Unequal Fatherhoods: Citizenship, Gender, and Masculinities in Outsourced ‘Male’ Domestic Work

Palenga-Möllenbeck, Ewa

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-51742-5_10

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Our findings illustrate how these class privileged men appropriate feminized characteristics (i.e., caretaking, perceptiveness, sensitivity, egalitarianism) into their masculine performances, maintaining their privilege. Our findings also indicate how privileged men can use material resources-like money toward a nanny-for constructing themselves as understanding partners and good fathers (Kilkey et al 2013;Palenga-Möllenbeck 2016;Prattes 2022). Paying marginalized workers to do their household labor allows fathers to "make time" (Kilkey et al 2013:111) for both their paid employment and the more enjoyable aspects of childcare.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“It’s Certainly Fair for Me”: Hybrid Masculinities and the Gendered Division of Labor during COVID-19

Carian,

Abromaviciute

2023

Men and Masculinities

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We draw on 31 in-depth interviews with fathers in different-sex couples to examine how their masculine performances contributed to the gender gap in household labor during the COVID-19 pandemic. The structural conditions of the pandemic created more and more intensive labor for families with young children, and we argue these conditions provided fathers with an opportunity to perform hybrid masculinities (i.e., masculinities that incorporate elements of non-hegemonic or subordinated masculinities or femininities) while simultaneously maintaining their families' unequal divisions of labor. The fathers in this study (1) exaggerated their childcare and housework contributions and commitment to egalitarianism, (2) decoupled inequality from unfairness, and (3) delayed changes in their household labor until their wives reached their breaking points. In the context of the pandemic, these hybrid masculinities exacerbated intra-couple inequality with potentially long-lasting consequences for marital satisfaction and women’s health and careers. Our study demonstrates how the very conditions that pigeonholed mothers into more traditional, restrictive routines allowed fathers to engage in new and more expansive gendered practices.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“It’s Certainly Fair for Me”: Hybrid Masculinities and the Gendered Division of Labor during COVID-19

Carian,

Abromaviciute

2023

Men and Masculinities

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“…What remains outside this view is Zygmunt's situation as a husband and father of three children. Unlike his client-friend, who spends his free time with his little son, Zygmunt has been spending all his time off on various other jobs to achieve what he considers an acceptable standard of living for himself and his family (Palenga-Möllenbeck, 2016).…”

Section: Othering and Privilege In Everyday Relations: Clients And Workers In Private Householdsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, "we" actively essentialise, naturalise, or culturalise "them" in a way that allows us to think of ourselves as "better." This phenomenon may best be illustrated by how "we" judge the way that "they" treat their children: "We" spend quality time with ours in the evenings or on weekends, "they" leave their neglected children behind in Poland-and since they incorrigibly "are" that way, they may as well look after our old parents, or fix some things around the house for us (Palenga-Möllenbeck, 2016).…”

Section: Othering and Privilege In Everyday Relations: Clients And Workers In Private Householdsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Migrants’ Input Invisible: Intersections of Privilege and Otherness From a Multilevel Perspective

Palenga-Möllenbeck

2022

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For some years, the German public has been debating the case of migrant workers receiving German benefits for children living abroad, which has been scandalised as a case of “benefit tourism.” This points to a failure to recognise a striking imbalance between the output of the German welfare state to migrants and the input it receives from migrant domestic workers. In this article I discuss how this input is being rendered invisible or at least underappreciated by sexist, racist, and classist practices of othering. To illustrate the point, I will use examples from two empirical research projects that looked into how families in Germany outsource various forms of reproductive work to both female and male migrants from Eastern Europe. Drawing on the concept of othering developed in feminist and postcolonial literature and their ideas of how privileges and disadvantages are interconnected, I will put this example into the context of literature on racism, gender, and care work migration. I show how migrant workers fail to live up to the normative standards of work, family life, and gender relations and norms set by a sedentary society. A complex interaction of supposedly “natural” and “objective” differences between “us” and “them” are at work to justify everyday discrimination against migrants and their institutional exclusion. These processes are also reflected in current political and public debates on the commodification and transnationalisation of care.

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“…These authors do not see a new dominant form of performing “migrant fatherhood” emerging; instead, “old” transgenerational patterns of fatherhood based on a breadwinner role model continue, and they are extended by new ones. Traditional fatherhood is firmly embedded in larger historical (Palenga-Möllenbeck and Lutz 2016) and current economic (Palenga-Möllenbeck 2016) contexts in countries sending and receiving male migrants. Cultural and social class patterns, for example, impact the acceptance of new male roles as household workers, or men’s absence from families “left behind” (Fiałkowska 2019a).…”

Section: Polish Male Migrants As a Subject Of Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Migrant Masculinities through a Spatially Intersectional Lens

Wojnicka

Nowicka

2021

Men and Masculinities

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This article analyzes migrant narratives on masculinity through an intersectional perspective that is sensitive to spatial aspects. Drawing on research with migrants in Berlin and Munich in Germany, we unpack how (self-identified) Polish men negotiate their gender identity vis-à-vis other people in these cities whom they perceive as ethnic, religious, gender, and sexual others. We address how their social and ethnic backgrounds shape their narratives on foreign masculinities and femininities at the intersections of ethnicity and gender. In particular, we draw attention to how these negotiations are entangled with local discourses over the presence and visibility of various immigrant groups and cosmopolitan queer communities in the cities. The intersectional approach helps us to formulate how migrant masculine identities change in migration.

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Unequal Fatherhoods: Citizenship, Gender, and Masculinities in Outsourced ‘Male’ Domestic Work

Cited by 9 publications

References 28 publications

“It’s Certainly Fair for Me”: Hybrid Masculinities and the Gendered Division of Labor during COVID-19

“It’s Certainly Fair for Me”: Hybrid Masculinities and the Gendered Division of Labor during COVID-19

Making Migrants’ Input Invisible: Intersections of Privilege and Otherness From a Multilevel Perspective

Understanding Migrant Masculinities through a Spatially Intersectional Lens

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