Psychological Regimes Of Truth And Father Identity: Challenges For Work/Life Integration

7/27/2019 Psychological Regimes Of Truth And Father Identity: Challenges For Work/Life Integration

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PSYCHOLOGICAL REGIMES OF TRUTH AND FATHER

IDENTITY: CHALLENGES FOR WORK/LIFE INTEGRATION

Kirsi Erranta and Johanna Moisander, Aalto University School of Business

Published in Organization StudiesApril 2011vol. 32 no. 4, 509-526

doi: 10.1177/0170840611400293http://oss.sagepub.com/content/32/4/509.short

ABSTRACT

Based on a case study, this paper elaborates on the psychological regimes of truth thatorganize and regulate male parenting and partly constitute the conditions of possibility

for male identity and subjectivity both as fathers and employees. The aim is to contribute

to a better understanding of the discursive-cultural constraints that western managers andemployeesmales in particularmay face when trying to pursue a better work/lifebalance. Based on an empirical analysis of expert literature on male parenting, the paper

argues that prevalent psychological regimes of truth about fathers and fathering do notnecessarily render enactable the sorts of identities that enable both men and women to

achieve a better work/life balance.

Keywords: governmentality, psy-knowledge, identity work, ethics, fatherhood


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INTRODUCTION

One cannot care for self without knowledge. The care for self is of course

knowledge of self but it is also the knowledge of a certain number of rules ofconduct or of principles which are at the same time truths and regulations. To care

for self is to fit ones self out with these truths. That is where ethics is linked tothe game of truth. (Foucault 1988: 5)

Fatherhood and male parenting have recently been discussed and problematized in manyWestern countries. Parental abdication by men has been viewed as a root cause of many

of the ills of society, and unequal sharing of childcare by men and women has beenidentified as a hindrance to work-life balance for women. As a result, measures have been

taken, both by governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations of the thirdsector, to encourage men to rethink their identities as fathers and to take more

responsibilities in the home, particularly in childcare (see e.g. Plantenga and Remery2005).

In many contemporary organizations, however, the male manager is faced with an ethicalchallenge. On the one hand he is expected to be a New Man (Linstead and Thomas

2002) and a Balanced Individual (Merilinen, Tienari, Thomas and Davies 2004), whospends more time with his children and shoulders some of the domestic burden to allow

his female partner to pursue a career of her own. On the other hand, he needs to earn hisplace in the organization, on a daily basis, by showing that he is committed, constantly

available and willing to work long hours.

In the existing literature, managers have been observed to solve this dilemma by

constructing their identities as fathers and managers in terms of the discourse of malebreadwinning (Linstead and Thomas 2002; Thomas and Linstead 2002). The male-

breadwinner discourse, which emphasizes the responsibility of a good father to providefor his family financially, can be used not only as a justification for making sacrifices in

ones private (family) life but also as a confirmation of being a committed and dedicatedmanager with an entrepreneurial spirit. In such contexts, the identity of the parent and

partner may be subsumed under the greedy discourses of management and organization(Thomas and Linstead 2002: 88)

It comes as no surprise, then, that in the everyday practice of families and organizationsthe prevalent ways of combining work and family life still remain gendered (Pocock

2005; Smithson and Stokoe 2005). While the option of taking a short parental leave at thetime of a childs birth is becoming increasingly popular, longer-term care options seem to

be ignored by the vast majority of male employees (Plantenga and Remery 2005).Overall, traditional western norms for motherhood and fatherhood seem to be resistant to

change. As Barbara Pocock (2005: 43) has put it, cultural norms remain firmly attachedto the idea of maternal carers, proper mothers who are available to care generously, as

well as proper workers who are male, full-time and care-free.

From a Foucauldian critical management perspective (Brewis 1996; Du Gay, Salaman

and Rees 1996; Brewis 2001; Halford and Leonard 2005; Ezzamel and Willmott 2008),


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we argue in this paper that to increase our understanding of these enduring culturalpatterns and practices, there is a need to focus attention to the forms of knowledge and

truth that organize male parenting and partly constitute the conditions of possibility formale identity and subjectivity both as fathers and employees (Foucault 1983; Butler

1990). Scientific knowledge and expertiseor rather the discourses and regimes of truth

they involveare not only sources of authority, legitimacy and credibility for policymeasures but also provide individual citizens, families and organizations with appropriatemeans, ends and justifications for constructing their identities and managing their

environments. As part of a whole network of practices and regimes of government(Foucault 1991a; Dean 1999), expert knowledge on fathering thus fabricates, makes

available and suggests particular versions of male subjectivity as fathers, providingethical repertoires and cultural practices to both men and women for performing their

gender identities and roles as parents and employeesand for combining the demands ofwork with family life.

In this paper, we set out to study this knowledge and the regimes of truth about fathersand male parenting it gives rise to and sustains. By regimes of truth we mean a 'general

politics' of truth about fathers (Foucault 1980: 131). This entails a set of discourses andrationalities that are accepted and made to function as true, and which give salience to

particular categories, divisions, classifications and identities in the representation offathers and male parenting, thus rendering fatherhood intelligible and enactable in

particular ways (Rose 1999b: 29).

Drawing on the literature on analytics of government (Donzelot 1979; Foucault 1991a;

Dean 1999; Rose 1999a), we study the ways in which male parenting isproblematizedrendered simultaneously troubling and intelligiblein a set of

educational materials and policy texts on fatherhood. As we shall explain below, thismaterial represents a case of societal problematization of male parenting that is

essentially based on psy-knowledge (Rose 1996; Rose 1999b). By psy-knowledge wemean the complex discourses produced mainly by psychologists, psychotherapists,

psychiatrists, and other psy-professionals, who are involved in the conduct of humanconduct through knowledge of human subjectivity. More specifically, we focus on the

ways in which the subject of the male parent is made up (Hacking 1986) in the texts,and the forms of cultural identity that thus open up for men as parents.

