'Waiting Till Father Gets Home': the Reconstruction of Fatherhood in Family Law
| Date | 01 March 1995 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399500400101 |
| Published date | 01 March 1995 |
| Author | Richard Collier |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
’WAITING
TILL
FATHER
GETS
HOME’: THE
RECONSTRUCTION
OF
FATHERHOOD
IN FAMILY
LAW
RICHARD
COLLIER
University
of Newcastle- Upon-Tyne
INTRODUCTION
HIS
ARTICLE
is
about
how
the
law
has
constructed
fatherhood.
It
starts
t
from
a
belief
that
in
order
to
understand
how
ideas
of
’absent’,
’good’
and
-A-
’errant’
fathers
have
been
reproduced
in
recent
debates
around
family
law
reform,
we
need
first
to
address
the
problematic
concept
of
’fatherhood’
in
law
itself.
In
England
and
Wales
contested
ideas
of
paternal
masculinities,
and
the
question
of
whether
families
do
indeed
’need
fathers’,
has
been
central
to
government
rhetoric
around
’back
to
basics’
and
’family
values’
in
the
early
1990s.
Running
through
a
succession
of
ministerial
comments
about
single
mothers,’
and
in
the
linking
of
family
breakdown,
absent
fatherhood
and
rising
crime
as
major
’social
problems
of the
day?
has
been
one
recurring
issue:
what
are
fathers
for?
In
debates
around
reproductive
technologies
facilitating
’motherhood
without
men’ through
to
the
high-profile
campaigns
of
fathers
and
second
families
against
the
Child
Support
Act
19913
one
idea,
spanning
the
political
spectrum,4
has
been
central:
the
feeling
that
the
problem
with
families
is
really
a
problem
with
men.
At
the
heart
of
these
debates,
though
it
is
seldom
addressed
as
such,
is
the
question
of
what
being
a
’father’
actually
involves.
In
this
article
I
shall
argue
that
fatherhood
has,
from
the
late
nineteenth
century
to
the
present
day,
been
reconstructed
in
law
and
that
in
this
process
it
SOCIAL
&
LEGAL
STUDIES
(SAGE,
London,
Thousand
Oaks,
CA
and
New
Delhi),
Vol.
4
(1995),
5-30
,5-
6
has
in
important
respects
been
rendered
’safe’.
I
wish
to
explore
how
the
familiar
(but
taken
for
granted)
idea
of
the
’good
father’,
the
fatherhood
of
the
’companionate
marriage’
and
the
egalitarian
’symmetrical’
family,
emerged
at
a
specific
historical
moment.
In
particular
I
shall
investigate
how
the
potent
idea
of
the
family
man
has
been
constituted
through
reference
to
the
economic
and
familial
order
of
gender
hierarchy
and
compulsory
heterosexuality.
It
is
through
reference
to
this
ideal,
I
shall
argue,
that
a
particular
male
heterosexual
subject
position
continues
to
be
privileged
in
law.
The
heterosexual
economy
of
legal
marriage
has
been
constructed
through
dichotomies
and
hierarchies
more
complex
than
a
simple
hetero/homosexual
dualism.
The
‘modernizing’S
of
fatherhood
has
involved
an
appeal
to
the
reconstituted
masculinity
of
the
ideal
’family
man’;
but
it
is
an
ideal
which,
we
shall
see,
is
at
the
present
moment
as
fragile
as
it
is
misleading.
In
the
context
of
debates
about
family
law
in
the
early
1990s,
feminism
is
frequently
singled
out
as
the
’cause’
of
a
number
of
tensions
around
fatherhood
and
masculinity.6
Yet
the
issues
about
paternal
masculinity
raised
by
recent
debates
around
father-absence
have
a
long
history.
They
can,
I
want
to
suggest,
be
traced
back
to
the
very
contours
of
the
reconstruction
of
fatherhood
in
law
and
the
ways
in
which
a
range
of
changes
in
the
division
between
public
and
private
reconstituted
the
meaning
of
what
it
was
to
be
a
’family
man’
in
law.
For
all
the
law’s
endeavours
to
bifurcate
masculine
subjectivities,
ideas
of ’dangerous’
and
’familial/safe’
masculinities
share
much
more
than
is
commonly
acknow-
ledged.
It
is
the
aim
of
this
article
to
explore
the
nature
of
these
connections
through
investigating
the
archaeology
of
the
’family
man’
in
legal
discourse.
’MEN’S
STUDIES’
AND
’NEW
FATHERS’:
CONSTRUCTING
A
CLIMATE
OF
CHANGE
AND
CRISIS
To
begin
to
unpack
this
history
of
fatherhood
it is
worthwhile
to
first
locate
it
in
the
context
of
the
burgeoning
scholarship
on
masculinity
which
has
emerged
during
the
1980s
and
1990s.
This
literature
has
no
one
politics
or
method
and
it
would
be
erroneous
to
group
together
a
disparate
collection
of
texts
and
practices
under
one
umbrella
(be
it
’men’s
studies’,
the
’sociology’
or
’critical
study’
of
masculinity).
It
is,
rather,
marked
by
a
heterogeneity
which
encompasses
both
explicitly
pro-
and
anti-feminist
accounts
of
modern
masculinities.
It
also
involves
a
variety
of
approaches
to
the
legal
status
of
fathers.
In
academic
texts
addressing
masculinity,
where
the
interest
appears
perhaps
most
marked,
a
wide
range
of
intellectual
fields
have
been
traversed.
These
texts
have
frequently
embraced
an
interdisciplinary
eclectism
which
is
both
suitably
postmodern
and
is
also,
perhaps,
indicative
of
wider
shifts
in
social
theory;
for
some
male
academics
the
deconstruction
of
masculinity
and
masculinist
discourses’
has
provided,
following
the
collapse
of
previously
comforting
meta-narratives,
a
(convenient?)
paradigm
for
ostensibly
’critical’
scholarship
to
continue.
Notwithstanding
the
diversity
of
these
writings,
however,
it
is
possible
to
identify
a
number
of
themes
which
recur
in
the
construction
of
what
I
shall
term
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