Fatherhood Harmony: Polyphony, Movement, and Subjectivity

We propose a reconceptualization of the metaphor of harmony to illuminate the contexts of fatherhood. This conceptualization is based upon an inductive analysis of narrative transcripts of expectant fathers (N = 42), who were telling stories that illustrated what it meant to them to be a good father. Harmony focuses our attention on three elements of social context: that there are many contexts surrounding fatherhood (polyphony), that they are changing over time (movement), and that their relationships can be understood in various ways depending upon the situation of the observer (subjectivity). We hope that this metaphor will guide future work on fathers.