What is it about?
In Relational-Fathering, where connection is central to parenting practice, fathers of sons grow and develop in growth-fostering relationships. The father/son connections provide liberatory contexts for relational evolution in the fathers. In co-identifying with their sons, fathers begin to re-envision their sense of self, redefining a new way of being where masculinity is conceived of as caring and manhood as relational. This process of co-identification or the Myson/Myself dymanic, is the cauldron transformation. Using Relational-Cultural Theory (R-CT) as a theoretical model for interpretation, the research reveals how men, grow and develop in relationship. This paper outlines a father’s actual process in relationship with his son. The process is situated in R-CT and illustrated with fathers’ narratives.
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Why is it important?
Fathering continues to be viewed as less legitimate and less meaningful than mothering. However, we live in a socio-historical moment that is amenable to an exploration and redefinition of fathering. Relational Fathering is revolutionary in proffering a paradigm that legitimatizing fathering. While other research has focused on the effect of the father in the home or lives of their children, this work looked at how being involved with their children impacts the fathers.
Perspectives
My work, I believe, impacts society’s view of human connection by applying the example of growth-fostering relationships to parenting – more specifically in this case fathering – and by extension to the larger world of economic and governmental practices and policies. If boys can experience healthy, empathic relationships in childhood with their fathers and/or later by parenting their children, their ability to negotiate, understand others, and build coalitions expands. Relational Fathering is my attempt to make a difference in men’s lives and in the lives of those who love them, to help men inhabit their full potential too often denied them by their socialization.
Ms Carol M Watson-Phillips
Lesley University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Relational Fathering, The Journal of Men s Studies, August 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1060826516661188.
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