“Our research is aimed at understanding men’s beliefs, perceptions and expectations of fatherhood within a sociocultural context. Adopting a person-centred qualitative approach gives insight into the complexities of men’s experiences. The qualitative aspect of our project will provide data for a deep and rich analysis.”
In 2015 and 2016 MAPP qualitatively investigated the expectations of fatherhood in metropolitan and rural men who at the time did not have children. The first MAPP qualitative study is published in the journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity:
Kings, C.A., Knight, T., Ryan, D., & Macdonald, J.A. (2017). The “Sensory Deprivation Tank”: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Men’s Expectations of First-Time Fatherhood. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 18(2), 112-122. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/men0000046
Our next qualitative project involved interviewing men who had told us that they did not intend to ever have children and asking them how they came to that decision and how they envisage their future lives. This study is published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships:
Smith, I., Knight, T., Fletcher, R., & Macdonald, J. A. (2019). When men choose to be childless: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407519864444