Staying Attached

This book is about the changing social contexts for fathering in the United Kingdom since the end of the Second World War, and the social moves from patriarchal fatherhood to multiple ways of doing 'dad'. The book questions why fathers have been marginalised by therapists working with children and families. It proposes that theories of psychotherapy, including attachment theory, have failed to take father love for their children, and the reality of changing social fatherhoods, sufficiently into account, consequently affecting related practice. Different contemporary family structures and multiple variations of relationship between fathers and children are considered.Many fathers, brought up within earlier patriarchal frameworks for viewing fatherhood are still trying to exercise these within contexts of rapid change in expectations of men as fathers. They may find themselves in troubled and oppositional relations with partners and oftern children. Examples are given for thinking abour fathers in different relationship transitions, including 'non-live-in' fatherhoods, re-entering children's lives after long absences, fathering following acrimonious divorce, and a range of social fatherhoods. Depression and mental illness are addressed. Work developed with fathers to keep them connected to their children, both in and out of the family court, is described and explored.

Gill Gorell Barnes works as a family, marital, and couple therapist in private practice and consults to other therapists of different modalities. For ten years she worked as Consultant to Family Court Proceedings in the UK Family Courts, both as therapist and expert witness. She has written a book on family life in transition following divorce, as well as a book on working with children and parents and a research project on stepfamilies. She has also written a number of publications that focus on working with highly acrimonious post-divorce relationships.