Narrativas do viver a construção da paternidade na contemporaneidade: a partir do Modelo Bioecológico de Urie Bronfenbrenner

Abstract

The father occupies a special place at the psychological evolution of his kids, as well as it may imply changes to his own psyche. These changes may be connected to the social meaning of what his son represents to him. Besides all particularities that may follow the process of fatherhood, this subject has been being the focus of many studies in the last years. The approaching of the researchers, from media, and even men towards the issue may be bonded to sociocultural and economic modifications in the contemporaneity. Therefore, the following qualitative study was aimed to comprehend the experiences of men/fathers when building their contemporary fatherhood from the Bioechological Model of Urie Bronfenbrenner. This study was carried out with over-24-years-old men that signed the Free and Informed Consent Form, which was approved under the number 65726117.0.0000.5316. Eleven men participated in the study. The starting point for the selection of the participants occurred in a school in the city of Rio Grande-RS. The data collection was carried out through narrative interview, genogram and the Minimum Map of Relationships, which happened in places agreed between the participants and the researcher. Data collection occurred from March 2017 to May of the same year. The procedure for data collection was by intentional sampling. The data analysis was based on the theoretical reference of Urie Bronfenbrenner, and methodological on Fritz Schütze. From the analysis of knowledge emerged the categories: Process of paternal construction in the contemporaneity; Mother or father’s role versus parental cooperation; and Reflections and paternal feelings in the contemporaneity. The men who are fathers, in this study, exercised fatherhood in a participative way, and had a co-parenting relationship. In other words, the father and the mother had equal responsibilities when taking care of their child. Women beginning to work outside the home environment triggered an important event on the participants’ lives, which includes allowing them to approximate to their children, and assume a more participative fatherhood. Women trusted their husbands and gave them some space so they could discover themselves as caregivers. The family microsystem also influenced the way these men developed as fathers. A significant part of the participants could have an example of a participative father, and other felt the absence of it, which stimuli these fathers to practice their fatherhood in a different way, and do not propagate towards their children feelings that involve the absence of a father. It was possible to observe that some men felt confused while playing their role as fathers, for they believed that sometimes they were exercising their wives’ roles. Fatherhood in the contemporaneity needs to be approached in different contexts in which the families circulate, in order to show the functions of the father within the family environment, break distinct taboos and concepts that still are strong and may distance the affective and participative involvement of the man with his kids.