
Ivan Chorvát
Address: Slovakia
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Papers by Ivan Chorvát
The result of the study of men’s position in the family is an awareness that the problem of compatibility of familial and working roles is not only the problem of the modern woman; it is increasingly the problem of the man, too. As the sphere of paid work has opened for women, consequently the sphere of the family has been opening for men. Because of this some shifts in man’s identity are taking place, which are in this text analyzed in the framework of Erik Erikson’s developmental perspective and its concept of generativity. Some normative shifts in the role of father are represented by the notion of men more intimately involved in daily care and upbringing of their children. Empirical researches suggest that the share of men’s involvement and childcare has been increased in comparison with the 1970’s. However, it is possible to agree with opinions that these changes are not substantial: there are changes occuring in attitudes, rather than behavioural ones. Yet we suppose that changes which are apparent in the sphere of men’s attitudes toward parenthood create an inevitable step leading to the changes in real behaviour later on. Generally we can speak about the trend towards a “new fatherhood” which is manifested mainly in younger and more educated men who are married with women with the same or similar status.
This study presents an opinion that the most important moment of the expected shift is an image prevailing in the society that accentuates positive values of fatherhood, thus legitimizing those men that are openly claiming their share of responsibility in childcare – i.e. men acquiring generativity ethos. Also for this reason we believe that the developmental perspective is more appropriate for researching changes in men’s family roles than the perspective of domestic democracy which predominantly focuses on the problem of unequal share of men and women in housework and concentrates on elements of personal and social injustice which women must bear. Changes in men’s behaviour by stressing what father more involved in activities around children gains in comparison with stressing what he sacrifices makes the developmental perspective more advantageous over the perspective of domestic democracy in solving the problem of low activity of men in childcare.