The retelling of storylines where the man is the motivator to care is a theme which emerged from some of the narratives. This theme shows how some men identify with caring as their journeys lead them to become foster carers. Studies have highlighted the positive benefit of fathers and men to children (Knight, 2004; O'Brien, 2005; Towers, 2006) though the focus of working with men has primarily seen them as the source of welfare concern (Ryan, 2000). It has been suggested that the motivation to become a foster-father can be an attempt for men to meet personal interests, such as the opportunity to become a father or to provide an opportunity to retrace their fathering (Inch, 1998; Inch, 1999). The journeys some men in my study recount involve childhood with positive father-figures and a transition to young adulthood and partnering which uphold the movement away from traditional masculinity (O’Neil et al., 1993) as they seek to become carers for children. Men in this category of journey are primarily motivated to care for children. I begin by recounting Ben’s story and I have chosen several other individual stories to reflect this type of journey to fostering.
Ben’s story
The men in this study have given witness to their own experiences of being fathered with the father- figure often becoming the foundation for male identification with masculinity. For some this
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identification with masculinity is about reproducing these good childhood experiences with their current family while for others it is more about providing different versions of masculinity. Ben’s story of his journey consciously began in his childhood and relationship with his father. As a child, Ben was able to draw on his father as a role model, so that he consciously constructs paternity and masculinity in relation to his father. As a foster carer Ben is the main carer, rather than his wife. Through his fostering Ben endeavours to reproduce his happy childhood, crediting his homemaking father with motivating him to care for children. Ben was positive about his father’s caring ability though he balanced this paternal feminisation with the assertion that his father was a boxer and a tough man. Ben stated:
“I had a fantastic childhood my dad was always on hand. My mum had a [job] so she went out to work, evenings, so my dad was in charge. So, this thing about men who foster and why do men want to nurture and everything like that it was given to me by my own father at a very early age, dad bathed us when mum was at work. I suppose he was a modern dad. He cooked our tea, hoovered and went to shops because mum was at work and he used to say a real man isn’t one who goes to the pub and drinks ten pints of beer a real man is someone who is comfortable with who he is and so I saw that with my father. I was brought up that way and he’s continued that throughout his life, but my dad’s just an old fashioned version of a modern man today so I’ve never had that ‘oh its soft to be like that’ because my dad was a very good amateur boxer so he wasn’t a softie. He was tough, really, but he had the nurturing side to him. So, I’ve been brought up with that it’s alright for men to care and nurture so it was nothing alien to me. My son’s friends have said ‘so your dad’s a foster carer’ as though it’s like a ladies job and ‘oh isn’t that a bit soft’ and my son has said to them ‘well, we’ll go to our house you know they might be having their tea and when we go you tell our dad he’s soft and see what he does’ so he understands that side of it and hopefully I’m repeating it with my own son. My dad passed it on to me and hopefully I’ll pass it on”.
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Ben’s identification, within the family, as the homemaking man concurrently in control is a position which would conform to Connell’s argument that men present masculinities where male power is not simply derived from being a man, but is a dynamic social construction which is backed by institutional forms of understanding (Connell, 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). Ben’s performance of gender as a main carer challenges masculine norms, though he also affirms masculine norms by associating caring with his boxing father. By negotiating his masculinity, to incorporate a caring role within the family, Ben extends beyond Connell’s hegemonic masculinity as it is more than just exercising control over the family. Ben has a clear gender identity as a man who cares for children, though he remains manly and rooted in paternity.
Mike’s story
In his story Mike was the main carer for many years. He supported his wife in her career though at the time of his interview she had recently retired. His journey concerns a man whose interest in fostering arose out of a desire to support his partner during her professional studies. Mike explained:
“Yes I was working on the buildings and I got a job [with children] and when she wanted to become a [professional] we sat and discussed it, I said right you are if you are going to be a [professional] I need to be in all day so I applied for the job at the school up the top and I’ll be in all day and look after the kids and be there so I applied for the school job and changed direction to suit her going to work but it worked out all right”.
Prior to fostering, Mike worked on building sites and changed his occupation in line with the needs of his partner and family. Initially this led him to work in a school and whilst working there his children asked if a friend, who lived in a residential home, could come and stay with the family. This prompted an application by the family to foster with Mike becoming the main carer while his wife worked outside the home. He was positive about his role looking after children, describing it as
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The journeys are nuanced with the men’s narratives as they present sequenced stories to relate meanings. Mike’s journey, with his young adulthood spent working in traditionally masculine employment on building sites, enabled him to change his role by way of his wife’s employment and his foster-fathering. Mike’s gender identity underwent change when he performed gender to become a carer; though this change is neither stable nor permanent as he relinquished feminised roles, associated with the home-space, on his partner’s return home following her retirement. The process of ending fostering which Mike experienced as he relinquished the home-space is explored more fully in Chapter 8. Mike’s performance of gender is in transition as he changes from being the main carer to become support to his wife as main carer. By performing gender as a foster-father who is the main carer Mike creates an alternative masculinity to hegemonic norms. However, gender is, as Butler (2004) speculates, a regulatory discourse because when his wife returns to the home, normativity restores gendered roles and she reclaims the main caring roles.