At the level of organization theory, the paper contributes to the body of literature on thediscursive construction of professional identities and on the management of employee

subjectivities (Du Gay et al. 1996; Fournier 1998; Halford and Leonard 2005). Whilemuch of the existing literature has focused on elaborating the ways in which individual

organizational members discursively construct their identities as professionals, partnersand parents in interview talk (Linstead and Thomas 2002; Thomas and Linstead 2002;

Merilinen et al. 2004; Kuhn 2006) we shift the focus to the discursive resources andconditions of possibility that expert literature and psy-knowledge offer for this identity

work and for employees as ethical subjects.

We argue that this perspective is important and offers new insights because psy-

knowledgeswhich address questions about who we are, how we could improve


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ourselves and how we should conduct our livesplay an important role in contemporaryliberal forms of government and in the currently widespread styles of management that

are based on improving the capacity of individuals to exercise authority over their ownconduct (Rose 1996; Rose 1999a; Rose 1999b). Moreover, in many organizational

contexts of today, the exercise of authority appears to take forms that are therapeutic in

nature; they are based on helping individuals to understand their actions and to regulatetheir own conduct towards directions that are in line with both their own interest and thecorporate strategy (Du Gay et al. 1996; Fournier 1998). As this type of management is

based on making up particular ethical subjects (Foucault 1985)subjects who define andregulate themselves according to a set of moral codes and who constitute themselves as

subjects of moral conductit is important to study the discursive resources andpossibilities that psy-knowledge offers for this sort of identity work.

GOVERNMENT OF MEN AND FATHERING

The interpretive framework that guides our analysis is based on a theoretical and

methodological perspective that is often referred to as an analytics of government or

governmentality (e.g. Dean 1999; Rose 1999b). It examines the conditions of possibility

and intelligibility for specific ways of seeking to act upon the conduct of others, oroneself, to achieve certain ends (Rose 1999b: 19). It is concerned with specific regimes

of practices, more or less organized ways we think about, practice, and reform suchthings as fathering for example (Dean 1999: 21). It focuses on specific regimes of

government, the ways in which people are governed and govern themselves withindifferent regimes of practices, and the conditions under which these regimes of

government emerge, operate and are transformed (Dean 1999: 23; Rose 1999b: 19-22).

From this perspective, government refers not so much to the political or administrative

structures of the modern state but, rather, to the conduct of conduct (Foucault 1991a).

Mitchell Dean (1999: 11) defines it as

any more or less calculated and rational activity, undertaken by multiplicity ofauthorities and agencies, employing a variety of techniques and forms of

knowledge, that seeks to shape conduct by working through our desires,aspirations, interests and beliefs, for definite but shifting ends and with a diverse

set of relatively unpredictable consequences, effects and outcomes.

It is thus a form of activity that is geared at shaping, guiding or affecting in some way the

conduct of some person or a group of persons (Gordon 1991: 2). Government thusoperates particularly through assembling and proposing particular forms of subjectivity

with which people conform to or resist. It works through peoples desires, aspirations,interests, beliefs and everyday practices by suggesting particular life-styles and forms of

being, e.g. the identity of the father and appropriate ways of performing that identity. Itis based on improving the capacity of individual citizens to exercise authority over their

own liveshelping them to understand their own actions and to regulate their ownconduct. Governing people, in this sense, is not so much a disciplinary technique or way

to force people to do what somebody else wants by producing docilesubjects. The aim israther to produce active citizens and ethical subjects who not only conform to and


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internalize specific rules but voluntarily govern themselves to achieve specific objectives.From this perspective, it is interesting to study the ways in which these subjects are called

up to problematize or question their own conduct and work towards good, virtuous,appropriate, and responsible conduct.

In contemporary western societies, scientific knowledge and expertise play a key role inregimes of government through which people are governed and govern themselves (Rose

1996; Dean 1999; Rose 1999a). The activity of government is made possible andconstrained by what can be thought and what cannot be thought at any particular moment

in our history. Knowledge, or the specific regimes of truth that this knowledge sustainsand gives rise to, defines and renders knowable and thinkable the objects of government

in particular ways, defining what is normal and pathological (in the functioning of humanbeings for example) and thus sets the aims and objectives of practice. As Mitchell Dean

(1999:18) has argued, people govern themselves and others according to what they taketo be true about what they are, what aspects of their existence should be worked upon,

how, with what means and to what ends. Knowledge and expertise provide them withsuch an understanding, thus giving both an intellectual technology and authority for their

practices of government.

Psychology and psychologists have long played an important role in establishing norms

for parenting as well as for normal and desirable childhood development and behavior(Rose 1999a). They have provided not only norms and standards for parenting and child

development but also specific forms of rationality, facts, concepts, and explanatory logicsfor making sense of parenting and family life. These psychological vocabularies and

rationalities have been widely disseminated not only through the education of social andhealth care workers, family therapist, counselors, and parents, but also through popular

literature and mass media. Through what Rose calls the psy-saturation of popular cultureand the everyday experience of individuals, psychological languages, techniques,

authorities and judgments have come to shape the contemporary ethics, the texture ofpeoples intimate dealings with themselves and with their closest companions (Rose

1999a).

In sum, government entails not only relations of power and authority but also issues of

truth, self and identity (ethos). In the following sections we therefore set out to study theethical government of the self (Foucault 1985; Dean 1999: 17) through which men are

governed as fathers, focusing particularly on the discursive practicesthe veridicalpractices that are concerned with the production of truththrough which the regimes of

truth about fathering (i.e. what passes as true knowledge of fathering) are produced andsustained in psy-knowledge (Foucault 1991b: 75). This is important, we argue, because

such knowledge of fathering, and the images of fathers and mothers that they give riseto, may well come to lay claim to all that can be said about parenting. These images may

thus become final statements of how fathers and mothers naturally are as parents, thusleaving individuals to relate their experiences to such images, rather than themselves

making images which conform to their own concrete experiences (Rossiter 1988: 17).


