12 May 2020 • Update
Life as a post-doc on the FYFF study: reflections so far
Life as a post-doc on the FYFF study: reflections so far by Laura Way
When I applied for one of the research fellowships on the FYFF project, I had not long received confirmation of the award of my PhD which had taken me six years part-time to complete. I had also started a full-time, fixed term Lecturer post after several years of hourly work. I had begun a new academic year in a more secure position than ever and everything appeared to be ‘coming together’.
Whilst I enjoy teaching I have always aspired to build a career as a social researcher and my Lectureship provided little research support. There was no obvious research culture at the institution either. Fresh out of doctoral research I wanted to develop my research experience further.
Reading through the information pack for FYFF prior to applying I was enthused by what was being proposed and could see how valuable this work was going to be. I also worried about applying – I felt the position was out of my league. I put the application off for quite a while and nearly talked myself out of applying altogether. I was quite surprised to get an interview and even more so when I was offered one of the positions…I was over the moon! Anna had a clear vision for the Fellowships; they were intended to be training opportunities for early career researchers, so it turned out that I was ideally placed for the role. Three months in and I’m thoroughly enjoying the role and being part of such a fantastic research team.
In terms of the research project, I will be focusing on strand 2. This strand involves introducing a novel social intervention, called the Young Dads Collective, to Grimsby and evaluating this from the perspectives of young fathers and those involved in the implementation. Strand 2 is going to draw upon qualitative research tools such as in-depth interviewing and reflexive diaries as well as utilising creative data capturing during the interviews themselves. These interview schedules are currently being developed and are something we are considering across strands in terms of areas for overlap. Something else we will no doubt reflect upon in a future post.
This research fellowship, then, very much ticked a lot of boxes for me (as much as likening this to a tick box activity doesn’t seem quite right to me):
- I’ve heard our project lead, Anna, refer to the importance of having a research narrative a few times now and whilst I still need to refine what mine is (or will be!), the FYFF project offers some key overlaps with my own research interests. With a focus on ageing punk women, my PhD was concerned with taking a ‘life-course’ approach to understanding subcultural affiliation as well as exploring how ageing is gendered. The FYFF project offered overlaps with my existing research interests concerning gender, life transitions and construction of identity.
- Something else that particularly drew me to the FYFF project were the proposed methodologies. FYFF seeks to explore young fatherhood through qualitative methodologies which involve collaboration, creativity and participation, as well as exploring innovative ways of researching. This fit with my own methodological interests as a qualitative researcher committed to exploring creative and innovative research tools – during my research with ageing punk women, for example, I invited participants to create ‘zine’ pages which were collated and distributed as well as used as a tool for data capturing. We hope to develop this methodology in the FYFF study.
- Identifying as a feminist since my teenage years, this interweaved with my sociological education and in turn influenced areas of interest as well as my approach to research. It was important for me to be involved in a project built upon feminist values. FYFF is an explicitly feminist study. This was clear not just from a methodological standpoint, for example, but also in its desired aims to transform the way that society constructs and responds to marginalised young fathers through practice and policy in ways that seek to achieve gender equality. I was enthused by the potential to be involved in research which could contribute in some way to achieving greater gender equality.
- Finally, I wanted to be involved in a project that would challenge me, offering plenty of learning curves and opportunities for development. From the outset I knew the FYFF project would provide lots of chance to learn and develop my career. Working as part of a research team, for example, working with external partners, dealing with such large and varied sets of data… All of this would help me develop as a researcher and provide a safe yet challenging space to gain new skills and experiences. Related to this there were development opportunities for the research fellows built into the project.
And now I (along with most of the population) am currently experiencing an unexpected learning curve (or curve ball?!) – learning now to adjust to a new normality amidst the COVID-19 crisis. This raises various questions in the context of FYFF… How might we progress with the project and the research? What impact is this crisis having on marginalised young fathers and their families more broadly? As we do move forward, we will explore such questions as a team further and post them on the blog and project website.
In the meantime, look after yourselves and each other.
