Fathers in 1960s Switzerland: A Silent Revolution?

Abstract

Until recently, historians of masculinities have examined their subject almost exclusively from the perspective of the public sphere and in terms of the links between masculinity and virility. In so doing, some of them have neglected men's relationship with fatherhood, as well as men's place within the domestic sphere. 1 This neglect is all the more striking when one considers that gender studies have, in fact, long emphasised the links between femininity and motherhood. 2 And, as the recent publication Histoire de la virilité (A History of Virility) shows, the omission continues to characterise French historiography in the field. 3 However, on the strength of John Tosh's pioneering work, Anglo-Saxon historiography, for its part, has begun to open up this area of research. 4 In his study of England's middle classes in the nineteenth century, Tosh has explored such themes as the tensions between masculinity and the domestic sphere, showing that such tensions were at the heart of a continuous reconstruction of the norms of 'good fatherhood' that was conditioned by prevailing economic contexts. Tosh argues that the rise of capitalist society led English fathers to modify their sons' socialisation and education so that they could succeed in the new, more competitive economic environment. More recently, other studies have further explored the links between masculinity and fatherhood, underlining a greater public emphasis on the significance of the father's involvement in family life as a feature of being a good husband. 5 This article continues along that path of inquiry in order to study tensions between masculinity and fatherhood present in the middle and working classes in Switzerland during the period 1955-70. Inspired by Tosh's approach, the article explores the perspectives of fathers who strove to ensure their family's ongoing and future well-being. The achievement of that objective required fathers' involvement in the family's social reproduction and, in addition, was conditioned by constraints determined by a changing socioeconomic context. At all times, diverse cultural productions transmit norms that define good parenting and good fatherhood. The present study formulates the hypothesis that such norms serve as guidelines for fathers and, moreover, that this is especially so during periods of socioeconomic change. In order to focus the scope of the study, I shall examine several such cultural productions and the specific models of good fatherhood that they conveyed.

Les origines du baby-boom en Suisse au prisme des parcours féminins

“…Caroline Rusterholz (2017Rusterholz ( , 2015 dresse un constat similaire avec un certain décalage temporel et en se centrant sur les villes suisses de Lausanne et de Fribourg. Elle observe une redéfinition de la paternité qui s'est opérée aux tournants des années 1960.…”

“…A travers ces questionnements, ce chapitre a aussi pour objectif d'approfondir les normes genrées véhiculées par l'organisation structurelle et culturelle quant au déroulement des trajectoires adultes. Si les hommes présentaient des profils participatifs avant tout dominés par l'activité professionnelle (Krüger & Levy, 2001), ils n'ont toutefois pas été exemptés des injonctions à endosser le rôle d'époux et de père de famille (Rusterholz, 2017(Rusterholz, , 2015. Les hommes inféconds de l'échantillon sont ainsi insérés dans nos analyses afin d'évaluer si les logiques et les conséquences potentielles entourant l'absence de parentalité ont été divergentes en fonction du sexe.…”

Men as Husbands and Fathers in Postwar Poland (1956–1975): Towards New Masculine Identities?

“…In the West, “women’s entry into paid work (…) has weakened social patriarchy, causing new tensions to emerge in families (…) men increasingly are challenged to share in the nurturing and emotional labor” (Adams and Coltrane 2005, 243). As several studies have shown, new ideas and realizations of involved fatherhood started to emerge in the post-war period also in the West, although fatherhood was still mainly defined by breadwinning (Bell 2013; Lorentzen 2013; Rusterholz 2015). In Britain, as Laura King has argued, “family-oriented masculinity,” which “involves more active fatherhood alongside the strong gendered division of labor that remained intact,” emerged even before 1960 (King 2015).…”

“… 15. Interestingly, Caroline Rusterholz points to similar limitations of involved fatherhood that Swiss men were facing (they have to work more to assure the expected standard of living) (Rusterholz 2015). …”

Men's welfare beyond the state

“…In parallel with several Western contexts after World War Two (e.g. Dermott, 2003;King, 2015;Rusterholz, 2015), there also was shift towards involved fathering in Eastern Europe. Research suggests that advisory literature of the time emphasised the need for more men's involvement in decisions around childbearing (Hilevych and Sato, 2018;Ignaciuk, 2020), and infant and childcare (Hallama, 2020;Jarska, 2021;Randall, 2021).…”