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ten - Mixing methods in fatherhood research: studying social change in family life
- Edited by Esther Dermott, University of Bristol, Caroline Gatrell, University of Liverpool
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- Book:
- Fathers, Families and Relationships
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 22 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 14 March 2018, pp 189-210
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter reflects on the ways in which mixing methods allow empirical exploration of the impact of social change on family life and how this process opens up fathering and fatherhood as research themes. Forming the basis of this analysis is a Danish research project called Families and Social Networks in the Modern Welfare State (FAMOSTAT), which studies the consequences of ongoing modernisation for family life. A presentation of the research design and analytical approach illustrates how fathers and fatherhood emerged as an important research theme by focusing on everyday family life primarily from a social psychological perspective. Working with multiple methods facilitates a genuinely exploratory approach that unleashes both empirical sensitivity and theoretical creativity. Mixing methods, however, is neither easy nor straightforward as a research strategy due to the epistemological dilemmas and theoretical challenges that are not easily resolved, yet this messiness and ambiguity must be tolerated in order to allow an open exploration of changing social phenomena such as fatherhood.
Divided into three major sections, this chapter begins with a presentation of the theoretical background and main focus, which is the impact of modernisation on family life in a Scandinavian welfare context, namely Denmark. We conceptualise modernisation as processes of individualisation and detraditionalisation and aim to investigate these processes empirically. The next section presents our mixed-method study and begins by briefly introducing mixed methods as the framework of our analytical approach. This section also contains a description of the empirical design, sampling strategies and data generation methods. The study comprises quantitative survey data (n=1,003) from computer-assisted telephone interviews and qualitative interview data from face-to-face interviews. Next, the comprehensive analytical process, which employed survey and interview data, is accounted for to explain how the exploratory approach that results from using mixed methods led to the emergence of fathering and fatherhood as a research theme. So vast was the amount of data generated that only a fraction of it is presented here. The third section discusses the benefits and challenges of mixing of methods. The central argument presented is that establishing a dialogue between qualitative and quantitative data provides greater empirical insight and enables in-depth theoretical analysis, which demonstrates that a social psychological approach to everyday life facilitates the coherence of the work.
nine - Fathering as a learning process: breaking new ground in familiar territory
- Edited by Guðný Björk Eydal, Tine Rostgaard, Stockholms universitet Institutionen för socialt arbete
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- Book:
- Fatherhood in the Nordic Welfare States
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 04 March 2022
- Print publication:
- 26 November 2014, pp 187-208
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter explores the learning processes of fathers engaging in everyday caregiving practices in family life based on a cross-Nordic qualitative study. The fathers were selected because they were seen as ‘pioneers’ in having made unconventional commitments regarding childcare. They had chosen to take longer paternity leave than normal, reduced their working hours or altered their career path so as to be actively involved in the everyday caring for their children. From a historical perspective, their commitments could be seen as avant-garde, and they are possibly the frontrunners of a broad social development.
The notion of ‘modern’ family life is itself an ambiguous term. This chapter departs from an understanding of Western societies as marked by ongoing modernisation and individualisation processes, meaning that contemporary family life unfolds in a context of continual social change (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Dencik et al, 2008; Westerling, 2008). Gillis’ renowned distinction between ‘families we live by’ and ‘families we live with’ (Gillis, 1997, p xv) is also central to the understanding of family and family life that informs the analysis in this chapter. Ideologies and practices are seen as related and connected but cannot be reduced to one or the other; both must be considered, and their relationship cannot be understood in simple or linear terms.
Informed by understandings of social learning and the modernity of critical theory, Olesen (2003) argues that a common disintegration of ‘the normal biography’ is occurring in modernity, requiring new types of social participation and practices – and possibilities for learning. Accordingly, it is possible to understand the involvement of fathers in childcare not merely as ‘chosen’, but also as ‘necessary’, that is, related to the unavoidable, practical arrangements and demands of everyday life.
In this sense, we see these fathers as ‘pioneers’ at the cutting edge of the social change in family life (Roseneil and Budgeon, 2004), challenging traditional, general and conventional forms of fatherhood and constructions of masculinity. In the analytical perspective adopted in this chapter, the fathers emerge as particular men with specific stories about practices and modes of orientation towards care and intimacy in everyday family life.