Ronald Mincy, Senior Program Officer of the Ford Foundation Strengthening Fragile Families Initiative, discussed the "male problem" as follows at a fatherhood conference attended by about a hundred practitioners:

Mincy's reference to men "pissing away" their resources is an obvious hydraulic metaphor. He reinforces a hydraulic model of male sexuality by using both biblical and contemporary examples to assert that men have to "manage" their sexuality in order to achieve financial stability as providers. For another example, Joe Jones, director of a famous fatherhood program called Baltimore City Healthy Start men's services evoked the hydraulic imagery of "managing," "saving," and "spending" male sexual energy at another conference. Jones maintained the importance of teaching men to control their sexuality in terms of managing a stock account, with a reward at the end. Jones's exhortation to "manage" one's sexuality is an example of the way in which especially fragile families oriented leaders within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement make a connection between marketplace economy and male sexuality, and conceive of men's sexuality as both natural, risky and possibly rewarding. The trick is to make use of male sexuality the "right" way as to maximize the financial and moral outcomes. In this view, men's limited amount of sexual energy can be invested in activities such as business, sport, copulation and procreation (Messner 1992:95). Unsurprisingly, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement casts married heterosexual monogamy as the optimal way to successful masculinity and fatherhood. In this context, gay men represent the ultimately destructive way of using "male energy" since they are not properly attached to, and harnessed or civilized by, women, marriage or heterosexual monogamy (Gavanas 2003).

At first, when sitting around these all-male workshops, I was confused by the ways these men both reconfirmed and reprimanded each other for the exact same reason. However, I eventually discerned a pattern: by acknowledging each other as "womanizers," men in fatherhood programs reasserted their common heterosexuality and thereby their common "manliness." This way, fathers could steer clear of being seen as "effeminate" or "sissy-like" in a context they perceived as feminine, i.e. the family. In other words, the maleness of fatherhood is cast in opposite relation to women and gay men. Although representing the diverging outlooks of white middle-class men as well as poor, low-income and minority men, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement thus unites in one common will: "keeping their pants on" in the family.

Sport:

In conjunction with heterosexuality, sport provides an abundance of masculinizing metaphors and practices that are frequently used in fatherhood programs. "Manly" team sports serve as important homosocial arenas within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement to negotiate and contest masculinity in relation to the feminized and "sissified" domain of parenting. For instance, by transposing the cultivation of masculinity and male parenting into sport arenas and framing fathering practices in terms of coaching and team sport, fatherhood programs can differentiate between fatherhood and motherhood, and simultaneously make fathering seem manly, heroic and appealing. Programs challenge men to take fatherhood responsibilities with expressions such as "step up to the [baseball] plate" and "be a team player." At one fatherhood conference, when discussing male mentoring, the speaker said that men, because they are men, understand terms like "team work" and "fair play." Practitioner Joe Jones, uses a football metaphor to explain his "team parenting" model to fathers: "You may be on a team with someone you don't like […] but that doesn't make any difference, because you want to win the Super Bowl." In another example, in a fatherhood video shown at a fatherhood workshop, a practitioner told a father that "you can wrap the diaper like a football." Importantly, sport has many different meanings and uses within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, constituting a longstanding terrain for contestation over racial, sexual and socio-economic boundaries of masculinities. For instance, to African American men, athletic role models are an ambivalent symbol for empowerment. The sport industry also represents dead-end careers, highlighting the disproportional scarcity of non-athletic opportunities for poor and low-income African American men within the labor market (Majors 1990, Messner 1992).

Religion:

Like sport, religious metaphors are frequently used in contemporary fatherhood politics to separate male parenting from female parenting and thus argue for the necessity of fathers to familial, social and moral order. In fatherhood programs, biblical imagery is often used to carve out a particularly male position in families. By casting men as indispensable due to being naturally and divinely ordained "protectors" and "leaders" of women and children, fatherhood programs may masculinize fatherhood and simultaneously make domesticity attractive to men. Especially Christianity serves as a common ground where competing constituencies of men come together on common grounds within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement. However, the two wings within the movement come out of diverging, and competing, religious traditions. Whereas the pro-marriage wing draws upon turn-of-the 19^th-century moral reform, the fragile families wing extends into racial justice rhetoric within abolitionist and civil rights struggles. Subsequently, even though pro-marriage and fragile families organizations converge on the grounds of biblical rhetoric, they do so given the different implications and meanings to different constituencies.

