Family Men : Middle-Class Fatherhood in Industrializing America

This book explodes the myth of the cold and distant Victorian patriarch, instead contending that men played a far more varied role in domestic life than previously thought.

The image of the cold and distant Victorian patriarch, whose domestic roles were limited to those of provider and disciplinarian, is one that still dominates the way we think about nineteenth-century fatherhood. In Family Men, Shawn Johansen reveals that this myth has very little to do with the complex domestic lives these men actually led. Fathers routinely engaged in numerous domestic chores, cared for children, and took a far more active role in parenting then previously thought. Using a rich selection of personal writings, Johansen resurrects the voices of nineteenth-century fathers, uncovering how their feelings during childbirth, their views on education and religion, the ways their relationship to their children changed as they both grew older, and their attitudes toward many other domestic matters. Family Men is a sophisticated and compelling addition to the growing literature on the history of masculinity and the family.