To read this content please select one of the options below:

“More than a Parent, You’re a Caregiver”: Narratives of Fatherhood in Families of Adult Sons and Daughters with Life-long Disabilities

Heidi Steinour

Sara E. Green

New Narratives of Disability

ISBN: 978-1-83909-144-5, eISBN: 978-1-83909-143-8

Publication date: 25 November 2019

Abstract

Purpose

The goal of this chapter is threefold: to bring the context of disability into literature on fathering; to bring voices of fathers into scholarship on parenting children with disabilities; and to examine what individual stories about a very particular kind of fatherhood might reveal about the cultural narrative of the good father, and the reflexive nature of cultural narratives and individual stories.

Methods and Approach

Transcripts of in-depth, life course interviews with 14 parents of seven young adults, and older teens with severe impairments associated with a variety of diagnoses were analyzed using narrative analysis strategies. Transcripts of the fathers’ interviews provided primary data and transcripts of the mothers’ interviews were used as supplemental material.

Findings

Fathers included in this study drew from normative notions of masculinity and widely circulating cultural narratives of fatherhood, even while participating in caregiving tasks that are at odds with this narrative. Five specific narrative tensions that highlight cultural understandings of the “good father” were evident in these stories: (1) evoking masculinity in the context of care work; (2) providing financial security in the context of the high cost of disability; (3) maximizing potential in the context of realistic expectations; (4) protecting in the context of uncertainty and helplessness; and (5) finding a “new normal” in the context of the unexpected.

Value/Importance

Findings add to what is known about mothering children with disabilities. Results also add a new dimension to fatherhood studies by illustrating how widely circulating cultural narratives of fatherhood are adapted in stories about fathering children with life-long assistance needs, and how individual stories might serve as a platform for social change.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the graduate student research team (Julia Barnhill, Sherri Green, Diana Torres Hawken, Loretta Sue Humphrey, Scott Sanderson), to the fathers who shared their stories with us, and to all the dads out there who keep “doing what’s needed” and, in the process, reshape the narrative of fatherhood.

Citation

Steinour, H. and Green, S.E. (2019), "“More than a Parent, You’re a Caregiver”: Narratives of Fatherhood in Families of Adult Sons and Daughters with Life-long Disabilities", New Narratives of Disability (Research in Social Science and Disability, Vol. 11), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 75-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-354720190000011009

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited