Men's Choices and Masculine Duties Fathers in Expert Discussions

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Men and MasculinitiesVolume 12 Number 1

October 2009 45-72© 2009 SAGE Publications10.1177/1097184X07306720

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Men’s Choices and MasculineDutiesFathers in Expert DiscussionsJaana VuoriUniversity of Tampere, Finland

This article analyzes the debate among family experts about fathering in Finland fromthe 1980s to recent years. The controversy is whether shared parenting between womenand men is good for children and for men themselves or whether a gendered divisionof parenting should be advocated instead. Both discourses perceive men as importantas fathers but disagree on the care of babies and very young children. Irrespective ofposition, experts stress that the choices made by men regarding fatherhood are individ-ual and have wide-ranging consequences in their lives and the lives of their children,especially of boys. Experts view motherhood as a societal duty, and fatherhood as per-sonal and elective. If fathers’ choices are stressed as a moral issue, it is because fathersare seen as masculine actors, not as nurturers. The author argues that the radical societalethos of shared parenting seems to have weakened, or even disappeared.

Keywords: fatherhood; fathering; Finland; motherhood; shared parenting

My purpose in this article is to analyze the lively debates about fathering that havebeen going on among family experts in Finland from the 1980s to recent years.

The basic prevailing controversy among experts is about whether shared parentingbetween women and men is good for children and good for men themselves or whethera clear gendered division of parenting practices should be advocated instead. Thesebasic understandings I call the shared parenting discourse and the exclusive motheringdiscourse.1 The exclusive mothering discourse emphasizes women’s innate characteras primary nurturers. The shared parenting discourse denies the absolute divisionbetween female and male nurturing roles. Both discourses consider men to be impor-tant as fathers but disagree on the care of babies and very young children. On the levelof everyday practices, the argument is often about practical infant care, but both dis-courses have turned to stress a “deeper” and more fundamental psychological or psy-chosocial relationship between men and children (Vuori 2001).

It is not my aim in this article, however, to point out that these two discoursesexist vis-à-vis each other but to argue how they both contribute to a powerfulcultural figure of the father, even to the extent that it has become very difficult to raiseany woman-centred issues of parenting or sometimes even to talk about mothers

46 Men and Masculinities

without an immediate mention of fathers. Still, the social responsibility for parentinglies with women. In addition, as I will argue, women have the task of persuadingmen into becoming fathers.

My data consists of three different sets of writings by Finnish family experts. Formy doctoral dissertation, I analysed seventy-eight Finnish books published in 1986and 1995, which explicitly discuss gender and parenting.2 Twenty-nine of them dealwith gender as a central thematic issue and were therefore included in my analysis.In addition, I analysed a series of four guidebooks published in 1985 and four cen-tral textbooks published from 1996 to 1998 for future family professionals. All dif-ferent genres of expert texts were included, such as guidebooks for parents,textbooks, research monographs and article collections, published dissertations,seminar reports, and books aimed for a wider public; that is, the so-called “popularscience.” Fiction, biographical works and books written from parents’ perspectivewere excluded. By family experts, I refer to a variety of professionals in health care,pedagogy, social work, research, development psychology, psychoanalysis, psychia-try, and counselling, who all can be labelled as psychosocial experts in a largersense (see Vuori 2001, 33–44). Some of them work in high expert positions, some ingrassroots-level institutions.

A second set of data collected in 2005 consists of twenty-four guidebooks aimedeither at immigrants or at professionals who work with immigrants and publishedelectronically on the Web site of the Ministry of Labour, the main authority forimmigrant issues in Finland.3 Many of them have been translated into different lan-guages but all were originally produced in Finnish and written by Finnish authori-ties, although often anonymously and collectively. What makes these guidebooksinteresting is that they attempt to sum up information about Finnish society and theFinnish way of life in an easily understandable way. Fathering and mothering are nota central issue in them, but they seem to capture the most self-evident culturalassumptions of gendered parenting. The third set of materials was more occasionallycollected and includes guidebooks and experts’ popular discussions on fatherhoodpublished after the year 1995, when I finished gathering the main data for my dis-sertation. It has been used merely to affirm that no big changes have occurred inexpert talk on parenting and gender since the collection of the first data set.4

Hence, this article can tell us more about continuity in expert talk than about his-torical changes. Twenty years is a long time in regard to both individual lives andparental generations. It might also be a long time in regard to changes occurring indiscourses and policies. In the Finnish context, however, the data covers approxi-mately the periods of the deployment of special fatherhood policies and the dual pol-icy of promoting both the employment of small children’s parents with public day careand the parents’ opportunities to stay at home on home care allowance—spanningfrom the mid-1980s to the present. As far as discourses in family expertise are con-cerned, twenty years might be considered a short time: expert literature is “slow” in

the sense that several generations of expert texts usually exist parallel to each otherand that scientific and professional fields usually change slowly.

With this diverse data setting, I analyze some prominent tendencies in the dis-courses of fatherhood in the frame of “father-friendly” social policies. The conceptof discourse here points to the process in which social practices and linguisticexpressions to which they refer form complex but analytically recognizable culturalunderstandings. These understandings are culturally so well learned that in everydaylife they are hardly recognized as learned but taken rather as “the way things are.”Discourses are never stable, and my reading of them can be described as lookingat both reiteration and variations at the same time. In such an understanding ofdiscourse there is no clear distinction between nonlinguistic practices and linguisticdiscourses—here I lean on Michel Foucault—and they both emerge, change andsometimes disappear in the same process. (Foucault 1982a, 1982b; Mills 1997,48–72; Vuori 2001, 81) In this article, I focus more on the disparity of discourses ofmen’s importance as active fathers and the practices of embodied men as individu-als and collectives than on analysis of men’s practices as such. In discourse analysis,however, social life and practices are mostly studied through more or less detailedlinguistic analysis of texts (e.g., Fairclough 2003; Taylor 2001, 5).

In the discourse-analytical close reading of the data (e.g., Whetherell, Taylor,and Yates 2001a, 2001b), I mainly analyzed ideational metafunction and especiallytransitivity (Halliday 1985, 106–161; Mills 1995, 143–149; Purra 1996), the repre-sentation of social actors (van Leeuwen 1996), and focalization (Bal 1997, 142–161;Mills 1995, 178–187). The linguistic features of the texts were analyzed to illumi-nate broader rhetorical questions about what kinds of gendered relations are con-structed between the writer and his/her audience in the text—that is, between thewriter-experts, family professionals, mothers, and fathers (Edmondson 1984, 1–31;Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1971; Stillar 1998).

In this article, I present the data and close reading only illustratively and attemptto make a more general argument on the basis of my findings. In the spirit of MichelFoucault’s and his followers’ discussion on the government of the modern society byknowledge produced in different expert practices, I aim to contribute to the discus-sion of the “father question” (Knudsen and Waerness 2001) or “new fatherhood”(Lewis and O’Brien 1987; Pleck 1989; Huttunen 2001; Ranson 2001). Althoughinvesting in the cultural figure of the father might be a wider Western trend, it is mostdeeply rooted in the Nordic countries with developed gender equality and socialpolicies.

