You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
I am not a psychoanalyst or psychotherapist, nor is the literature very familiar to me. There is, however, a growing body of non-psychoanalytic literature on the subject of fatherhood which is open to people such as myself. What follows in this paper is a reflective mining of that literature and of my own experience, written in the hope that it may be of interest to readers of Free Associations. I look forward to being able to read something psychoanalytic on these topics in the future — something accessible to a broader audience. In the meantime, this is what is available to me — and to many others — for sorting out feelings and practice.
Who is a father? Is he the man who provides the sperm… or the man who cares for the child? How often are the two the same?
Does artificial insemination represent a challenge to our current organization of society? Are there ‘equal opportunities’ for women and men in the appointment of nursery nurses? These apparently unrelated questions, and many others, ought to be part of the debate about ‘fathering’. They rarely are.
None the less, fathering has attracted a growing literature. Partly, this is because feminists have desired to re-evaluate the role of men in childcare and marriage. In addition, some men (especially, but not exclusively, ‘anti-sexist’ men) have replied to this feminist initiative. My article is a review of this literature. Particularly illuminating, I find, are the differences between and within female and male perspectives.
I would like also to offer an experiential view of fathering. I am a father, albeit of only fifteen months' standing, and with the joys and crises of fathering fresh in my mind. My situation is unconventional, in