Support-seeking attitudes and emotional sharing practices among stay-at-home fathers in urban China

This article draws on two rounds of in-depth interviews with 22 stay-at-home fathers in urban China. It explores how they navigate their caregiving experiences, particularly in relation to their support-seeking attitudes and emotional sharing practices. Understanding the emotional dispositions of these men is timely, as changing caregiving arrangements and an increasingly individualistic culture coexist with persistent gender inequalities. These inequalities are reinforced by government and media discourses that discourage men’s involvement in caregiving. Stay-at-home fathers, as an emerging gendered identity in urban China, inevitably face emotional tensions as they negotiate their caregiving roles in relation to dominant narratives of ‘what it means to be a man’. This study identifies three subject positions: self-isolation, marked by pride in one’s childrearing approach and emotional restraint; marginalisation by other men, leading either to seeking solace among female caregivers or to remaining involuntarily silent; and transition from silence to emotional disclosure, where emotional reflexivity within intimate contexts – often prompted by life changes affecting them and their families – leads to a reassessment of the self in relation to others. By examining how stay-at-home fathers experience, understand and express their emotions, this study contributes to theoretical debates on the non-linear transformation of gendered emotional norms and shifting notions of masculinities within Chinese families. It contributes to the literature on hybrid, caring masculinities and emotional reflexivity in China by showing how stay-at-home fathers’ agency both sustains and challenges practices associated with hegemonic masculinity, revealing conditions under which gender hierarchies may be disrupted.