Keywords

1 Why Fathers?

This chapter aims to connect fatherhood involvement with human flourishing. As we will elaborate, being an involved father might generate generative actions, which are necessary for relational flourishing, and consequently, for human flourishing. Before that, it is necessary to present to the reader why it is necessary to focus on fathers, while they might look like a privileged group in an unequal world (Grau-Grau et al., 2021).

We are witnessing a growing interest in fatherhood involvement, not only in the academia (Schoppe-Sullivan & Fagan, 2020), but also in the political arena (Kvande & Brandth, 2019) and in the corporate world (Atkinson, 2021). Several reasons might explain this new attention, which can be summarized in at least three groups: fatherhood is in transition, fatherhood involvement offers a rich constellation of positive consequences, and fatherhood involvement is one of the pathways towards a more egalitarian society.

Fatherhood is in transition (Grau-Grau, 2020). Some cultural and social aspects of fatherhood are changing in many societies, explaining, or explained by, new behaviors among contemporary fathers, especially in postindustrial societies. In LaRossa (1988), such a transition implies that the culture and conduct of fatherhood are changing. For example, studies using time have used diaries to reveal substantial changes in fathers’ participation at home (Altintas & Sullivan, 2017; Sandberg & Hofferth, 2001). At the same time, empirical evidence using data from values surveys has found that traditional gender-role attitudes have “uniformly declined” towards greater egalitarianism (Knight & Brinton, 2017, p. 1485). These changes in attitudes and behaviors situate fathers, fathering, and fatherhood as renovated objects of study.

The mounting evidence of the impact of fatherhood involvement is another important reason for explaining the growing interest in fathers, fathering, and fatherhood (Grau-Grau & Bowles, 2022). New evidence has found that fatherhood involvement has important consequences not only for children (Kotelchuck, 2021a; Yogman & Eppel, 2021; Yogman et al., 1995), but also for mothers and mothers’ pregnancy (Alio et al., 2013), fathers themselves (Kotelchuck, 2021b; Lo et al., 2022), their organizations (Grau-Grau, 2017), and society in general (Chan et al., 2017; Flouri & Buchanan, 2002).

Finally, fatherhood involvement is one of the pathways towards a more egalitarian society. The gender revolution is stalled and unfinished (Gerson, 2009; Goldscheider et al., 2015). The first half of the gender revolution, women’s participation in the paid labor market, is advancing; however, the second half of the revolution, men’s participation in the private realm, is far from being fulfilled. Understanding and encouraging fatherhood engagement seems to be one of the pathways to unfolding this second half of the revolution.

2 Fatherhood as a Transformation Event

Fatherhood is powerful per se. Becoming a parent is one of the greatest transformative experiences in adult life. It may generate a significant reconfiguration of priorities (Parker & Wang, 2013), as well as important physical, emotional, and psychological adjustments. Such reconfigurations and adjustments might lead to new rewards, but also to new conflicts and tensions (Cooklin et al., 2016; Harrington et al., 2011). In the case of fathers, some evidence has revealed that the work-family conflict has increased in recent years (Aumann et al., 2011), probably explained by a new dilemma between two contradictory calls: being a full breadwinner and being a nurturing or involved dad.

The role of fatherhood has evolved from a moral teacher to a new nurturant father (Lamb, 2000), although some historians have highlighted another narrative (Daatland, 2007), showing that the ideal father in England during the second half of the eighteenth century period was “tenderly affectionate, sensitized and moved by babies” (p. 267). Today, it seems that there is a genuine interest among fathers in their role as fathers.

Fatherhood involvement has been conceptualized in different ways. For example, Russel and Radin presented paternal involvement in five categories: presence at birth, general availability, time spent on childcare, time spent in play, and degree of responsibility (Russell & Radin, 1983). Lamb and their colleagues made a similar effort that has been widely used, presenting fatherhood involvement in three dimensions: availability, engagement, and responsibility (Lamb et al., 1985, 1987). High levels of the three dimensions are necessary to consider a father an involved father.

However, the realization of fatherhood involvement does not happen in a vacuum, but in a given context. Such contexts may offer opportunities for vivid fatherhood involvement through protective and enhancing factors such as social policies, flexible work arrangements, or a new caring and egalitarian culture. At the same time, such a context may limit fatherhood engagement through risk factors such as lack of political support, flexibility stigma in organizations, or a non-egalitarian culture (Ewald et al., 2020; Kotelchuck & Lu, 2017; Moran & Koslowski, 2019; Petts et al., 2018).

A recent study explored different barriers that limit fatherhood participation. These barriers were classified in three groups: contextual barriers, organizational barriers, and internalized barriers (Tanquerel & Grau-Grau, 2020). The contextual barriers comprise two sub-barriers: poor political support and the common past. The organizational barriers comprise three main sub-barriers: poor management support, poor peer support, and anticipation of career consequences. Finally, there are two main internalized barriers, internalization of the ideal worker image and internalization of traditional gender norms.

