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Silence and Heterosexual Gendered Norms

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Tracy Morison d and Catriona macleo

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Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za First published 2015 ISBN (soft cover) 978-0-7969-2503-9 ISBN (pdf) 978-0-7969-2504-6 ISBN (epub) 978-0-7969-2505-3 © 2015 Human Sciences Research Council

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This book has undergone a double-blind, independent peer review process overseen by the HSRC Press Editorial Board.

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The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (‘the Council’) or indicate that the Council endorses the views of the authors. In quoting from this publication, readers are advised to attribute the source of the information to the individual author(s) concerned and not to the Council.

The publishers have no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this book, and do not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Edited by Maria Smit Typeset by Robin Yule (cheekychilli) Proofread by Diana Coetzee Indexed by Jennifer Stern Cover design by Carmen Schaefer (Hey Audrey) Cover photo by Carmen Schaefer Printed by [Name of printer, city, country]

Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477; Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 www.blueweaver.co.za

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Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 17 6760 4972; Fax: +44 (0) 17 6760 1640 www.eurospanbookstore.com

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Distributed in North America by River North Editions, from IPG Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741; Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 www.ipgbook.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the copyright owner. To copy any part of this publication, you may contact DALRO for information and copyright clearance. Tel: 086 12 DALRO (from within South Africa); +27 (0)11 712-8000 Fax: +27 (0)11 403-9094 Postal Address: P O Box 31627, Braamfontein 2017, South Africa www.dalro.co.za Any unauthorised copying could lead to civil liability and/or criminal sanctions.

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Contents

Preface v Chapter 1 Our research: Initial questions and changing tack 1

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Chapter 2 Exploring the operation of procreative heteronormativity in participants’ narratives about pathways to parenthood 28

Chapter 3 Talking against choice and planning: Automatic childbearing, romance, love and the sacralised child 49

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Chapter 4 Constructing a procreation imperative: Glorifying parenthood and denigrating ‘childlessness’ 75

Chapter 5 Children need a mom and a dad: The marriage–procreation bond and the conjugalisation of reproduction 100 Chapter 6 Daddy issues: The role and rule of the father 119

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Chapter 7 Gender norms, procreative heteronormativity, resistance and possibilities 149 Appendix 1 Interview guides

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Appendix 2 Demographic details

Appendix 3 Transcription conventions

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References 172

Contributors 190

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Index 191


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Preface

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This book is a product of several years of collaboration between Tracy and Catriona and is based on the findings of Tracy’s doctoral research, which Catriona supervised. The original impetus for the study stems fundamentally from our personal and academic commitment to de-gendering and queering both heterosexuality and parenting. As feminist researchers who work in the broad area of sexualities and reproduction, we see the private, and often invisible, space of intimate relationships between women and men as unavoidably entwined with complex relations of power. We believe that it is imperative to interrogate the discourses of gender, heterosexuality, family and parenting in order to shine a light upon that which seems to us to be most natural in relation to becoming and being a parent and, ultimately, to facilitate more equitable partnerships between women and men.

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We therefore begin this book by relinquishing ‘the protective barriers of objectivity’ (Etherington 2007: 599) and locating ourselves in our research as central figures who shape every aspect of it (Finlay 2002). This transparency is part of our feminist commitment to researcher reflexivity as an ongoing practice that occurs throughout our research practice from inception through to the writing up. We therefore share aspects of ‘who we are’ before beginning the research conversation. This kind of disclosure is not merely intended as a means of validating our account, but to help produce a rich and complex understanding that emphasises the provisionality and contingency of the knowledge produced, the ways that we as researchers are already positioned before embarking on the research (Pillow 2003). In continuing the practice of reflexivity throughout the book, we resist the urge to sanitise our account as we open our practice and processes to public scrutiny, and admit to its messiness, problems and pitfalls (Etherington 2007).

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We recognise that who we are – especially in terms of our own intimate partnerships and reproductive choices – is integral to our work and has a bearing on the research that we present in this book. As women in committed, intimate partnerships with men, our lives conform to varying degrees with the expectations dictated by conventional ideas of heterosexual coupledom. Tracy is in a domestic partnership and voluntarily childless, while Catriona is married with two children, whose births were ‘planned’ to coincide with sabbaticals. Catriona’s life therefore fits more closely than Tracy’s with the idealised heterosexual life trajectory (which we later discuss in terms of the canonical heterosexual couple narrative – see Chapter 3). Moreover, we not only simultaneously deconstruct and reproduce procreative heterosexuality (a term that we unpack later), but as middle-class,

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English-speaking, white1 academics in post-apartheid South Africa we are also enmeshed in daily struggles of racialised and class-based relations.

