Gendered division of family responsibilities has, traditionally, positioned mothers as responsible for the private sphere and fathers responsible for relations with ‘the outside world’ (Boström and Broberg 2014: 811).
However, this traditional positioning of fathers as ‘public facing’ now coexists with a contemporary emphasis on their active involvement in family life. Fathers are encouraged to take up more involved roles within two strong ideological discourses. The first promotes the ‘gender neu- tral dual earner family’ through economic and political policy making (Yarwood 2011); the second, indirectly encourages father involvement through discourse which demonises the ‘absent father’ (see Robb 2004).
The development towards gender equality within dual-income fami- lies has created a context, if not a moral imperative, for mothers to work outside the home. This, simultaneously, diminishes the traditional posi- tioning of fathers as ‘chief breadwinners’ and also positions them inside the home alongside mothers, as much as it positions mothers outside the home alongside fathers. This provides increased scope for fathers to enhance their paternal role (Featherstone 2009). However, the opportu- nities for enhanced father involvement coexist with powerful discourses of traditional gender role division that dominated previous centuries and are still evident today. These discourses are based on assumptions that mothers are instinctively better at providing the care and emotional needs of their children (Doucet 2006; Harden 2005; Litt 2004; Lupton and Barclay 1997). Doucet has also observed that women can seem reluctant to give up this area of power and expertise (Doucet 2006).
Commenting on gender role divisions within the home, however, Dixon and Wetherell (2004: 175) point out that ‘Principles such as
“fair shares” or “equity”, for example, are moral evaluations that are quite literally brought to meaning within day-to-day discourse’. [Italics in original] In contrast to the subject position of ‘good mother’, the sub- ject position of ‘good father’ ‘appears not to depend to quite the same extent upon demonstrating expertise in and dedication to the care of one’s children’ (see Lupton and Barclay 1997: 132). Instead, fathers are able to draw on alternative repertoires and subject positions to repre- sent themselves as ‘good’ fathers. Ideas about providing for and sup- porting families (Pedersen 2012; Yarwood 2011; Summers et al. 2006;
Riley 2003; Ranson 2001) as well as mentoring, teaching, nurturing (Summers et al. 2006) and ‘protection’ of their vulnerable and depend- ent children (Lupton and Barclay 1997) are significant for good father- ing. This indicates the diverse ways of defining ‘good fathering’ that can lead to tensions as well as opportunities for fathers, at work and in family life (Ranson 2001). When talking about these topics, ‘good fathering’ discourses can appear contradictory and result in ideological dilemmas (see Billig et al. 1988; Edley and Wetherell 1999). In other words, fathers have to find ways of resolving the tensions between diverse and sometimes contradictory cultural imperatives about being a
‘good father’ when they talk about these matters.
The Cultural Context and Two Versions of the ‘Good Father’
Ideas about fathers’ involvement in family life in the UK arise within the cultural context of neoliberal discourses of the self-sufficient,
‘hard-working family’ (see Runswick-Cole et al. 2016). This empha- sises familial responsibility for family life, and the desired ‘stable family’
(Allen and Taylor 2012; Barnes and Power 2012; De Benedictis 2012).
De Benedictis (2012) argues that neoliberal ideology promotes ‘stricter forms of parent subjects’ and, consequently, ‘stricter formulations of the
“good father”… (2012: 6). Stability within the family has been associ- ated with marriage and a ‘strong’, authoritative, father presence. Such
families were traditionally held up as the optimum environment for the production of ‘civilised’ children and contrasted with negative rep- resentations of dysfunctional families with ‘absent’ or ‘dangerous’ fathers:
that is, fathers who, respectively, either neglect or abuse their child in some way (see Robb 2004; Lupton and Barclay 1997). The ideologically charged ‘absent father’ subject position has been aligned with notions of a lack of parental authority or responsibility and this stereotype is often related to psychosocial explanations for ADHD in the media (Horton- Salway 2011).
However, contemporary ideas about good fathering challenge more traditional forms and there are now two dominant ways of represent- ing good fathering that intersect with competing ideas about masculin- ity and the discourse of ADHD. Edley and Wetherell described these as two repertoires that can be drawn on to talk about fathering, the tra- ditional father and the new father. As Edley and Wetherell (1999) sug- gested, the ‘new father’:
departs from the example of his patriarchal predecessor. He not only accompanies his partner during labour, but also sits down with her beforehand to work out their birthplan. He’s keen to master the art of nappy changing, enthusiastic when it comes to bottle feeding and burp- ing, and happy to walk around town all afternoon with the child strapped to his chest. (Edley and Wetherell 1999: 182)
The ‘new father’ contrasts with his traditional counterpart who is repre- sented as strong but less emotionally articulate in line with more tradi- tional notions of masculinity. Ideas about ‘traditional fathering’ or ‘new fathering’ are drawn on by the fathers represented in this chapter to make sense of their family lives and their relationships with their sons with ADHD. These representations of fathering are potentially dilemmatic so an analysis of how fathers draw on them when they talk about parenting a child with ADHD will allow us ‘to appreciate how men’s lives, thoughts and experiences are organized around a particular set of `ideological dilemmas’ (Edley and Wetherell 1999: 183). The remainder of this chap- ter explores how the discourses of father identities, ADHD and masculin- ity intersect, drawing on examples of data from original research (Fig. 5.1).