Abstract
This article explores the daytime social interactions of fathers who have assumed primary or equal responsibility for the care of their young children. For most such fathers in our sample, contact with other parents during their day-to-day care was minimal. Many rationalised their isolation as a personal preference rooted in their own ‘introverted’ nature. Nevertheless, such individualised narratives underplay how various systemic factors worked against their integration into parent networks, including: feeling ‘out-of-place’ in many daytime public spaces; a fear of being judged because of their gender; and the difficulty of meeting other fathers with responsibility for day-to-day care. The operation of these factors provides evidence of the enduring nature of gender differences with respect to early years parenting and, in particular, of the gendering of daytime public parenting spaces – something that may represent a barrier to the extent and longevity of fathers’ caregiving roles.