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We recognise that being like our participants (heterosexual, married, parent, middle-class, white) or unlike them (unmarried, childless, English-speaking) allows particular ways of speaking and seeing, and also potentially impede others. Later in the book, we engage in a more sustained critical reflection on our role as researchers in shaping the data that emerged from our study. As suggested by Pillow (2003), critical self-awareness and vigilance were built into our research practice through the documentation of activities, ideas and impressions in field notes and research journals; reflective note-taking in relation to tape recordings and transcripts; supervision sessions (where self, theory, method, analysis and process were discussed); and further reflexive discussions during the multiple revisions that went into writing this book and other articles (see Morison 2013; Morison & Macleod 2013a & 2013b). This helped to refine how we understood the project, as we discuss later, to take cognisance of the multiple, contradictory, and socially constructed, interactive and reflexive subjectivities we occupy in relation to our participants. In our analysis of these data we were also aware of how the narratives were formed as part of an interaction that we helped to shape and we highlight our own role in the generation of specific aspects of the data for our readers. In so doing, we intend for the readers to insert themselves in the active process of adjudging our vigilance and reflection in terms of self, other, context, process, assumptions and theory.

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This research journey – the process of reading theory and literature, conducting the research, analysing screeds of data, writing, and rewriting – has involved an ever-evolving relationship between us the authors as our roles shifted from student/supervisor to full colleagues. We attribute the ongoing respectful and supportive relationship that we have enjoyed during this time, and our ongoing productive research collaboration, to our respective commitments to the feminist principles of solidarity, openness, fairness, support, nurturance and care. These principles have allowed us to navigate together the complex and messy business of qualitative research and its write-up, as well as the progression from teacher/ student to a fully collegial relationship. In closing, we acknowledge several people without whom this research would have been impossible. Of course, the research reflected in this book rests fundamentally on the willingness of the participants to speak about their private lives. As intimated later, this was not always easy. Silences, deflections and confusion ensued. And yet, Tracy was always welcomed, and participants politely accommodated her ‘unusual conversational move’ – which we eventually termed her seemingly odd question about ‘choosing’ to have children in the context of married heterosexual coupledom (see later discussion). Their responses show a commitment to try to attend to her (rather odd!) questions. We are grateful to them for their time and

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for their readiness to engage in a topic that was deeply personal to some and not always easy to speak about. We also gratefully acknowledge the funding from Rhodes University and the National Research Foundation that made this research possible. We thank Katherine Furman and Santhana Gengiah, who proofread and formatted the manuscript, as well as colleagues in the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme who have commented on various versions and forms of our work over the years. Lastly, we also wish to thank our families, and especially our partners, for their continued love and support. Note

The main racial designations during apartheid were ‘White’, ‘Black’, and ‘Coloured’. ‘Asians’ were the main sub-group of ‘Coloured’, and were further subdivided into ‘Chinese’ and ‘Indians’. Although these definitions no longer have the same entrenched official currency, they are still invoked: firstly, socially and, secondly, by government to evaluate the progress of redress of past injustices through, for example, processes of affirmative action.

These terms therefore continue to be used within the South African context (although with some discrepancy). It is standard practice to continue to use these (or similar) to call attention to on-going inequities and their effects. Moreover, in reality persons were, and still are, treated in a particular social, legal, and economic manner based on their racial status. Consequently, we employ these apartheid-generated terms of necessity in this book. Although we have not enclosed these ‘racial’ descriptors in quotation marks, we acknowledge the linkage of these constructions to the apartheid system of racial classification and our use of this apartheid-generated terminology should not be taken as an endorsement of these classifications.

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1

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1

Our research: Initial questions and changing tack

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A number of initial, somewhat undefined, questions occupied our minds as we embarked upon the study we report on in this book. How do men come to be parents? What social and interpersonal processes are involved? How does the ‘decision’ to become a parent unfold? Is becoming a father, in fact, a ‘decision’ at all, or a series of events? How are social norms implicated in the men’s paths to parenthood? How is the heterosexual relationship within which most conceptions take place implicated in the pathway towards parenthood? What discussions do men hold with their partners? What gender relations feature in the discussions and negotiations?

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With these early questions in mind, we started a process of reading in the area. Given the global focus on family planning and reproductive health, it was unsurprising that we found a relatively substantial amount of literature on contraceptive usage. We read, for example, that women hold a high level of contraceptive responsibility in many countries (Barker & Olukuya 2007),1 including in South Africa (Department of Health 2007). In contrast, the research reported, male contraceptive use, and men’s sharing of sexual and reproductive responsibilities and outcomes remain a national and international challenge (Department of Health 2012a). Despite the abundance of this type of literature, what we found, however, is that there is limited research that speaks specifically to gender and the pathways to parenthood,2 or what some researchers have called ‘parenthood decision-making’: that is, the processes of thinking or not thinking about, talking or not talking about, deciding or not deciding, and acting or not acting upon becoming a parent (this is confirmed by Rijken & Knijn (2009)).

