Padri che parlano (dell’essere padri). Ragioni, bisogni e desideri nella costruzione di una paternità riflessiva

Abstract

The article focuses on a group of fathers who participated in a fathers’ self-support group and offers an initial interpretation exploring their reflexivity.
The ethnographic context is understood in the framework of the scientific debate on the concept of “new fatherhood” and within the transformations in kinship and families triggered by the second demographic transition.
After a review of the broad debate on what is really new in contemporary fatherhood, I propose that talking about fatherhood and the participation in these meetings are elements that clearly marks the novelty of these fatherhood.
From this, ethnography offers an initial analysis of the reflexivity of these fathers, exploring two dimensions. I focus primarily on the kind of loneliness these men describe, which concerns the invisibility of fatherhood in social services, the absence of interlocutors in the family and friendship networks, and the deep-rooted difficulty of opening up spaces for sharing, even informally, among men.
Following on from this, I explore their desire to experience fatherhood in all its possible dimensions, breaking away from the “traditional” model of fatherhood, opening up new paths for rebuilding fatherhood and, at least in some cases, rethinking the whole experience of masculinity.