Fatherhood: The male experience from a gender focus

Pregnant and postpartum women frequently complain about the limited involvement of their partners with their children, beginning in pregnancy. The current study thus aimed to understand men's feelings towards fatherhood during this period of their lives. The research adopted a qualitative approach and a gender-theory focus. The universe included men whose children were being treated at a pediatric outpatient clinic, and data were collected through semi-structured home interviews. Subjects' testimony was analyzed using discourse analysis, the basic principle of which is to recognize the most abstract levels of the text, identified by themes organized in blocks of meaning and allowing the construction of empirical categories. Study subjects' social position towards fatherhood shows that the model that men assume as father-providers coexists with that of the man who seeks to be a "new father", whose affective bond with the son or daughter begins during pregnancy, thus representing a break with traditional fatherhood.