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Men’s Choices and Masculine Duties

This article analyzes the debate among family experts about fathering in Finland from the 1980s to recent years. The controversy is whether shared parenting between women and men is good for children and for men themselves or whether a gendered division of parenting should be advocated instead. Both discourses perceive men as important as fathers but disagree on the care of babies and very young children. Irrespective of position, experts stress that the choices made by men regarding fatherhood are individual and have wide-ranging consequences in their lives and the lives of their children, especially of boys. Experts view motherhood as a societal duty, and fatherhood as personal and elective. If fathers’ choices are stressed as a moral issue, it is because fathers are seen as masculine actors, not as nurturers. The author argues that the radical societal ethos of shared parenting seems to have weakened, or even disappeared.