Subunit 3 Cultural Perspectives on Families Article 4 1-1-2014 Fatherhood in Brazil , Bangladesh , Russia , Japan , and Australia

This article illustrates that the roles of fathers are highly variable and contextdependent. Research data from five diverse societies (Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, and Australia) show that fathers, fathering, and fatherhood differ within societies according to eight types of contextual influence. Examples are provided of each contextual factor: (1) geographical location (e.g., dispersion of fathers across huge land masses in Russia and Australia; impact of dense populations in Japan and Bangladesh); (2) long-term historical legacies (centuries of patriarchy in Brazil) and short-term historical events (fall of communism in Russia); (3) family characteristics (joint, extended families of Bangladesh; small Japanese families); (4) economic factors (high standards of living in Australia and Japan); (5) work-related conditions (long work hours in Australia; level of encouragement for paternal work leave); (6) societal norms and values (social expectations for Russian fathers to be disengaged and uninvolved); (7) ethnic groupings (homogeneity of Japanese; impact of Islam on Bengali fathers); and (8) patterns of immigration and emigration (emigration from Bangladesh; immigration to Brazil). It is possible to identify general differences in fathers between the five societies, but fathering diversity within societies make it clear that over-generalizations about fathering anywhere are dangerous. Although the quantity and quality of fathering research is improving in all five of the societies, we still need to know more about how fathering behavior varies within and between societies, and the mechanisms (e.g., through socialization, economic contexts, etc.) by which cultures influence fathers and vice versa. Opportunities abound for future psychological research on fathers and families in cultural context. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. This article is available in Online Readings in Psychology and Culture: https://scholarworks.gvsu. edu/orpc/vol6/iss3/4 Barbara and David Shwalb Introduction Socialization and childrearing have been studied often by cross-cultural psychologists and developmental psychologists for well over half a century. As a result, excellent data are available about cultural influences on family life and child development (Georgas, Berry, Fons, van de Vijver, & Kagitçibasi, 2007; Harkness & Super, 2002; Kagitçibasi, 2007; Tudge, 2008; Whiting & Whiting, 1975). Within this literature, however, most international studies on socialization and parenting have focused on mother-child relations and paid much little attention to the father’s role. This article presents information about fathers (called the “forgotten contributors to child development” by Lamb, 1975), with an emphasis on diversity within five societies: Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, and Australia. In Fathers in Cultural Context (FICC, Shwalb, Shwalb, & Lamb, 2013), experts on fifteen societies or regions wrote about fathers (biological and ‘social’), fathering (their behavior), and fatherhood (conceptualizations of their roles). FICC concluded with five general statements, specifically that (1) cultural and historical change and continuity are important influences on fathers; (2) the quality and quantity of fathering research, and enthusiasm for active fathering, vary between societies; (3) social policies and laws relevant to fathering are extensive in some societies but rare in others; (4) diversity of fathering is universal within societies; and (5) economic and employment conditions comprise an important influence on fathering. The conclusion about diversity underscored Tudge’s (2008) observation that “. researchers interested in cultural issues have paid too little attention to heterogeneity within societies.cross-societal research should always recognize the within-society heterogeneity that is a function of social class, race, ethnicity, and so on. ” (p. 17). Most of the society-wide or regional generalizations about fathers made by the chapter contributors in FICC were tentative and cautious, given the limited research data on fathering in most societies and also because the chapter writers knew that fathers are highly diverse within their societies. After reconsidering the issue of diversity, we wrote a postscript to FICC as a follow-up handbook chapter (Shwalb & Shwalb, in press) and categorized eight main sources of within-society variability among fathers: 3 Shwalb and Shwalb: Fatherhood in Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, & Australia Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011 1. Geography – spatial location of the father; features of the physical environment 2. History – long-term or short-term 3. Family characteristics – family structure and size; marital or residential status 4. Economic factors –at the family and societal level 5. Employment/work conditions – employment patterns, work hours, leave policies 6. Norms, values and beliefs – ideology, value system, role expectations 7. Ethnicity – language, culture, country of origin, religion 8. Immigration/emigration – rural-to-urban or international; generation since immigration. This article provides evidence of variability in fathers, fathering, and fatherhood in a subset of five of the fifteen societies discussed in FICC (2013). There were three considerations in the selection of the five societies: (1) their original inclusion in FICC as based on geographical balance and existence of empirical research data; (2) exclusion of data on fathering in China, India, Central/East Africa, and the Caribbean, which we have recently highlighted elsewhere (see Shwalb & Shwalb, in press); and (3) substantial evidence of within-society fathering diversity. The five portrayals of fathers are presented below in size order of national population: Brazil (201 million), Bangladesh (164MM), Russia (142MM), Japan (127MM), and Australia (22MM). Of these five, there is a deep and broad fathering literature only for the Japanese, although sufficient information about fathers was available from all five societies to compose chapters in FICC. Throughout this article we use the term “society” (organized communities that may equate with a culture, nation, or both) to describe Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, and Australia, rather than “nation” (a geo-political entity). “Society” also seemed the more appropriate focus here than “culture” (a pattern of beliefs and behavior common to a social group and transmitted between or within generations ‘non-biologically’ Hewlett, 2000), because most of the research reported was not concerned with aspects of cultural construction or transmission. Fathers in the five societies selected for review here do not represent fathers worldwide, and diversity of men within each society makes it impossible to claim that we have represented all fathers within any of these societies. This article aims to contribute to an understanding of fathering by providing evidence of diversity, and hopefully it will encourage other researchers to add to the knowledge base on fathering diversity, which has improved but still is neither broad nor deep for most societies. Biological anthropologist Sarah Hrdy (2009) concluded in Mothers and Others that 4 Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, Unit 6, Subunit 3, Chapter 4 https://scholarworks.gvsu. edu/orpc/vol6/iss3/4 “. nurturing responses in human fathers are extremely facultative --that is, situation-dependent and expressed only under certain conditions. This generalization holds true whether we consider provisioning or the observable intimacies between father and child. ” (p. 161) This paper illustrates that fathers are facultative and that variability is a hallmark of fatherhood; future research is required, however, to determine empirically whether fathering is more situation-dependent or variable than mothering.