From incarcerated fathers, to trans fathers, to the question of who is your father, today’s picks comprise an alternative father’s day reading list. We highlight the men who sought to challenge traditional norms of fatherhood by emancipating children from their parents, and we challenge the testosterone enthusiasts who argue that “real men” can’t be caregivers.
We also have an excerpt from Barnard historian Nara Milanich’s book Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father. At the very moment that DNA testing has promised paternal certainty for the first time in human history, she argues that uncertainty about fatherhood as a cultural force appears as powerful as ever. Above all, this is because “science was never capable of finding the father in the first place. . . . The truly significant question about paternity is not empirical—Who is the father?—but normative: What do we want him to be?” In the age of modern genetics, the answer to the question “Who’s your daddy?” remains as complicated as ever.
As soon as there was a Constitution, fights about its meaning began.
A childhood steeped in guns shows that toxic masculinity and racism are at the heart of U.S. gun culture.
A tale of forbidden love in an age when corporations have replaced government.
Men's hormone levels correlate with their pregnant partners. Some men even experience morning sickness.
Poetry is offering new candor about the ways men care for their children.
More than 1.5 million children currently have a parent in prison; for 94 percent of these children, that parent is the father.
Seventies activists wanted to emancipate kids and destroy the nuclear family—so how did we end up with gay marriage instead?
The meaning of fatherhood remains elusive, even in the age of DNA-based paternity testing.
