University of Minnesota Morris
Gender Muted Fathering: The New Fatherhood Replaced
A History Paper Submitted to Wilbert H. Ahern for History 4120
By Lukas Brandon
December 11, 2009
Scholarly interest in fatherhood emerged inthe 1970s and 1980s, then grew quickly inthe1990s.1 Social history of all stripes has been examined more thoroughly over the past twenty years and even so, the subject of fatherhood lags behind its analogous subjects. It is possible to write a history , but not the history of fatherhood, as there are many histories of fatherhood with regional and ethnic variations that are ignored in attempts to paint social history with too broad a brush.2 That being the case, it is useful to study the major trends and changes in the history of fatherhood in order to discern how the institution continues to change and evolve to the present day.
We will examine the broad themes in the social history of fatherhood in the United States, at the expense of class and ethnic differences. We will focus on the twentieth century, with context provided for the modes of fathering that dominated prior to 1900. We will follow the dominant modes of fathering, with the understanding that as one mode of fathering fades to yield to the next phase, there is a fluid and sustained transition. These transitions are not clear cut and are less than obvious to the actors upon the stage of the present. Rather, it is with hindsight and historical study that one is able to view the broad themes of twentieth century fatherhood in the United States.
We know that variability exists in all times, and that the current dominant mode of fathering always shares cultural space with other competing models.3 In the words of sociologist Ralph LaRossa, "Whether we are talking about this social transformation or any other, the end of one stage always blends with the beginning of another, and different segments of society undergo transitions at different moments and at different speeds."4
Professional historians have used several terms to describe the dominant modes of fathering and while there is some variation in the terms used, there is wide agreement that much of the twentieth century was dominated by a fatherhood that emerged in the years between world wars. The "companionate family" model is the term used in Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life, written by wife and husband team Susan Kellogg, an anthropologist, and Steven Mintz, a historian. The concept of the companionate family was developed and disseminated by social experts such as psychologists, professors, and social workers. Emerging in the 1920s and finding its widest implementation in the 1950s, this form prescribed affection over patriarchal dominance and urged spouses and parents alike to act as pals rather than stern authority figures.5
Alternately, historian Robert L. Griswold, author of Fatherhood in America: A History, has written of a new fatherhood that emerged in the 1920s middle class and continues (in Griswold's view) in its second more egalitarian phase. The new fatherhood to which Griswold ascribes dominance from 1920 to his writing in 1993 is in the contemporary viewpoint of 2009 unsatisfactory. It is unsatisfactory because the most dramatic schism in the history of fatherhood in the United States is the most recent: the muted character of parenting gender roles. This gender muted fathering is indeed a natural enough evolution from the previous paradigm of the new fatherhood, but the wane of the doctrine of separate spheres (wherein males dominate the public sphere and females the private) sets it apart as its own mode of fathering.
The gender muted fathering practiced by many men of the late twentieth century does not fit the framework of the new fatherhood. The fatherhood practiced both by mainstream middle class fathers and social outliers pushing the boundaries should not properly be lumped in as a mere second phase of the gender restrictive 1920s middle class view of fathers as biological donors, breadwinners, and sex role identification models. Much as more traditional patriarchal modes of fathering co-existed alongside the companionate model of a breadwinner father who also played with his children, the companionate yet gender role restrictive new fatherhood currently co-exists with the ascendant rubric of gender muted fathering.
The dominant mode of fathering as a “new” or companionate father who was nonetheless greatly constrained by gender role waxed in the 1920s, waned a bit through the economic disruptions of the Great Depression, was interrupted by conscription during World War II, then waxed and shone as bright as any moon through the middle years of the twentieth century. As the new fatherhood (or companionate model of fathering to be more descriptive) receded in the 1960s and 1970s, a new mode of fathering was rising on the tidal wave of second wave feminism. The second wave feminists demanded not just rights, but liberation.6 They wanted to be full human beings, unlimited by the traditional gender roles and stereotypes that have bound us throughout recorded Western history. The feminists could only achieve their goal of equality by changing the nature of motherhood, fatherhood, marriage, and the family itself.