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THE CASE STUDY AND EMPIRICAL MATERIALS

Our empirical analysis is based on an instrumental case study (Stake 2003) carried out

using Foucauldian discourse analysis (Howarth 2000; Kendall and Wickham 2003;Ezzamel and Willmott 2008) and based on expert literature (non-fiction) and

documentary texts on fatherhood. We study a case of societal problematization of maleparentinghow the government of fathers and fathering is called into questionin

Finland at the turn of the millennium. This problematization is based on specificpsychological knowledge of human subjectivity and it exemplifies the previously

discussed psychologization of government (Rose 1996; Rose 1999a) that has takenplace in contemporary western societies. The case thus gives us a possibility to explore

the ways in which fathers and male parenting are rendered intelligible in particular waysthrough psychological knowledge, and to gain a better understanding of the regimes of

truth that this knowledge gives rise to and sustains.

As empirical materials we use six professional texts on male parenting and fatherhood,

published in Finland during the years 1998-2001. This dataset was obtained by searching

several national bibliographies and databases for basic keywords associated with

fathering. The following selected texts, which represent expert but non-academicliterature on fathers and fathering, were analyzed (see Appendix 1 for full reference

information):

1. A green papertype committee report on fatherhood published by the FinnishMinistry of Social Affairs and Health (Green paper)

2. Two conference reports on fathers and male parenting by the Nordic Council ofMinisters (Proceedings A), and by the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare (anational NGO promoting the wellbeing of children) (Proceedings B)

3. A guide book for health care professionals on male parenting published by theFinnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (Guide for professionals)

4. A general text book on male parenting and fatherhood (Text book)5. A popular child care and parenting book for fathers (Parenting book)

These particular texts were chosen because they represent and fruitfully illustrate the psy-knowledge based societal problematization of male parenting in Finland at the turn of the

millennium that constitutes our case. The books and reports that we analyze arerepresentative of psy-knowledge (Rose 1996) on male parenting in Finnish society in that

time period. Even though the authors of these books and reports represent variousinstitutions and disciplines of education, health care and social work, all of the texts seek

to establish authority and an ethical basis from psychological knowledge and expertise onchild and adult development.

The analysis is carried out using the basic principles and procedures of Foucauldiandiscourse analysis (see e.g. Howarth 2000; Kendall and Wickham 2003; Ezzamel and

Willmott 2008). From this perspective, social action is typically studied and rendered


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understandable by reconstructing the symbolic structures of knowledge that enable andconstrain social agents to interpret and make sense of the world around them in particular

ways, and to behave in corresponding ways. It is based on the assumption that powerworks through language and discourse, constituting a matrix of understanding, which

produces what is considered 'true' and 'normal' and thus helps to set rules, norms, and

conventions by which social life is ordered and governed. Available discourses, therefore,guide and constrain the way that fathers and fathering can be meaningfully discussed andreasoned about, and define acceptable and intelligible ways of conduct with respect to it.

These discourses are not, of course, translated into the day-to-day practices of parents inany straightforward and simple manner but are continuously contested, negotiated and

changed through social practice and interaction.

Accordingly, in analyzing the data, we look into the discursive practices through which

male parenting is problematized, represented and made sense of in the texts. In doing so,our aim is to identify and elaborate on the veridical practices (Foucault 1991b: 75)

through which particular regimes of truth or rationality about male parenting areproduced and sustained in the empirical context of our study. The Foucauldian theory on

ethical government of the self discussed above provides a way of drawing attention toparticular aspects of the texts, helping us elaborate on the distinctive ways in which truths

about fathers are formulated through particular concepts and vocabularies (Dean 1998:192; Howarth 2000: 141).

PSY-DISCOURSES OF MALE PARENTING

In Finland, the knowledge and expertise on male parenting tends to be organized around

two competing regimes of truth or rationality that can be observed in the texts onfathering that we analyze in this study (Vuori 2001; Erranta 2005; Vuori 2009). These

rationalities share the same psychological vocabulary but represent the field to be

governed somewhat differently, identifying and defining different ethical principles,explanatory logics, facts, problems, and ends for the government of fathers and maleparenting.

We have labeled these two different ways of representing, talking and reasoning aboutmale parenting manly fatheringand involved fathering. These two competing parentingdiscourses are much in line with the two recent currents in fatherhood politics discussedin contemporary sociology of the family: the one seeking to reclaim reputed rights of

fathers by re-establishing patriarchal authority in the nuclear family, and the other aimingto reform male parenting in the name of gender equality and wellbeing of families

(Gavanas 2004). Both of these discourses at least implicitly emphasize the importance of

family for social order.

The broader socio-political and cultural context in which male parenting becomes anobject of societal problematization, and where the expert knowledge that we analyze is

produced, may be described as a Nordic welfare state. According to this type of regime,the public sector has a fundamental responsibility for providing universal educational,

medical, and other welfare services and social benefits to all citizens in the name of socialjustice and gender equality (e.g. Esping-Andersen 1999). Ever since the 1970s, the


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Finnish government has taken specific policy measures to support first the dual earnermodel, and later shared parenting and father care, in an attempt to promote womens

active participation in the labor market and to change the gendered practices of work-family reconciliation (Lammi-Taskula 2006; Vuori 2009). There are extensive parental

and childcare leave schemes, for example, which are equally available to men and

women. Despite these measures, however, Finnish men have not been particularly eagerto take advantage of these opportunities to care for their children (Lammi-Taskula 2006).

