In the last few years, the informal network – called manosphere – of forums, websites and blogs, where commentators are mainly men and focus on issues relating to masculinity, has been gaining members and visibility. The article’s objective is to explore the politics of fatherhood and masculinity that an Italian non-resident fathers’ online forum engages in to assess whether the claims for fathers’ rights are a move towards a new form of involved fatherhood or if they are only useful to rebuild a solid traditional male identity. By conducting an explorative content analysis on their Facebook group and page, we found that fatherhood is an ‘empty box’ and that fathers’ rights are used in a strategic way to justify hegemonic masculinity, gender-based violence, as well as antifeminist and antifeminine ideas, and to promote political advocacy cooperating with right-wing parties. The article also reflects on the connections between hegemony and power using the concept of hybrid masculinities.
The article explores how fatherhood in prison is conceived and supported by policy intervention in Italy. Despite the fact that, in 2020, 96% of adults detained in Italian prisons were men and half of them had at least one child, fatherhood in prison, a gendered space and institution where masculinities are (re)produced, is an underdeveloped research topic. Adopting a caring masculinity perspective, we focus on incarcerated fatherhood to investigate if and how Italian social programs that deal with incarcerated parents target fathers and, if so, to what extent they promote caring masculinities. To this aim, we will combine an analysis of social programs for incarcerated fathers in Italy, almost entirely run by third sector organizations, with discursive interviews with educators, welfare workers, and third sector stakeholders who participated in the implementation of a project for incarcerated parents in a north Italian prison. The results of our analysis show that involved fatherhood is not only denied to incarcerated men; it is also not allowed in an institution, such as a prison, where domination is the keyword.
This work aims at investigating gendered embodiment in fathering practices in a national context, Italy, where understandings of fatherhood, at the institutional as well as the individual level, are still more centered on the provider ideal than on a model of nurturing and caring fatherhood. This qualitative research on Italian first-time fathers of children under three years of age focused on men’s participation in routine, instrumental, and material childcare practices, exploring the potential for a transformation in both the meanings attached to fatherhood as well as to aspects related to embodiment and constructions of masculinity that sustain inequalities. The findings show that, while participation in hands-on childcare plays an important role in the construction of intimate father-child relationships, a legitimation of men’s bodies’ involvement in interaction with children is still missing, especially for care practices that overlap with constructions of motherhood.
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