Abstract
This chapter examines the fatherhood settings and fatherhood stories of 14 gay men from the all-Australian sample and eight men from the international sample.1 When these 22 men spoke about relations with their children, they mainly did so by first, explaining the means by which they came to be parents, which I call ‘fatherhood settings’, and second, describing in more detail the nature of relations with their children, which I call ‘fatherhood stories’. My analysis of their stories revealed two fatherhood settings and four main fatherhood stories. The fatherhood settings and fatherhood stories the men told are examined in the context of generation difference, where applicable, and in light of gender assumptions about masculinity and care.
I probably slightly envy straight men because … being a parent is one of the richest experiences in my life and one I would not have missed. … I would like to have had more children.
(Hector, aged 81, Melbourne)
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Notes
G. Chauncey (1994) Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books), pp. 6–7.
A. McLaren (1999) Twentieth Century Sexuality: A History (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 187ff.
J. Weeks, B. Heaphy, and C. Donovan (2001) Same Sex Intimacies: Families of Choice and Other Life Experiments (London: Routledge), pp. 159–60.
Weeks, Heaphy, and Donovan Same Sex Intimacies, pp. 160–3; J. D’Emilio (2002) The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), pp. 185–90.
J. Lindsay and D. Dempsey (2009) Families, Relationships and Intimate Life (Melbourne: Oxford University Press), p. 155.
N. Elias (2000 [1939]) The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic investigations, trans. E. Jephcott with some notes and corrections by the author. E. Dunning, J. Goudsblom, and S. Mennell (eds), rev. edn (Oxford: Blackwell).
D. Altman (1972) Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (Sydney: Angus&Robertson).
D. Dempsey (2012) ‘More Like a Donor or More Like a Father? Gay Men’s Concepts of Relatedness to Children’, Sexualities, 15, 156–74.
P. Robinson (2008) The Changing World of Gay Men (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp, 145–48. For discussion of gay men’s surrogacy experiences, see, for example, Dempsey ‘More Like a Donor or More Like a Father?’, pp. 156–74.
G. Chauncey (2004) Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate Over Gay Equality (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books), pp. 110–11;
M.C. Nussbaum (1999) Sex and Social Justice (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 204–5; Weeks, Heaphy, and Donovan Same Sex Intimacies, pp. 158–9.
Anthony McMahon uses the term ‘joys of fatherhood’; see A. McMahon (1999) Taking Care of Men: Sexual Politics in the Public Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 125.
J. Weeks (2000) Making Sexual History (Cambridge: Polity Press), pp. 216–20.
See, for example, B. Featherstone (2009) Contemporary Fathering: Theory, Policy and Practice (Bristol: Policy Press), pp. 24–5.
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© 2013 Peter Robinson
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Robinson, P. (2013). Fatherhood. In: Gay Men’s Relationships Across the Life Course. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314680_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314680_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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