The narrative Mike presented during his interview was that he was motivated to foster due to his wife’s employment and their children’s request to take in a friend. However, he also retold a story about working as a youth worker before his wife’s employment:
“I was working before I started in the school I was helping run a youth club with 2 other blokes in [area] and before education started opening youth clubs we opened a youth club in [area] when we moved there and I would be down there two or three nights a week with the kids”.
Childcare and community support is embedded deeply in Mike’s narrative as his journey retraced caring for children at several turns, as a parent, youth worker, working in a school and as a foster carer. In many ways this is a family that negotiated gender role reversal as the couple performed gender roles not associated with masculine and feminine norms. Mike was the main carer and his wife worked as the breadwinner. Mike made a conscious decision to change his role from working on a building site to become a househusband and in this way they are mirroring families of choice in
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a manner reminiscent of same-sex couples (Giddens and Pierson, 1998). Mike negotiated a version of masculinity which is different to the breadwinner construct. His description of the roles and tasks, which he undertook within the home, seem to go further than the ones attributed to men by Walby (1997). However, this role is not fully stable as Mike found it difficult to break from gendered relations and these role reversals are in turn reversed on his partner’s retirement. By performing gender as a carer Mike subverted stereotypes, as he had taken on the role of main carer within the family which enabled his wife to become the family breadwinner; though, as I show in chapter 8, traditionally gendered relations are restored with the return of the woman to the home-space.
Peter’s story
This narrative concerns a man’s journey from the armed forces to become a foster-father. Peter’s wife took up employment as a residential worker in a children’s home and Peter became the main foster carer. Peter explained:
“It’s something [partner] and I thought about many, many years ago when I was in the RAF and we thought about doing it then, but because I was always moved around so often and so frequently that I was told no wait until you come out of the forces and you are settled, and you have your own routes established. So, a couple of years after I came out that’s exactly what we did [foster]”.
The negotiation to foster, between Peter and his partner, involved some role reversal and coincided with the independence of their children:
“Well, our children had already grown up or were well on their way and we thought we can fill the gap…we didn’t want any more of our own in fact [partner] couldn’t any way and we just thought well why not and it’s giving somebody a chance”.
Peter’s renegotiated gender role is non-traditional as his partner took up the breadwinning role and he became the homemaker.
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During his interview, Peter reflected on this gender role reversal which he felt coincided with a general change in employment patterns. He explained:
“Twenty years ago you would never think of a man doing this job, he’d be outside, down the pit or the farm or wherever, he was the breadwinner. Some men wouldn’t do this, but now it’s more common, it’s more accepted there’s not many jobs around and women are taking a lot more jobs they are becoming more adept at jobs that were for men are now shared and this is no different. It’s a job bringing up children; it’s a job whether it’s a woman’s job it doesn’t matter”.
It has been noted that foster care is becoming more professional (Kirton, 2001; Wilson and Evetts, 2006; Kirton, 2007; Sellick, 2007) and that professionalism can be associated with gendered occupations (Crompton, 1987). Peter’s continued identification with employment reinforces masculine norms and the breadwinner / financial provider role.
Peter by contemplating the changing nature of employment was able to compare fostering with paid employment. He argued that fostering had become a job suitable for a man and by relating fostering to employment he is effectively reproducing traditional gender relations by maintaining a breadwinning role. On leaving the armed forces Peter worked in several jobs before fostering with his partner. Peter explained he had not intended for fostering to become his job:
“Oh well I left in 1996 and we started to foster almost straight away it took 6 months process to get through and we started. I’ve been doing it for; this is our 11th year now. I started so it was almost straight away as soon as I got out I left the RAF we got our own house so we had a base and I got a job in Civvy street then we could set down our own roots if you like. If you haven’t got your own roots how can you look after somebody else, so we were fine got a job, got a house and then we got a bairn about 18 months later something like that”.
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Fostering is an important part of Peter’s life, as it takes the form of vocation and employment. Peter is positive about fostering and it is important for him that he recreates family with children. However, he performs gender to affirm masculine norms because he continued to identify with the breadwinning role. He explained:
“I don’t work anymore, I work in the house, I don’t work outside that’s the biggest change, it’s probably given me more respect for ladies, for women that work in the house because I know what they do and what they go through - the daily chores”.
