Reshaping Fatherhood: The Social Construction of Shared Parenting

This qualitative study of 18 shared parenting couples explores men′s and women′s resourcefulness as they create together alternatives to traditional parenting patterns. Narrative accounts show a diversity of possible ways to organize family life so both mothers and fathers can be active in parenting. The many strategies followed by these couples - including tag-team parenting, interchangeability of roles, and division of labor - share a flexibility which challenges the many researchers who are fixated on static models of gendered family life.