#12220. Love, Fear, and Disgust: Deconstructing Masculinities and Affective Embodiment in Pregnancy Guides for Men
July 2026 | publication date |
Proposal available till | 17-05-2025 |
4 total number of authors per manuscript | 0 $ |
The title of the journal is available only for the authors who have already paid for |
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Journal’s subject area: |
Literature and Literary Theory;
History;
Gender Studies;
Sociology and Political Science; |
Places in the authors’ list:
1 place - free (for sale)
2 place - free (for sale)
3 place - free (for sale)
4 place - free (for sale)
More details about the manuscript: Science Citation Index Expanded or/and Social Sciences Citation Index
Abstract:
This article deconstructs advice within published guides to pregnancy and birth written by men for men. We deconstruct the representation of feelings and emotions in men during this period rejecting essentialist and social constructionist views of gendered emotionality. We find the texts are saturated with emotional advice, which is ambivalent and resorts to forms of essentialism that obscure male vulnerabilities and leave male forms of power intact. While men can expect to feel love, fear, and disgust, the case for male calm and stoicism is reconstructed, threatening dire consequences if he fails. Our study makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the affective assemblage that accompanies men who are now expected to care during pregnancy, labor, and birth. Men are constructed as having an embodied experience that cannot be admitted to, ensuring that hegemonic masculine understandings reinforce gendered constructions of care, caring and emotions during pregnancy, labor and birth.
Keywords:
affect; embodiment; emotion; fatherhood; feeling; hegemonic masculinity; material discursive; pregnancy and childbirth guides
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