UC Berkeley

Between 1900 and 1930, a wide variety of authors, journalists, parenting experts, boyworkers, and social scientists expressed interest in fostering closer father-child relationships in the United States. As the interest in fatherhood grew through the late-1910s and 1920s, authors promoting greater paternal involvement also reinterpreted what it meant to be a good father, focusing more on play and camaraderie and less on discipline and education. This dissertation argues that the changing ideal of fatherhood was the result of conscious efforts to convince men to take a more active role in parenting, to revitalize fatherhood by distinguishing the fun, youthful, modern father from the stodgy, Victorian patriarchs of the previous generation. The modern father even had a new name: "Dad."

Interest in fostering greater paternal participation in child-rearing grew in part out of a fear of the "feminization" of boys and particularly emphasized the benefits of fathers' involvement with sons, but efforts to engage fathers more fully with their children were even more focused on the imagined benefits for men. Authors fretted over the skyrocketing divorce rate and the erosion of the shared economic function of the family and sought to tie the father more tightly to the middle-class home. The changing ideals of fatherhood reflect a more child-centered, democratic middle-class family and a new valuation of youthfulness.

This dissertation explores a variety of efforts to connect fathers more fully with their children and to make fatherhood seem modern and fun. Such concerns can be seen in efforts to design homes to appeal more to masculine sensibilities, in efforts to increase father participation in child-focused organizations, in more inclusive advice literature, and in the growth of popular humor about fatherhood. In addition to these developments, fathers began seeking parenting groups and books of their own, and the 1910s and 1920s saw the growth of fathers' clubs, fathering classes, father-child organizations and events, and books on childrearing written specifically for and by fathers. Rather than joining their wives in parenting groups, these men reached out to other fathers in an acknowledgement of what some called a "fraternity of fatherhood."