Fatherhood in America - Robert L Griswold

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".