WAITING TILL FATHER GETS HOME - THE RECONSTRUCTION OF FATHERHOOD IN FAMILY-LAW

In recent debates about the form and function of the family much atten tion has focused on the deleterious consequences deemed to attach to f ather-absence (for example, in relation to issues around child support and the criminality of male youth). At the heart of these debates, th ough it is seldom addressed as such, is the question of what being a ' father' actually involves. This article seeks to relate changes in leg al conceptions of fatherhood to wider shifts in the historical constru ction of heterosexuality and, in particular, to the emergence of a dis tinct discourse of a 'respectable' familial masculinity. In contrast t o ideas of 'undomesticated' and 'dangerous' masculinities, it is argue d that the idea of the family man has come to signify in law a range o f (frequently contradictory) ideas about heterosexual masculinity. The law continues to valorize a particular male heterosexual subject posi tion, though importantly, the mechanisms by which it does so have chan ged from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Through refer ence to this reconstruction of paternal masculinity in law, this artic le questions the idea that we are now witnessing a form of contemporar y 'crisis' in masculinity and the family.