The internalization of the (classic) ideal worker image is quite problematic, because it challenges the new notion of the involved father, generating tensions among fathers. It is true that empirical evidence suggests that fathers in reality, contrary to mothers, who continuously suffer a penalty in their careers (Budig & England, 2001; Correll et al., 2007), enjoy a fatherhood premium (Hodges & Budig, 2010; Killewald & Gough, 2013). More research and policies are necessary to reverse this situation. It would be interesting also to study if the fatherhood premium fully applied to involved fathers. At the same time, it is necessary to deeply explore the personal, family, and social implications of a recurrent action after becoming a father: returning to work (Grau-Grau, 2020).

In sum, fatherhood involvement has the capacity by itself to be a transformative event, resulting in a rich constellation of positive consequences as reviewed above, and a propulsor for gender equality, but this transformative event needs to be accompanied, to some degree, by contextual factors, in order to be a source of flourishing.

3 Fatherhood as a Form of Generativity

In order to connect fatherhood involvement with human flourishing, it is necessary to present the concept of generativity. The construct generativity was coined by Erikson in 1950. It was one of the seven stages in the theory on personality development. According to Snow, this rich concept “encompasses the constellation of desires, concerns and commitments that motive individuals and societies to pass on legacies to future generations” (Snow, 2015, p. 263). In short, generativity is defined as the concern of establishing and guiding the next generations.

According to Erikson’s theory on personality development (see Table 1), our ego identity is developed throughout our entire life. More specifically, our personality is explained through eight stages, from infancy to adulthood. Each stage is a psychological crisis that could have, or not have, a positive outcome for our human development, such as hope, will, care, or wisdom. The theory suggests that the successful fulfillment of each stage leads to a healthy personality. For example, in Stage 1, infants suffer their first psychological crisis between trusting or mistrusting others. The successful completion of this first stage brings hope.

Table 1 Summary of Erikson’s theory on personality development
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For this chapter, Stage 7 (generativity) is a key point. In this case, the seventh stage is the turning point in developing generative actions towards others. According to Erikson, in middle adulthood, we suffer a new psychological crisis between self-care and others-care, in other words, a tension between stagnation and generativity. For Erikson, generativity is the hallmark of adult maturity.

According to Snarey, the task of middle adulthood is to achieve a positive balance of generativity over stagnation or rejectivity (Snarey, 1993), understood as a kind of indifference towards others. The strength of the successful completion of this stage is care or an ethic of care.

Generativity involves more than biological acts. For example, Kotre distinguished four types of generative care (Kotre, 1984): biological generative, which refers to the bearing and nursing of offspring, with the infant as the generative object; parental generative, which refers to childcare activities to promote offspring, with the child as the generative object; technical generative, which refers to teaching specific skills to a successor, with the apprentice and skill as generative objects; and cultural generative, which involves “creating, renovating, and conserving a symbol system—the “mind” of a culture—explicitly passing it on to successors” (p. 12), with the disciple and culture as the generative objects.

In a similar vein, Snarey distinguished and measured three types of generative care (Snarey, 1993): biological generativity, involving initial nurturing of the infant; parental generativity, involving childrearing activities that promote children’s ability to develop their full potential in the form of autonomy (Stage 2), initiative (Stage 3), industry (Stage 4), and identity (Stage 5); and societal generativity, involving “caring for other younger adults, serving as a mentor, providing leadership, and generally contributing to the strength and continuity of subsequent generations” (p. 22). In this sense, Snarey presented the concept of generative fathers as “men who contribute to and renew the ongoing cycle of the generations through the care they provide as birth fathers (biological generativity), childrearing fathers (parental generativity), and cultural fathers (social generativity)” (p. 1).

Snow (2015) perceived the logic sequences of generative care proposed by Snarey as problematic, as in some sense they imply that without procreation it is difficult to develop a generative disposition. For Erikson, generativity includes productivity and creativity, as well as procreativity (Erikson & Erikson, 1981). He assimilates generativity to a parent-like form of care, but this does not necessarily mean a being a parent form of care. In Snow’s article, we found an interesting definition of generativity by McAdams and his colleagues, who presented generativity as the goal of providing for the next generations, including seven features: (a) inner desire, combined with (b) norms experienced as cultural demands to produce (c) concern for the next generation, reinforced by (d) a belief in the goodness of human action, leading to (e) generative commitment, which in turn may produce (f) generative actions (McAdams et al., 1998). Such a definition implies that it is not necessary to become a parent to generate generative actions.

