The Becoming of Children and Caregiving Fathers—A Video Ethnography of Individual Parent Conversations at Swedish Child Health Centres

ABSTRACT The current study explores conversations fathers and nurses at Swedish Child Health Centres. Video‐ethnographic methods allow for the analysis of naturally occurring interaction and the analysis focuses on how the participants address fathers' accounts of inadequacy and being secondary to the mother in terms of being able to provide care and comfort to his infant child. Using an ethnomethodological approach, the analysis focuses on how the participants make sense of social identities in relation to fatherhood, childhood and care practices. We argue that the participants construe both father and infant child as involved in a process of becoming as they highlight the temporal aspects of fatherhood and childhood and emphasise future possibilities of care.