Abstract

The dual role of the father as family man and provider has received surprisingly little attention and, despite recent work on the development and consolidation of the 'breadwinner ideal', there has been little examination of how this ideal wasimplemented and negotiated within distinctive workplaces. This chapter argues that the sexual division of labour and the role of the father in the home and the workplace were contingent on particularities of specific occupations, labour markets and cultures, and that older patterns of gendered labour were not always displaced. Based on the Sheffield trades and the South Yorkshire mining industry, it explores the reproduction of the paternal role in the workplace, and the reltionships between particular patterns of family labour and wider cultural discourses on fatherhood.