American Fathering an Historical Perspective

In “American Fathering in Historical Perspective,” Joseph Pleck surveys the progression of the dominant images of fatherhood throughout U.S. history and how they provided a foundation for the father image today. He begins by studying the role of the father during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While the mother undertook the majority of the caretaking, Pleck explains, it was the father who were believed that the father who was primarily responsible for the children. This belief originated from the idea that men possessed superior reason to that of women. Therefore, the children, who were viewed as naturally corrupt, required the reasonable and worldly influence of their father. As Pleck explainss, during the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries mothers developed a more prominent role, while the father figure became increasingly more distant. This development, according to Pleck, was associated with an ideological shift in gender identities. Whereas the women had once been seen as illogical and foolish incapable of cultivating a child, she was now seen as nurturing and selfless. With this new identity, the mother was seen as the necessary nurturer. Pleck describes this shift as a product of industrialization when men’s work took them away from home. This geographical distance eventually translated into familial distance that weakened the father’s direct involvement in his child’s life. It was during this phenomenon that the idea of the father as the breadwinner occurred, an idea that said his role in the family was to mainly an outside economic one. In the years between 1940 and 1965, however, fathers were encouraged to reclaim an intimate and engaging role in the family. Pleck explains that this development was largely due to the fact that many fathers did not come home after World War II and it was believed that the absence of fathers had adverse effects on their children’s development. Furthermore, women’s new place in the workforce that began during the war demanded that the husband and wife share responsibilities. From this development evolved the rising image of the father today, which Pleck calls the “new father.” According to Pleck, “this new father differs from older images of involved fatherhood in several key respects: he is present at the birth; he is involved with his children as infants, not just when they are older; he participates in actual day-to-day work of child care...he is involved with his daughters as much as his sons.” (pg 358). I had never given much thought to the evolution of the father role, which proves that I am a product the dominant mother role. my mother never worked, nor did most of my contemporaries’ mothers work. So I saw a pretty uniform mother role. I never realized it until reading this article, but the same is not for the father role. While I have always seen the father as the breadwinner, I have also seen many different ways in which different fathers interact with their families. In my family, my father spent most of his time working and while his involvement in my dogs’ lives was the heaviest, he was equally involved in my brother’s life as he was in mine and my sister’s. He definitely made every effort to conform to the standards of the “new father,” and I saw the strain he experienced in trying to do so. But as he always said to me,“its not easy being perfect.”