Journal Articles
Publications by list
Way, L. (2024) Dadzine: Zine making with young fathers as a participatory and DIY approach to research. DIY, Alternative Cultures & Society, 0(0).
Tarrant, A., Way, L., & Ladlow, L. (2024) Increasing father engagement among minoritised fathers through proactive service support and outreach: insights from a participatory pilot study. Community, Work & Family, 1–18.
Ladlow, L. (2024) ‘I don’t feel like a young dad. I feel like an unprepared dad’: young parenthood, welfare support and accelerated transitions to adulthood in the UK and Sweden. Journal of Youth Studies, 1–16.
Tarrant, A. (2023) Instigating father-inclusive practice interventions with young fathers and multi-agency professionals: the transformative potential of qualitative longitudinal and co-creative methodologies, Families, Relationships and Societies,
Andreasson, J., Tarrant, A., Johansson, T. and Ladlow, L. (2023) Perceptions of gender equality and engaged fatherhood among young fathers: parenthood and the welfare state in Sweden and the UK, Families, Relationships and Societies, 12 (3): 323–340.
Tarrant, A., Way, L. and Ladlow, L. (2023) ‘Oh sorry, I’ve muted you!’: Issues of connection and connectivity in qualitative (longitudinal) research with young fathers and family support professionals, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 26 (3): 263-276.
Tarrant, A., Ladlow, L., Johansson, T., Andreasson, J., and Way, L. (2022) The Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic and Lockdown Policies on Young Fathers: Comparative Insights from the UK and Sweden, Social Policy and Society,
Way, L., Tarrant, A., Ladlow, L., York, J., Gorzelanczyk, A., Brown, D. and Patterson, W. (2022) Co-creating with Young Fathers: Producing Community-Informed Training Videos to Foster more Inclusive Support Environments, Sociological Research Online, 27(3), 675-683.
“Oh sorry, I’ve muted you!”
Issues of connection and connectivity in qualitative (longitudinal) research with young fathers and family support professionals
This article considers how the unanticipated use of remote qualitative methods during the pandemic impacted processes of research connection and connectivity in qualitative (longitudinal) research. First, we consider questions of connection when seeking to (re)establish and retain connections with project stakeholders and marginalised participants through the pivot to remote methods. Second, we reflect on how processes of maintaining participation and interaction were impacted by practical and technological issues associated with the digitally mediated forms of connectivity available.
Available open access!
Co-creating with young fathers: Producing Community-Informed Training Videos to Foster more Inclusive Support Environments
Learn about the Diverse Dads study where we co-created films led by young dads as peer researchers who sought to explore how to better support minoritised young dads.
Available open access!
DadZine!: Zine making with young fathers as a participatory and DIY approach to research
This article considers how zine making might be understood as a participatory and DIY approach to research through a focus on zine making workshops with young fathers. Drawing upon Fletcher's conceptualisation of ‘zine ethos’, zines’ DIY ethic, their democratic and participatory ideal and their transformative potential will each be considered reflexively, highlighting some of the ways these might be enacted through zine making in the context of research but also potentially constrained. This article extends existing empirical work concerning zines in the context of research and offers some fresh reflections on their value as a participatory and DIY approach to research.
Increasing father engagement among minoritised fathers through proactive service support and outreach: insights from a participatory pilot study
Based on analyses of multi-perspective data generated from a small participatory and exploratory pilot study called Diverse Dads, this article considers how service engagement with minoritised fathers might be addressed in contexts of family and youth support. Semi-structured qualitative interviews and focus groups, complemented by a small survey, were conducted by beneficiaries and employees of a specialist charity supporting young fathers, with regional practitioners, service managers and minoritised fathers. These explored how and why services, which traditionally serve White, working-class communities, might be ‘hard(er) to access’ for minoritised fathers and how this might be addressed. In a context of considerable constraint for services, this article identifies how more accessible, inclusive support pathways and environments might be fostered. Key processes explored include how services can increase their accessibility, visibility, and appeal; become more proactive with outreach to fathers in diverse communities; and sustain father-inclusive support for all fathers.
Instigating father-inclusive practice interventions with young fathers and multi-agency professionals: the transformative potential of qualitative longitudinal and co-creative methodologies
Interdisciplinary social sciences literature on the value and significance of engaged fatherhood and father-inclusive approaches to practice for enhanced family outcomes have begun to reach a consensus. Yet there has been less attention to how research knowledge about fatherhood, including that which is co-produced with and for fathers, can be more effectively translated and embedded in practice and policy contexts. This article elaborates on a cumulative, empirically driven process that has established new relational ecologies between young fathers, multi-agency professionals and researchers. It illustrates how these ecologies, supported by longitudinal and co-creative research combined, are driving societal transformations through knowledge exchange and the instigation of new father-inclusive practice interventions that address the marginalisation of young fathers. The methodologies, including the co-creation of the Young Dads Collective and its impacts on young fathers and multi-agency professionals, are evaluated, confirming them as powerful and productive mechanisms for embedding father-inclusive practices within existing support and policy systems.
