`titrebNew Fathers, Violence and Childcare`/titreb This article examines how « new » ideologies of fathers as caring parents who are being denied their equal rights to look after children by all powerful mothers and the law, post-separation, have obscured ways in which fatherhood has been reconstructed as a means of continuing to do power over women and children through familial social relations. In discussing domestically violent fathers as an empirical case study, the author argues that there is no simple relation between the activities of « caring for » children and the lessening of abusive practices towards them. The article therefore raises questions about those feminist and pro-feminist theories which view men’s involvement in childcare as an inevitable means of transforming dominant masculine identities.