Families at Work: Expanding the Bounds

2: My Wife Can Tell Me Who I Know: Methodological and Conceptual Problems in Studying Fathers

32 2 My Wife Can Tell Me Who I Know Methodological and Conceptual Problems in Studying Fathers Annette Lareau Social scientists repeatedly have stressed the importance of interviewing fathers in studies that examine family life. This is seen as particularly important in efforts to understand work-family conflicts, a topic that has gained more attention in recent decades (Hays, 1996; A. Hochschild, 1997; Hoffman & Youngblade, 1999). Yet many studies of families target only mothers (but see Coltrane, 1995; Hood, 1993; Marsiglio, 1995). In addition, a large number of studies have suggested that many fathers continue to have a limited “helper” role in important aspects of family life, including child rearing (A. Hochschild, 1989; Hood, 1993; Press & Townsley, 1998; Walzer, 1996). Our study used in-depth interviews and intensive observations to examine the roles fathers and mothers played in their children’s daily lives. We focused on white and black families with children in third and/or fourth grade. Our findings address two related points. First, in terms of research methodology, the study raises important questions about the usefulness of fathers as sources for some types of information and about the validity of the answers they provide. We found that most fathers did not know very much about the details of their children’s lives because, relative to mothers, they did not provide very much day-to-day care. This lack of involvement in daily family affairs did not make fathers unimportant, however. The children in our study appeared to be strongly connected to their fathers .1 They seemed to value their fathers highly as a source of entertainment, a center of conversation, and teachers of certain life skills. But for social scientists seeking a source of useful information about children’s behavior, fathers proved inadequate. The answers they supplied during interviews frequently were vague, and when pressed for specifics, fathers tended to retreat into generalities. Significantly, neither vagueness nor the use of generalities was typical of the fathers we interviewed when talking about their work or about topics of personal interest , such as their leisure activities. Clearly, our interviewees were not reticent by temperament. Had we been seeking information about fishing or basketball, for example , interviewing fathers would have been a richly rewarding undertaking. Unlike questions about children’s activities, queries on these topics would have netted us many long, detail-laden quotes. If relying on fathers as a source of insight into children’s daily lives carried no greater risk than that of reducing the quantity of© 2000 by Human Sciences Press, Inc. Reprinted from Qualitative Sociology Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 407-433. Methodological/Conceptual Problems in Studying Fathers 33 usable data, pursuing fathers might arguably be worth the effort involved. However, more than the quantity of data is at stake. Many (although not all) fathers appeared to believe that they should be active in their children’s lives. Their adherence to this belief affected their responses to the questions we posed in the interviews. At best, embracing an ideology of involvement complicated fathers’ answers; at worst, it seriously compromised their validity. Fathers often reported they were drawing on what their wives had told them; they did not see a clear distinction between what they had learned from their own interactions and what they had learned from their wives. Moreover, fathers who seemed unfamiliar with the details of their children’s daily lives nevertheless suggested that they were intensively involved in the children’s lives; some even suggested an egalitarian division of labor. Finally, few fathers seemed comfortable offering a “don’t know” response, even when such a response would have been the most truthful. Vague generalities appeared to be preferable to absolute accuracy. To be sure, fathers were a valuable source for understanding the ideology of parenthood. It was our examination of behavior, which is a very common focus in social science research, which proved so problematic. If interviews exposed fathers as a poor source of information about children’s daily lives, observations showed them as a focal point of family life. Thus, in addition to a methodological concern, this paper has a second, more conceptual goal. We believe that the way family life is studied should be revised. In our study, what fathers did do emerged as being as important as what they did not do. The fathers we observed were a powerful presence in the household. They provided affection, humor , and advice to their children. These important contributions of fathers often have been downplayed by...