You can access the article via the journal webpage or to request a copy.
Perceptions of gender equality and engaged fatherhood among young fathers
Parenthood and the welfare state in Sweden and the UK
This article presents analyses from an international empirical study of young fatherhood in Sweden and the UK. Young fathers in both countries express an encouraging commitment to contemporary cultural imperatives for engaged fatherhood. However, differences in welfare and parental leave systems have a clear influence on the extent to which the young men in the respective countries can fulfil their parental commitments.
The Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic and Lockdown Policies on Young Fathers: Comparative Insights from the UK and Sweden
COVID-19 and young dads
This article explores the impacts of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown policies on young fathers and their families in the UK and Sweden.
From our partners and young dads
“[daughter]'s almost two-year-old. She came up the house and she actually really liked it. Preferably my house is the best place for her to, for the contact to be, if I’m honest, 'cause we just buy toys for her all the time. We’ve got a lovely garden that she can play in, lovely, big, and we’ve got a sandpit in there. We’ve been buying loads of things for her to play with to keep her occupied.”
“[Speaking about support of young fathers] We’ve done a lot of kind of advocation and representing them, a lot of the time there’s involvement with statutory services. They don’t have the care of the young person, the care’s provided by the state or the mother, so we’ve attended lots of meetings with the young person to offer additional support and facilitated contact where necessary and offered just general emotional wellbeing, support, improving robustness and resilience, encouraging them to have as amicable relationship as possible.”
“And I suppose it goes back to what we were saying before about behaviours, maybe the education side of stuff and the fact that men aren’t involved in those early conversations, you know, whether it is, I know they’re invited to come along to bumps to babies but I don’t know whether we go into the detail around some of that brain development side of stuff and things like that. Maybe that is the thing that really would change things. You know, if you were given all of that information about what happens to a child as they grow, in a scientific way, as easy to understand as possible, could be the thing that impacted on behaviour in the home.”
“If your child’s with the mother, like your relationship with her depends on your relationship with the child, innit. That’s what I realised a lot, like you can try and be bitter, you can try and be this, be that, but it’s just gonna push you further away from your child, innit.”
“I wanna fight for more stuff for dads. Like I do wanna have that extra support for new dads or even existing dads that we don’t get now 'cause we’re still important too although obviously the mum does need the majority a’ the care because obviously of the after care and the birth. But like the dads take it extremely hard as well. And obviously with having no support I think it increases the rise of mental health.”
“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... ”
“We need to be including, we need to not [just] be focusing on mum and child […] That’s a great focus but dad … dad’s not invisible, dad needs to be in the picture as well because there’s research that shows you the effect it has on children and families as a whole when dad isn’t in the picture, so services need to be changing the way in which they work so it’s more inclusive.”
“Cause I think a lot of the time, some of young people who end up having children have been through the care system or support systems and they can feel quite judged or labelled by organisations and it’s breaking the cycle and breaking them out of that to feel empowered to be able to take stuff back, that’s the real interest to me. So, it’s about getting support right, as in being there and giving advice and guidance and all them things that we can do, but also making sure that we are doing with people as opposed to people.”
“One of the most successful projects we ever did was an informal dads’ group, and it used to be on Saturdays […] they did what they wanted, they used to do things like breakfast, and they would have breakfast together and talk about dad stuff and where they were taking their kids. And that group was always really well attended because there was never an agenda. They were never judged. They were just there together.”
“...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 ”
“Oh…patience…compassion…tolerance, a whole boatload a’ that! Honestly, I like a whole lot of life. Sacrifice…compromise, yeah I think, yeah I think they, they would be the, the big, the five, I feel, I think that was five, they would be the main. ”
“We’re currently in touch with social services for two [dads] because they don’t understand why they can’t see their children because they haven’t been informed by social services, their partner. So there’s a massive communication breakdown with those young men, so that’s the main focus of what we’re dealing with at the minute.”
“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?’. Like you don’t need to know that....I know exactly where that thought process is going, you know. It’s like, ‘oh you look really young and you’ve had a kid’. It’s like, ‘yeah I know, I was there!’”
Partners