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At the same time, we were reading theory, specifically Judith Butler’s performativity theory. It was in this difficult, iterative (and brain-hurting) activity of thinking through theory in relation to formulating our research questions and in relation to the literature that we began to frame our approach to this research: an approach to gender that addresses how gender norms operate. For this, we utilised Butler’s theoretical notion of performativity, which is a useful framework for exploring the processes of gender construction and gender normalisation. We supplemented it with the notion of performance and insights from the narrative-discursive method (see more detail later in this chapter and in Chapter 2). With this as background, we thus formulated the following research questions: What discursive resources do white Afrikaans-speaking people (re)cite when speaking about past or anticipated parenthood decisions and men’s involvement therein? (See 1


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M e n ’ s pat h w ay s t o pa r e n t h o o d : S i l e n c e a n d h e t e r o s e x u a l g e n d e r e d n o r m s

our rationale for using white Afrikaans people as participants later in this chapter). What gendered scripts are (re)cited by participants and what are the potential implications for gender power relations? What positions do participants adopt within their narratives and what is envisaged as male involvement? What instances of troubled positioning arise in relation to gender and how are they resolved?

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After the long process of proposal writing and ethical clearance, we set out into the field to interview Afrikaans-speaking heterosexual men and women. We asked them to tell us their stories about becoming a parent, especially about how they and their partner were involved in the process and in any decisions. We asked women to specifically concentrate on the role that their male partner played.

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As our research progressed, however, it became apparent that answering our initial questions was not as straightforward as simply asking our participants about their ‘parenthood choices’ and stories related to the personal and interpersonal processes they went through in thinking through, talking about and actively becoming a parent. What struck us most as we went through the process of collecting and analysing the data was how participants experienced difficulty talking about their ‘decision-making’ processes in relation to having children and especially male involvement in ‘family planning’ or reproductive ‘decisions’. Direct answers to the question of how men become fathers, how they engage in a process of negotiating with their partners around having children or thinking and deciding about their parental status, remained elusive. As we show in this book, the issue of becoming a heterosexual parent was not especially ‘storyworthy’ for them; it was really a ‘nontopic’. Though most or our participants were or wanted to be parents, we were asking them to tell us a story that bore little or no relevance to their lives: an account, for the most part, centred on characters who are largely rational, autonomous and reflexive, who deliberated, planned, and chose more or less actively.

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This meant that the participants really had no response to our questions about becoming a parent, not as we had put it to them in any case. As we reviewed the data we had collected, we increasingly noted that participants were largely silent in relation to our questions and were telling us different, seemingly unrelated stories. We started to understand the reasons for this apparent silence as we ‘listened’ for and to it, and this will become clearer to readers throughout the remainder of the book. What this meant for us during the earlier stages of the research, and later for our analytic strategy, as we started to try to make sense of what our participants were – and often were not – telling us, was that we had to pursue that which ‘goes without saying’. We had to listen for what was often unvoiced in the interview, because it was so obvious and taken for granted by the participant. Quite unknown to us at the outset, our participants’ difficulty in answering our questions ultimately proved very useful in highlighting exactly the gendered and social norms in which we were interested. In this chapter, we outline the journey we undertook from initial formulation of the research questions to changing tack, and answering different questions to the ones we initially anticipated. We discuss

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O u r r e s e a r c h : I n i t i a l q u e s t io n s a n d c h a n g i n g ta c k

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how we arrived at our initial research rationale, by examining pertinent literature. We describe our study, including the participants and how the methodology that we employed enables the analysis of social, cultural and normative processes. We outline how we understood our participants’ bewilderment at our questions about the planning, choices or decisions related to their pathways to parenthood. We discuss what we refer to as our ‘unusual conversational move’ (borrowing the term used by Reynolds and Taylor (2004: 203), which we explain below) and how it created interactional trouble for the participants. This trouble, as we shall show, led to what Liza Mazzei (2003) calls ‘veiled silences’ in which participants attend to a different question than the one being asked. It was this very process that highlighted the key normative regulatory framework that we discuss in this book, what we have called ‘procreative heteronormativity’.

