Operation 'Long Distance Parenting': the moral struggles of being a Danish soldier and father
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Operation 'Long Distance Parenting' : the moral struggles of being a Danish soldier and father. / Heiselberg, Maj Hedegaard.
In: Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, Vol. 25, No. 10, 2018, p. 1471-1491 .Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Operation 'Long Distance Parenting'
T2 - the moral struggles of being a Danish soldier and father
AU - Heiselberg, Maj Hedegaard
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - This article explores how Danish soldiers and fathers combine their moral responsibilities with international military deployment. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Danish soldiers and their families, I demonstrate how soldiering and fatherhood exist as conflicting gendered moral discourses in the lives of Danish soldier-fathers. I argue that military deployment becomes a situation of moral conflict where Danish soldier-fathers struggle to balance their moral engagements as both professional soldiers and present and involved fathers. Rather than looking at military deployment as a temporally and spatially bounded experience, I suggest it is more useful to understand deployment as a life circumstance that continuously forces soldier-fathers to make conscious moral decisions. From this perspective, I explore two strategies used by Danish soldier-fathers to maintain their social and moral engagement as both soldiers and fathers. Firstly, I demonstrate how soldier-fathers create alternative narratives of ‘good’ fatherhood by challenging a moral discourse of the physically present father. Secondly, I show how online technologies simultaneously become a strategy for soldier-fathers to ‘be there’ as fathers during deployment as well as a trigger of moral concern when the fathers are unable to provide the support needed on the home front. The aim of the article is thus to demonstrate how Danish soldier-fathers navigate conflicting moral terrains, as well as how they negotiate and challenge existing gendered norms and moralities through their continuous struggles.
AB - This article explores how Danish soldiers and fathers combine their moral responsibilities with international military deployment. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Danish soldiers and their families, I demonstrate how soldiering and fatherhood exist as conflicting gendered moral discourses in the lives of Danish soldier-fathers. I argue that military deployment becomes a situation of moral conflict where Danish soldier-fathers struggle to balance their moral engagements as both professional soldiers and present and involved fathers. Rather than looking at military deployment as a temporally and spatially bounded experience, I suggest it is more useful to understand deployment as a life circumstance that continuously forces soldier-fathers to make conscious moral decisions. From this perspective, I explore two strategies used by Danish soldier-fathers to maintain their social and moral engagement as both soldiers and fathers. Firstly, I demonstrate how soldier-fathers create alternative narratives of ‘good’ fatherhood by challenging a moral discourse of the physically present father. Secondly, I show how online technologies simultaneously become a strategy for soldier-fathers to ‘be there’ as fathers during deployment as well as a trigger of moral concern when the fathers are unable to provide the support needed on the home front. The aim of the article is thus to demonstrate how Danish soldier-fathers navigate conflicting moral terrains, as well as how they negotiate and challenge existing gendered norms and moralities through their continuous struggles.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - Absence
KW - deployment
KW - fatherhood
KW - morality
KW - presence
KW - soldiering
U2 - 10.1080/0966369X.2018.1489784
DO - 10.1080/0966369X.2018.1489784
M3 - Journal article
VL - 25
SP - 1471
EP - 1491
JO - Gender, Place, and Culture
JF - Gender, Place, and Culture
SN - 0966-369X
IS - 10
ER -
ID: 193492418