Displaying good fathering through the construction of physical activity as intimate practice

A close father child relationship is apotent cultural ideal in western, post-industrialsocieties. This paperposes physical activity as a practice through which fathers display intimacy in their relationships with their children.Utilising the premiseof family display,this paperrevealsthe conduct of contemporary fathersto be suffused withmeaning fromthe social convention that intimate fathers are 'good fathers'. It arguesthat intimate fatherhood represents adiscourse, serving to shape whatfathers do and how they and their children display and give meaning to fatheringpractices.