The Place of Fatherhood and the Parental Role: Tensions, Ambivalence and Contradictions

Abstract

The deinstitutionalization of parenthood is the sign of a dynamic change moving towards more openness and liberalization, and of a loss of references, following the shifts that have occurred in the forms of transmission throughout history. The father's role may be in a closer relationship with the child in a less hierarchical framework having more to do with partnership, but it is still outside the mother-child dyad, made all the stronger by the biologization of society and a tendancy to matrifocality. With the possible cleavage between conjugality and parenthood, the father may be excluded from the relationship with the child, and nowadays paternity cannot be exercised without this relationship. Therefore, the father's role depends more globally on the development of the paternal consciousness, with or without the father's subjectivization by the child's mother, and on the support of his identity by the child, and this may cause problems. The article makes references to history and to analyses of interviews.