Examining representations of fatherhood through the lens of family leisure photographs

Abstract

This paper responds to calls from leisure researchers who recognise the need to study the changing ideologies of fatherhood. It does so in a new way: it is the first study to utilise family leisure photographs to evidence New Zealand society’s changing notions about fatherhood. Photographs are a useful lens for addressing such issues, as they can be interpreted as ways of understanding human life and document sociological aspects of lives that we are unable to gain 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. 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 purposive teacher in more recent decades.