Fatherhood Politics in the United States by Anna Gavanas

Author:Anna Gavanas [Gavanas, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780252091377
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2010-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Mediating Contradictory Masculinity Politics

The fragile-families wing reflects a contradictory mix of masculinist and egalitarian discourses on racialized and gendered relations. Fragile-families representatives draw on a tradition of political and academic discussion of the many ways that African American men’s aspirations for “full manhood status” have been blocked and unrecognized since slavery (Madhubuti 1990; Majors and Billson 1992). The family sociologist Robert Staples is one of the scholars who have been widely criticized by feminist scholars, mainly for conservative essentialist and radical reductionist emphasis on African American men’s struggles for the political and economic power that allow white middle-class men to count as “men” (see also Franklin 1994). The African American feminist scholar bell hooks is one of the most well-known critics of masculinist perspectives in African American studies. She laments that African American men have never collectively critiqued dominant norms for masculinity and instead have assumed, like Staples, that male headship is a “natural fact of life” (1992, 96–97). She argues that the “[c]ontemporary black power movement made synonymous black liberation and the effort to create a social structure wherein black men could assert themselves as patriarchs, controlling community, family, and kin. On one hand, black men expressed contempt for white men yet they also envied them their access to patriarchal power” (1992, 98).

Here, hooks contributes to the feminist critique of the civil rights movement, which its leaders often described in terms of “claims for manhood.” However, hooks also acknowledges the efforts of individual African American men who oppose sexism and “subvert and challenge the status quo” (1992, 100). I met quite a few representatives in the fragile-families wing who claimed to promote gender-egalitarian notions of masculinity and fatherhood. None of these representatives claimed to be feminist or pro-feminist. However, there was one fragile-families representative (Michael) who made a point of applying a feminist perspective and often criticized the gender politics of his colleagues. Even though he claimed his colleagues were resistance to feminist ideas, he kept trying to promote equality-based fatherhood programs from a feminist perspective, as is reflected in these interview comments:

I think it needs to be programs and agencies that are really helping men rethink masculinity. A lot of people say that word, but what I mean by that is: you have to have men really recognize what sexism is. You have to really help men recognize where oppression is, really work to change the power dynamics they’re used to in their families.… And if you get men to do that, then you may have less men abandon families, because they will understand that there should be no leader in the family—there should be partnership when people decide to cohabitate or marry, or have a lifelong connection. There is no leader, no follower: people individually went together to deal with stuff. But men are so tired of all that, and they hear this from [retired Chicago Bears football linebacker] Mike Singletary, Vice President Gore, and all those other speakers, they hear that “Oh, I have to be the moral leader of my family.

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