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This qualitative study of 18 shared parenting couples explores men's and women's resourcefulness as they create together alternatives to traditional parenting patterns. Narrative accounts show a diversity of possible ways to organize family life so both mothers and fathers can be active in parenting. The many strategies followed by these couples - including tag-team parenting, interchangeability of roles, and division of labor - share a flexibility which challenges the many researchers who are fixated on static models of gendered family life.
List of contents
PART ONE: BACKGROUND
Introduction
Academic Discourses
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Fatherhood
PART TWO: MEANING-MAKING
Diversity of Styles in Sharing Parenting
Diversity of Paths
What Influenced Men and Women To Move toward Shared Parenting
Guiding Light
Foundations for Sharing Parenting
Tag-Team Parenting and the Mechanisms of Sharing Parenting
The Dance of Father Involvement
Men¿s and Women¿s Connected Experiences
Sharing Parenting and the Reciprocal Revisioning of Both Fatherhood and Motherhood
PART THREE: RELEXIVE COMMENTARY
Reshaping Parenthood
Possibilities to Inform Alternative Discourse
Revisioning Dominant Discourses and Final Reflections
Implications of Taking a Different View
Summary
Discourses on fatherhood often focus on minimal changes in men's participation in family-life and in so doing mask significant changes some men have made. In contrast, Dienhart's qualitative study of 18 shared parenting couples explores men's and women's resourcefulness as they deliberately co-create alternatives to traditional parenting patterns.