The study of women's history and motherhood has developed at a more rapid pace, but the study of fatherhood is interwoven with the history of women. Writers of women's history are often inclined to call for changes that benefit the cause of women's rights.7 Much like the subject of women's history, there is a closeness to the subject matter that must be acknowledged to minimize projecting one's own stake in the highly politicized topic of the state of fatherhood in the United States. As a man who has written online articles and essays on my experiences as primary caregiver to my son while my wife takes on the role of primary breadwinner, I am an example of gender muted fathering in our contemporary culture.8
We will focus on the most recent and dramatic change in the nature of fatherhood and family life, but far from being the conservative and unchanging force that is sometimes imagined, the history of the family as an institution has been characterized by change. The family has undergone a change from being the essential component that builds our society and to which its members were inexorably bound to a much more limited and flexible unit from which individuals can and do secede. This trend from the collective to the individual centered family has been developing over hundreds of years.9
As the family has changed over time, so has the definition of fatherhood. Sociologist Scott Coltrane provides the traditional definition of fatherhood thusly: "In common English language usage, to father a child means to provide the seed, to donate the biological raw material, to impregnate." Coltrane also calls attention to the contrast with motherhood, stating, "To speak of mothering implies ongoing care and nurturing of children. Fathering, on the other hand, has typically implied an initial sex act and the financial obligation to pay." [Coltrane's emphasis]10 While it is true that this definition exists in the present day, it has been eclipsed by a more egalitarian view of fathering that has largely shed the ideological baggage of separate spheres gender role allocation. There is a trend of fathering moving closer to the definition of mothering. The definitions are beginning to converge.11
It is my contention that the new fatherhood that emerged in the 1920s and found its greatest expression in the middle of the twentieth century has now yielded to a dominant mode of fathering that is worthy of its own name rather than torturing the definitions of the unfortunately named new fatherhood to perpetually fit the present circumstances as the word “new” requires. The term I will use to describe the ascendant mode of fathering is more descriptive and acknowledges the forces that helped to shape it: gender muted fathering. I have chosen to use this term rather than similar terms such as involved fathering, nurturing fathering, androgynous fathering, or second phase “new” fathering in order to draw a more useful and descriptive distinction between the current ascendant mode and the more gender restrictive modes of parenting available to men prior to 1970.
In order to understand how we arrived at the present state of fatherhood in the United States we will follow the story in broad strokes from antiquity to the early twentieth century, then focus more narrowly on the rise of the new fatherhood in the early part of the 1900s, the dominance of separate spheres ideology throughout the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, and the reasons this new fatherhood gave way to the gender muted fatherhood of the post second wave feminist period.
While I will argue that the dominance of the doctrine of separate spheres has come to an end, it must be acknowledged that many structural barriers exist in our culture that prop up the corpse of separate spheres ideology and prevent many fathers from joining the ranks of gender muted fathers who provide economically, change diapers, play with their children, and share household tasks with their wives. Social barriers to more involved and egalitarian male parenting exist as well. Scott Coltrane, author of Family Man: Fatherhood, Housework, and Gender Equity, describes meeting an attorney friend of his, Terry, who chose to lower his hours at the firm in order to stay home to take care of his daughter. Terry paid a price for his commitment to his family in that his colleagues no longer considered him to be serious about his work.12 These kinds of attitudes are commonplace when thinking about mothers in the work force, but now apply to men seeking to follow a "daddy track" as well.
