Stay-at-Home Fatherhood and Masculinities in China

This volume is the first book-length study of stay-at-home fathers, an emerging and non-conforming gender role in mainland China, offering a nuanced account of masculinities and fathering practices associated with this role while situating them within global discourses of gender, care, and family life.

Drawing on analyses of TV dramas, social media materials, and in-depth interviews, it examines the multiple, overlapping, and at times contradictory discourses surrounding this role. By moving beyond the initial motivations for becoming stay-at-home fathers, the book shows how these men occupy shifting positions across different domains of their lives, including self-understanding, childcare, and intimate relationships. Readers benefit from an analysis that reveals masculinities as fluid and negotiated performances shaped by cultural expectations, life events, and class-based opportunities. These insights highlight how gendered power is reconfigured in partial and non-linear ways within and beyond the family.

Stay-at-Home Fatherhood and Masculinities in China serves as an essential resource for researchers and students in Asian studies, gender studies, sociology, and family studies. It is particularly valuable for those interested in the contemporary transformation of parenting practices and gender roles in urban China.