In the following sections we discuss these two discourses of fathering, describing the

forms of male subjectivity and male parenting that the discourses give rise to and sustain.First, we focus on the truths and forms of knowledge through which fatherhood is

problematized in these discourses. Then we analyze the forms of ethical subject that thediscourses mobilize, focusing on the ways in which fathers are called to problematize

their own conduct and work toward a good and virtuous fatherhood.

Manly fathering

1. The increasing number of divorces and single-parent families is indicative of thefragile nature of fatherhood and of some sort of a marginalization, which has

resulted in some women starting to think that there is no need for a father in theeveryday life of the children at all. Welfare state has made it possible for a woman

to get by with children, financially and partly also socially, without a man and afather. (Green paper, 45.)

2. [F]atherhood is the most important of the tasks that society has given to a man.It helps men to obey the laws, be good citizens, and take others needs intoconsideration. What is remarkable is that fatherhood helps the man to channel his

aggressions and use them for social ends. Second, fatherhood makes the man work

for the best of his children. The father provides his children with physical safetyand various material benefits. The father contributes to the development of theidentity, personality, morals and competence of children, and passes on to them his

own values and culture. (Parenting book, 21.)

3. Nowadays there is a great dearth of fathers [] Fathering has been regarded as theultimate stronghold of conservatism and patriarchy, the destruction of which is the

first step towards true [gender] equality. [] There has been a [conspiracy] towardsmen and fathers to make them soft, equal [with women and mothers], men who do

not have the balls [to stand on their own]. (Parenting book, 12.)

Manly fathering would seem historically to be the earlier of the two discursive fields thatorganize contemporary regimes of practices concerning male parenting in Finland. Itsustains a neo-patriarchal and moralist form of rationality in the sense that it builds on a

patriarchal vision of family life, and that it seems to be at war against gendernonconformity. The model image of a father is a man who stands his ground as the moral

authority and the master of the household, ideally organized according to the model ofmale breadwinner and female homemaker. He is the biological father of the child, the


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head of the family, and a real man who has the balls to set the limits or to imposeneeded discipline on the family, but in a responsible manner.

The main source of concern in the discourse of manly fathering is the weakening of themarriage as the basis of family and the fragmentation of the safety net that family once

provided. High divorce rates and the increasing number of single mothers constitute athreat to the institution of the nuclear family and to its capacity to socialize, provide

welfare, security and care for members of society (Erranta 2006). The discourseconstructs a world where the problems of the young are constantly increasing as the result

of inadequate fathering and the loss of parental responsibility in the education,supervision and care of children. With a conservative, moralistic tone, it warns against

the exceedingly wide defamilialization of responsibilities (Esping-Andersen 1999), i.e.devolving responsibilities for welfare, health and mutual care upon the state. It rather

emphasizes the role of families in taking care of these services, emphasizing that menneed to seriously reflect upon their commitment and personal engagement in the

education and socialization of their children.

As a solution to the concern for the crisis of the nuclear family and parenthood, the

discourse of manly fathering sets out to define specifically male modes of domesticityand parenting. In doing this, it draws from the neo-patriarchal, pro-marriage rhetoric of

the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, mobilized particularly in the US (see Gavanas2004). It claims that fathers have become marginalized and the family feminized and thus

seeks to re-establish the indispensability of men in families. It therefore emphasizesgender differences and constitutes fatherhood as specifically male and masculine form of

parenting in differentiation from the female forms of family involvement.

Truths about manly fathers and healthy families

4.It is late afternoon and the father comes home from work. He settles down in thehouse and observes how the mother feeds the baby, changes the diapers and washesthe bottom. When the child is sated and satisfied, the father takes him and starts to

play. The babys face is lit up, his eyebrows rise and his mouth forms a smilesomething exciting is about to come! The father does not talk too much but hops,

sways, and bounces the baby in a rhythmic way. The play is accompanied by thefathers babbling and the childs screaming mingled with exhilaration and fear. The

mother warns that the child may bring up, which is what he probably will do(Parenting book, 99.)

5. [...] we agree with the psychoanalytic comprehension that fathers and mothers formdifferent bonds to the baby. The sexual difference between man and woman, father

and mother, is inevitable. Fathers do not experience pregnancy, childbirth andbreastfeeding. (Guide for professionals, 5.)

In the discourse of manly fathering, psychological theories of child development form the

core of the regime of truth that defines the scope and limits of intelligible fathering andmothering. In the empirical materials we analyzed, these theories include the canons of

developmental psychology, such as John Bowlbys attachment theory, Sigmund Freudstheories on sexuality, and Margaret Mahlers theory of the separation-individuation


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process. In these depictions, the unit of analysis is always the heterosexual nuclearfamily, the triangle of the child, mother and father. In addition to the classical theories of

developmental psychology, this discourse also makes use of the more recent Americanliterature on fatherlessness (e.g. Blankenhorn 1995), which sets out to demonstrate the

association of father absence with various detrimental effects and destructive outcomes

for children and adolescents.

Overall, grounded on this knowledge, the discourse of manly fathering sustainsessentialist notions of gender difference, emphasizing the natural biological differences

between male and female parenting that translate into gender-specific tasks andcapabilities for both men and women as parents. Drawing selectively form

psychoanalytic literature and evolutionary psychology, it represents the mother as thefirst object of psychological attachment and the primary caretaker of the child.

As the extracts above illustrate, manly fathering represents men and women as inevitablydifferent biological and psychological creatures. They develop psychologically different

relationships with the infant-child and thus have gender-specific roles as parents. As the

person who has given birth to the child, the mother is naturally responsible for meeting

the basic needs of the infant by offering nutrition and physical closeness. The task ofthe father, for his part, is to meet some higher needs of the childto provide economic

security and recreation, as well as paternal authority and advice, for instance. Inconstructing the identity of the father in this way, the discourse of manly fathering reifies

the terms wherein the divisions between men and women as well as masculine andfeminine are treated as absolute and unchanging not only in families but also in

organizational life (Knights and Kerfoot 2004: 432).

