The ‘Paternal body’: Reviewing the corporeal impact of new fatherhood on employed men

Gatrell, Caroline ORCID: 0000-0003-3134-3252 (2025) The ‘Paternal body’: Reviewing the corporeal impact of new fatherhood on employed men International Journal of Management Reviews, 27 (1). pp. 12-33. ISSN 1460-8545, 1468-2370

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Abstract

AbstractThis review proposes a new concept, the ‘Paternal body’, to illuminate the corporeal impact, on employed men, of new fatherhood. It explores literatures on fatherhood, employment and health to reveal how fathers experience pregnancy, birth and infant‐care (infancy defined, here, as up to age two). In contrast to well‐established notions regarding Maternal (pregnant and post‐birth) bodies, there exists within management studies no similar concept to facilitate understanding of recent fatherhood, the body and employment. The proposed concept ‘Paternal body’ addresses this lack, offering a strategic platform for theorizing how fatherhood impacts men's lived, bodily experience of balancing paternity with paid work. Drawing upon interdisciplinary perspectives from sociology and health literatures, the paper reviews research on paternal corporeality in the context of employment in neo‐liberal (market‐oriented) economies (typified by the USA and UK). It identifies related and important health symptoms (such as sleep deprivation) that pose risks to paternal health and employment. Yet the review shows how expectant/recent fathers are pressured, at work, to live up to a mythical image of hegemonic masculinity that requires them to display strong work‐orientation, denying ill‐health and working long hours away from home. The paper coins the term: ‘Absent warrior’ to represent this illusion of a ‘manly’ father (warrior) who is absent from infant‐care and from his home, but bodily present at work: a father who is supposed to deny the materiality of inhabiting a Paternal body. Recommendations are made for further exploration of fathers’ embodied health needs through the concept of the lived ‘Paternal body’.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	3502 Banking, Finance and Investment, 3505 Human Resources and Industrial Relations, 35 Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services, 3507 Strategy, Management and Organisational Behaviour, Pediatric Research Initiative, Generic health relevance
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	13 Sep 2024 13:43
Last Modified:	16 Jun 2026 17:17
DOI:	10.1111/ijmr.12377
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12377
Related Websites:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3184486
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