Fathers in 1960s Switzerland: A Silent Revolution?

This article analyses changes in the models of fatherhood as conveyed by newspapers and religious magazines in the two Swiss cities of Protestant Lausanne and Catholic Fribourg between 1955 and 1970, and as reflected in the discourse of forty-eight individuals who lived in these cities. To do so, this article adopts the point of view of the fathers who sought to guarantee the current or future well-being of their families. It shows that new constraints emerging from the changes in the socioeconomic context led to a redefinition of the good father in the sense that fathers had to invest in the quality of their children as well as in familial well-being. These new constraints found an echo in the norms of fatherhood as conveyed by newspapers and religious magazines in both cities, and a convergence towards a new model of fatherhood across these publications was perceptible despite religious differences. The interviews testify to the internalisation of this new model; fathers who spent time with their children, who passed down their values and knowledge so as to provide their children with the necessary skills to be successful in life, were described as the good fathers.