Being a father: the social construction of masculinity among Vietnamese men

Becoming a father is a major event, marking a great turn around in the life of a man by shifting his social identity from being fatherless to becoming a father. Conventionally, the new role often requires a man to adjust his everyday life activity to include a new job—parenting—a gendered project and a form of family practice (Coltrane & Adams, 2008). As a chapter of a PhD thesis, this paper examines the meanings of being a father and men’s parenting experiences, which reflected their ideas of fatherhood and masculinity among young, adult, married Vietnamese men. Using a qualitative methodology, 20 men aged from 26 to 38 were purposively recruited in 2009 for semi-structured interviews. Interview data were then thematically analysed in relation to the mentioned theme.