The emotional geographies of expectant fathering

Menzel, Alice Emmeline ORCID: 0000-0002-9360-7869 (2024). The emotional geographies of expectant fathering. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

Preview

Menzel2024PhD_Redacted.pdf
Text - Redacted Version
Available under License All rights reserved.
Download (3MB) | Preview

Abstract

Pregnancy, and the transition to parenthood are intensely emotional experiences and inherently gendered periods of change. Feminist geographers have convincingly situated family/parenting as fundamentally spatial practices, with the transition to parenthood being associated with a unique array of spaces/places and changes to spatial routines. Yet despite a wealth of literature on pregnancy/maternities, and emerging/increasing work on fathering, the experiences of expectant fathers have, heretofore, been largely absent. Drawing upon periodic in-depth interviews, conducted between January 2021 – May 2022 with nine expectant fathers in the UK (most living in England), this research explores the lived, emotional geographies of expectant fathering.
Importantly, this research was conducted amidst the coronavirus pandemic, which saw widespread disruption to ‘normal’ spatial mobilities and routines. Interview narratives are therefore contextualised via broader social-media analyses of the pandemic experiences of UK expectant mothers/fathers. This research brings together, and contributes to, the critical junctures of geographies of family/parenting, emotional and embodied geographies, and political geographic research on (anticipatory) emotional governance, facilitating unique, critical insight into the emotional and spatial experiences of expectant fatherhood in an era of crisis. In so doing, it situates expectant fathering as a daily emotional practice, negotiated and contested across different spaces and, importantly, at different scales – from bodies, homes, and into workplace spaces, mediated also by national policy and legislation. Ultimately, it reveals how fathering, and the evolving identities of expectant fathers are always already shaped by cultural discourses/expectations around masculinity in particular places, by (in)dependence, and by state-citizen relations within specific spaces of healthcare, employment rights/flexibility and welfare, exacerbated in periods of crisis.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):