Manly fathering identifies three developmental tasks of infancy and early childhood, in

which the role of the father is crucial. First, the father helps the child to achieve

autonomous and ambitious subjectivity and emotional independence from the mother.Second, he sets the rules and regulations for socially acceptable behavior and teaches thechild morally responsible citizenship. And third, he shows how a man correctly performs

his gender and sexual identity. Through these psychological facts the father isconstituted as the producer of normal, heterosexual children.

Compared with the caring activities typically expected of the mother, these three parentalfunctions assigned specifically to the father arguably take a relatively non-active and

primarily symbolic form ofbeinga fatherrecognizing oneself and being recognized byothers as the father in the family. While the task of teaching children rules and certain

masculine skills might well involve some concrete, time-consuming activities, the main

agent in these activities still is the developing child, to whom the father is an object ofidentification, above all. In the discourse of manly fathering, male parenting thus wouldseem to be constructed as caring about (Tronto 1989). In other words, it takes the form

of an abstract intellectual concern and loving of the child that does not necessarilydemand constant or regular concrete involvement, except breadwinning outside the home.

Consequently, the discourse of manly fathering tends to prescribe versions of masculineafter-work or weekend fathering and recreational parenting for mene.g. frisky play-


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mates and sports coaches as in Extract 4 above (Linstead and Thomas 2002; Thomas andLinstead 2002). The maleness of fathers family involvement is thus constructed in terms

of breadwinning, discipline, play, role modelling and protection, which are viewed asparticularly male and masculine modes of parenting, and in complementary relation to

motherhood and femininity (Gavanas 2004: 253). The mother gives care and the father

supports the family. In constructing the identity of the father in this way, the discourse ofmanly fathering thus seems to sustain the gender stereotypes that characterize malemanagers as professionals without caring responsibilities and their female colleagues

primarily as mothers and not as competent and loyal professionals (Kugelberg 2006:158).

The morality of manly fathering

6. The personality or masculinity of the father does not need to change. On thecontrary, it is precisely [the personality and masculinity of the father] that is in thehighest demand. Nevertheless, this does not free a man from contemplating the

quality and sufficiency of his fatherhood. An excellent way to get answers is to ask

children. (Parenting book, 38.)

As the fathers primary field of action is at his workplacehis task at home being tooccupy the symbolic position of the fatherhe is not necessarily required to engage in

ethical work by inventing, developing, and promoting new forms of subjectivity. A mansfatherhood or masculinity does not have to be problematized because it is largelybiologically determined. What is imperative, however, it that the father offers himself, his

masculinity and personality, as a role model for his children.

On the whole, the discourse of manly fathering represents a code-oriented morality

(Foucault 1985), in the sense that it is based on conforming to a set of familistic values

and obeying rules of action that are recommended to fathers by various prescriptiveagencies. While in the publications of many of the grass roots advocacy groups theserules are usually clear and explicit, in the expert literature on fathering, the moral code is

rather abstract and implicit, and mainly endorsed through the knowledge of childdevelopment. Nevertheless, in the discourse of manly fathering, a set of criteria for

appropriate ways of being a father can be identified. For example, masculine is theobligatory expressive attribute of the father. And masculinity is constituted in discrete

and asymmetrical opposition to feminine and mother. Identities such as femininemen and feminine fathers, cases where gender does not follow from sex, are

unintelligible and thus do not, and cannot, exist. While men and women may have bothfeminine and masculine traits, fathers are unquestionably masculine and mothers are

feminine. In one of the texts we analyzed, for example, it is claimed that in the case of a[feminine] soft dad, the woman loses a man and the child loses a father. The discourse

of manly fathering thus effectively reproduces and sustains a social order that JudithButler has referred to as the heterosexual matrix (Butler 1990).

The way in which the father is invited or incited to recognize his moral obligations isbased on his group membership as a father, and by empathetically responding to the wish

of a helpless child who needs a father. In the texts that we analyzed, for example, this


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wish was represented by crafting emotional narratives of little father hungry boys atchild psychiatric hospitals and by presenting adult mens autobiographical accounts of

their painful childhood memories of absent fathers. Through such elements, the readermay recognize himself as obliged to take his place in the natural order of the

generational chain, and act as a father for the sake of his children, family, and

community. The man offers himself as an example of good father, whose desirable modeof being is the responsible male citizen.

Consequently, while discouraging fathers from problematizing their masculinity, the

discourse of manly fathering would also seem to discourage them from problematizingtheir masculinity and masculinist priorities at work. Yet, in many contemporary

organizations pursuing masculinity at work often translates into pursuing masculinistcareer patterns and working patterns, which would seem to push men into working long

hours and being constantly available to their employersat the cost of their family lives(Fournier 1998; Linstead and Thomas 2002; Merilinen et al. 2004; Dermott 2005).

Involved fathering

7. It is a generally accepted view that the time that a father spends with his children even when they are quite small is important both for the father himself, for hispersonal growth, and especially for the development of the father-child

relationship. When the father takes responsibility, is committed and gains moreself-confidence, he becomes a real person that is present in the childs life. [.]When a man becomes more accomplished in the skills of a father, a more equal

division of responsibility can be introduced with regard to the practical tasks ofrunning a family and caring for children. When necessary, this also provides the

mother with the opportunity to give a more equal input to her own working career.(Green paper, 28)

The competing discourse on male parenting, involved fathering, entails a liberal socio-political form of rationality in the sense that it is more open to new forms of family life

and gender relations, taking shared parenting and the dual-earner/dual-carer family as thebasic starting points. It seems to have emerged gradually in Western countries since the

1960s in response to the mounting criticism and uneasiness about the traditional culturalideals of family life and parenting, which have tended to confine women to the roles of

homemakers and caring mothers, and men to the roles of breadwinners and detachedafter-work fathers (Vuori 2001). It thus questions the idea of different, specifically

paternal and maternal roles and functions in parenting, and prescribes engaged andcommitted, intimate and caring parenthood for both men and women. Involved fathering

is believed to have multitudinous positive outcomes not only for the children and theirmother but also for the father himself.