To my mind, this kind of cultural analysis of gendered parenting discourses is asimportant as analysis of gendered practices, because parents as different family pro-fessionals and family politicians also shape their practices in relation to what can andcannot culturally be thought of as proper ways to take care of children, to be menand women, or to grow into wholesome personalities.5

Vuori / Men’s Choices and Masculine Duties 47

Fathering in the Nordic Social Policies

From the 1960s onwards, particularly in the Nordic countries, fathers have beenseen more often by mothers’ side—in childbirth and infant care as well as in parent-ing growing children and building close relationships with them. This is somethingthat feminists, women politicians and “ordinary women” have hoped and worked forboth in their personal lives and in political spheres (Leira 2002a). It is somewhat moredifficult to see how men have collectively and politically fought for new father poli-cies (e.g. H. Bergman and Hobson 2002; Holli 2003, 54–57; Kantola 2006, 104).6

During the last few decades, gender-neutral opportunities for parental and child careleaves and some specific rights for fathers (paternity leave to be held at the same timeas maternity leave and “daddy quotas” that are extra parental leave weeks for menonly) have been created in the Nordic countries, in Finland, Sweden, Norway,Denmark, and Iceland (Säntti 1990; Haas 1992; Leira 2002a; Björnberg 2002;H. Bergman and Hobson 2002; Lammi-Taskula 2007; Haataja 2004). Joint custodyafter divorce has also become a normal arrangement widely preferred by authoritiesand politicians; if it cannot be agreed on, regular contact with the nonresident parent isstriven for (Kurki-Suonio 2000; H. Bergman and Hobson 2002; Heide Ottosen 2006).

In the Nordic countries, policymakers have strongly supported shared or “equal”parenting and policies contributing to women’s employment and the dual breadwin-ner model. In recent years, the European Union has also given some recommenda-tions and directions for care leave arrangements, services for child care, workplacechanges, and changes toward men’s participation in child care, which are being vari-ably implemented in the member states. Nevertheless, more effort has been made tobring women into paid work than to bring men into care (Pascall and Lewis 2004,385; Lombardo and Meier 2006).

The Nordic gender regime has been analyzed by feminist researchers as the mostequal regime in regard to women’s paid work, care work, income, and political par-ticipation. Analyzing family and parenting policies is central in this argumentation.In feminist thinking, sharing the responsibility for child care and upbringing hasbecome a central issue in assessing gender equality in general. (Leira 2002a, 15–44,2002b; H. Bergman and Hobson 2002; Borchorst and Siim 2002; Pascall and Lewis2004, 379). In addition, it is a routine practice for researchers to divide the broadlines of division of labor in parenting into traditional versus equal parenting (e.g.,Lewis and O’Brien 1987; Haas 1992).

The Nordic model in regard to policies toward shared child care between mothersand fathers usually refers to Sweden and Norway in particular. Because of the dualpolicy of promoting parents’ (read: women’s) employment with public day care pro-vision as well as promoting (women’s) opportunities for staying at home and takingcare of children on home care allowance (for parents of children less than three yearsold), Finland has been seen as an exception moving toward a more mother-centredor even unequal model when compared to the other Nordic countries. Analysts build


on an assumption that the number of (rather short-term) stay-at-home mothersreceiving home care allowance is a sign of inequality in comparison to the numberof women working either full- or part-time (Anttonen 1998, 365–366; Leira 2002a,138–139, 2002b).7 Also, the policy conception of fatherhood seems to be rathervague in Finland compared to Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, where the sharing offamily responsibilities is more straightforwardly guided. In Finland, the freedomof choice in families is stressed and guidance in the father-child relationship is stillsecondary to plain organizing of child care. Therefore, the implementation of possi-ble changes in gender relations is entrusted to individual parents. For example, pater-nity leave does not motivate men to independent child care but presupposes thatmothers are at home at the same time as fathers. Tellingly, fathers who do not livewith their children have no right to any care leaves (M. Rantalaiho 2003, 208–209,226; Lammi-Taskula 2007).

Recently, the different implementations of the new “daddy quotas” (in Sweden,Norway, Iceland, and for a short time, Denmark) have increased the differencesbetween the Nordic countries. In Finland, the numbers of fathers using differentfamily leaves are the smallest and the proportion of fathers taking parental leave in2002 was around 2 percent. The time they spent at home was quite short, on average64 days; including both paternal and parenting leaves, the average was two and a halfweeks. The recent implementation of the father’s quota of extra parental leave withrather tight conditions has not changed the figures very much. In Finland, the father’squota may be interpreted as a special form of support to father care, implying at thesame time that a greater part of parental leave is expected to be taken by mothers(Lammi-Taskula 2007). In Norway, Sweden, and Iceland, the introduction of moreeffective quotas has resulted in a notable rise in men’s take-up of parental leaves:only 20 to 25 percent of fathers do not take up any leave (Lammi-Taskula 2007;Haataja 2004).

In my view, the Finnish exceptionality should not be exaggerated too much. Mendo not make extensive use of their opportunities to take parental leaves or time offfrom work when their children are ill in any other Nordic country either. Comparedto women, men tend only to take a limited amount of time off in the form of familyleaves: in 2004, Finnish and Danish men used less than 6 percent and Norwegianmen 9 percent of all paid parental, paternity, and maternity leave days, whereasSwedish fathers used 19.7 percent. Only in Iceland were these rates were very high(almost 32 percent) because of recent policy changes. (NOSOSCO 2006, 50). Theroots and consequences of these differences have been intensively discussed by fem-inist researchers. It seems that highly developed social policies for parents have per-haps even reproduced gender division because women tend to use benefits more(Leira 1992, 174–177, 2002b; Anttonen 1998, 2003; Borchorst and Siim 2002).However, Eva Magnusson’s interviews with Finnish, Danish, and Swedish hetero-sexual couples with children remind us that the use of child care leaves does not haveany direct effects on how equally parents share the responsibilities of child care and


housework after the leaves in the long run (Magnusson 2006, 61–78; regardinghousework, see also Lammi-Taskula 2007).

At the same time, different family experts have become more interested in father-ing in the Nordic countries, and fathers have become the object of professional workand guidance. In Finland, fathering has been widely and extensively debated in publicin the last four decades. The idea of men sharing household duties and child care waslaunched within the equality movements in the 1960s and in even some more estab-lished family policy organizations of that time (Israel 1966; Beckman 1966; Yhdistys9: Isien äitiysloma [1968] 1995; Karila 1968; Jallinoja 1983, 123–163; S. Bergman2002, 134.) It took some time before the ideas spread and lost their tone of being tooradical, ridiculous, or impossible to reach, which was said about the proposal for ashared six-month parental leave (half for mothers, half for fathers) in Finland in 1968,for example (Rotkirch 1968; Joensuu 1972, 32–36). The 1980s and 1990s were inmany ways “fathers’ decades” in the Nordic countries. In Finland, several projectswere launched, fathering was extensively debated in expert texts and popular maga-zines, and official reports were made. Men living with their families, as well asdivorced fathers, were encouraged to enjoy their fatherhood. This debate does notseem to have died down in the new millennium (Auvinen 1991, 235–243; Sihvola1995; Isätoimikunta 1999; Huttunen 2001; J. Kolehmainen and Aalto 2004).