Conclusion: the dilemma of masculinization and the future of "responsible fatherhood"

In my view, it seems that the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement risks reinforcing some of the problems that they seek to solve. Firstly, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement's masculinizing strategies may inhibit alternative constructions of parenting that don't correspond to binary notions of gendered and sexual difference. Secondly, by constructing fatherhood and masculinity out of a differentiation from women and gay men, fatherhood programs may reinforce the urgency for men to assert their heterosexuality. Here, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement contradicts itself, simultaneously viewing male "womanizing" and "promiscuity" as a problem in the first place. Thirdly, by partly focusing on heterosexual monogamy and gender difference, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement ignores the existence and lessons of non-heteronormative families that deal with issues of negotiating parental division of labor in non-gendered ways. As opposed to reinforcing notions of gendered parental difference, it might be a better idea to de-emphasize notions of gendered/ sexual difference in order to liberate fatherhood programs from the dilemmas of masculinizing domesticity while domesticating masculinity.

It remains to be seen in what ways the lives of children, mothers and fathers will be impacted by the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement. Fatherhood responsibility programs have probably been helpful to many men who deal with issues around child support, unemployment, divorce, parenting skills and relationships. Heterosexual mothers may possibly get more help from the social and/ or biological fathers of their children, but this might be conditioned by which burdens and obligations their husbands or boyfriends find "manly" enough to assume considering the ways that the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement seeks to re-gender parenthood. As I have demonstrated above, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement re-genders parenthood by using heterosexuality, sport and religion as masculinizing metaphors and practices in fatherhood programs. Importantly, these "masculine" arenas have different histories and connotations to asymmetrically positioned men.

Issues around marriage crystallize tensions between diverging constituencies of men and threaten to divide the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement. This is where the pro-marriage and fragile families wings strongly disagree while simultaneously sharing similar, sometimes contradictory, principles. Many pro-marriage representatives come out of a tradition that defends the institution of marriage and the "superiority" of the nuclear family in the face of changing patterns of family formation and perceived feminist and liberal "attacks" on "the family" (Popenoe 1988, 1996, Blankenhorn 1995, Whitehead 1993). In contrast, most fragile families representatives, who draw upon civil rights traditions and deal with poor and unmarried parents, think that marriage is a good thing but point out that it does not guarantee "positive child outcomes." Their priority is to work with a range of socio-economic and structural problems for families and communities and in turn increase the "marriageability" of low-income, poor and minority men.

Since the mid-1990s, partly due to the efforts of marriage proponents within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, marriage has become a main priority in U.S. national policy. In response, groups traditionally denied the legal, economic and social benefits of marriage are protesting recent governmental shift towards a focus on marriage promotion. For example, feminist organizations and civil rights groups have objected that marriage centered messages on fatherhood will further dismount governmental assistance for poor, low income and unmarried parents. The National Organization for Women (NOW) strongly opposed the Father's Count Act of 1999, which was heavily influenced by the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement. NOW labels the Father's Count Act as "dangerous legislation" and claims that it will undermine support for custodial parents, which in most cases are women. NOW also warns that the act, being centered on promoting marriage as key to fatherhood responsibility, might endanger the financial possibilities for women to opt out of bad marriages and indirectly result in an increase of domestic violence rates (Rhodes 2000). In addition, NOW claims that the Fathers Count act may benefit father's rights groups seeking increased control over property, ex-wives and children, undermining mothers' legal rights and protection in terms of custody, visitation and financial assistance (Conolly 1999).

Tellingly, gay and lesbian families have been excluded from the fatherhood and marriage discussion so far. The Fatherhood Responsibility Movement seeks to avoid addressing non-heterosexual families whatsoever. Despite its focus on male heterosexuality, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement denies the fact that gendered and sexual politics are mutually reinforcing and inseparable within fatherhood and marriage politics (Gavanas 2003). Representatives within the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement tend to deny that their politics has anything to do with sexuality. While representatives do not position themselves as heterosexuals, they implicitly refer to heterosexuals when talking about families and parents. Moreover, marriage proponents blatantly promote the supremacy of heterosexual marriage above all other family forms, including heterosexual cohabitation, while seeking to re-introduce moral, economic and legal incentives that discourage non-heteronormative family forms. Marriage proponents rarely mention lesbian and gay family forms other than under the rubric of "alternative lifestyles" that should be discouraged. This way, they are structuring a silence that denies any legitimacy for these families whatsoever.

In the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, the promotion of male family involvement coexists with fears for the perceived "sissifying" and feminizing connotations of male domesticity. Early 20^th century authors feared that women's suffrage might turn men into effeminate housewives while women gained more political and economic power. Simultaneously, contemporary proponents for responsible fatherhood seek to steer clear of becoming "Mr Moms," while renegotiating masculine domains. Aa long as fatherhood politics is based on the exclusion of alternative masculinities, as well as binary differentiation from notions of femininity, it will remain caught up in the dilemmas of masculinization. Moreover, as federal fatherhood politics shifts into an emphasis on marriage promotion, the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement may end up disbanding itself as fragile families and pro-marriage diverge over the competing perspectives of men in relation to marriage.

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