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Is the Stay-At-Home Dad (SAHD) a Feminist Concept? A Genealogical, Relational, and Feminist Critique

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Abstract

This article is a critical examination of the stay-at-home dad (SAHD) as a concept and set of practices in Canada and the United States (U.S.). It is informed by a feminist relational approach to practices of work and care, a genealogical approach to concepts, and by case study material from a 14-year qualitative and longitudinal research program on stay-at-home fathers and breadwinning mothers primarily in Canada, but more recently in both Canada and the U.S. I take up three theoretical and conceptual issues. First, I explicate the concepts of work, care, and choice that underpin the SAHD concept and I explore how these are taken up in government reporting and some research studies in Canada and the U.S. Second, drawing from my longitudinal research on stay-at-home fathers, I apply feminist and relational theoretical approaches to work, care, and choice and argue that this approach leads to specific theoretical and methodological implications for the study of SAHDs. Finally, I attempt to answer the question: Is the SAHD a feminist concept? I argue that while studies on SAHDs can offer important glimpses into possibilities of egalitarian family relationships and are fruitful sites for feminist analyses of family relationships, the SAHD concept is located in a conceptual net that includes binaries of work and care and individualized conceptions of choice. I thus question the utility of the SAHD as a feminist concept since the binaries that inform it have long been contested by feminist scholars.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Katherine Allen, Ana Jaramillo Sierra, and Irene Frieze for insightful feedback on this article. Earlier versions of this work were presented at the Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN) Conference (June 2012, June 2014) and at the meetings of the International Sociological Association (RC06 Fatherhood Roundtable) in Yokahama, Japan, July 2014. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and its Canada Research Chairs program generously funded the projects that inform this article. I am especially grateful to the 112 fathers and mothers who shared their stories with me, some of them through multiple visits, across 14 years.

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  1. Brock University Niagara Region, 500 Glenridge Ave., St. Catharines, ON, Canada, L2S 3A1

    Andrea Doucet

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Correspondence to Andrea Doucet.

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The research was funded by a government body, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canada Research Chairs program. There are no conflicts between the research funding and the findings in this paper. All interviewees gave informed consent and ethical clearance was obtained through the host university of the author.

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Doucet, A. Is the Stay-At-Home Dad (SAHD) a Feminist Concept? A Genealogical, Relational, and Feminist Critique. Sex Roles 75, 4–14 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0582-5

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