Drawing from qualitative studies conducted outside the Nordic countries, GillianRanson concludes that shifts by fathers to greater involvement with their children“have been less than dramatic.” In her own study of Canadian middle-class profes-sional men, the men understood “involvement” often as willingness and potentialability to be involved, rather than as actual time spent with children. If men had pro-fessionally employed partners, they saw their involvement more as obligatory thandiscretionary, and they did participate to some extent (Ranson 2001, 5–6, 22–24).Being a “caring” or “involved” father is institutionally as well as culturally a muchmore legitimate position in the Nordic countries than in other parts of the Westernworld (e.g., Smith 1998). This is why a closer look at the case of Finland helps todeconstruct the straightforward view that greater encouragement into active father-hood automatically leads to the dissolving of gendered divisions in parenting.

To Care or Not To Care

To provide background for a closer analysis of the Finnish texts, I briefly discusssome findings from Anglo-American parentcraft guides and media texts. Whereas inthe Nordic countries, policies and everyday understandings of men and women leanmore toward shared parenting, in the Anglo-American context they lean morestrongly toward exclusive mothering.

In Britain, Janet Sunderland has analysed parentcraft guides using a detailed lin-guistic critical discourse analysis. Sunderland has found in them a very mother-centred


discourse in which men are nothing more than “baby entertainers,” mothers’ “bum-bling assistants” or “line managers” (Sunderland 2000). In her analysis of British,U.S., and Canadian parenting magazines, she finds that, despite the new gender-neutral titles of these magazines, men are seen as “part-time fathers”; they do littlemore than “step in” and “help” mothers who are constantly reproduced discursivelyas main parents. The shared parenting discourse is never actively drawn on, explic-itly articulated, or discussed, she concludes in her analysis of whether both mothers andfathers are addressed and represented in the magazines. Despite the fact that the lexisincludes such utterances as “parent/parents/parenting” and “moms and dads,” “parents”in the plural are simply not addressed. She looks into the exclusion of fathers associal actors and other linguistic traces, such as the pronouns, lexicalizations, repre-sentation of “voices” of the characters in the texts and visuals of the magazinefeatures (Sunderland 2006, 511, 522–524).

The Finnish family expert texts of the last two decades, which my data cover, givemen a much more central role. These Finnish texts constantly address men as fathers,and more importantly, both in the discourse that strives for shared parenting and inthe discourse that puts weight on mothers as primary carers. Increasing interest inmen is a general tendency in all types of texts under analysis here.

My first set of data from the 1980s and 1990s includes altogether seventy-eightbooks, of which twenty-nine deal with gender as a central thematic issue. Over half ofthese (seventeen) discuss men, boys, and fathering. According to them; becoming aman means growing into fatherhood, and gender is a central problematic. Only onebook discusses both women and men concurrently and to an equal extent; eleven booksfocus on women and motherhood. This does not mean that women and mothers arediscussed explicitly in regard to gender issues but rather in regard to reproduction (e.g.,pregnancy, breastfeeding, and number of children) or to women’s role as primary car-ers (e.g., the mother-child verbal interaction). Explicitly gynocentric, feminist, or equalopportunities perspectives are rare but not totally missing. In Finland, the psychoana-lytic tradition has not been very important culturally, but in regard to parenting it hasbeen particularly important. Nine of the books are psychoanalytic in a broad sense, andas many as seven of them discuss men and/or boys. (Vuori 2001, 65–78).

Finnish as a language is more gender neutral than English; for example, the thirdperson pronouns do not differentiate between men and women. It is thus possiblethat talking about parents and their doings is in some sense easier in Finnish than inEnglish, but there is a great deal of evidence of a reflexive and intentional use of agender-neutral language as well as of an intentional use of phrases like “mother andfather.” At the same time, there is much slippage from gender-neutral discourse intotalk about women as carers. The language of parenting yields to bolster both the dis-courses of shared parenting and exclusive mothering. Like Sunderland, I also thinkthat the extensive use of such “parenting” vocabulary presents solid evidence that theexclusive mothering discourse—or simply the mothering discourse, as Sunderlandputs it—is being contested. However, the fact that men enter into expert or popular


magazine texts as fathers does not automatically echo a growing balance or equalitybetween the sexes, as Sunderland suggests (Sunderland 2000, 2006).

In my data, shared parenting, or fathers’ active role in taking care of small children,is often taken as a self-evident goal and the political agenda is often made explicit. Asthe family advice plan drawn up by the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare8

declared in 1985: “Let’s involve fathers in child care” (Vauvan ensimmäinen vuosi1985, 5).9 A couples counsellor also takes a strong stand for shared parenthood:

The myths showing women’s role as bound to home maintain men’s strong position in themarriage and outside it. The situation can be solved and the marriage saved only throughshared parenthood and women’s equal participation in public life. (Kuhanen 1995, 56)

In leaflets aimed for immigrants, the Finnish way of parenting is alwaysdescribed so that mothers and fathers are put into as symmetrical positions as possi-ble. The gender-neutral term “parent(s)” is widely used. The ideal of symmetricalparenting can be seen also in the frequent textual coordination of both mothers andfathers. If they both are mentioned, they are liable for the same kinds of things andthey carry out similar responsibilities. Even when reproduction, the most commonissue in the leaflets that can be related to women only, is talked about, fathers maybe mentioned in the very next sentence, as in the booklet for quota refugees:

In the prenatal clinic the development of the foetus and the condition of the mother arefollowed and advice about exercise and diet is given. Also the father may take part inthe childbirth preparation courses and accompany the mother in delivery to support her.(Kotimaaksi Suomi n.d., 16)

Men or fathers are mentioned as gendered actors usually when it is stressed thatshared parenthood is good for them.

