0 DOWNLOAD NOTICE: This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of Family Issues. The publisher-authenticated version is currently available online before print at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X18811387 . For citation and paging look for the final print version. A Cultural Model of Parenthood as Engineering: How Caregiving Fathers Construct a Gender-Neutral View of the Parent Role By Danny Kaplan and Efrat Knoll Danny Kaplan Center for Men Studies at the Gender Studies Program and Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bar Ilan University Efrat Knoll Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bar Ilan University Corresponding author: Danny Kaplan danny@dannykaplan.org Abstract: Despite the growing impact of the therapeutic discourse on family life there is limited research on how it affects lay understanding of parenthood, beyond concerns with gender roles. Drawing on a case-study of caregiving fathers in new family forms we delineate an emerging folk model of parenthood as engineering. It construes parental caregiving as lay expertise in emotion management, which includes active planning and vision, pursuit of information, time management, and emotional engagement. The cultural shift toward parenting as expertise is reinforced by fathers increased participation in childcare, as men are often viewed as lacking “natural” maternal competence and more dependent on deliberate acquisition of expertise. Notions of engineering may not be as salient among heteronormative parents who are less compelled to actively reconstruct established familial structures. While this folk model underscores a gender-neutral ideal nested in liberal ideology, the actual shift raises renewed questions about gendered power relations. Acknowledgments We are indebted to our friends and colleagues Galit Ailon, Orly Benjamin, Sylvie Fogiel Bijaoui, Kathleen Gerson, Limor Gabay-Egozi , Shira Klimor Maman, Shira Offer, amd Zvi Triger for their careful reading and thoughts on previous drafts of this article. Their insightful comments have greatly improved the quality of our argument. Thanks, too, to Oran Moked for his help in translation and style editing. We thank the editor Constance Shehan and anonymous reviewers of Journal of Family Issues for their generous and most constructive suggestions on the finals versions of this manuscript.