Doing (Oppressive) Gender Via Men’s Relations with Children

The question addressed by this chapter is not so much “In relation to what?” but rather “In relation to whom?” For the chapter suggests that if we really want to understand how men perform gender – and especially how they perform gender oppressively – then studying the relations between children and men is as important as studying the relations between women and men or those between men and men. Yet, gender research on men (with a few exceptions) has woefully failed to accord this equal importance to child-men relations. In exploring this worrying state of affairs, the author demonstrates clear ageist tendencies in gender research on men regarding the position of children – both in Sweden and internationally. Where children do appear in gender research on men, the focus is largely on boys in the process of becoming men or on what men would like to do to make themselves into “more involved” fathers. By contrast, in such gender research, there is very little focus on children as children in relation to men from an age perspective and minimal focus on children as they are now “in the present” rather than as the gendered adults that they will “become” in the future. This chapter then suggests how this considerable lacuna in gender research on men can be addressed. Finally, the author offers some reflections on why scholars in this field, as in many other fields, seem to have been reluctant to listen closely to the voices of children.