The aim of Finnish family policy is to create a safe growing environment for the childas well as to secure the parents the material and mental capacities to give birth tochildren and to raise them. The equal right of both parents to raise children is empha-sized nowadays. Shared responsibility facilitates the reconciliation of work and familylife and also enriches the life of men. (Equality in Finland: Information for immigrantsn.d., 4; an official English translation from the original Finnish-language guidebook)

The same leaflet regularly talks about “men and women” and “mothers andfathers.” The use of gender-neutral and gender-sensitive utterances is reflexive, evento such an extent that the normal order of actors and work-related issues arereversed—a kind of focalization twist is put into effect:

The Act on Equality between Women and Men pays special attention to the improve-ment of women’s status in working life. The law also obliges the employer to facilitate


the reconciliation of work and family life. The aim is to give men and women equalopportunities to participate in both household tasks and salaried work. (ibid., 10; ital-ics added)10

In one of the earliest studies on fathering in Finland, psychologist authors discussthe changing role of fathers in the same manner. They turn the usual gendered orderof active/passive and traditional/modern upside down while envisioning that “a grad-ual change from a traditional passive male role into a more active and family-centred direction” has occurred in Finland (Koski-Hyvärinen and Puttonen 1987, 125).

However, there is some ambivalence in the shared parenting discourse when it is notdescribed as a political goal or as a family policy principle but rather as an issue on thelevel of everyday realities. In the next extract from an employment authorities’ bookletaimed for people who migrate to Finland to work, gender equality as such is describedas a self-evident goal under the subtitle “Equality and Antidiscrimination.” First the textfocuses on Finnish women who can “actively participate” in working life because of theparental leave and day care systems. A sentence later it declares that “more and moremen also have the opportunity to participate actively in caring for their children.” Theterm “also” is noteworthy here, and phrases “more and more,” “opportunity to” and“participate in” strengthen the wavering between the actuality of mother-centred careand the ideal of shared parenting (Working in Finland 2004, 8; official translation).

The weight of the shared parenting discourse in Finland can be seen particularlyin the way in which the experts who support the exclusive mothering discourse putup a defense against it and warn against fathers having too deep an involvement inmothers’ tasks:

In the Nordic countries the equality discussion has been kept alive long and it has ledto the point where the father is eagerly offered not only to alternate with and to help themother but to downright replace the mother. The concept of a stay-at-home father hasbeen launched and he is the one who cares for the children at home while his wife goesout to paid work. But do the advocates of this solution really understand that, in a psy-chological sense, the father is thus changed into the mother, which in the case of cer-tain motherly men is of course fully possible? If the father takes over the mother’sfunctions and emotional significance to the child, who is then the father in the family?I am really afraid that the child’s identity development may be badly disturbed in sucha family system. (Schalin 1991, 43)

Here we can see the importance of the different roles of a mother and a father; if theywere equal carers of the baby, the infant could not rely on anybody while being in thestate of ambivalence. (Vuorinen 1997, 124)

Shared parenting poses a threat especially to boys and their psychological devel-opment. What is actively built here is a heteronormative matrix (cf., Butler 1990, 17;Warner 1993). Boys may not be able to develop a healthy male identity at all if they


do not have a masculine (i.e., not too caring) man with whom to identify. Women areidentified with mothers and mothers are associated with femininity. If fathers “turninto mothers,” they lose their masculinity. If mothers try to act like fathers, theyprobably lose their femininity. If boys do not have masculine fathers, they willdevelop in a wrong way, not into masculine but feminine boys. In the extreme case,they become homosexual or transsexual, as I will show in more detail later on. Butthe chain stops here, and the rest remains unsaid: the fact that boys could turn intomotherly men who are able to take care of the children. This is the argument of theshared parenting discourse that cannot be raised in the exclusive mothering dis-course. (Vuori 2001, 206–237; Sedgwick 1993)

Fathering Could Be Even Better

However, there is no reason to think that the exclusive mothering discourse andthe shared parenting discourse are two total opposites. Both derive their drivingforce from their reciprocal relationship: they challenge one another, raise the samequestions from different points of view and avoid using the same frames for theirquestions. Here I want to point out that, in both current discourse versions prevail-ing in Finland, fathers are of special interest and concern. Those experts who seewomen as primary caretakers also attach their hope to changing fathers and trans-forming fatherhood. In closer analysis of the texts, I found that experts describefathers in more diverse ways than mothers. Fathers are described as acting, feeling,thinking, and talking actors and attached with various attributes. The talk aboutfathers is in general mostly positive and encouraging. It welcomes men to fatherhoodand invites them to identify themselves with other fathers and with models offeredby experts. Fathers have a special place in children’s development, as an examplefrom a parentcraft booklet under the subtitle “How to Involve the Father from theVery Beginning” reveals:

The father is nowadays often present to witness the birth of a new baby. For many menthis is an enormous emotional experience, which may arouse feelings of smallness orhelplessness in them. Giving birth is a very intimate family event which gives the fatheran extraordinary occasion to start a close interaction with his child. However, partici-pation should always be voluntary and social pressure should not affect the father’sdecision too much. . . . The father may create a unique and just as equal a relationshipwith his child as the mother. (Vekaravihkonen pikkulasten vanhemmille 1999, 31)

Men are asked to enjoy their fatherhood, to learn new things, to liberate them-selves as fathers and to leave the traditional burden behind them. To sum up in thespirit of theoretical discussions on analytics of “governmentality” or “government,”experts are very intensively blazing the trail for paternal agency.11 A tendency to


widen the agency of subjects (individuals as well as groups and masses) is the majoraim in all “biopolitical” direction nowadays (Foucault 1991a, 1991b; Rose 1990;Helén 1997; Dean 1999; Eräranta 2005, 2007).

An essential feature of the government of parenthood is multiplicity. The work isdone in many different ways and with many different aims, in a variety of institu-tions and in relation to various practices, in every one of which knowledge is a cen-tral part (Dean 1999, 9–39). This can be seen in my data: fatherhood is discussed inrelation to every field of research, in connection with all kinds of professions, and inrelation to all institutions working with children and families. Knowledge is mainlyconstructed as factual (Potter 1996), and only occasionally as political and ethical.

The tone of family experts has changed compared to the times of implementingmaternalist discourses during the past hundred years or so, when women were taughthow to run the household, how to care for and raise children, and how to concentrateespecially on children’s early years of infancy to give them the best opportunities todevelop into wholesome personalities. It has been common to “blame” the idle, unin-terested and not-sensitive-enough—often working-class—women (Ehrenreich andEnglish 1979; Riley 1983; Oakley 1984; Walkerdine and Lucey 1989, 47–63; Burman1994; Birns 1999; Bliwise 1999; Cleary 1999; for Finland, see Wrede 1991; Ollila1993; Nätkin 1997). Direct and “negative” means of control have gradually beenreplaced by a more positive ethos, and internalized knowledge and self-direction havebecome the final aim. As Nikolas Rose puts it, the modern society is not kept goingby coercion but by showing how life is and by creating visions of how it could be evenbetter (Rose 1996, 73). This kind of change toward governmental ethos has been seenas a long process in mothering discourses as well (Rose 1990, 131–150). But in rela-tion to fathering, this change is occurring right now around us and the tone is almostoverwhelmingly encouraging and even passionate, and the blaming of men is beingavoided (see also Eräranta 2007; cf., Curran and Abrams 2000).12

Even if my data do not present people’s assumptions in general, the investment indiscussing fathering can be seen everywhere, as the following two examples from theworld of advertising show: one advertisement depicts a man holding a baby in his armswhile selling cars and the other a half-naked young man with an infant lying on hischest (in connection with a department store). These kinds of positive images of “newfathers” have been circulated widely since the 1980s, for example, by Hollywood filmssuch as Three Men and a Baby or by the British media (Smart 1989, 10–16).

