The paternal cord. Telephone relationships between 'non-custodian fathers and their children

Summary: The present study, which confirms the shift from institutional to relational fatherhood, analyses telephone relationships between 166 divorced fathers and their children. In every case the children live with their mother who has custody. This analysis of father-child telephone interaction furthermore belies traditional representations of men's use of the telephone. Here fathers participate in the subjectification of the child in a privileged form of listening which is more similar to guidance or to providing focus of identity for the child, than to traditional authority. However, they often find the relationship difficult and frustrating, for fatherhood is, in a sense, transformed into 'virtual fatherhood'. We are then at the heart of the contradictions, problems and inherent tensions in the shift from institutional to relational fatherhood - or of the difficulty of achieving the latter.