Neoconservative social scientists have claimed that fathers are essential to positive child development, and that responsible fathering is most likely to occur within the context of heterosexual marriage. This perspective is generating a range of governmental initiatives designed to provide social support preferences to fathers over mothers; and to heterosexual married couples, rather than to alternative family forms.
Fathering
Fathers have a vital role to play in preventing and reducing men’s violence against women and in building a non-violent future.
Dads, Gender, and Violence Prevention
There is a strong rationale for engaging fathers in efforts to prevent men’s violence against women.
There is intensified attention in Australia at present to the messages about manhood, good and bad, that boys and young men grow up with.
The concept of caring masculinities emerges from critical scholarship on men and masculinities, where a group of men is identified who express masculinities that seek to break with the most rigid and hegemonic gender mandates, rejecting male domination and adopting, instead, a set of values derived from the ethics of care. By taking responsibility for caring for other people, they also adopt practices that reveal a path towards a balanced division of tasks based on gender.
What role do fathers play in violence prevention and building a non-violent future?
This new white paper by Professor Michael Flood explores fathers' roles in violence prevention. It was launched at the inaugural Fathering Summit on March 14 2024, in Sydney (Australia), hosted by the Fathering Project.
The paper notes that:
1. Positive father involvement is good for children, mothers, families, and fathers themselves
2. Positive father involvement and non-violence go together
Who has a greater impact on their children's support for patriarchal gender norms and attitudes, mothers or fathers?
Fathers have a vital role to play in preventing and reducing men’s violence against women and in building a non-violent future. Fathers can have a profound and positive impact on children, mothers, families, other fathers, and the wider community.
There are of course a wide range of ways in which men can contribute to ending violence against women, and a wide range of ways men can improve their own fathering. But here I focus on what fathers can do, as fathers, to prevent domestic and sexual violence.
Firstly, the pandemic was a public health crisis. But the pandemic generated many secondary crises and illuminated underlying tensions and contradictions in our society. And the care crisis was a big one.
It is 25 years since the Fourth World Conference on Women and its adoption of the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. For all of those who are committed to the visions of gender equality, human rights and social justice expressed in the Beijing Platform for Action and subsequent international declarations and agreements, 2020 was to have been a year of taking stock of progress made and debating priorities and strategies to advance towards these visions.
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NOTE: Now also see the 5-page Policy Brief, summarising this report and released in November 2021, available here.
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