Pure Fatherhood and the Hollywood Family Film

Pure Fatherhood and the Hollywood Family Film
ISBN-10
3030716481
ISBN-13
9783030716486
Category
Social Science
Language
English
Published
2021
Publisher
Springer Nature
Author
Denise McNulty Norton

Description

This book maps father failure and redemption through three decades of Hollywood family films, revealing how libertarian notions that align agency with autonomy lead to new conflicts for the contemporary father. The films find resolution to these conflicts through a re-gendering of parenting as relationship. In their creation of a pure fatherhood that is valorised as authentic for its lack of parental responsibilities, the films serve to challenge the perception that fathering enacted outside the nuclear family structure is fragile. McNulty Norton finds in the films a new essentialism that secures the pure relationship to the biological father, reinforcing his position in the face of changing family forms. Denise McNulty Norton is an independent researcher. Her research interests include the sociology of free will and the discursive construction of family.

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