In comparison to this investment in fatherhood in the current versions of the exclu-sive mothering discourse and the shared parenting discourse, mothers’ agency is con-structed as more ambivalent than fathers’. The texts do not tend to consider mothersas women with their own experiences and voices. In the discourse-analytical closereading of my data, this becomes very clear. The authors rarely describe women asactors and use only a small variety of processes to describe them (Halliday 1985; vanLeeuwen 1996). To sum up, mothers are looked at in a more objectified manner thanfathers, and it is really hard to find as vivid descriptions of mothers’ doings,


thoughts, and feelings as those of fathers. The authors seldom identify with mothers,and the pathos of the texts may be described as more matter-of-fact.

In addition, when experts address mothers as central figures in their writings,their motivation often lies in mothers’ reproductive role (e.g., delivery and breast-feeding), mothers are inherently assumed to be relevant informants for research, orthey just suddenly pop up as actors amid the gender-neutral talk about parents. In thebooks discussing mainly mothering, the exclusion of fathers is usually explained andoften regretted: “The most difficult defining act in this work has been the exclusionof the father from research,” writes a psychiatrist in her dissertation about maternaldepression (Tamminen 1990, 99). Another dissertation exploring psychologicalproblems during the puerperium (postnatal confinement) is concerned as much withthe symptoms of fathers as those of mothers (Karila 1991).

A typical pattern in expert texts is that the positive figure of the father is con-structed against a more silent and more or less negative figure of the mother. Forexample, in an extract from a textbook on child mental health work, which verystrongly promotes the shared parenting discourse, fathers and mothers are describedin processes in which both “take care of,” “are active,” “touch,” “look at,” and “kiss.”But when compared to mothers, fathers “play in a more creative way than mothers,”they “romp about more” and “play more unconventionally,” they “put their heart andsoul into the play in a more enthusiastic way” and they “get the children to reactmore eagerly.” Mothers are mentioned first in the comparison only once; they “spendmore time in care activities.” When fathers are described without being compared tomothers, the generic form the father is used, and the father’s activity is connected toprocesses like “venture on,” “take care of,” “be afraid of,” “play,” “engage in,” “com-pete,” “want to,” “grind down,” “get angry,” “cheat,” “support,” “wonder, “admire,”and “grow up.” The father is described as “capable” and “assured.” He has “a goldentime,” “a role,” “masculinity,” “resources,” and “a relationship.” The image of thefather drawn in the text is not a simple one, and both positive and negative alterna-tives for action are attached to it. Nevertheless, the father is presented as a much live-lier person than the mother to whom he is compared (Taipale 1998, 21–22).

Men’s Choices and Masculine Fathers

The experts are not united in their opinion about what the “new father” should belike in the questions they set. The discourse of shared parenting asks: what is theminimum amount of parenting needed from fathers to guarantee their children a nor-mal development and how much should men rework their masculinity to be ableto act like good fathers? In principle, men have the capacity to do everythingthat women do. However, in the current versions of this discourse, the normativepressure for men to change is not strong. The question has turned into: what domen want?


In the texts, fatherhood is interpreted as men’s individual choice and, at the most,a result of in-family negotiations. In addition, housework is seldom discussed at thesame time as fathering (see also Tigerstedt 1995; Brandth and Kvande 1998,305–307). Men are not addressed as political actors or members of male communi-ties, nor is it thought that the responsibility for child care arrangements would con-cern men’s workplaces, labor unions, parties, or men’s organizations. ChristofferTigerstedt and Ilana Aalto have studied the autobiographies of Finnish men andarrive at the same conclusion: not even the so-called stay-at-home daddies’ choicesseem to be equality projects, but personal and family-based solutions instead(Tigerstedt 1995; Aalto 2002). This line of argumentation forms a gendered dis-course which builds on the figure of a voluntary father whose life opens up as aseries of individual choices (cf., M. Rantalaiho 2003, 221). His figure seems to sur-face as a reflection of the situation in which equality in parenting has lost much ofits normative power and most men seem not to choose to vote for it in practice.

In the exclusive mothering discourse, men are both persuaded to broaden theirmission and warned not to broaden it too much. They should not become mothersand displace women as primary caregivers. Instead, men should more intensivelysupport mothers in caring for babies and take more and more part in children’s edu-cation as they grow up. However, the strong discourse of shared parenting has ledexperts to wonder what the extent is to which fathers can participate in child carewithout causing problems to children’s development or their own masculinity.

Every man longs for the kind of activity in which he feels his manhood grow strong oreven stronger. An outsider cannot know what it is like. Neither can an outsider knowhow or how much time a man can spend with a baby before getting anguishedor whether a man can take care of a little child at home without losing his sense ofmanhood—we are, after all, talking about an activity which in our unconscious tradi-tions for so long has been regarded as women’s work. (Manninen 1991, 135)

Thus, the other central male figure drawn in recent expert texts is that of a mas-culine father whose fatherhood is constructed as much more necessary and sociallydemanding than the choice-making father’s because it is required on the basis of thechild’s needs (cf., M. Rantalaiho 2003, 221). The figure of a masculine father isthe normative cornerstone of the current exclusive mothering discourse. He is theanswer to the concern about the crisis of masculinity of men and their sons (Williams1998). Men are not expected to substitute for mothers but to act beside them asparents with the capacity to transmit special masculine quality. A large number ofthe expert texts in the 1980s and 1990s in Finland twisted around this theme. Expertswith a psychoanalytic background (even if not all “proper” psychoanalysts) in par-ticular wrote books and caught the interest of the media. Many other experts com-mented and circulated their ideas as well.13 For example, the psychoanalytic writingsexpress a deep worry about the development of boys as follows:


Particularly in the second year of life and especially at the end of it, the absence of thefather is a really serious situation: more serious for a boy than for a girl. In the inner worldand its structures, there is a “gap of a size of a man,” a categorical vacuum which becomesdistressingly evident in the psychotherapy of boys and men. (Sinkkonen 1990, 147–148)

Both figures may be seen in the discourses of shared parenting and exclusivemothering in many ways. The discourse of shared parenthood is strong in Finland andthe antagonists have to consider seriously the extent to which fathers may choose tocare. However, the worry about boys and masculinity in turn puts the protagonists forshared parenting in the position of defendants. They have to argue time after time thatcaring fathers remain men and can foster healthy and proudly masculine boys.

