Domesticating Masculinity and Masculinizing Domesticity in Contemporary U.S. Fatherhood Politics

Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. fatherhood responsibility movement has claimed that fathers have become marginalized in the family, with catastrophic societal consequences. In response to this perceived situation, the fatherhood responsibility movement seeks to reestablish the necessity of men in families, constituting fatherhood as specifically male in differentiation from the feminizing connotations of family involvement. However, by masculinizing fatherhood, proponents of responsible fatherhood engage a century-long dilemma at the heart of constructing particularly male versions of parenthood: How do you masculinize domesticity and at the same time domesticate masculinity? The fatherhood responsibility movement deals with this dilemma by converging on three long-standing and overlapping arenas for masculinization: heterosexuality, sport, and religion.