This book explores how contemporary men understand love in the realm of family life and how they integrate it into their identity. Drawing from Ian Burkitt’s aesthetic theory of emotions, Macht presents rich data from qualitative interviews and observations with Scottish and Romanian involved fathers, to reveal how they maintain closeness to their children, their partners and their own family of origin. Reflecting on distances, separations, power, worry and intergenerational experiences of love Fatherhood and Love hypothesizes that fathers’ identities and emotionality rely on a variety of social relationships in their intimate environment. A new concept, ‘emotional bordering’, is introduced, to portray the tensions inherent in fathers’ identities and illuminate why gender progress happens slowly. Engaging with literature on love, masculinity, culture and father’s involvement from a unique perspective, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of social science disciplines.

Scotland
Romania
Family
Parenting
Childhood
emotional bordering
culture
socialisation
mens’ studies

• Introduction: The Heart of a Father
• Becoming a Father
• Love in Action
• The Bond Between Father and Child
• Challenges of Fatherhood
• Fatherhood Through the Ages
• Discipline with Love
• Emotional Availability
• Fathers and Sons
• Fathers and Daughters
• Balancing Work and Family
• Fatherhood in a Changing World
• Legacy of Love
• Voices of Fathers
• Conclusion: Love That Endures

• Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

  Alexandra Macht

Book Title
Fatherhood and Love

Book Subtitle
The Social Construction of Masculine Emotions

Authors
Alexandra Macht

Series Title
Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20358-0

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages
Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

Copyright Information
The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Hardcover ISBN
978-3-030-20357-3
Published: 08 October 2019

Softcover ISBN
978-3-030-20360-3
Published: 08 October 2020

eBook ISBN
978-3-030-20358-0
Published: 26 September 2019

Series ISSN
2731-6440

Series E-ISSN
2731-6459

Edition Number
1

Number of Pages
XI, 187

Number of Illustrations
1 b/w illustrations

Topics
Men’s Studies, Sociology of Family, Youth and Aging, Ethnicity Studies