There is a chapter missing from this book, a chapter about the making of Making Men into Fathers. It would begin in 1995 in Stockholm in a conference room on the twenty-fifth floor overlooking the harbor. The chapter would try (most likely in vain) to recapture those first three days of intense conversations between the authors of this book, several of whom are central figures in the international debates on gender and welfare states, and two of whom are among the leading figures in the critical studies of men.

Over the next four years the authors of this book met many times, sometimes in the heart of the dark Swedish winter. Our conversations continued; our friendships developed. Our dialogues cut across borders, both geographic and disciplinary. We challenged and energized each other, particularly the junior scholars, Anna Gavanas, Helena Bergman, and Livia Oláh, who brought new perspectives and ideas to our discussions. The original title of the project, Fathers and the State, was discarded since it did not capture the dynamic and complex processes we were writing about. Nor did it encompass the multidimensional views of the authors or of the book, which were being continuously reconfigured and recast in our discussions, through our heuristic triangles. Trudie Knijn presented her rotating and overlapping triangles (the institutional and domestic); David Morgan his inspirational third father triangle. Ann Orloff kept up the provocative questions about men's interests. My scholarship has been enriched by the making of this book.