Plats för en karl

Abstract

This paper looks at how struggles to define a male identity, based in the home, lead to highly diverse definitions of what is typically masculine. In the early years of this century, Swedish men were transformed from the patriarchal head of the household of rural society to the absent husband of the industrial age. During the welfare-society period in the middle of this century, men were supposed to be hard-working breadwinners and prepared to help out as fathers by keeping children occupied in their spare time. The general argument is that while early modernity separated men from many of the responsibilities in regard to home and family, so is late modernity opening up new ways of relating to the values concerned with intimacy and life-policy questions. The many contradictory trends to this optimistic interpretation are also discussed.