Combining elements of this last definition (McAdams et al., 1998), together with other elements from Kotre (1984) and Erikson (1993), Snow defined generativity as “an other-regarding desire to invest one’s substance in forms of life and work that will outlive the self. It is ideally reinforced by a belief in the goodness or worthwhileness of the human enterprise. It is typically expressed by a concern for and commitment to future generations. It includes, but is not limited to, productivity and creativity” (p. 268).

Snow’s definition also implies that generativity could be generated without the need to become a parent. In fact, we can easily find good examples of people with a high generativity disposition who never become parents. At the same time, the evidence suggests that becoming a parent is one of the greatest transformative experiences in adult life, facilitating the capacity to develop generative actions. For fathers, the early postnatal period could be the most sensitive transformation life event for their own psychological development (Genesoni & Tallandini, 2009). This period may lead to paternal generativity.

Snarey defined paternal generativity as “the ways good fathers constructively care for their daughters and sons in childhood and adolescence and promote their children’s social emotion, intellectual-academic, and physical-athletic development” (Snarey, 1993, p. 1). In addition Kotelchuck and Lu use paternal generativity “metaphorically for defining the essence of fatherhood, beyond just the biology of procreation, to represent one of the highest developmental characteristic of men’s health, successfully nurturing the next generation” (Kotelchuck & Lu, 2017, p. 2028).

The rationale for generating a new definition of paternal generativity is to reinforce two ideas: (1) the importance of a particular period in men’s adult life as a biographic moment to generate new concerns towards others, and (2) these new generative concerns may generate generative actions, not only towards their own children, but also towards other people, projects, or ideas. For that reason, and combining elements of Erikson (1993), Snarey (1993), Snow (2015), and Kotelchuck and Lu (2017), I offer the following definition:

  • Paternal generativity takes place when the experience of being an involved biological or social father leads to a new concern for, and commitment to guiding the next generations, which in turn might generate generative actions towards children, but also to other people, projects, and ideas.

4 Generativity as a Form of Flourishing

As we argued in the last section, becoming a parent can positively affect the capacity for generativity. This section will describe how generativity might be related to human flourishing. To do this, it is necessary to present two concepts: human flourishing and relational flourishing.

Flourishing means living well (vivere bene). It is another rich and complex notion with Aristotelian roots that the rest of my colleagues in this edited book have studied in depth. For Aristotle, happiness (Eudaimonia) is not pleasure, honor, or satisfying personal appetites, it is an activity of the soul in order to achieve the best in us, an activity to flourish.

Willen and her colleagues consolidated a good range of contemporary definitions of human flourishing (Willen et al., 2022). For example, VanderWeele presented flourishing as “a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good. We might also refer to such a state as complete human well-being, which is again arguably a broader concept than psychological well-being” (Vander Weele, 2017, p. 8149). Another example is provided by Huppert and So, who consider that “flourishing refers to the experience of life going well. It is a combination of feeling good and functioning effectively” (Huppert & So, 2013, p. 838). Both definitions capture flourishing as a holistic notion with different constitutive elements.

For more details, VanderWeele presents various elements of human flourishing such as happiness and satisfaction with life, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relations (Vander Weele, 2017). Ryff, the author of the first chapter of this edited volume, also elaborated a model of well-being in order to facilitate its operationalization, based on theoretical proposals from authors in different disciplines interested in positive functioning such as Jung, Erikson, Frankl, Jahoda, Jung and Maslow, among others, involving six dimensions: personal growth, autonomy, positive relationships, self-acceptance, purpose in life, and environmental mastery (Ryff, 1989). Both models have many elements in common, one of which is the importance of quality of relationships in order to have a flourishing life.

Aristotelian virtues are normally presented in an individualistic form, as a way for self-perfectionism, to become who you are. But rarely are they presented in a relational way. We argue that virtues make sense, not only if their development implies an improvement or perfectionism of their possessors, but especially if these new possessors develop a new relationship with their environment.

Among different form of relationships, personal relationships are universally endorsed as central to optimal living (Ryff & Singer, 2000). The results of the longest longitudinal study (Harvard Study of Adult Development) also suggest that the quality of relationships is related to quality of life (Vaillant, 2012). In Aknin’s chapter, in this edited volume, we also read that having a person to count on when there is trouble is the best predictor of life satisfaction around the world (Helliwell et al., 2019). So, quality ties with others are one of the core elements for human flourishing. Erikson also argued that adult development tasks are highly interpersonal, including intimate union with others (intimacy—Stage 6), and showing concern for guiding others (generativity—Stage 7). Snow also argued that it is hard to flourish without being generative (Snow, 2015).

