Abstract

Following the changes occurred in the labor market and in the ways of making and living family, today men are more and more actively involved in the processes of management of the harmony among personal, family and working fields. The aim of this paper is to present a case study on fathers who face the complexity of parenthood and it specifically focuses on those cases in which the support of families of origin is absent. In a context characterised by a lack of «family-friendly» welfare policies such as the Italian one, grandparents are usually the primarily informal resource employed by the new parents to overcome the parenthood challenges. The research aim at exploring those context in which such valuable tool is absent - because of mobility processes that lead the couple away from homeland; peculiar dynamics in the family relationships, deaths or health problems - in order to better understand the weight of fathers' role in searching family balance and their ways of perceiving and experiencing fatherhood.