Laura
From our young dads
“I know so many, so many people my age that have had, had kids and got married, you know, have a house and a family and everything and they’ve done it young, because they wanted to do it young and, you know, just people need to appreciate that, and the fact that, you know, the whole stay at home dad thing is not something to be ashamed of, you know, if you’re a dad and you wanna take your daughter out for the day, or you wanna take your kid out for the day on your own, well why is that frowned upon, why can’t you take your child out for the day ”
“ I definitely wasn’t.... How quick you can fall in love with a kid that you’ve only just met. Like, because obviously, like, you don’t, like, know it when it’s in the belly and stuff like that, but then, but when it’s out and you just, you sit there and your little lass, like that’s a little me. Like, you just fall in love straight away. ”
“I think both a mother and father combined, it’s communicating and both being on the same page of what’s best for your child or children, and for both, it’s just being there 100% for them and not, like, putting yourself first, it’s, you know, putting the child’s interests first... They’re essentially a blank slate really, they look up to you, they look up to you for, like, guidance on how to, how to behave and how to, you know, like grow and develop, and if you’re not putting their interests first, it can, you know, damage their social, emotional, mental health... ”
“Just the stigma, the fact that, you know, the, the judgemental looks me and my wife get when we go out with, you know, we go out with our daughter and we take the dog with us, and the judgey looks we get, you know, we’ve had, you know, we’ve heard comments from people and, you know, someone turned round and said, you know, ‘That’s obviously daddy’s money that’s bought that car,’ or, ‘Oh, he’s obviously only with her cause he’s got her knocked up and now he’s stuck with her and daddy’s paid for this, and daddy’s paid for that'.”
“It’s still the sense of judgement I get from other people when they find out that I have a child. And they say, ‘oh how old is she?’. I say, ‘oh she’s ten’. And they say, ‘oh how old are you?... And yeah so I think, I think my age, that has been a significant factor in it just because it is, it is outside the norm and I do recognise that but equally, as I said before, it’s, it’s not anyone’s business. You know?, it was a choice that I made to be involved in my child’s life”
“to talk about some of these topics that at times can get quite, you know, quite emotional, like it really wound me up that there was no, I went to a pub, or went to a restaurant and there was no baby changing in, I couldn’t change my daughter at all. I came out of there like, you know, like shaking, I was absolutely shaking, you know, quite upset by it... If the stigma can go or something about having, you know, male toilets, if you’ve got baby changing in the female toilets then you’ve gotta have it in the male toilets, you know. If it’s in the disabled toilet, it’s not a problem, it isn’t, you know, everyone can use them, but if it’s just in the female toilets, it’s wrong. It’s even borderline, you know, you could say it’s discriminating against you really, if you wanna go down that whole sort of 21st Century crap. ”
“I feel…like privileged to be, like, a part of it. Is that the right word I was looking for? I dunno if that’s the right word, but I feel good about being a part, and it’s good to know, like, people are actually interested in fathers or young fathers, rather than we’re being, like, kind of a minority. ”
“…it’s just lush watching her do little things, like there, she’s just took her dummy out of her mouth and stuff and, like, she’s learnt to put it back in her mouth and stuff and it’s little things, when she plays with her teething toys and all, she gets, you can just see her learning stuff every day and it’s lush, it’s a privilege.”
“I’ve got more confident as being a dad. Like, I’ll take my daughter out by myself and that to places now, like I would never like to when I was, like, younger. Just people would judge you, like look at you with your tracksuit bottoms and then your pink buggy and that, think the state of him, but now, like, I take her out on me own, I take her to the parks and that, I take her, like, soft play. I took her to the football match the other week as well. …dads don’t get any preparation for this, they’ve just gotta do it when the baby’s here and it’s difficult. And then for me, when, like, when I first gotta, like, change my daughter’s nappy and that, there was way too much pressure on us, I didn’t have a bloody clue what I was doing and there was somebody watching us with a notebook, like cause you know how we were both young, just to make sure that we can look after the baby and that, and it’s way too much pressure when you don’t know what you’re doing ”
“Big big big changes.”
“if I can help put my, you know, just help a little bit with the stigma, or try and get it made a little bit more looked upon to have baby changing in male toilets, or not having just in female toilets, just little things like that, if I can help, if I can help with that, then I’ve done my bit, you know, I can’t stand here and moan about it if I haven’t, if I haven’t tried my bit to help.”
“I think it’s one a’ the best times that you could have in your life... Having a bairn. ”
“Maybe be more, like, persistent with, like, contact with my daughter and, like, maybe have been, like, more stern with, like, my daughter’s family and been, like, to say to them, like, this situation that has been going on isn’t right, like, there needs to be, like, improvements. Cause I feel like I definitely took a backseat and I didn’t say anything to them for, like, quite a while, when things were, like, not going my way, and I was just kind of, like, letting it slide. On some level I wish, like, I’d, like, stood my ground and, like, stood up for myself and my daughter and just said this isn’t right, needs to be a change. But obviously, that did end up happening eventually, cause I ended up taking them to court, so there is only, like people say, there is only so much a person can take, so.”
