Fragmented fatherhood: Gender, emotions and biogenetic and prison (dis)connections

Abstract

This article explores the relational and socially situated nature of fatherhood by focusing on the multiple meanings that being a father may assume in contexts apart from traditional family settings, through the narratives of men involved with the justice system, but positioned in differentiated social and symbolic contexts: fathers who are prisoners on remand; and fathers involved in compulsory paternity investigation ordered by courts. We suggest that there is a complex web of tensions between the dominant ideologies of gender and the actual practices that can be fulfilled by men who are fathers, which reveals multiple scenarios of fragmented fatherhood and embody various forms of perceiving and experiencing being a father.