Peter, by identifying with fostering and employment, appears to believe that gender relations are transforming and that he himself represents this transformation in person. His partner, by becoming the breadwinner out of the home, performs gender that subverts feminine norms and its association with homemaking and caring. The income from fostering is inconsistent because it depends on a child being in placement and at times Peter has had to return to paid work out of the home, which shows his continued association with breadwinning masculinity. Peter was positive about fostering and he seemed to believe that it was becoming more professional. By performing gender Peter identified with breadwinning masculinity, but he also subverted this version of masculinity by becoming the main carer for children.
Alan’s story
Alan was the main carer at the time of the first interview, though by the second interview his wife had left work to concentrate on fostering. The basic thread of Alan’s journey is that they adapted their employment patterns to meet the financial opportunities that came their way when his wife was due a promotion and he became the househusband. Alan explained their rationale:
“She said unless you pack in work and become a househusband I’m not prepared to take this job on because it was a nice step up in salary and if you’re not prepared to do it I’m not taking on all that extra work to still not see you over the week …so we had already agreed I’d be a househusband”.
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This, however, was only partly true when the fostering narrative extended to their son’s illness and how it impacted on Alan as a father. Through his son’s illness Alan appeared to have had an insight into mortality and parenting:
“Your son is seriously ill, I thought Christ, I only left [hospital] an hour and a half ago and we went back [to hospital] and he had got that superbug, MRSA whatever it is, he got that and he was in an isolation ward”.
Alan’s own experience and attachment to fatherhood and his son’s illness awakened in him strong paternal emotions which motivated him towards fostering.
Alan also retold, through his narrative, how his journey brought him into contact with fostering by proximity to his sister-in-law who fostered a young girl. Alan, and his wife, became attached to the girl and they offered to care for her. The interconnections of these factors converge within the narrative as Alan told the story about the girl’s impending move to an unsatisfactory residential placement and their desire to help her:
“I packed in and become a househusband earlier than I thought I was going to and the girl was with us under friends and family and then the social worker asked [sister-in-law] if she could take the girl to see this house it was still getting done, but when [sister-in- law] saw the house she said to [partner] ‘I wouldn’t put an 18 or 20 year old in it never mind a 12 year old’. She [partner] said can’t we do something and this kid was a lovely girl she had problems [and] I kept saying ‘I can’t understand why nobody can look after her she’s lovely’. Anyway, so we contacted the Local Authority and said [what] about becoming foster carer”.
His journey, like most of the narratives, is complex as it took in partnering, parenting, employment, mortality and fostering. The intersection of these elements motivated Alan to become the main carer through fostering. His journey from worker out of the home to a foster carer was a complex web of conditions that allowed him to transfer working out of the home to caring in the home. He
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explained how he became a foster carer in a way which maybe belies his instinct to care, as he performed caring tasks which challenged his understanding of masculinity. In a sense he wanted to make good his son’s illness and the awful trauma he experienced as a father, take control over the powerlessness he felt due to his son’s illness and to rescue the young girl as he performs gender that affirms masculine norms constructed on being in control.
As a foster carer, Alan chose to reconnect with fathering and to look after other people’s children. In his narrative of his journey to fostering Alan did not talk about his childhood, rather he talked about his own parenting and fathering. His son’s illness, combined with the relationship with a young girl fostered by his sister-in-law and his wife’s job offer, resulted in him becoming a foster-father. Alan’s partnering and parenting are important aspects of his journey. Through performativity he performs gender to create an alternative masculinity to what he perceives to be the norm when he takes on the househusband role within the family. However, the paternal motivation restores normative gender roles within the gender binary because he remains a man who recreates paternity.
Thomas’ story
This narrative is about a man who, after arriving in England from Jamaica, found through fostering a channel to communicate his cultural identity to children and the community at large. Thomas narrated a journey involving physical and metaphorical travel as he moved from Jamaica to England and altered his gender identity. Fostering reflects sociocultural factors; as there are national and geographical differences in the delivery of fostering (Hojer, 2004; Charnley, 2006). Living in Jamaica Thomas was a fisherman and a taxi-driver and his journey to fostering involved the relocation to a different country. Communication is a recurring theme in his narrative. Thomas chose to foster because he felt that he was a skilled communicator with children. Fostering provided Thomas with a sense of pride and acceptance within the community. The act of fathering, associated with an apparent need to care for children, provides men with a purpose within the family where children are a binding agent cementing families together. This emergent paternal motivation to foster is