Fatherhood in America: A History.

Abstract

An historical analysis of men's lives as parents, this book traces a fundamental shift - the transformation from the 19th-century patriarch, a man whose position as breadwinner was more or less unquestioned, to the late-20th-century Dad, a man who now shares the breadwinning with his wife. Using intimate revelations from diaries and letters, prescriptive exhortations in popular magazines, impersonal social scientific surveys, and the transcripts of congressional hearings, Griswold explores a range of subjects - the long history of calls for fathers to be more involved at home; the history of fatherhood among African-Americans; the tensions between immigrant fathers and their Americanized offspring; the unresolved relationship between feminism and fatherhood; and the deployment of the fatherhood issue by the new right. Illuminating the critical connection between fatherhood and male identity, this book should fill a gap in the literature on parenting, the men's movement and gender studies. Robert L. Griswold is the author of Family and Divorce in California 1850-1890.