Fatherhood Politics in the United States: Masculinity, Sexuality, Race, and Marriage.

• Author: Jarman, Jeffrey W.
• Position: Book Review

Fatherhood Politics in the United States: Masculinity, Sexuality, Race, and Marriage. By Anna Gavanas. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004; pp. xiv + 190. $32.50 cloth.

Anna Gavanas's book examines the fatherhood responsibility movement in the United States. Her interviews and participant observations over two years form the basis for much of the book. She also examines many of the movement's rhetorical artifacts, including speeches by movement leaders, brochures, handouts and press releases. Her central concern is the rhetorical difficulty faced by men as they struggle to determine the role of fathers in domestic life. As she explains: "how do you masculinize domesticity and simultaneously domesticate masculinity?" (6).

The fatherhood responsibility movement, which emerged to protect the interests of families and children, comprises of two major wings: the pro-marriage wing and the fragile-families wing. The pro-marriage wing consists predominantly of white men who defend the essential importance of marriage, while the fragile-families wing consists pre-dominantly of black men who advocate economic and social programs as the cornerstone of protecting children's interests. The movement emerged in the 1990s as debates about family values, child well-being and single motherhood shifted to the social crisis of fatherlessness. Gavanas differentiates the fatherhood responsibility movement from other men's organizations. The men's rights and father's rights movements emphasize legal issues such as discrimination, sexual assault and domestic abuse, and child support, custody and visitation. While members of the fatherhood responsibility movement might support many of these issues, their issues, challenges and responses are completely different. Gavanas also explores the differences between the fatherhood responsibility movement and the mythopoetic men's movement, Promise Keepers, the Million Man March, and the Pro-feminist Men's movement. Again, while the groups overlap to some degree, the fatherhood responsibility movement is distinct in its orientation, goals and strategies for social change.

While Gavanas refers to the fatherhood responsibility movement, she does not justify describing it as a movement. In fact, she adopts this label "for simplicity's sake" rather than because the definition of a social movement is met (21-22). While some characteristics of a social movement are present, other, seemingly more important characteristics...