The model image of a father is a man who takes responsibility for care work and spendsquality time with his children, engaging in active interaction and being available to them

on a daily basis. The involved father is thus some sort of a New Man, who is ready andable to shoulder some of the domestic burden to allow his female partner the space of her

own and not just be a wife at home (Linstead and Thomas 2002: 11). He therefore


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balances his career with home life in order to promote equal opportunities for hispartner in the labor market and to form stronger, closer, and personally more rewarding

relationships with his children. The discourse of involved fathering thus problematizesthe role of the father as a career and work oriented, authoritative and distant breadwinner.

The main source of concern that the discourse of involved fathering brings up revolvesaround the question of work/life balance, i.e. how men and women can better reconcile

the demands of their work and family lives. For men, working long hours, neglectingfamilial responsibilities and being weekend fathers, creates tensions in their domestic

relationships. This places them at a risk of divorce and losing an important part of theirsocial networks, which puts their psychosocial survival in danger. It also prevents them

from gaining personally valuable experiences as fathers through more involvedengagement and closer relationships with their children. For women, the question of

work/life balance concerns their unequal position in the labor market and society. Thecaring responsibilities imposed upon women affect their possibilities of having a full-

time job, accumulating income and building up a successful career. Moreover, sincewomen usually spend significantly more time on household chores and care work than

their male partners, they are loaded by a double burden of having to engage both in paidemployment and in unpaid domestic labor, on a second shift (Hochschild 1989). For

children, a good work-life balance in the family is represented as an important ingredientof a harmonious family environment for them to grow up.

To offer practical solutions to the problem of work/life balance, involved fathering callsattention not only to individual fathers and families but also to public policy and

workplace practices, calling for paternal leaves, educational programs and policyinterventions for promoting involved fathering. It encourages fathers to get involved and

to take an active role in everyday childcare and constructs male parenting as a personaldevelopmental project of a man as a father and an ethical subject.

Truths about involved fathers and balanced families

8. The main problem of the nuclear-family -fatherhood that is based on an old-fashioned role differentiation is that it is risky [] The everyday life of a father

who is capable of doing very little housework and who knows his childrens needsonly superficially can continue smoothly only as long as the mother is able and

willing to take care of these things. [] Problems arise in case of a quarrelsomedivorce, where the fathers possibilities of getting custody are weighted. The parent

who has taken more responsibility for childcare before the divorce, and whose carethe children are accustomed to in the everyday life of the home, has an advantage.

(Text book, 75.)

9. The starting point was the eventually revolutionary change in perspective,according to which child care is no longer considered as a biology-driven, natural

activity for women alone, but as care work, like any work, [skills and practices] thatare learned and obtained gradually through experience. Thus also the father can

learn to satisfy the needs of the child completely, and there are no real barriers toshare nurturance and care with the mother. (Text book, 171.)


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The discourse of involved fathering offers policy makers, family experts, and individualparents an intellectual technology and authority that is based on the canons of

developmental psychology as well as on the recent Anglo-American literature on maleparenting. Some of the important authors and concepts include Alan Hawkins and David

Dollahites (1997)generative fathering, and Michael Lamb, Joseph Pleck, Eric Charnov

and James Levines (1987)father involvement, which emphasize the psychological natureof parenting and represent fathering as a practice and a personal project of the maleparent.

Grounded in this literature, the discourse of involved fathering clearly problematizesessentialist notions of fathering and the prevalent ideas of a gendered division of labor in

parenting. The popular understanding that there are natural gender-based differences inparenting that stem from innate biological or psychological differences between men and

women is contested.

Involved fathering rather emphasizes the practicalnature of fatherhood. Childcare andparenting are represented in terms of concrete tasks, everyday practices, and skills that

can be learned, rehearsed and improved. A critical point, according to this reasoning, is

whether the father truly assumes responsibility for the well-being and care of his child ona daily basis. To be an involved father, a man has to engage in organizing the daily

programs of his children, taking care of their clothes, meals, school trips, and medicalappointments, as well as staying at home when they are ill. Parenting thus involves not

only caring about but also caring forchildren (Tronto 1989). It involves spending timeand being available to ones children as well as taking responsibility for the everyday

routines and activities of childcare, childrearing and family life. Fathering is thus largelya form of care work and domestic expertise, a competence that can be acquired.

This activity of carrying out child-related domestic work is represented as a fundamental

precondition for building close parent-child relationships, both for women and men. Theassumption of an exclusive attachment to the primary parent, typically the mother, isquestioned as an outdated view of child development. Infants are rather represented as

capable of forming multiple close relationships with their parents and caretakers, bothwith the mother and the father, for example. Therefore, fathers need to get involved in the

daily activities of the family, because direct paternal involvement in childcare and one-to-one interaction with the child enables an early psychological attachment of the child to

the father. This contributes positively to a childs sense of security and to the wellbeingof the entire family.

