Methodology

The project relies on interviews with heterosexual couples who have small children (under the age of eight years old) and live together in Cyprus, followed by individual one-to-one interviews with the fathers only. Through these interviews, the project explores fathers’ changing practices in the family setting and beyond, their involvement in everyday family life, relationships with their partner and children, and attitudes towards issues concerned with gender and sexual equality. Employing a multi-layered lens, it explores fatherhood as a set of practices, a life-stage and part of men’s identity, and intends to understand change in men and masculinities and the conditions enabling or constricting it.

Further, the project utilizes secondary data from European and International social surveys to analyze attitudes towards gender, family life, parenthood, and so on, to develop a critical understanding of whether and how men and their practicesare changing.

The project is funded by the University of Cyprus start-up research scheme.