Managing Perceptions of Threat: Identity Work and Barriers to Providing Care Among Stay-at-home Dads

• In Event: Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Gender Roles and Ideologies

Abstract

Despite the growing number of stay-at-home dads (SAHDs), little research examines the concrete barriers they face in performing caregiving on a daily basis. Existing scholarship has focused primarily on fathers’ motivations, identity work, and negotiations of masculinity, but less attention has been paid to how interpersonal interactions and cultural assumptions constrain fathers’ caregiving participation. Drawing on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 33 current and former stay-at-home dads, this study identifies managing perceptions of threat as a central barrier to providing care.
Fathers described their gendered embodiment as producing implicit suspicion in caregiving spaces, particularly in interactions with mothers and other children. These perceptions constrained their ability to initiate playdates, reciprocate caregiving favors, and participate fully in networks of caregiving support. In response, fathers engaged in deliberate identity work to signal legitimacy as caregivers, including publicly performing attentive parenting, emphasizing their caregiving role in conversation, and modifying their behavior to avoid situations that could be misinterpreted. These strategies allowed fathers to partially mitigate suspicion but required ongoing interactional labor not expected of mothers.
These findings demonstrate that gender inequality in caregiving persists not only through household-level negotiations, but through broader cultural schemas linking masculinity, care, and risk. Even when fathers assume primary caregiving responsibility, gendered perceptions constrain their participation and shape how caregiving must be performed. By identifying threat management as a key interactional barrier, this study highlights how cultural assumptions about gender and safety reproduce unequal caregiving expectations and contribute to the persistence of gender inequality in family life.

Author

• Mark Henry Walker, Louisiana State University