The father takes care of the same tasks as the mother, and gender has so far no meaning.The father of course remains wholly a man, just as the mother remains a woman. Bothact as carers and nurturers. . . . Being “a second mother” lasts only for a short period oftime. Soon the father is a father and a man for the baby. (Juntumaa 1989, 122–123)

The concern about the development of boys’ masculinity is not new. It derivesfrom the situation after the Second World War, when American psychiatrists andpsychoanalysts in particular analysed the influence of absent fathers on the develop-ment of boys into men (Carrigan, Connell, and Lee 1985). This discussion has car-ried over to recent times (Hearn 2001, 93–94). In Finland at the end of themillennium, the main concern was not only completely absent—dead, divorced, andworkaholic—fathers, but also fathers who sacrificed their manhood by turning intonurturing mother-like caregivers. According to experts, boys who lack masculinefathers suffer from many kinds of psychological problems.

For an amazingly large group of authors defending the masculine ways of par-enting, the suffering of the boys (and sometimes of also girls) refers to same-sexualdesire or even transsexuality (e.g., Lahti 1991; Mäkinen 1991; Schalin 1991;Puhakka 1992; Jokipaltio 1992; Torsti 1992; Ewalds 1995; Leppänen 1995).

NN [original reference erased] for his part emphasizes the psychological presence ofthe father in the post-oedipal triangle in order for the son to be able to detach himselffrom incestuous temptations toward the mother and to manage to avoid serious psychicdisorders like the borderline disorder, homosexuality and perversions. (Mäkinen1991, 103.)

Among dozens of negative descriptions about nonheterosexuality in psychoana-lytic texts, I found only one which posited a happy gay.14 To me, this lack indicatesthat nonheterosexuals have a central role in the discourse. The figures of the non-heterosexuals are either tragic or unpleasant, or their pathos arouses either pity ordisgust. The descriptions are also meagre: they are not described as actors but trans-formed into term-like abstractions such as “homoerotic regression.”


The role of the nonheterosexual figures in the texts is not to argue about sexualdevelopment per se or the possible problems of lesbians and gays. They rather func-tion as warnings of what might happen if parents are not “good enough” (Winnicot[1964] 1973). Most of the expert texts in my data that take up the issue of non-heterosexuality are openly heterosexist. There is an unquestionable presuppositionthat parents would feel bad if their children did not develop into heterosexuals. Buteven more unthinkable in the discourse is that parents themselves could be non-heterosexual; this possibility is not discussed at all (Vuori 2001, 229–234).Homosexuality and transsexuality are viewed as something pathological, as a disor-der, abnormalcy, and deviation, not totally excluded but on the border (Butler 1990,5–7, 1993, 3–8, 93–119; de Lauretis 1994; Stålström 1997). According to JudithButler, however, in each discourse there is something that is forbidden, denied, andrepressed (Butler 1993, 3). The figure of the homosexual is there, but what thencould be unthinkable in the expert discourses of parenting? The “normal” and good-enough mothers and fathers of well-being gays, lesbians, and transgender people,naturally. This is part of the “overarching, hygienic Western fantasy of a world with-out any more homosexuals in it” (Sedgwick 1993).

Women as Mediators

As far as expert texts on parenting are concerned, the story goes as analyzedabove. Although fathers seem to have taken a lion’s share in expert considerations,it does not mean that mothers have lost their importance. In everyday life, it is usu-ally mothers that professionals encounter. Also, talk about men as fathers is veryoften women’s talk to each other in child welfare clinics, social welfare offices, orin family counselling, for example (Kuronen 1993; Forsberg 1994; Alasuutari 2003).However, the authors of the expert texts analysed here are both women and men, andno general pattern can be found in regard to their gender. Both women and men pro-mote both shared parenting and exclusive mothering, and both tend to be very sen-sitive to fathers’ issues.

In the texts, mothers may be in the background, but still present. In fact, expertsseek to influence the conduct of fathers by making women act as mediators. Women,both as mothers and as female family professionals, are directly asked to make roomfor fathers’ agency, to persuade men to move gently into the new fatherhood, to helpand to support them.

If the mother thinks that the father participates too little in child care, presumably betterthan to nag and argue is for the mother to discreetly ask the father to join her when sheis about to do something nice with the baby. Together the whole family can thus enjoythe company of the baby, instead of each one dutifully doing his/her own “watch.”(Vauvan ensimmäinen vuosi 1985, 35)


This quote is derived from the 1980s, but women’s anxiety about whether theyhave appropriately supported men as their spouses or as professionals sounds veryfamiliar even today. Although my data clearly address men, as a genre the texts onparenting and education largely work in the relationships between women. Theauthors of these expert texts are both men and women, but students or professionalsare far more often female than male in the field of family professionals, as the sta-tistics of occupations in child care, education, social work, and health care in Finlandshow (S. Kolehmainen 1999; L. Rantalaiho 1997). And parents who reach for guide-books on the bookshelves are probably far more often mothers than fathers.Research shows that women still bear the main responsibility for child care. In recentyears, some guidebooks aimed especially for fathers (Käytä isyysvapaasi! 2006) andprofessionals who work with fathers and with still-rare father groups (Säävälä,Keinänen, and Vainio 2001) have been published in Finland. They, however, stillremain in a marginal position.

The figure of the father is therefore constructed through women—the father canbe either the kind of man who equally shares all work and the responsibility for par-enting with the mother or the kind of man who works beside the nurturing mother,supports her and is marked by the gender difference. Mothers and women profes-sionals are summoned to make space for fathers’ agency, to discreetly coax men intofatherhood, to help and to support them. It is paradoxical that the sharing of respon-sibility for parenting in families between mothers and fathers that was supposed tolead to increased options for women—at least in equality utopias—actually seems tohave increased women’s responsibility. Despite the changing focus toward fathers,motherhood has retained its character as a social duty.

On the other hand, the mother needs to understand that it is not always so easy for thefather to understand. There is no-one kicking inside the father. The father cannot, forthat matter, always have the baby in his mind. It would be nice if the mother had thepatience to wait until the father is ready to participate. The father will do it, althoughsomewhat slower. The mother can help the father do this by, for example, telling himabout the facts she has learnt concerning the development of the foetus, baby care, childdevelopment, etc. . . . It is important for the mother to try to involve the father.The father should also learn to see the baby as a human being with whom a relation-ship is to be established from the very beginning. (Yhdeksän kuukauden matka:Vanhempainkoulu 1 1985, 30)

The feminist hope for an equal—both qualitatively and quantitatively shared—parental relationship between men and women does not seem to fit the way in whichmen and women are currently addressed by experts. Where is the normative powerof fatherhood discussions?


The Social Responsibility of Fathers

The purpose of this article was to analyse how Finnish family experts talk aboutfathers who care for babies or small children. Irrespective of whether they outline theprincipal similarity of male and female nurturing and child-rearing roles, or gen-dered difference, they stress the choices made by men around fatherhood as per-sonal, individual choices resulting in wide-ranging consequences for men’s ownlives and for the lives of their children, especially boys. Mothers have their say infamily negotiations, but experts warn women not to direct men’s decisions too much.

