![Emotional Openness ‘ When the kids came along it was just, I am a modern father, I want to be involved with my kids’ (Jack) ‘ He [his father] wasn't a fraction as involved with us as I have been with my children. He worked, he came home late from work, he went to sleep on the couch.’ (Jack)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/dermott-110315065523-phpapp02/85/Intimate-Fatherhood-4-320.jpg)
![Focussed Time It [is] important for me to make sure that I am there [in the evening], so she has half an hour, 45 minutes of time and I am there available for her to question if need be (Michael) Most evenings - which is very important to me, at their different bedtimes, having read them a story (or maybe Felicity [wife] will read them a story) is give them a cuddle and talk to them for five or ten minutes (William)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/dermott-110315065523-phpapp02/85/Intimate-Fatherhood-6-320.jpg)
‘Intimate Fatherhood’
- 1. ESRC Parenting Cultures Seminar Series Seminar 2: Gender and Parenting Culture: Intensive Fatherhood? Contemporary Fatherhood: Intensive or Intimate? Dr Esther Dermott Department of Sociology Cambridge, 3 rd April 2009
- 2. Disclosing Intimacy ‘ characterized by knowledge and understanding of inner selves.’ (Jamieson 2005:2411)
- 3. Aspects of Intimacy Sexuality/Embodiment Reflexivity Fragility Equality Communication
- 4. Emotional Openness ‘ When the kids came along it was just, I am a modern father, I want to be involved with my kids’ (Jack) ‘ He [his father] wasn't a fraction as involved with us as I have been with my children. He worked, he came home late from work, he went to sleep on the couch.’ (Jack)
- 5. Emotional Openness ‘ I mean I saw with my father, he was sort of very dedicated to his family but quite distant as well. I think there is something in that generation that, well, somehow people weren’t quite so open as they are today in talking about their feelings….I would say that he was close to me, but not in the way of showing emotions or talking about things, or like necessarily being very open about things. And so, I suppose, I always aspired to try to be more open with my children. I mean I’m not saying he was uninvolved or didn’t care but I would have, well, I wanted to be really involved in what they do.’ (Gareth)
- 6. Focussed Time It [is] important for me to make sure that I am there [in the evening], so she has half an hour, 45 minutes of time and I am there available for her to question if need be (Michael) Most evenings - which is very important to me, at their different bedtimes, having read them a story (or maybe Felicity [wife] will read them a story) is give them a cuddle and talk to them for five or ten minutes (William)
- 7. ‘ Being There’ - Shared Events ‘ Obviously there are formal parents-teachers evenings…and I’ve done my round of sports days and nativity plays and whatever’ (Hugh) ‘ I have already got down in my diary the dates of the school Christmas play and when I go somewhere and they say, ‘let's sort out the date of the meeting, how about the 16th of December?’, I say no, I am busy’ (Derek, interviewed in September)
- 8. ‘ I knew that it was unlikely that I would be around all day, but I knew that at the end of the day, I should put work behind me and should throw myself into whatever is left of the day for the children...given that I have a long journey home from work.’ (Greg)
- 9. ESRC Parenting Cultures Seminar Series Seminar 2: Gender and Parenting Culture: Intensive Fatherhood? Contemporary Fatherhood: Intensive or Intimate? Dr Esther Dermott Department of Sociology Cambridge, 3 rd April 2009