The Remodeling Of Fatherhood Under The Contemporary Nuclear Family And Its Dynamic Mechanism

In recent years,nuclear families have gradually become the mainstream of urban families.At the same time,more and more female groups are participating in the work,gradually breaking away from the traditional role.With the continuous withdrawal of intergenerational parenting,men are really placed on the front line of childcare,taking over the heavy responsibility of childcare and sharing household chores when their wives go out to work.Especially since China entered the 21 st century,there have been significant changes in the gender concept and parenting work of contemporary youth: the fathers of this group of middle-class nuclear families,represented by the post-90 s generation,have begun to take up the work of raising infants and young children.Financial support also takes on the responsibility of education and emotional companionship.Not only has the cognition of the role of fatherhood changed,but also the practical ability has been improved,realizing the transition from the traditional fatherhood to the new type of fatherhood.This paper takes Giddens’ structural theory as a research perspective to explore the remodeling of fatherhood in nuclear families,and selects post-90 s middle-class fathers as representatives to study their transformation from economic and emotional perspectives.Our country is in a period of social transformation,with strong stratum competition and great liquidity.Families in the middle class,on the one hand,have to maintain their own class standards,and on the other hand,they have to invest a lot of money in the education of their children.The increasing economic pressure makes dual-income income irreplaceable.Changes in social structure affect rational actors’ cost-benefit calculations,decision-making of actions,and outcomes of actions.In order to enable their children to continue to obtain the best quality education environment,mothers also invest in the job market like fathers to increase family wealth,while fathers share the mother’s childcare burden in the form of labor compensation in housework to resist the economic pressures of class competition.In a word,the economic constraints on the quality of family life and investment in children’s education have prompted men to participate more in parenting activities,thereby completing the remodeling of fatherhood.Emotions are another element of fatherhood reinvention.With the rise of free love,contemporary marriage relationships are increasingly transformed from "instrumental" to "emotional",and husbands’ parenting behavior is actually an expression of love for their wives.The development of feminism and the male liberation movement has made people more pursue the love of partners that is equal,respectful and supportive of men and women.This love of equality also makes men take the initiative to share the responsibility of parenting.At the same time,the emergence of low-birth-rate nuclear families has made the blood ties between parents and children closer,and the increase in parent-child interaction has also enhanced the parent-child relationship.With the emergence of reproductive civilization,the role of children’s spiritual comfort has become more and more prominent.As far as the reproductive purposes of the current middle-class groups are concerned,the elements of pursuit of spiritual satisfaction are becoming more and more important,and the elements of emotional needs,self-realization needs and spiritual comfort needs are constantly improving.Emotional factors act on male groups in the form of conjugal and parent-child love,prompting them to express love in the form of parenting practices.In general,the current reshaping of fatherhood has enabled male groups to have more practical experience in parenting,which also gives males the greatest opportunity to establish a female perspective,and thus are more likely to be willing to give female groups more attention and support at home and in the workplace..And this support plays an important role in the closeness of the husband and wife relationship,the harmony of the family and the healthy operation of the whole society.Especially at the moment when there are gender contradictions,high divorce rates,and the daily "fear of marriage" and "fear of childbirth" among young people,the research on the remodeling of fatherhood is of positive reference significance.