Moreover, in the discourse of involved fathering, the rigid sex-specificity of the paternal

functions is also problematized. Both female and male parents are represented as capableof satisfying all the needs of their children, and to contribute to the developmentalprocesses that they go through, e.g. achieving autonomy and learning to cope with

aggression. In this sense, there seems to be no qualitative gender difference in theparenting skills of mothers and fathers. Mothers are assumed to be able to function as

proficient parents and instigators of social order as fathers, for example. There is noreason to assume that in families of single mothers children are at risk for developing into

anti-social, over-dependent or otherwise abnormal adults because of the absence of the


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other sex. A two-parent family is nevertheless represented as a preferable growingenvironment for a child since there are quantitatively more parental resources available tothe children.

Grounded in the literature on generative fathering, the discourse of involved fathering

also represents male parenting as a personal project and developmental task of the father.It draws on Erik H. Eriksons (1950) theory of psychosocial development, which discerns

eight stages of psychosocial development in human life. In Eriksons theory, the seventhstage, experienced in middle adulthood, is characterized by a crisis or a nuclear conflict

between generativity and stagnation. By generativity Erikson refers to the interest inestablishing and guiding the next generation or whatever in a given case may become the

absorbing object of a parental kind of responsibility (Erikson 1950: 231). He argues thatwhere this enrichment fails, a regression from generativity to an obsessive need for

pseudo intimacy, punctuated by moments of mutual repulsion, takes place, often with apervading sense [] of individual stagnation and interpersonal impoverishment

(Erikson 1950: 231). The seventh stage thus is about attaining a favorable balance ofgenerativity over stagnation through, and in the process of, parenting or helping the next

generation in other ways.

Generative fathering thus refers to the will and capacity of a (male) person to commit

himself to caring for the next generation, to nurturing his children in particular. From thisperspective, parenting is considered an important, even crucial part of adult male life

since it is viewed to extend mens sense of self to include the next generation, family, andcommunity. The failure to achieve the stage of generative fathering is thus understood as

pathology, which signals a parental inability to meet the needs of ones children.

In the discourse of involved fathering, the concept of generative fathering thus brings out

a new perspective. It shifts the focus from childhood development to the lifespan

development of the adult male. Concurrently, it shifts the focus of psy-knowledge andexpertise from the subjectivity of the child to that of the male parent, thus psychologizingfatherhood (see Rose 1999a). By rendering fatherhood into a psychological project and

the object of psy-knowledge, the discourse of involved fathering offers a range of newresourcesconcepts, categories, logicsfor fathers to problematize, analyze, evaluate,

and improve their parenting in new ways. Through this knowledge and intellectualtechnology the government of male parenting is rendered into a question of father

identity and the father is interpellated as an ethical subject in the Foucauldian sense(Foucault 1985).

Overall, the discourse of involved fathering constructs male parenting in terms of

activities and attributes that have conventionally been understood as female forms ofparenting. It highlights the psychological relationship between father and the child that isbrought into being through activities of care and nurturance. In principle, this

problematization of the traditional gendered organization of work and parenting in thefamily opens up revolutionary perspectives to fathering and family life. It improves the

conditions of possibility for male parents to take more responsibility and even act as fullcaregivers and homemakers, and thus allows them to liberate their partners to better

reconcile work and family life.


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The ethos of involved fathering

The discourse of involved fathering may be characterized as an ethics-oriented moralityin the sense that it emphasizes the self-formation of the father as an ethical subject

(Foucault 1985). While the instructions and advice given to the male parent are many inthe texts that draw on the discourse of involved fathering, the emphasis is clearly on the

practices that enable the father to transform his own identity or mode of being as a father.In contrast to the discourse of manly fathering, there is no predefined, symbolic position

of the father that a man can occupy. A man has to create his own parenthood andconstruct himself as a father through personal growth.

The discourse of involved fathering would seem to make up the father as a person whoaspires to become a mature individual, partner and parent, so as to give meaning to his

personal life and existence. To achieve this mode of being, the involved father engages inconcrete practices of relationship building and care work. The main focus of this moral

action is the relationship between the father and his child, i.e. psychologicalfatherhood, emotional bond and attachment. The discourse motivates the male

parent to pay attention to this father-child relationship by appealing to the fathers ownneeds and wants. For example, the texts that draw on the discourse of involved fathering

contain personal narratives, in which adult men describe their own experiences offathering in positive terms. These autobiographical accounts typically represent male

parenthood as a journey of self-discovery and fulfillment, and invite the reader totake the viewpoint of the creative, loving father. It is the fathers will to create a close

contact with the child and to be a new father (Kugelberg 2006: 164) and a balancedindividual (Merilinen et al. 2004: 555), whose professional and organizational identity

is based on mastering both work and private life.

Hence, for the discourse of involved fathering, the moral question concerns not only

whether or not a man should care about his children but also the appropriate ways inwhich he should engage in the activity of caring. The forms of ethical work that the

discourse offers consist of concrete childcare activities and responsibilities, as describedabove. Moreover, the practices that the man carries out in the hope of making this caring

possible, of transforming himself into the involved father, consist of different forms ofidentity work and self-formation, such as writing about parenting experiences and

participating in fatherhood groups to learn how to express and handle the differentemotions that the male parents experience during their transition to fatherhood. In all

these practices, an active problematization of mans fatherhood and masculinityas wellas his relationships to his children, partner and to the societyare required.

Consequently, the discourse of involved fathering constructs fatherhood as an

entrepreneurial activity, a project of shaping ones life as an autonomous, responsibleindividual seeking to maximize ones potential and achievements as a worthy person(Lupton and Barclay 1997: 18). How this entrepreneurship is compatible with the male

work identity cultivated in contemporary organizations is another question. Inorganization studies, work organizations and management have long been described as

implicitly masculine worlds, where the virtues of rationality, autonomy, instrumentality,and efficiency, for example, are highly valued (e.g. Mills 1998; Knights and Kerfoot

2004; Ross-Smith and Kornberger 2004). In masculinity studies, precisely the public


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domain of work organizationtogether with popular culturehas been regarded as a keyarea for the manifestations of an ideal typical form of masculinity, often termed as

hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1995). It is often argued that this kind oforganizational ethos functions to constitute coherent subjectivities that leave little room

for intimacy, affection, nurturing, and interconnectedness among people. In such a

context, both male and female managers and employees might find it difficult to cultivateparental identities that the discourse of involved fathering suggests.

