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INTRODUCTION
Becoming a father is a crucial change within the life course, fatherhood thus having to be integrated into male idetity. The transition to parenthood will very likely change fathers' relationships with their partners (Ahlborg et al., 2009; Houts et al., 2008; et al., 2007), their families (Bell et al., 2007), and their social environments (Maurer, 2007). It will also change their habits spending leisure time, affect their working lives, and is likely to transform them into individuals who cherish interests and values that are different than before this transition. (Claxton and Perry-Jenkings, 2008; Nomaguchi and Bianchi, 2004). During the process of pregnancy and within the first months with their new baby, parents are forced to get used to their new position, as well as to concomitant changes (Bell et al. , 2007). The new being requires 24-hour care and is to be fed, dressed and diaper-changed. Parents have to buy furniture, buggies, toys, food and clothes for their child. Hence having a baby is a major physical, psychical and financial effort. Both parents are called to negotiate the tasks and the kinds of involvement with reject to their child. How parents divide the tasks concerning caring and breadwinning is connected to current discourses about parenthood and the associated structures and options for agency. Our paper aims to review how the narrations of fathers in Vienna (Austria) regarding their caring practices, emotions and self -perceptions are mediated through these discourses.
The literature on fathers' studies identifies two main discourses concerning heterosexual couples: the breadwinner discourse, defining fathers primarily as financial caretakers, and the "new fathers" discourse that describes men who are highly involved in caretaking practices (e.g. , Lamb, 1987; LaRossa, 1988; Coltrane, 1596) . Since the late 60's, the phenomenon of a new and nurturing father has been described and discussed (LaRossa, 1988; Lamb, 1987). The traditional European and North American picture of the breadwinning father and the caretaking mother was questioned and described as a model that will became increasingly obsolescent in the next decades (e.g. , Coltrane, 1596). Masculinity was attributed a crisis from which emerge new options of agency for men (Meuser, 1998; Kimmel, 2000; Connell 1995). Pro-feminist and critical men's movements claimed equal access to resources for all groups within...