What underlies the figure of a choice-making father is the equality discourse of the1960s, in which the idea of the nurturing man was first launched within a politicalreform program. The equality discourse, however, was mainly entwined around thegendered and sexual role of women (Höjgaard 1997, 250–251; S. Bergman 2002; Holli2003; Kantola 2006), although some of its central fruits were the laws that supportfathering, making it possible for men to combine family and work. Even when pro-moting fathering, the equality discourse in family policy is still concerned withwomen’s labor market status and thus focuses on women (M. Rantalaiho 2003,215–216). Fathering policy has mostly been driven by women politicians and stateofficials, whereas it seems that men have not politicized and collectivized it. Men havenot raised questions of child care and family leaves at their workplaces intensivelyenough either (Lammi-Taskula 2007). The turn of “the father question” into a personalquestion shows that women either have not wanted or have not been able to politicizeit properly in recent years. Sharing child care between men and women should never-theless be politicized again because it still has major practical consequences for theeveryday lives of men, women, and children, as well as for gender equality in otheraspects of society. In Finland, legal barriers for more active fathering have been abol-ished, economical consequences for the family for sharing parental leaves, forexample, are much smaller than people assume, and caring for children does not seemto be a major threat for masculine identities, even if some experts still believe so.

In the immediate past, the number of mothers staying at home has increased inFinland, and the culture and identity politics of stay-at-home mothers has gainedmore weight. Child care allowance policy seems to strengthen it, even though theallowance itself is a gender-neutral benefit (Anttonen and Sointu 2006, 50–58;NOSOSCO 2006, 50, 62, tables 4.6 and 4.11). However, there are no clear statistics,let alone deeper quantitative or qualitative research, on who these women are, howbig a of part of their whole lives and careers staying at home constitutes, to whatextent they combine “staying at home” with paid work, studying or (small) business.We have no idea how their partners (male or female) take their role as parents. Whatkinds of new discourses of mothering and fathering are emerging? Who chooseswhat in which circumstances? There is some clear evidence that points to amore intensive advocacy of the discourse of exclusive mothering among groups of(stay-at-home) mothers compared to the 1980s and 1990s (e.g. Jallinoja 2006,


98–108). If this is such a big shift, as it sometimes seems to be in the media, it willsurely affect the practices of sharing and nonsharing parenting in the years to follow.In that is the case, Finland’s tendencies may differ increasingly from those of theother Nordic countries. Even today the use of the child care allowance, whichenables women to stay at home for shorter or longer periods (until the child is threeyears old), is so significant in Finland that the black-and-white equality policy thatpromotes women’s employment and concentrates on encouraging men to take careleaves seems to lead to serious sociopolitical and economic disadvantages forwomen in the long run, particularly in divorce cases.

The data indicate that the affirmation of fatherhood can no longer be justified bysaying it would give women better opportunities in working life and in other publicand personal activities.15 It is rather the other way around: expert texts conjure up avision of fathers taking care of their children with mothers somewhere nearby readyto support and help. In addition, housework is not debated in connection with childcare anymore, while in the 1960s, these two activities could barely be defined as sep-arate activities (Vuori 2004, 33–35).

These cultural figures of fathers reflect the way in which child care and child-rearingtasks are typically shared in heterosexual families today. Different studies indicatethat in Finland as well in other Nordic countries men concentrate on play and outdooractivities with children, whereas for women, activities with children and houseworkare intertwined. Fathers’ participation in child care often means an opportunityfor women to concentrate on cooking and laundry (Sutela 1999; Melkas 2005;Lammi-Taskula 2007). According to Lisbeth Bekkengen (1999), men are seen as“dads” but women as responsible “parents” (see also Brannen and Moss 1991). Inpractice, the Nordic gender-neutral parenting policies seem only to partly dismantlethis gendered division of labor and responsibilities, and partly to reproduce it.Arnlaug Leira concludes that “by tradition, fathers’ right not to engage in the care ofchildren has been widely accepted” (Leira 2002b, 84). Fatherhood obligations areweak but rights strong (Hobson and Morgan 2002, 13). Both current discursivefigures of fathers are still rooted in the social and moral order of motherhood as awomen’s duty. If women did not worry about child care, fatherhood could hardly bevoluntary or exclude baby and infant care.

At its extreme, this discourse on fathers’ choices leads to the situation in whichmen have no other social responsibilities than to provide for the children they haveconceived. Concrete fathering is to a great extent left to men’s own judgement. Thefamily laws in Finland emphasize biological fatherhood and the right of children tomeet their separated fathers but, in divorce situations, men still have a lot of freedomregarding the kind of relationship they maintain with their children (Kurki-Suonio2000; see also H. Bergman and Hobson 2002, 101–104, regarding Sweden; Nealeand Smart 1999, regarding the United Kingdom). On the other hand, difficultdivorces show how vulnerable fatherhood is if men as individuals choose a “shrink-ing fatherhood” or an “assisting fatherhood” instead of a committed “generative


fatherhood,” as Jouko Huttunen sums up the contemporary trends in fatherhood(Huttunen 2001; Lamb 1997; Jensen 1999, 2). Fathers’ will and capacity to commit,if not shown before divorce, is difficult to argue afterwards. Women have—justly—appealed to this in difficult custody arrangements and in political discussions in gen-eral, while some men activists have claimed formal equality to be followed here andnow by giving shared custody for men and women (Neale and Smart 1999, 186–197;Collier & Sheldon 2006). It is difficult for men to appeal to the masculine father rolein divorce situations as well, particularly if the custody and residence of very youngchildren are being decided over, because the decision in that situation should bebased on the primacy of mother care.

However, the figures of both the masculine father as a role model for the boy andthe choice-making father have been effective in strengthening the agency of divorcedfathers. They justify the expanding role of men in their children’s lives after divorce.Here, it seems to me, is their central breeding ground. The earlier motivation of theequal parenting discourse, in the Nordic countries at least, seems to have exhaustedits cultural power, and the discussion on fathering is now led by men’s need tomaintain—or even foster—their relationship with their children after separation. Forfeminist and radical fatherhood politics, this is important, but should not be enough.

The contemporary normative pressure for men to gradually change into sociallyresponsible fathers does not lie in men’s choices or in the name of equality, but inissues of masculinity. The figure of the masculine father derives from the exclusivemothering discourse, which emphasizes the need to strengthen a new kind of father-ing, but always as something different from mothering. Although experts also stresshere that other people should not press men to change, there still remains a strongsocial and moral emphasis. If men neglect their paternal duties, they endanger boththeir sons’ future and the well-being of the whole society. The discourse of the mas-culine father leaves the mother-son and father-daughter relationships mostly unprob-lematized. While underlining the need for fathers to change, it requires mothers toremain unchanged, as they “inherently” are. Therefore, the model is fundamentallyandrocentric, despite the fact that it offers women a unique mother role in return.This is a dead end for feminist, equality, and radical-fatherhood politics.

