Changing representations of fatherhood through the lens of family leisure photographs

Abstract

This paper utilizes family leisure photographs to examine New Zealand society’s changing representations of fatherhood. Photographs are a useful lens for addressing such issues, as they can be interpreted as ways of understanding human life. They document sociological aspects of lives that we are unable to see easily from other sources. Over 100 years of family leisure photographs (a combination of archival family photograph albums and more recent albums sourced privately through advertising and snowball sampling) were analysed using visual qualitative thematic analysis. For analysis, a structured chronological approach was adopted to make the findings easy to follow and show the changing representations of fatherhood discourses over time. The findings show that family leisure photographs reflect a shift away from father as an invisible breadwinner in the early twentieth century, to participating in leisure consumption with the family in the post-war years, to visible and involved during the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, to the position of playmateteacher in more recent decades.