Secret fathers: Navigating fatherhood through workplace performance

IF 5.4 2区管理学 Q1 MANAGEMENT

Human Relations Pub Date : 2025-10-01 DOI:10.1177/00187267251368243

Martyn Bradley, Caroline Gatrell, Laura Radcliffe, Gary Brown

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

How do fathers navigate work and family in light of the conflicting ideals associated with breadwinning and involved fathering? Utilizing an ethnographic methodology and drawing upon Goffman’s work concerning dramaturgy and secrecy, we answer this question. We discover how fathers employed within the high-pressure UK legal profession develop a suite of strategic tactics to mislead colleagues into assuming that they are not fathers at all. We untangle and reveal how fathers achieved these impressions, highlighting the complex nature of covering and counter-uncovering moves that men used to conceal their paternity. We show how, when performing on the organizational front stage, fathers adopt the role of job-oriented ideal-worker, casting fathering, in Goffmanian terms, into the shadows as a dark secret (Jaworski, 2021). As a result, men restrict ‘involved fathering’ to the backstage of their home settings. In offering new perspectives on the choices that fathers make in relation to how they navigate the contradictory ideals of traditional and involved fatherhood, our paper challenges prevailing notions of workplace fatherhood, illuminating how fathers experience and respond to workplace glorification of the ideal-worker image, with important implications for theory and future research on work and family, and fathering practices.

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秘密父亲：通过工作表现引导父亲

父亲们是如何在养家糊口和为人父的理想冲突中处理工作和家庭关系的？利用民族志的方法论，并借鉴戈夫曼关于戏剧和秘密的工作，我们回答了这个问题。我们发现，在压力巨大的英国法律行业工作的父亲们是如何开发出一套战略策略，误导同事们认为他们根本不是父亲。我们梳理并揭示了父亲是如何获得这些印象的，强调了男性用来掩盖自己父亲身份的掩盖和反揭露动作的复杂性。我们展示了，当父亲在组织的前台舞台上表现时，他们是如何扮演以工作为导向的理想工作者的角色的，用戈夫曼的话说，他们把父亲的养育作为一个黑暗的秘密抛到阴影中（Jaworski, 2021）。因此，男性将“参与式父亲”限制在家庭背景的后台。我们的论文为父亲在如何驾驭传统父亲和参与父亲的矛盾理想方面所做的选择提供了新的视角，挑战了流行的职场父亲观念，阐明了父亲如何体验和回应工作场所对理想工作者形象的美化，这对工作、家庭和父亲实践的理论和未来研究具有重要意义。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Human Relations Multiple-

CiteScore

12.60

自引率

7.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Human Relations is an international peer reviewed journal, which publishes the highest quality original research to advance our understanding of social relationships at and around work through theoretical development and empirical investigation. Scope Human Relations seeks high quality research papers that extend our knowledge of social relationships at work and organizational forms, practices and processes that affect the nature, structure and conditions of work and work organizations. Human Relations welcomes manuscripts that seek to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to develop new perspectives and insights into social relationships and relationships between people and organizations. Human Relations encourages strong empirical contributions that develop and extend theory as well as more conceptual papers that integrate, critique and expand existing theory. Human Relations welcomes critical reviews and essays: - Critical reviews advance a field through new theory, new methods, a novel synthesis of extant evidence, or a combination of two or three of these elements. Reviews that identify new research questions and that make links between management and organizations and the wider social sciences are particularly welcome. Surveys or overviews of a field are unlikely to meet these criteria. - Critical essays address contemporary scholarly issues and debates within the journal''s scope. They are more controversial than conventional papers or reviews, and can be shorter. They argue a point of view, but must meet standards of academic rigour. Anyone with an idea for a critical essay is particularly encouraged to discuss it at an early stage with the Editor-in-Chief. Human Relations encourages research that relates social theory to social practice and translates knowledge about human relations into prospects for social action and policy-making that aims to improve working lives.