The Ambiguous Construction of Nondominant Masculinity: Configuring the “New” Man through Narratives of Choice, Involved Fatherhood, and Gender Equality

Abstract

This article explores the development of gender equality-oriented (heterosexual) masculinity discussing the challenges of constructing nondominant masculine identities in the context of the Danish welfare state. Combining narrative methods with the theoretical framework of masculinity as cultural repertoire, the article offers a qualitative study examining how three Danish men construct (gender) identity in relation to being the partners of career-oriented and high-achieving women. Analyzing the men’s narrative negotiations of power, gender, and self, the article identifies three central narratives produced by the men to render themselves and their family arrangements intelligible and desirable. Considering how the narratives of (1) choice, (2) involved fatherhood, and (3) gender equality work as strategies to negotiate and reconstruct the meaning of compliance and autonomy, I delineate and discuss how traditional notions of what it means to be a man are simultaneously preserved and destabilized. Thus, the article demonstrates that, while nurturing practices and the loss of traditional male breadwinner authority can be positively reconstituted within the Nordic ideals of intensive parenting and gender equality, a fear of male subordination still seems to affect the construction of masculine selves even among gender equality–oriented “new” men.