From Modernized Masculinity to Degendered Lifestyle Projects: Changes in Men's Narratives on Domestic Participation 1990–2005

University of Oslo, Norway

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: helene.aarseth{at}skk.uio.no.

	Abstract

This article explores men’s motivations for change in the interface of a feminist demand for gender equality and the appeal of new consumerist lifestyles. Drawing on a longitudinal study of egalitarian dual career couples within a Nordic welfare state, the article analyzes the case story of four men interviewed in 1990 and 2005. During this period, the men and their partners challenge a gendered division of work in their families by turning the administrative and emotional cohesion in the family’s daily life into a joint lifestyle project. The described trajectories suggest that this transgression is an outcome of a specific interweaving of a feminist discourse on equal responsibility and an aesthetic consumption discourse. The consumerist appeal seems to have offered a vehicle to turn a moral demand into a motivational force in these men’s own life projects; consequently, it has facilitated the creation of a degendered commitment toward domestic participation.
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