If Moms Scrapbook, What do Dads Do?

Here’s another post from my dissertation.

If mothers do motherhood through scrapbooking, do fathers also do fatherhood by their very absence from scrapbooking? What I find is that fathers support their scrapbooking wives in a variety of ways.

Fathers do fatherhood in scrapbooking primarily by taking care of the children so that their wives can scrapbook. Even digital scrapbooking, which only requires a computer, requires children to be otherwise occupied. Respondents who are mothers of younger children almost always mention how they scrapbook only when their husbands can take over their children’s bedtime rituals or can take the children out of the house for the day so she can scrapbook.

In the scrapbooks themselves, women who are making albums about their children do fatherhood for their husbands. In journaling about fathers and their children, scrapbookers might talk about how much “daddy loves his little girl” or how much the child loves her or his daddy (even when the child is an infant and cannot yet verbally express this love).

Motherhood may be done through actually making the scrapbooks, but fatherhood can be done through displaying and sharing the scrapbooks. Husbands occasionally take the scrapbooks their wives make to work to share with coworkers, for instance.

The scrapbook also makes up for the time fathers spend away from the family. Husbands who work long hours away from home are appreciative of their wife’s scrapbooking because it allows them to get to know their children better and become more informed about what they miss while they were at work.

If you are a parent, what role do fathers play in your scrapbooking? Join the conversation below.

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Stephanie