From the Waiting Room to the Delivery Room

Discover the fifth session of the 2025–2026 seminar series "Crossed Perspectives on Early Childhood" – "From the Waiting Room to the Delivery Room: Contemporary Redefinitions of Fatherhood in Turkey".

The seminar approaches early childhood as a social, historical, and cultural construct. Knowledge and theories relating to conception, birth, and child development are analysed in terms of the child’s interactions with their surroundings and according to gender norms. The seminar also explores the boundaries of this age category and its temporality, according to medical, international, anthropological, and historical standards.

This paper explores recent changes in paternal roles surrounding childbirth in Turkey, based on accounts from women who gave birth between 1990 and 2020. The analysis highlights the growing involvement of fathers in perinatal practices, as well as the tensions and expectations that arise from this. Using an ethnographic approach, the aim is to understand how gender norms, family hierarchies, and hospital policies shape experiences of “fatherhood in maternity.” Far from a uniform model, the father figures observed oscillate between symbolic presence, emotional support, and sometimes exclusion or awkwardness. This partial redefinition of parental roles reveals the dynamics of hybridization of masculinities and gendered negotiations around childbirth.

• Selen Gobelez: Postdoctoral researcher in sociology at the University of Nîmes (UPR Chrome)
• Discussant: Doris Bonnet: Anthropologist (IRD, Ceped)