The Modernization of Fatherhood: A Social and Political History - Softcover

LaRossa, Ralph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226469042 ISBN 13: 9780226469041

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1996

Synopsis

The period between World War I and World War II was an important time in the history of gender relations, and of American fatherhood. Revealing the surprising extent to which some of yesterday's fathers were involved with their children, The Modernization of Fatherhood recounts how fatherhood was reshaped during the Machine Age into the configuration we know today.

LaRossa explains that during the interwar period the image of the father as economic provider, pal, and male role model, all in one, became institutionalized. Using personal letters and popular magazine and newspaper sources, he explores how the social and economic conditions of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression—a period of technical innovation as well as economic hardship—fused these expectations into a cultural ideal. With chapters on the U.S. Children's Bureau, the fathercraft movement, the magazine industry and the development of Parent's Magazine, and the creation of Father's Day, this book is a major addition to the growing literature on masculinity and fatherhood.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

'The Modernization of Fatherhood' is an enlightening documentation of shifts in the social construction of fatherhood, both as a cultural institution and as an individual reality.

About the Author:

Ralph LaRossa is professor of sociology at Georgia State University and the author of Conflict and Power in Marriage: Expecting the First Child; Transition to Parenthood: How Infants Change Families (with Maureen Mulligan LaRossa); Becoming a Parent; The Modernization of Fatherhood: A Social and Political History; and Of War and Men: World War II in the Lives of Fathers and Their Families.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0226469042
• ISBN 13: 9780226469041
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 295