“I hope that my child grows up knowing that both her mam and her dad love her more than anything in the world and that we don’t hate each other and we’re glad that she’s here, like in the world. Yeah”
“…I’ve been told several times they don’t like separating a child from their mother, even social workers have told us that they don’t feel comfortable separating a child from their mother, but the way it is, it’s like they were comfortable separating a child from their father when they separated me for two year, and there was no dangers, there was no police records… …a woman can do everything a man can do, but mothers, they get a lot more rights when it comes to their kids than what fathers do. As I say, the courts, it makes a man feel like, I even said the other day when I rang a solicitor, I was really annoyed, to me, they look at us as I’m a father so I mean less to me kids. That’s the way a lot of this stuff works, they look at a father means less to his kids, a mother’s a lot more important in that sense. To me, I feel like a dad. I’ve never really looked at it specifically as a young dad. Obviously, when you’re talking about age wise then yeah, I am a young dad, yes. To me, a dad’s a dad. ”
“I was walking down the street and she says, ‘Who’s baby is that?’ And I says, ‘It’s mine,’ and then she literally eughed at us and threw them faces, ‘I wouldn’t dare let my kid have a baby that young’, and all that”
“... all through, like, the pregnancy with the mother of my child , we hid, hid that she was, like, having a baby, because we were terrified, cause she was so young, what people were gonna say, so we, like, kind of hid it, so I think it’s gonna be like a totally different experience if I have, like, another baby with anyone or owt again, because I’ll be able to have a baby shower, I’ll be able to do these things and actually celebrate it, rather than, like, hide it as, like, something to be negative about. Cause I was young.”
“I wanna, even though I’m not with, with my child's mother anymore, I wanna, I still, I don’t wanna make her life difficult or anything like that, I wanna support both her and my child as much as I can ”
“I wasn’t prepared. It came out of nowhere. I knew why it happened obviously [laughs]. But no, I don’t think I was prepared... Yeah. I think, I think especially for young parents, young dads, most, 99.9% of the time they are gonna be unprepared... it’s so unexpected they’re not gonna be prepared, you know, and I think that’s why I like this job is cause I think we’re, we’re very unique in a way to help them prepare without bombarding them with, like, so much information that they’re just gonna, like, forget. But also be there for them if they need anything on that professional level... it could be that they’re not emotionally stable or ready, they’re just worried, they could be thinking about school, GCSEs, other things happening in their lives. And, and then they could be thinking well, where do I go to find this information out, what am I supposed to do? It’s a whole panic. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think, I think emotional is a big one cause especially hearing that for the first time, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to act. Yeah, just didn’t know how to act at all [laughs].”
“I’m not the best at saving money, but when it comes to my daughter, I know I need to have money there for her, I need to be able to sustain her. ”
“Just as long as they’re happy. I’ve always said in life as long as they’re happy doing what they’re doing. It’s keeping them safe and it, that’s all I really want really. ”
“Just believe in yourself I think. That’s one a’ the ones I struggled with when I was younger cause I was always like, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this’. Everything was, ‘oh I can’t do this. Oh I’m not gonna be able to do that’. I think just having a bit of belief in yourself and actually engaging in stuff and that, you know, life’s about spending time with your children, not what you can give to them. Just as long as they’re happy. I’ve always said in life as long as they’re happy doing what they’re doing. It’s keeping them safe and it, that’s all I really want really. ”
“…dads get rewarded for doing the general things. Say the mother takes them to school, it’s just a general thing, but a guy takes their kids to school, and they get praise for it, it’s like that’s wrong. Do you know what I mean? It’s like it’s 50/50, you both do what you can. And yeah, like guys do get praised for doing more of the sort of housework thing now and, I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem fair to women really in general, because I mean, they still do it and they don’t get any more praise or any less praise for doing what the guys do, if you know what I mean. …there is also a bit of a stigma around it, I mean you see some parents, like males, going to school, and a lot of women or a lot of people think they haven’t got a clue, so they’ll try and sort of explain what you have to do, where you have to go, even though say you’ve been doing it for ten years. ”
“ I think being, being present and seeing your child for who they are I think is the most important. Like, not necessarily being present, but when you are with your child at least being present and also just to, when I say see your child for who they are, I think I mean you don’t, cause a lot of parents expect their child to be certain things or like, ‘Oh, I react like this, or my spouse, or their parent reacts like this, so they’re gonna react like it,’ but actually try to see what it is that you get from, like how, who they are, which is super interesting cause they’re a mix of everything. But like to actually see that and not, not put expectations in that..”
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