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"It was like being torn apart". The experiences of young men who become fathers while at school. A critical interpretive analysis of discourses of Young Fatherhood.
Abstract
This is an exploratory study that reports the experiences of a sample of five participants, young men who became fathers while still at school. I talked to these young men about their personal stories which relate their personal introspection on interactions with institutions and relationships with people in their lives, set within a socially constructed reality that positions young men who become fathers in a certain way. Discourse and hegemony are collaborative constructive processes that shape and sculpt the conditions of the lives of everyone and it is the intention of this study to illuminate the workings of particular discourses in the context of these young men’s lives.
This research is interested in how or whether the assumptions underpinning the socially dominating discourses of youth, gender, marriage and family were reflected in the participants’ experiences. The study aims to critique this social situation, which assumes immaturity when it comes to the experiences of young men who father children while still at school. The invisibility of these young men’s experiences in the current research literature as well as in society generally, except in pejorative ways, brings focus upon both the research landscape and the lens that is being looked through.
It is not the intention of this research to make sweeping statements or to pretend that the findings of the study represent the findings of all who have an experience similar to the participants’. What this enquiry does intend to achieve is to bring alive the humanity of five personal stories of real people and shed light on the processes that played a part in their construction.
The importance of the research is to gain a greater understanding of and insight into the experiences of these young men and what the reality is for them as they see it.
Type
Thesis
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Cooper, K. K. maia. (2012). ‘It was like being torn apart’. The experiences of young men who become fathers while at school. A critical interpretive analysis of discourses of Young Fatherhood. (Thesis, Master of Education (MEd)). University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/6477
Date
2012
Publisher
University of Waikato
Supervisors
Rights
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