Paternal Everyday Practice in the Federal Republic of Germany. A Biographical-Theoretical Investigation

Dissertation Project Klemens Marsoner, M.A.

This dissertation project examines how fathers in the Federal Republic of Germany shape fatherhood in their everyday practices, what patterns of action and interpretation underlie these practices, and how these patterns are expressed in biographical self-presentations. The focus is thus not on the extent to which fathers take on caregiving responsibilities or which normative models they follow, but rather on how fatherhood is shaped through the interplay of action, experience, and biographical self-presentation.

The methodological framework is based on sociological biography research, developed in line with the work of Fischer-Rosenthal and Rosenthal, as well as the sociological foundations of knowledge laid by Schütz and Luckmann. The central research question focuses on the biographically acquired orientations that underlie paternal behavior and on the ways in which fathers articulate this behavior in the narratives of their life stories. The study draws on biographical-narrative interviews as well as couple interviews, since paternal practice does not take place monologically but always within the framework of partnership-based negotiation processes. Methodologically, the project combines phenomenological and sociological approaches to knowledge: Taking the lifeworld as a historically sedimented, intersubjectively shared structure as its starting point, the biographical case reconstruction uncovers the implicit bodies of knowledge and layers of experience that guide paternal behavior.

The motivation for examining fatherhood in this way stems from the conviction that the “how” of a father’s everyday life—that is, the way in which fatherhood is produced, negotiated, and processed biographically in concrete situations—can only be understood through reconstructive methods. Quantitative surveys and attitude studies can show what fathers do and what they want. Phenomenologically informed biographical research asks how these two aspects are connected and how they take shape in lived experience.