Editorial

3 pages, 156 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Fathers and Forefathers: Men and Their Children in Genealogical Perspective

by Martin Robb

Genealogy 2020, 4(2), 65; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/genealogy4020065 - 19 Jun 2020

Viewed by 1894

This editorial article introduces the seven contributions to the special issue “Fathers and Forefathers: Men and their Children in Genealogical Perspective”. It highlights the geographical, historical and methodological diversity of the contributions, as well as their commonalities, and the different ways in which [...] Read more.

This editorial article introduces the seven contributions to the special issue “Fathers and Forefathers: Men and their Children in Genealogical Perspective”. It highlights the geographical, historical and methodological diversity of the contributions, as well as their commonalities, and the different ways in which they use a genealogical perspective to explore the relationship between past and present fatherhoods. The special issue, as a whole, aims to deepen the understanding of this relationship and to point the way for future theoretical and empirical work on this important topic. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fathers and Forefathers: Men and Their Children in Genealogical Perspective)

Research

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22 pages, 309 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Masculinity, Intimacy, and Mourning: A Father’s Memoir of His Son Killed in Action in World War II

by Sandy Ruxton

Genealogy 2020, 4(2), 59; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/genealogy4020059 - 15 May 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3614

Abstract

Emotional restraint was the norm for the bereaved during and after the Second World War. Displays of individual grief were discouraged, and overshadowed by a wider concern for mass bereavement. There is limited archival evidence of the suffering that fathers of sons killed [...] Read more.

Emotional restraint was the norm for the bereaved during and after the Second World War. Displays of individual grief were discouraged, and overshadowed by a wider concern for mass bereavement. There is limited archival evidence of the suffering that fathers of sons killed in action endured. This article draws upon and analyses a powerful memoir written by my grandfather, lamenting the death of his only son killed in action near the end of the War. While most men contained their emotions in such circumstances, this extended lament expresses a range of deep feelings: Love and care for the departed son, tenderness towards other family members, guilt at sending his son away to boarding school, loss of faith in (Christian) religion, and a sense of worthlessness and personal failure. Of particular interest is the impact of geographical distance over which this narrative is played out, and what it reveals about the experience of one white British middle-class family living overseas, but strongly interconnected with ‘home’ (and specifically Scotland). It also documents the pain of prolonged absence as a result of war; often boys sent ‘home’ to board were separated from their parents for much of their childhood, and were forced to ‘become men’—but not as their parents had envisaged. The article concludes by exploring the implications of this private memoir and what it reveals about memoir, masculinity, and subjectivity; gender and grieving; connections with ‘home’; and constructing meaning after trauma. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fathers and Forefathers: Men and Their Children in Genealogical Perspective)

18 pages, 296 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“My Daddy … He Was a Good Man”: Gendered Genealogies and Memories of Enslaved Fatherhood in America’s Antebellum South

by Susan-Mary Grant and David Bowe

Genealogy 2020, 4(2), 43; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/genealogy4020043 - 01 Apr 2020

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3899

Abstract

While the last few years have witnessed an upsurge of studies into enslaved motherhood in the antebellum American South, the role of the enslaved father remains largely trapped within a paradigm of enforced absenteeism from an unstable and insecure familial unit. The origins [...] Read more.

While the last few years have witnessed an upsurge of studies into enslaved motherhood in the antebellum American South, the role of the enslaved father remains largely trapped within a paradigm of enforced absenteeism from an unstable and insecure familial unit. The origins of this lie in the racist assumptions of the infamous “Moynihan Report” of 1965, read backwards into slavery itself. Consequently, the historiographical trajectory of work on enslaved men has drawn out the performative aspects of their masculinity in almost every area of their lives except that of fatherhood. This has produced an image of individualistic masculinity, separate from the familial role that many enslaved men managed to sustain and, as a result, productive of a disjointed and gendered genealogy of slavery and its legacy. This paper assesses the extent to which this fractured genealogy actually represents the former slaves’ worldview. By examining a selection of interviews conducted by the Federal Writers’ Project under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s (the WPA Narratives), this paper explores formers slaves’ memories of their enslaved fathers and the significance of the voluntary paternal presence in their life stories. It concludes that the role of the black father was of greater significance than so far recognised by the genealogical narratives that emerged from the slave communities of the Antebellum South. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fathers and Forefathers: Men and Their Children in Genealogical Perspective)