The first written reference to separate spheres of work based on gender is credited to Xenophon, a Greek military leader during the Classical period: "And since both the indoor and the outdoor tasks demand labour and attention, God from the first adapted the woman's nature, I think to the indoor and the man's to the outdoor tasks and cares."13 This idea that men are built for some tasks while women are made for others is remarkably resilient, existing even in the present day. With minor variations, the combination of patriarchy and separate spheres gender ideology dominated the history of fatherhood in the Old World and its eventual colonial populations until relatively recently.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution of Western Europe and the United States, the dominant mode of fathering (and family life in general) was that of the patriarchal family who labored and lived together, most often in agricultural pursuits but also in small artisan crafts and trades. While the family functioned as an economic unit that valued the contributions of both women and children, there is no doubt that fathers were the centers of power in their families. Men tended to focus on the outside jobs, and women the inside, much as Xenophon set forth. The gender based division of labor continued throughout the Early Modern period as the traditional domestic economy began to be replaced by a machine based economy.14
Fatherhood in the early periods of American history was patriarchal in the sense that fathers were the acknowledged heads of households in almost all cases and the process of fathering was very much embedded in the day to day economic activities of the family. The patriarchal mode of fatherly authority that existed in the colonial United States was based on biblical analogy: as man was subservient to God, so would wives and children be ruled by an earthly father.15 Fathers were considered to be responsible for the moral and religious instruction of their children, and child rearing manuals were addressed to fathers rather than to mothers until the middle of the eighteenth century. The status of colonial fathers was also reflected in family portraiture, in which the father was usually pictured standing above the rest of the family.16
Parental primacy shifted from the father to the mother during the American Revolution. The fledgling republic reconciled the rhetoric of rights with the reality that they were not extended to women by celebrating motherhood as a political act in itself. The republican mother, with the duty to rear children as good citizens, assigned a public role to the private realm of hearth and home.17 The sentimentalization of children and the growing numbers of fathers working outside the home also contributed to the rise of the concept of republican motherhood. Republican mothers had the vital task of rearing citizens for the fledgling democracy, and were now widely considered the primary parent.18 Infants and toddlers were sentimentalized even more than older children, which further shored up mothers' status as the primary parent.19
Fathers often worked together with sons and daughters (especially sons) in the manner of an apprenticeship. Lessons were learned along with the basic skills needed for economic survival in the chosen trade. During the period of industrialization in America this dominant trend began to give way to the emerging model of breadwinning fathers who worked outside the home, beginning the modern period in the history of fatherhood in the United States. Artisan skills and land to farm became harder to pass along, adding further to the loss of parental authority of fathers.20
Among the changes wrought by industrialization were the beginnings of a gradual taking over of traditional family roles by the state, a trend that continues to the present day. Noting the emergence of almshouses and schools, Kellogg and Mintz note, "By the middle of the eighteenth century, a variety of specialized public institutions had begun to absorb traditional familial responsibilities."21
Griswold writes of the shift from the patriarchal dominance of Calvinist fathers to the more affectionate and individualistic notions of male parenting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.22 These changes in attitudes regarding the degree of affection fathers can show for their children along with the sentimentalization of childhood helped set the stage for the new fatherhood to emerge in the early twentieth century.
Kellogg and Mintz emphasize the long transition of the family by noting some of the roots of the companionate family model appeared hundreds of years before its ascendence in the 1920s. "By the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the American family had been transformed from a public institution whose functions were primarily economic into one whose major role was to rear children and provide emotional support for its members."23
Underscoring the nineteenth century erosion of paternal authority, the courts began to award custody of children to mothers in cases of family dissolution. Children had long been considered the property of fathers, but in the antebellum years the logic was reversed as courts considered who would best serve the interests of the child and overwhelmingly favored mothers in their calculus.24
Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting the United States from his native France in the 1830s, noted that individualism characterized family life in the U.S. Tocqueville considered American family life to be moving toward a more egalitarian and affectionate model he termed the democratic family. One of the distinguishing features of this new model was the carving up of roles along gender lines: men won the bread, wives made the home.25
The Industrial Revolution exacerbated the schism between the private sphere of home life and the public sphere.26 The separation of the domestic and public spheres was polarized during the Industrial Revolution as men literally left the private sphere to pursue work inthe factories, often inthe role of sole breadwinner. In the words of historian Helga Harriman, "Marriage changed from being an economic partnership...to a relationship in which the wife was now totally dependent on her husband for her subsistence." [Harriman's emphasis]27 The modern day emergence of gender muted fathering has been facilitated by a return to marriages characterized by economic partnership, as we will discover.
Families were not instantaneously broken up with industrialization. Factories employed entire families in many cases and kinship ties were often preserved on the production floor. It was the early twentieth century with the advent of scientific management techniques that finally replaced the less efficient and informal modes of industrialized family life.28 The machines of the early Industrial Revolution were small enough to be operated inthe home and so were not as disruptive to the domestic economy as the larger centralized machines that were to come.29 Those women who did hold paid jobs outside of the home during the Industrial Revolution were saddled with the "second shift" of domestic tasks when they returned from paid work. Much of the technological progress thus often made women's lives more difficult as both the paid work of cottage industry and the unpaid work of the domestic sphere could at least be done inthe same space.30