SOCIAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE FATHERHOOD IN NARRATIVES OF MARRIED AND UNMARRIED PEOPLE

Abstract

The issue of social attitudes towards the "fatherhood" is discussed in the article. We studied the structure and content of men and women’s ideas about fatherhood according to their matrimonial status. A comparative analysis of their narratives showed that content of ideas of married and unmarried people regarding the parenting had some common and specific descriptors. The first ones confirmed the commonality of understanding paternity, whereas the specific ones indicated differences in cognitive and emotional representations of phenomenon: they were largely unique and had more personal features. It has been found that the structure and content of ideas about the fatherhood had qualitative and quantitative gender-related features. In terms of structure and content, the attitudes of both married and unmarried men were quite similar and simple, whereas women’s concept of fatherhood became more complicated, deeper and more sensitive when they got married.

According to the opinion of married women, a man not only provides material wealth to the family. He focuses on family, emotional well-being, on creating a favorable atmosphere with mutual trust and respect, open and friendly communication. The content of factors in the attitudes of married and unmarried men was contraversial. On the one hand, they revealed men’s desire to show love forthe child, take care of him and whole family, their understanding the responsibility that man should assume as the head of the family. On the other hand, men associated the fulfillment of the educational function of the father with the expectation of difficulties in interacting with the child and the need to spend time on decent material support for the family. That’s why the prospect of further research in this direction is seen in the study of the structure and content of social ideas about paternity of married men and married women with different lengths of marriage.