13 pages, 229 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

‘From Your Ever Anxious and Loving Father’: Faith, Fatherhood, and Masculinity in One Man’s Letters to His Son during the First World War

by Martin Robb

Genealogy 2020, 4(1), 32; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/genealogy4010032 - 24 Mar 2020

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2901

Abstract

In the early months of 1916, Charles Robb a retired shipping clerk in the East End of London, England, wrote a series of letters to his 19-year-old son Arthur, an army private awaiting embarkation to the Western Front. Charles Robb was my great [...] Read more.

In the early months of 1916, Charles Robb a retired shipping clerk in the East End of London, England, wrote a series of letters to his 19-year-old son Arthur, an army private awaiting embarkation to the Western Front. Charles Robb was my great grandfather and Arthur Robb was my grandfather. The letters offer an intriguing glimpse of one man ‘doing’ fatherhood under conditions of traumatic separation and extreme anxiety. This paper presents an analysis of the letters from a psychosocial perspective, exploring the ways in which the writer exhorts his son to live up to the ideals of Christian manhood, while managing the anxiety of separation by presenting a reconstruction in language of the familiar world of home and church. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fathers and Forefathers: Men and Their Children in Genealogical Perspective)

17 pages, 327 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Father Involvement, Care, and Breadwinning: Genealogies of Concepts and Revisioned Conceptual Narratives

by Andrea Doucet

Genealogy 2020, 4(1), 14; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/genealogy4010014 - 24 Jan 2020

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 4156

Abstract

This paper addresses an enduring puzzle in fathering research: Why are care and breadwinning largely configured as binary oppositions rather than as relational and intra-acting concepts and practices, as is often the case in research on mothering? Guided by Margaret Somers’ historical sociology [...] Read more.

This paper addresses an enduring puzzle in fathering research: Why are care and breadwinning largely configured as binary oppositions rather than as relational and intra-acting concepts and practices, as is often the case in research on mothering? Guided by Margaret Somers’ historical sociology of concept formation, I conduct a Foucauldian-inspired genealogy of the concept of “father involvement” as a cultural and historical object embedded in specific histories, conceptual networks, and social and conceptual narratives. With the aim of un-thinking and re-thinking conceptual possibilities that might expand knowledges about fathering, care, and breadwinning, I look to researchers in other sites who have drawn attention to the relationalities of care and earning. Specifically, I explore two conceptual pathways: First the concept of “material indirect care”, from fatherhood research pioneer Joseph Pleck, which envisages breadwinning as connected to care, and, in some contexts, as a form of care; and second, the concept of “provisioning” from the work of feminist economists, which highlights broad, interwoven patterns of care work and paid work. I argue that an approach to concepts that connect or entangle caring and breadwinning recognizes that people are care providers, care receivers, financial providers, and financial receivers in varied and multiple ways across time. This move is underpinned by, and can shift, our understandings of human subjectivity as relational and intra-dependent, with inevitable periods of dependency and vulnerability across the life course. Such a view also acknowledges the critical role of resources, services, and policies for supporting and sustaining the provisioning and caring activities of all parents, including fathers. Finally, I note the theoretical and political risks of this conceptual exercise, and the need for caution when making an argument about fathers’ breadwinning and caregiving entanglements. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fathers and Forefathers: Men and Their Children in Genealogical Perspective)

12 pages, 242 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

The Ghost of the ‘Y’: Paternal DNA, Haunting and Genealogy

by Helen Scholar

Genealogy 2020, 4(1), 3; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/genealogy4010003 - 27 Dec 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 5511

Abstract

Based on a personal family history experience, in this paper, I consider the way in which genealogical DNA testing is revealing family secrets, in particular paternity secrets, which would previously have remained unknown via ‘traditional’ methods of genealogical research. Reasons for the displacement [...] Read more.

