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4 Soc. & Legal Stud. 5 (1995)

handle is hein.journals/solestu4 and id is 1 raw text is: 'WAITING TILL FATHER GETS HOME': THE RECONSTRUCTION OF FATHERHOOD IN FAMILY LAW RICHARD COLLIER University of Newcastle- Upon-Tyne INTRODUCTION HIS ARTICLE is about how the law has constructed fatherhood. It starts from a belief that in order to understand how ideas of 'absent', 'good' and errant' fathers have been reproduced in recent debates around family law reform, we need first to address the problematic concept of 'fatherhood' in law itself. In England and Wales contested ideas of paternal masculinities, and the question of whether families do indeed 'need fathers', has been central to government rhetoric around 'back to basics' and 'family values' in the early 1990s. Running through a succession of ministerial comments about single mothers,' and in the linking of family breakdown, absent fatherhood and rising crime as major 'social problems of the day',2 has been one recurring issue: what are fathers for? In debates around reproductive technologies facilitating 'motherhood without men' through to the high-profile campaigns of fathers and second families against the Child Support Act 1991' one idea, spanning the political spectrum,4 has been central: the feeling that the problem with families is really a problem with men. At the heart of these debates, though it is seldom addressed as such, is the question of what being a 'father' actually involves. In this article I shall argue that fatherhood has, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, been reconstructed in law and that in this process it SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol. 4 (1995), 5-30

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