Fathering In India

This book covers the underexplored subject of ‘fathering’ in India. It delves into the shared aspirations of men in India to nurture their children in sensitively attuned ways within the culturally prescriptive context that governs men’s roles as providers and caregivers. This work is based on over two decades of intensive research in India on how different groups construct and experience fatherhood and fathering under changing circumstances. It unmasks the heterogeneity that exists within fathering in India through conversations with fathers across diverse contexts—in privileged economic situations and those in difficult home and family circumstances, having children with disability, single-parent fathers and fathers in the military. A separate section discusses fathering daughters and shared parenting. Images and role models in fathering are brought alive through analysis of Hindi films, the media, children’s literature and classical literature. The conceptual analysis moves beyond the power and control dimensions commonly used to describe Indian men and fathers, to highlight their resilience, adaptability, positive involvement and developmental trajectories. This volume is for scholars, researchers and practitioners in developmental psychology, human development and family science, sociology, early childhood education and psychiatry, pediatrics, community medicine and allied fields.

There is a strong connection between culture and parenting. What is acceptable in one culture is frowned upon in another. This applies to behavior after birth, encouragement in early childhood, and regulation and freedom during adolescence. There are differences in affection and distance, harshness and repression, and acceptance and criticism. Some parents insist on obedience; others are concerned with individual development. This clearly differs from parent to parent, but there is just as clearly a connection to culture. This book includes chapters on China, Colombia, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, Native Americans and Australians, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Cuba, Pakistan, Nigeria, Morocco, and several other countries. Beside this, the authors address depression, academic achievement, behavior, adolescent identity, abusive parenting, grandparents as parents, fatherhood, parental agreement and disagreement, emotional availability and stepparents.​

How do men think about fathering? How does this differ across different regions of the world? And what effect does this have on child development? Fathering in Cultural Contexts: Developmental and Clinical Issues answers these questions by considering a broad range of theoretical and conceptual models on fathering and childhood development, including attachment theory, developmental psychopathology, masculinity and parenting typologies. Roopnarine and Yildirim provide a comprehensive view of fatherhood and fathering in diverse cultural communities at various stages of economic development, including fathers’ involvement in different family structures, from two-parent heterosexual families to community fathering. This book’s interdisciplinary approach highlights the changing nature of fathering, drawing connections with child development and well-being, and evaluates the effectiveness of a range of father interventions. Fathering in Cultural Contexts will appeal to upper level undergraduate and graduate students in human development, psychology, sociology, anthropology, social work, and allied health disciplines, and professionals working with families and children in non-profit and social service agencies across the world.

This vital addition to Springer’s ‘Educating the Young Child’ series addresses gaps in the literature on father involvement in the lives of young children, a topic with a fast-rising profile in today’s world of female breadwinners and single-parent households. While the significant body of theoretical understanding and empirical data accumulated in recent decades has done much to characterize the fluidity of evolving notions of fatherhood, the impact of this understanding on policy and legal frameworks has been uneven at an international level. In a field where groups of fathers were until recently marginalized in research, this book adopts a refreshingly inclusive attitude, aiming to motivate researchers to capture the nuanced practices of fathers in minority groups such as those who are homeless, gay, imprisoned, raising a disabled child, or from ethnically distinct backgrounds, including Mexican- and African-American and indigenous fathers. The volume includes chapters highlighting the unique challenges and possibilities of father involvement in their children’s early years of development. Contributing authors have integrated theories, research, policies, and programs on father involvement so as to attract readers with diverse interest and expertise, and material from selected countries in Asia, Australia, and Africa, as well as North America, evinces the international scope of their analysis. Their often interdisciplinary analyses draw, too, on historical and cultural legacies, even as they project a vision of the future in which fathers’ involvement in their young children’s lives develops alongside the changing political, economic and educational landscapes around the world.

"Fathering Your Father is indubitably an important, timely work. In this incisive re-reading of the sources for the early history of Chinese Chan Buddhism, Cole conveys a new understanding of material familiar to scholars that might well make students engage with these sources more imaginatively. Hitherto scholars have pored over the five or six key sources; now we are invited to read them as successive literary inventions. In short, this study has no competition and is bound to provoke debate."—T. H. Barrett, Professor of East Asian History, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and author of The Woman Who Discovered Printing

This monograph breaks new ground by weaving stories of fathers and children into the history of gender, family and nation in colonial India. Focusing on the reformist Bengali Hindu and Brahmo communities, the author contends that fatherhood assumed new meaning and significance in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century India. During this time of social and political change, fathers extended their roles beyond breadwinning to take an active part in rearing their children. Utilizing pedagogic literature, articles in scientific journals, autobiographies, correspondence, and published essays, Fathers in a Motherland documents the different ways the authority and power of the father was invoked and constituted both metaphorically and in everyday experiences. Exploring specific moments when educated men--as biological fathers, literary activists, and educators--assumed guardianship and became crucial agents of change, Banerjee interrogates the connections between fatherhood and masculinity. The last chapter of the book moves beyond Bengal and draws on the lives of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to provide a broader salience to its argument. Reclaiming two missing links in Indian history-fathers and children-the book argues that biological and imaginary "fathers" assumed the moral guardianship of an incipient nation and rested their hopes and dreams on the future generation.

Paine presents several mini-biographies of 20th-century Westerners whose lives and thoughts were radically transformed by their experience of India: E.M. Forster, Carl Jung, W.B. Yeats, Christopher Isherwood, V.S. Naipaul, and Martin Luther King, Jr.