“父亲的身体”:审视初为人父对在职男性的身体影响

The ‘Paternal body’: Reviewing the corporeal impact of new fatherhood on employed men

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT REVIEWS · 2024
被引 8
人大 A-ABS 3

中文导读

提出“父亲的身体”这一新概念,综述父亲身份对在职男性身体的影响,揭示父亲在平衡育儿与有偿工作时面临的身体健康风险(如睡眠不足)以及职场中霸权男性气质的压力。

Abstract

Abstract This review proposes a new concept, the ‘Paternal body’, to illuminate the corporeal impact, on employed men, of new fatherhood. It explores literatures on fatherhood, employment and health to reveal how fathers experience pregnancy, birth and infant‐care (infancy defined, here, as up to age two). In contrast to well‐established notions regarding Maternal (pregnant and post‐birth) bodies, there exists within management studies no similar concept to facilitate understanding of recent fatherhood, the body and employment. The proposed concept ‘Paternal body’ addresses this lack, offering a strategic platform for theorizing how fatherhood impacts men's lived, bodily experience of balancing paternity with paid work. Drawing upon interdisciplinary perspectives from sociology and health literatures, the paper reviews research on paternal corporeality in the context of employment in neo‐liberal (market‐oriented) economies (typified by the USA and UK). It identifies related and important health symptoms (such as sleep deprivation) that pose risks to paternal health and employment. Yet the review shows how expectant/recent fathers are pressured, at work, to live up to a mythical image of hegemonic masculinity that requires them to display strong work‐orientation, denying ill‐health and working long hours away from home. The paper coins the term: ‘Absent warrior’ to represent this illusion of a ‘manly’ father (warrior) who is absent from infant‐care and from his home, but bodily present at work: a father who is supposed to deny the materiality of inhabiting a Paternal body. Recommendations are made for further exploration of fathers’ embodied health needs through the concept of the lived ‘Paternal body’.

心理学性别研究社会学管理学