Perhaps paradoxically, according to Johanna Lammi-Taskula, the main obstaclefor men to take more parental leave nowadays in Finland is the cultural assumptionmade by both men and women that mothers have the right to choose first and menhave to consent to their choices. Only a very small number of parents in her surveycovering over 3,000 mothers and nearly 1,500 fathers in 2001 and 2002 were clearly“antisharing” (and pro the exclusive mothering discourse) and thought that it isbetter that women bear the main responsibility for small children (Lammi-Taskula2007). In Norway, Holter and Aarseth (1993) even argue that the choice is not reallymen’s to make; in families, mothers set the standards of child care and men have toaccommodate themselves to those standards. The other side of the coin is thatwomen tend to end up taking the responsibilities in which the father is not interested


(Lammi-Taskula 2007) and that women tend not to actively prevent men from tak-ing up caring responsibilities (Bekkengen 2002, 104).

The discourse on choice itself seems to be problematic here. Instead of choice,Eeva Jokinen discusses gendered habits which are so deeply rooted in everyday lifethat there seems to be no choice available. Gender equality in the family and part-nership has turned into an issue of such reflexivity that almost everybody takes it asa self-evident goal but admits at the same time that it is too complicated and stress-ful really to argue for (Jokinen 2005). “In principle” everybody is for more activeand caring fatherhood, “in practice” too many things occur that direct men’s andwomen’s choices toward mother care, as Lars Jalmert (1983) analyzed already at thebeginning of the 1980s in Sweden (cited in Lammi-Taskula 2007).

There are several contradictory outlines as to why fatherhood should be strength-ened, but they do not confront or challenge each other, as Minna Rantalaiho (2003,223) states on the basis of the Nordic fatherhood policy documents. This reflects themore general cultural discourses on fathering, which I analyzed in this article on thebasis of family expert texts; because the strengthening of fatherhood is taken axiomat-ically as a positive goal, all arguments will do. The discussion does not develop intorecognizable political controversies, and the parties do not have to argue for distinctivesolutions. This naturally raises many questions, among which are the following two: Isthe shared parenting discourse transformed into such a male-centred direction that it isdifficult to exercise it for feminist and radical fatherhood policy goals and to bringmothers back into the discussions in a positive way (cf., Bacchi 2005, 204)? Is theequality perspective on parenting irreversibly intertwined with a dual-earner, dual-carer, heterosexual couple? Indeed, here is the common ground for the shared parent-ing and exclusive mothering discourses: they both exclude any positive space for solomothers, solo fathers, and same-sex parents. The shared parenting discourse, for itspart, cannot see any positive options for women ending up as primary carers in thefamily, nor can it understand family cultures based on a gendered division of labor. Itis time to think once more through the black-and-white division between the “good”ideas of equal and shared parenting and the “bad,” old-fashioned, traditional andunequal ideas of exclusive mothering from the perspective of women’s agency.

Notes

1. I have borrowed the term exclusive mothering from Nancy Chodorow (1978). To my mind, it isbetter than the often-used ahistorical attribute traditional (vs. equal). Shared parenting has been widelyestablished as a rather neutral term. The problem in the notion of shared parenting is that it does not dis-tinguish between quantitative and qualitative aspects of parenting; it is not quite the same thing to sharechild care and housework 40–60 as to stress that both parents should be able and willing to share all kindsof tasks and to build a close relationship with their children.

2. The number equals 35 percent of all books on mothering, fathering, and parenting written in Finnishby Finnish experts and published during the decade.

3. http://www.mol.fi/mol/fi/99_pdf/fi/04_maahanmuutto/07_aineistot_kirjasto/wkokoaineisto.pdf.Accessed April 19, 2005.


4. Kirsi Eräranta’s analyses of the central expert and policy texts on fathering at the turn of the cen-tury confirm this (2005, 2007).

5. Besides, among family experts, cultural discourses of gendered parenting might be analyzed alsoin sociopolitical and family-political decision-making and administration, in the media and on the levelof everyday interaction among or between parents and professionals, for example. Even if my data do notconsist of family policy texts, policy is also of interest here, because my aim is to make contextualizinglinks between my data and Nordic family policies and gender equality discourses more generally.

6. At least some of the fathers have made changes in their personal lives. (Holter & Aarseth 1993;Huttunen 1996; Kauhanen 1998; Korhonen 1999; Hagström 1999; Brandth & Kvande 2002; Magnusson2006).

7. In Finland, the employment rate of mothers with one-to-two-year-olds is 47.6 percent, with three-to-six-year-olds, 80 percent, and with older children, 83.9 percent. Almost all employed mothers workfull-time. Of all women, 17.1 percent work part-time but, for only 9 percent, the reason for working part-time was child care (Women and Men in Finland 2003, 35, 39).

8. The Mannerheim League for Child Welfare (founded in 1920) is one of the central actors inFinland to promote family policies. It is a nongovernmental organization but related in many ways to statepolicies, politicians, and professional interests as well. Many of the current state- and municipality-runinstitutions have been founded by the Mannerheim League and other nongovernmental organizations suchas the Family Federation of Finland (founded 1941), the materials of which I refer to later on.

9. All translations are mine unless not stated otherwise; in the case of other translations, the texts areofficial translations of original Finnish-language documents.

10. In the original Finnish text, the order of coordination is “men and women,” but in the official trans-lation this has changed into “women and men”; here I have returned to the original order.

11. Mitchell Dean has replaced Foucault’s somewhat complicated neologism “governmentality” with“government” while cultivating his ideas.

12. This kind of analysis is very different from the interpretation made by Jeff Hearn, who writesabout “state surveillance” extending “into the hearts, minds and actions of parents—read often, fathers”(Hearn 2001, 94).

13. In Finland as well as in the other Nordic countries, the cultural ground for psychoanalytic theo-ries and practices is rather vague in comparison to Britain, France, and the United States, for example, butthe worry about men and boys in particular seems to give it more power. To my mind, the explanation forthis must be that in no other scientific fields than feminist and psychoanalytic theories have gender andsexuality been properly discussed. This is especially true in regard to the theories of child development.

14. I found seventy different expressions in my first set of data which describe nonheterosexualitymainly negatively, among them “homoerotic regression,” “chasm of homosexuality,” “the destructingpower of homosexuality,” “lesbian problem” and “extreme gay.”

15. An exception to this seems to be a situation in which equality is transmitted to the immigrants whoare assumed to come from cultures and societies where this kind of idea is new or unknown.

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Jaana Vuori is an assistant professor of women’s studies in the Department of Women’s Studies, Universityof Tampere, Finland. Her main research interests are cultural images of gendered parenting and family life,welfare work with immigrants, and text work of authorities, as well as rhetorical and discourse analysis.


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Men's Choices and Masculine Duties Fathers in Expert Discussions