Negotiating Fatherhood, 1st ed. 2020 Sport and Family Practices Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life Series

Winner of the Leisure Studies Association's Outstanding Book Prize 

This book examines the tensions and ambivalences which men encounter as they negotiate contemporary expectations of fatherhood and fulfill their own expectations of what it means to be a ?good? father. There is little doubt that today?s fathers are responding to new expectations about fatherhood and fathering practices. The remote, detached, breadwinning father of the past, once lauded as a masculine ideal, has faded, and men are now expected to be ?involved?, ?intimate?, ?caring? and ?domesticated? fathers. Using a family practices lens and a case study of sport, Fletcher elucidates the changes and continuities in family and fathering practices in different historical periods and contexts. Negotiating Fatherhood will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in family and fathering practices, sport, leisure, and gender.

Thomas Fletcher is Senior Lecturer, School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Leeds Beckett University, UK.

Examines the inequalities attached to parental gender roles

Interrogates what being a father means in the twenty-first century

Locates the significance of sport in family practices