CONCLUSION

Our aim, in this paper, has been to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of theregimes of truth that organize and regulate male parenting and partly constitute the

conditions of possibility for male identity and subjectivity both as fathers and employees.More specifically, our objective has been to elaborate on the forms of knowledge and

truth about fathers and male parenting in psy-knowledge, so as to learn about thediscursive resources that are available to men and women for constructing their identities

as parents and employees.

Our study illustrates how the problematization of male parenting is formulated in terms

of psychological truths about persons, and how this knowledge opens up these persons tointerventions and provides discursive resources for identity work, both for men and

women. It shows how the conduct of fathers is problematized by describing it andunfolding its complexities by means of a vocabulary, ethical principles, and logics of

explanation that are characteristically psychological (see Rose 1999a). To educate fathersor social and health workers on male parenting, the reality of men as parents is

represented and organized according to psychological taxonomies, abilities, personalities,and attitudes.

Understanding these social truths is important because psychological knowledge not onlyinforms and justifies social policy and the organization of family education and welfare

services. Psychological knowledge has also a decisive role in the everyday life ofcontemporary western people. As Nikolas Rose (1999a) has argued, the representations

of motherhood, fatherhood, family life, and parental conduct created by psy-expertise,infuse and shape the personal investment of individuals, the ways in which they

voluntarily form, regulate and evaluate their lives, their actions, and their goals accordingto social norms. Understanding the discursive resources that these regimes of truth or

rationality offer can also provide insight on the institutionalization of workplace practices(Kuhn 2006). It has been argued, for example, that changes in mens work/family

orientations and practices often start at home and are brought into jobs, rather than the

other way around (Holter 2007). By problematizing many of the truths of male parentingthat the expert literature on fathering reproduces and sustains, our study thus serves toenlarge the conceptual space in which fathers and mothers as well as men and women can

be talked about as human beings, managers and employees, as well as parents. As AmyRossiters (1988: 17) work shows, understanding the social construction of mothering

[and fathering] is essential to an ability to resist knowledge about mothers and fathers knowledge created by abstractions.


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It is noteworthy that in the empirical material that we analyzed, i.e. in the Finnishproblematizations of male parenting, occupational and class-based distinctions and

reasoning play a minor role. This is understandable, we argue, in the context of theNordic welfare state that we focus on. In Finnish society, which is a deeply rooted

democracy and a highly developed welfare state, egalitarianism would seem to constitute

an important cultural value and political rationality. According to the Nordic egalitarianideal, in a just society all citizens are able to exercise their autonomy and pursue their lifegoals regardless of class and gender. In this type of socio-cultural environment, class-

based differences in personal and organizational identities tend to be silenced, and apowerful discourse of equality prevails (Merilinen et al. 2004; Tienari, Soderberg,

Holgersson and Vaara 2005).

Moreover, based on our analysis we argue that the prevalent psychological regimes of

truth about fathers and fathering do not necessarily render enactable the sorts of parentalidentities that enable both men and women to achieve a better work/life balance. While

the discourse of manly fathering arguably perpetuates the ideology of male breadwinner,the discourse of involved fathering, with its ideals of caring and family oriented fathers,

does not readily match with the conceptions of what a good and committed employee isand how he is supposed to organize his life. It is therefore understandable that

breadwinning continues to be an important element of the cultural identity of the father.

Our study also suggests that while involved fathering seeks to problematize essentialist

representations of sexual difference, the discourse of manly fathering explicitly sustainssuch representations, thus arguably reifying the terms wherein the divisions between men

and women as well as male and female are treated as absolute and unchanging (Knightsand Kerfoot 2004). This is problematic because in the day-to-day of organizations, such

distinctions between male and female or masculine and feminine may polarize genderrelations in ways that subordinate, marginalize, or undermine women with respect to men

(Knights and Kerfoot 2004; Linstead and Brewis 2004). They also sustain the genderstereotypes that characterize male managers as reliable professionals without caring

responsibilities and their female colleagues primarily as mothers and not as competentand committed professionals (Kugelberg 2006: 158). Consequently, we argue, the

discourse of many fathering sustains the conditions of subjectivity/language that makethe representation of gender as a binary and the associated organizational hierarchies

possible (Knights and Kerfoot 2004).

APPENDIX 1

Full reference information on the empirical material analyzed

1. Green paper: Komiteanmietint 1999:1. Istoimikunnan mietint. Sosiaali- jaterveysministeri, Helsinki.

2. Proceedings A: Conference report: TemaNord 1999:5. Isn jljill.Konferenssiraportti. Kpenhamina: Pohjoismaiden ministerineuvosto.


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3. Proceedings B: Torkkeli, Markus (ed.) (2001) Lytretki isyyteen. Helsinki:Mannerheimin lastensuojeluliitto.

4. Guide for professionals: Svl, Hannu, Eero Keinnen & Jari Vainio (2001)Is neuvolassa. Tyvlineit ja ajatuksia vauvaa odottavien ja hoitavien isien

kanssa tyskenteleville. Tasa-arvojulkaisuja, Sosiaali- ja terveysministeri,

Helsinki.

5. Text book: Huttunen, Jouko 2001)Isn olemisen uudet suunnat. Jyvskyl: PS-kustannus.

6. Parenting book: Sinkkonen, Jari (1998) Yhdess isn kanssa. Porvoo: WSOY.

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Psychological Regimes Of Truth And Father Identity: Challenges For Work/Life Integration

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