All of this mounting evidence confirms the importance of quality ties with others. If quality ties exist, one can expect relational flourishing. Fowers and his colleagues, using the example of couple relationships, argued that relational flourishing occurs when those in a relationship are able to positively assess meaning, develop personal growth, and share goals within their relationship. This can be expanded beyond couple relationships (Fowers et al., 2016). Relational flourishing might exist throughout the relations in intimate circles, but also through other types of relationships, which might even include relationships with strangers. Relational flourishing is a premise of human flourishing. It is difficult to imagine a person flourishing without quality ties with others.

Having presented the concepts of fatherhood involvement, generativity, and paternal generativity, together with the notions of relational and human flourishing, we argue (see figure 1) fatherhood involvement is a (potential) source of human flourishing. Paternal behavior is explained by a very complex network of elements, which can be divided between micro-level meso-level, and macro-level factors,Footnote 1 which positively or negatively influence the level of fatherhood involvement.

According to this circle of elements that influence fatherhood involvement, each father will have a different level of fatherhood involvement, explained by their sublevels of availability, engagement, and responsibility. This level of fatherhood involvement is not only important for the rich constellation of benefits reviewed above, but also because it might be the turning point to develop paternal generativity. Low levels of fatherhood involvement will not generate paternal generativity. It is theoretically possible that uninvolved fathers develop generativity, but this generativity will not be considered paternal generativity, because it is not because of the experience of being a father that they develop a concern towards others, but for other reasons. Returning to the case of involved fathers, such involvement is intrinsically a favorable balance of others-care over self-care, as generativity is a favorable balance between others-care over self-care. For that reason, we assume that those fathers with a high level of fatherhood involvement are more likely to show high levels of paternal generativity. A new ethic of care reigns, at least partially, in their life. They are, by choice, in a secondary position, which is a sign of maturity.

Developing a high level of paternal generativity, understood as a new concern for, and commitment to guiding next generations, which in turn might generate generative actions towards others, including children, might be positively related to relational flourishing. Following Erikson’s model, the strength of the successful completion of the seventh stage (generativity vs stagnation) is care or an ethic of care. This new ethic of care will reshape the relational way in which the possessor of such new ethic interacts with others, potentially generating relational flourishing. Generativity brings care as an ego strength, and such care has the capacity to reconsider all of the relationships as ends, and not means. When this occurs, relational flourishing emerges.

Finally, relational flourishing is a premise for human flourishing. It is not sufficient but is necessary. As we have reviewed, social connections are one of the essential features of human flourishing. Relational flourishing means having quality ties with others. It is for that reason that we assume that relational flourishing is a necessary condition for experiencing human flourishing (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Fatherhood involvement as a potential source of human flourishing. Source: Own elaboration based on different conceptual underpinnings: Fatherhood involvement (Lamb et al., 1985, 1987), Risk and protective factors (Kotelchuck & Lu, 2017), Paternal generativity (Snarey, 1993), Relational flourishing (Fowers et al., 2016), Human flourishing (Ryff, 1989)

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5 Conclusion and Implications

This chapter attempted to connect fatherhood involvement with human flourishing. We began by presenting the reasons why fatherhood involvement matters. We then reviewed fatherhood as a transformative event, together with the barriers that may limit the transformational aspect of fatherhood. Next, we reviewed the concept of generativity, where a new definition of paternal generativity was provided. Then, we presented a model that connects fatherhood to human flourishing, through the development of paternal generativity and relational flourishing. However, empirical evidence is needed to confirm such relationships.

For this reason, the first set of implications are for scholars. While important efforts have been made in measuring fatherhood involvement, as far as we know there is no scale that measures paternal generativity. If the connection between fatherhood involvement and relational flourishing is explained by the development of paternal generativity, it is necessary to develop an instrument to measure it. Moreover, although fatherhood is becoming a hot topic, current studies lack a comprehensive comparative of the essence of fatherhood involvement across regions, as well as potential and different risks and protective factors.

Organizations are playing a crucial role in fatherhood involvement (Ewald et al., 2020; Haas & Hwang, 2019b; Haas & Hwang, 2019a; Moran & Koslowski, 2019). Many fathers perceive a flexibility stigma in using flexible work arrangements, while others sense a lack of legitimacy (Coltrane et al., 2013; Rudman & Mescher, 2013). Thus, it seems necessary to unmask those visible and invisible barriers that limit fatherhood involvement, together with reflecting on the notion of the ideal worker, which might affect fathers’ decisions in using such flexible work arrangements. Finally, organizations could promote new avenues and spaces to talk openly about fatherhood.

Finally, despite some governments making important efforts to encourage fatherhood involvement through parental leave, especially by offering parental leave exclusively to fathers (Brandth & Kvande, 2009, 2016), some other measures need to be considered, such as encouraging fatherhood involvement from the perinatal period. Moreover, governments could make an effort to work with statistical institutes to measure human flourishing, not only among fathers (Table 2).

Table 2 Implications of fatherhood involvement as a (potential) source of human flourishing
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