Home-bound Dads Seek Greater Legitimacy

“Stay-at-home fathers aggressively pursue recognition by and acceptance from mainstream institutions…,” said study authors Gokcen Coskuner-Balli and Craig J. Thompson, from the Chapman and Wisconsin Universities, respectively.

“Accordingly, they vigilantly watch for mass media representations and advertisements that positively acknowledge their collective identity,” they add, reports the Journal of Consumer Research.

Men who forgo the traditional breadwinner role to stay at home and become the main care-giver to their children, face a loss of status as they invest in domestic skills that are traditionally tied to motherhood and historically undervalued, according to a Chapman and Wisconsin statement.

Prior research has found that consumers who fall outside of the norm either hide their stigmatic traits or engage in counter-cultural rebellion against mainstream standards of normalcy and acceptability.

However, stay-at-home fathers tend to seek legitimacy by challenging traditional gender roles and the marketplace.

They also attempt to avoid the feminizing linkages invoked by their full-time commitment to the domestic realm by masculinising domesticity.