Overview

The contemporary meaning of Latino fatherhood What does fatherhood mean in the lives of Latino men? In Latino Fathers, Fatima Suarez shifts the attention from how father involvement affects Latine children to how Latino men experience fatherhood and what being a father means to them. Suarez brings attention to the social forces shaping, sustaining, and undermining Latino men’s parenting, how their views and behaviors uphold, challenge, negotiate, and transform culturally dominant ideas of fatherhood, and the lessons they teach us about the reproduction of inequality in family life. Suarez focuses on the many different facets of fatherhood, including work-life balance, parenting challenges, and empathy and resentment for their own fathers. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 60 Latino fathers in California, Suarez highlights Latino fathers’ familial stories of joy, sorrow, humor, pain, uncertainty, and hope. Latino Fathers provides a compassionate, intimate account of a group of fathers challenging the myths about them, wrestling with the tensions they experience as they negotiate cultural ideas of good fathering, and the structural realities that make it both possible and difficult to meet those expectations.

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9781479826285

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Reviews

""Fatima Suarez’s Latino Fathers is a groundbreaking exploration of Latino fatherhood that dismantles stereotypes and uncovers nuanced and intersectional realities of parenting in contemporary U.S. society. Drawing on 60 in-depth interviews, Suarez captures the joys, struggles, and complexities of fathers navigating cultural expectations, work demands, and shifting notions of masculinity. This deeply empathetic and rigorously researched project amplifies the voices of Latino fathers while carefully articulating what it means to father with resilience and care. The book should be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand family, fatherhood, and the intersections of race, class, and gender in the U.S. today."" - Tristan Bridges, co-author of Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Continuity and Change ""Based on conversations with dozens of men, Latino Fathers explores their trials and triumphs, including how political economy and racism impact them as parents. We witness a range of Latino fathers expressing strong and mutually contradictory generalizations about Latino fathers. From the challenges of measuring up to legendary Latina motherhood to living down the 'unrelenting"" stereotype' of machismo, Suarez breaks new ground in the sociology of gender and Latinx studies."" - Matthew Gutmann author of Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short ""Using in-depth interviews, Suarez captures the lived experiences of Latino fathers, revealing complexities typically unacknowledged in popular depictions. She analyzes these men’s social contexts, intergenerational perspectives, motivations and emotions using sophisticated sociological frameworks that help us understand the nuances of family life in Latino communities today. Highly recommended for classrooms and general readers and must-reading for those who work with or study Latino families."" - Scott Coltrane, co-author of Gender and Families

Author Information

Fatima Suarez is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is the author of Latino Fathers: What Shapes and Sustains Their Parenting.

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