The Voice, Harry Potter, and fatherhood: what's the connection? Hear Dr Martin Robb talk about this and much more on episode 1 of Now and Men. Martin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Care at the Open University. His work is based around issues of gender, identity and care, with a particular focus on fatherhood and the development of caring masculinities.

Some of the issues we cover in our conversation include:

• How fatherhood and men’s care are portrayed in popular culture.
• The strengths and weaknesses of different political positions on fatherhood and men caring for children.
• How to understand and promote men’s involvement as fathers and caregivers.
• Debates about the meaning and relevance of ‘male role models’ to men and boys.
• Historical perspectives and how thinking about fatherhood has changed over time.
• How Martin’s own experiences of growing up as a boy and becoming a father have impacted on his work.

Martin has a blog at: https://martinrobb.wordpress.com, and you can follow him on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/MartinRobbOU

In the episode, we mention the following pieces of work:

• Martin is the author of a book which was published by Routledge in 2020, entitled ‘Men, Masculinities and the Care of Children: Images, Ideas and Identities’: https://www.routledge.com/Men-Masculinities-and-the-Care-of-Children-Images-Ideas-and-Identities/Robb/p/book/9781138234550
• He has also edited a book (available for free as an e-book) on ‘Fathers and Forefathers: Men and their Children in Genealogical Perspective’: https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/2628
• Martin, Sandy and others worked on an Open University project called ‘Beyond Male Role Models’: https://wels.open.ac.uk/research/beyond-male-role-models
• Martin, Sandy and David Bartlett have collaborated on a project for Promundo on ‘Young Men, Masculinity and Wellbeing’: https://promundoglobal.org/resources/young-men-masculinity-wellbeing-open-university-research-project-association-promundo/
• At the end of the episode Stephen and Sandy mention our own new book, co-authored with Prof Nicole Westmarland and several international colleagues, which has just been published by Policy Press (including as a free e-book) - ‘Men’s Activism to End Violence Against Women: Voices from Spain, Sweden and the UK’: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/mens-activism-to-end-violence-against-women

This episode was hosted by Stephen Burrell and Sandy Ruxton, and was produced by Vic Turnbull from MIC Media: https://micmedia.co.uk. We are very grateful to Vic from all of the support she has given us in setting up Now and Men.