Father Figure
How to Be a Feminist Dad
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2.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A thoughtful and "utterly mind-blowing" exploration of fatherhood and masculinity in the 21st century (New York Times).
There are hundreds of books on parenting, and with good reason—becoming a parent is scary, difficult, and life-changing. But when it comes to books about parenting identity, rather than the nuts and bolts of raising children, nearly all are about what it's like to be a mother.
Drawing on research in sociology, economics, philosophy, gender studies, and the author's own experiences, Father Figure sets out to fill that gap. It's an exploration of the psychology of fatherhood from an archetypal perspective as well as a cultural history that challenges familiar assumptions about the origins of so-called traditional parenting roles. What paradoxes and contradictions are inherent in our common understanding of dads? Might it be time to rethink some aspects of fatherhood?
Gender norms are changing, and old economic models are facing disruption. As a result, parenthood and family life are undergoing an existential transformation. And yet, the narratives and images of dads available to us are wholly inadequate for this transition. Victorian and Industrial Age tropes about fathers not only dominate the media, but also contour most people's lived experience. Father Figure offers a badly needed update to our collective understanding of fatherhood—and masculinity in general. It teaches dads how to embrace the joys of fathering while guiding them toward an image of manliness for the modern world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shapiro (The New Childhood), former Forbes education columnist, invites cisgender male parents to dive deep into concepts of masculinity, identity, and fatherhood in this thorough guide. He identifies four foundational principles to becoming a feminist dad: cultivating critical consciousness that interrogates problematic narratives; practicing responsive fathering that gives up narcissistic paternal authority in favor of valuing others' perspectives; fighting locker-room gender essentialism and biological determinism with explicit antisexism; and practicing and modeling rigorous inclusivity in the home and in the world. Shapiro highlights how media properties such as Star Wars codify the father-child role and establish rugged individualism as something to be admired, and takes on tropes of "good dad" masculinity—such as monopolizing dinner conversations with well-meant advice or indulging in the notion that fathers should be the model against which a child models future romantic partners— to show how such thinking is grounded in outdated models of authority. Shapiro's narrative style is collegial and extraordinarily approachable considering the well-entrenched ideas he aims to dislodge; readers turned off by other man-to-man treatises on discarding toxic masculinity will find this to be nonjudgmental while still unrelenting in reinforcing the necessity of doing "self-intervention" work. Urgent and intellectually rigorous, this survey comes at a perfect moment.
