This review proposes a new concept, the ‘Paternal body’, to illuminate the corporeal impact, on employed men, of new fatherhood. It explores literatures on fatherhood, employment and health to reveal how fathers experience pregnancy, birth and infant‐care (infancy defined, here, as up to age two). In contrast to well‐established notions regarding Maternal (pregnant and post‐birth) bodies, there exists within management studies no similar concept to facilitate understanding of recent fatherhood, the body and employment. The proposed concept ‘Paternal body’ addresses this lack, offering a strategic platform for theorizing how fatherhood impacts men's lived, bodily experience of balancing paternity with paid work. Drawing upon interdisciplinary perspectives from sociology and health literatures, the paper reviews research on paternal corporeality in the context of employment in neo‐liberal (market‐oriented) economies (typified by the USA and UK). It identifies related and important health symptoms (such as sleep deprivation) that pose risks to paternal health and employment. Yet the review shows how expectant/recent fathers are pressured, at work, to live up to a mythical image of hegemonic masculinity that requires them to display strong work‐orientation, denying ill‐health and working long hours away from home. The paper coins the term: ‘Absent warrior’ to represent this illusion of a ‘manly’ father (warrior) who is absent from infant‐care and from his home, but bodily present at work: a father who is supposed to deny the materiality of inhabiting a Paternal body. Recommendations are made for further exploration of fathers’ embodied health needs through the concept of the lived ‘Paternal body’.

中文翻译：

---

“父亲的身体”：回顾新父亲身份对就业男性的身体影响


这篇评论提出了一个新概念，即“父亲的身体”，以阐明新父亲身份对就业男性的肉体影响。它探讨了有关父亲身份、就业和健康的文献，以揭示父亲如何经历怀孕、分娩和婴儿护理（这里的婴儿期定义为两岁以下）。与关于母亲（怀孕和产后）身体的既定概念相反，管理研究中不存在类似的概念来促进对近期父亲身份、身体和就业的理解。提出的“父亲身体”概念解决了这一缺陷，为理论化父亲身份如何影响男性的生活和身体体验提供了一个战略平台，以平衡父亲身份与有偿工作。本文借鉴社会学和健康文献的跨学科视角，回顾了新自由主义（市场导向）经济体（以美国和英国为代表）就业背景下父亲的肉体性研究。它识别出对父亲健康和就业构成风险的相关且重要的健康症状（例如睡眠不足）。然而，这篇评论显示，准爸爸/刚出生的爸爸在工作中面临着怎样的压力，要实现霸权男性气质的神话形象，这要求他们表现出强烈的工作导向，否认健康状况不佳和长时间外出工作。该论文创造了“缺席的战士”这个词来代表这种“男子气概”的父亲（战士）的幻想，他不在婴儿护理和家庭中，但在工作中身体力行：一个应该否认物质性的父亲居住在父亲的身体里。建议通过活生生的“父亲身体”的概念进一步探索父亲的具体健康需求。