Based on a personal family history experience, in this paper, I consider the way in which genealogical DNA testing is revealing family secrets, in particular paternity secrets, which would previously have remained unknown via ‘traditional’ methods of genealogical research. Reasons for the displacement of these invisible fathers from the records are discussed, and the power of genealogical DNA testing to bring them into focus is examined. Such discoveries may disrupt and unsettle, causing people to think differently about the fathers and grandfathers with whom they have grown up or have believed to be part of their personal histories and, for some people, may challenge their sense of identity. Beyond personal identity issues, in this paper, I draw upon ideas about ‘ghost-work’ to suggest that these experiences have some of the features of hauntings and that the ghostly fathers who break through may speak to us about social realities and structures, beyond the confines of linear time. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fathers and Forefathers: Men and Their Children in Genealogical Perspective)

18 pages, 3902 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Generations Comparison: Father Role Representations in the 1980s and the New Millennium

by Maria Letizia Bosoni and Sara Mazzucchelli

Genealogy 2019, 3(2), 17; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/genealogy3020017 - 09 Apr 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4548

Abstract

In the light of relevant and current debate on the changing role of fathers, this contribution is aimed at analysing the international literature on fatherhood, comparing two distinct periods of time, from the social, cultural and demographic point of view: the years 1980–1999 [...] Read more.

In the light of relevant and current debate on the changing role of fathers, this contribution is aimed at analysing the international literature on fatherhood, comparing two distinct periods of time, from the social, cultural and demographic point of view: the years 1980–1999 and the new millennium. This will contribute to identifying features of the fatherhood transformation in these two contexts, which in fact refer to two generations of fathers. The research questions to be answered are: Which aspects characterize the process of fatherhood transformation, in an intergenerational perspective? How are paternal childcare practices represented in different historical and social periods? An analysis of the academic publications on fathers in Scopus and Google Scholar will be conducted, in the two temporal periods indicated, using T-Lab software, in order to map fathers’ role representations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fathers and Forefathers: Men and Their Children in Genealogical Perspective)

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12 pages, 706 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Against All Odds? Birth Fathers and Enduring Thoughts of the Child Lost to Adoption

by Gary Clapton

Genealogy 2019, 3(2), 13; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/genealogy3020013 - 29 Mar 2019

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 6002

Abstract

This paper revisits a topic only briefly raised in earlier research, the idea that the grounds for fatherhood can be laid with little or no ‘hands-on’ experience of fathering and upon these grounds, an enduring sense of being a father of, and bond [...] Read more.

This paper revisits a topic only briefly raised in earlier research, the idea that the grounds for fatherhood can be laid with little or no ‘hands-on’ experience of fathering and upon these grounds, an enduring sense of being a father of, and bond with, a child seen once or never, can develop. The paper explores the specific experiences of men whose children were adopted as babies drawing on the little research that exists on this population, work relating to expectant fathers, personal accounts, and other sources such as surveys of birth parents in the USA and Australia. The paper’s exploration and discussion of a manifestation of fatherhood that can hold in mind a ‘lost’ child, disrupts narratives of fathering that regard fathering as ‘doing’ and notions that once out of sight, a child is out of mind for a father. The paper suggests that, for the men in question, a diversity of feelings, but also behaviours, point to a form of continuing, lived fathering practices—that however, take place without the child in question. The conclusion debates the utility of the phrase “birth father” as applied historically and in contemporary adoption processes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fathers and Forefathers: Men and Their Children in Genealogical Perspective)

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