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The research literature that informed our rationale

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At the outset of the project, we had some initial ideas about trying to understand gender power relations in reproductive decision-making, specifically decisions around having children or family formation, among healthy, ‘normal’, heterosexual people (see later discussion on the rationale for our focus on white heterosexual Afrikaans people). The only times that we encountered researchers explicitly considering gender and parenthood decisions/paths were in circumstances that require overt deliberation or that deviate from the heteronormative ideal in some way. Thus, there is research on infertility and the use of new reproductive technologies (NRTs) like in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment,3 and on reproduction in the context of potentially transferable congenital conditions and especially HIV.4 There is also some research on the pathways to parenthood of lesbians5 and gay men.6 In addition, researchers have considered those who conceive as teenagers.7 And finally, there is also a body of work on people who opt out of parenthood and remain ‘childfree’.8

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The common trend, therefore, is to study those who do not closely adhere to the ‘gold standard’ of parenthood, namely able-bodied, middle-class, white, married/partnered heterosexuality (Riggs 2007). Thus, having children goes unquestioned among those who are ‘old enough’, married, able-bodied, healthy (especially HIV-negative) and economically stable. In contrast, we know that parenthood is questioned for lesbians and gay men, as well as those who are teen-aged, ‘too old’, unmarried or single, HIVpositive, poor, or who have a physical or intellectual disability. Race has also been a factor in assessing people’s reproductive decisions in the past (Kruger 2006; Morell 2000). These individuals fall outside the heteronormative ideal, because they have to make an overt choice to have children or they deviate from the normative life path expected of most heterosexual adults. In contrast, there is far less research that explicitly considers how ordinary heterosexual people go about deciding to have children and especially how this unfolds within the context of heterosexual coupledom (Rijken & Knijn 2009).

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Research also does not usually consider why these people want to have children. Indeed, Dyer and colleagues note the lack of research on ‘parenthood motives’ in South Africa (Dyer et al. 2008: 352). A reason for this gap, Finnish researcher Eija Sevón (2005) maintains, is that ‘parents are seldom asked to explain their choice to have children, in contradistinction to those who cannot or do not want to have children’ (2005: 463, our emphasis). As a result, there are only very few studies on the parenthood decision-making experiences of heterosexual women who have no problems conceiving and do so at the ‘right’ time and under the ideal conditions. Sevón’s (2005) own study of heterosexual women’s stories of their motherhood decision-making is one of the few exceptions. There are even fewer studies that consider fertile, heterosexual men, especially before their partners become pregnant (Peterson & Jenni 2005).

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Most of what we know about people’s parenthood ‘decision-making’ and motives has been gleaned indirectly from related studies. For instance, qualitative research on fertility and infertility with women has shed light on women’s motivations for parenthood (Dyer et al. 2008). Work using transition theory on the ‘transition to motherhood/fatherhood’ might also hold some relevance (Draper 2003). Similarly, research that investigates younger men’s anticipation of fatherhood or early fatherhood experiences might also indirectly shed light on men’s parenthood decisions. (This work is discussed further below.) With the exception of this handful of studies, it is fair to say that fertile heterosexual people, and especially men, appear to be the invisible norm in research that focuses explicitly on pathways to parenthood. As a result, we know relatively little about heterosexual men’s pathways to parenthood – that is, the process by which they come to be fathers – and how this process is negotiated along with female partners.

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When we look more broadly at reproductive research conducted with heterosexuals, we see that past research has provided some insight into female–male (non-) negotiation specifically in relation to heterosex and contraception, and minimally in terms of reproductive ‘decision-making’. This literature tends to highlight three broad trends: men dominating the process, men deferring to women, or men collaborating with women, each of which we will refer to briefly below. For the most part, this research, while relevant, does not shed much light on thoughts, talk and actions about parenthood (parenthood ‘choices’ or ‘decision-making’), but rather gives some indication of some of the more general gender-relational dynamics involved in (hereto)sexual and reproductive partnerships.

Research on gender and reproductive decision-making Within the first of the three trends referred to above, men dominating decisionmaking, researchers have highlighted how reproductive ‘choices’ within heterosexual partnerships are socioculturally defined and mediated through localised patriarchal power relations, so that a woman’s ability to exercise her own choices, and even to express her preferences or opinions, can be severely curtailed. There is abundant

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and rich research in South Africa dealing with the negotiation of heterosex. This research, while not always speaking directly to reproductive decision-making, sheds light on the role of gender in heterosexuality. The profusion of research on sexual practices has occurred largely in response to the rising HIV pandemic. It has produced much evidence of gender power dynamics in female–male negotiations of heterosex (Shefer & Foster 2009) and, in particular, the centrality of men’s dominance in these negotiations. In sexual and reproductive heterosexual relations, men frequently dictate the terms of the relationship and (directly or indirectly) dominate decision-making.9 Many studies show that male control often proceeds through the use of violence, coercion or threats. There is a substantial body of South African research on gender dynamics in violent or coercive sexual relationships, showing how this constrains women’s sexual and reproductive choices.10 Research also points to the lack of communication between women and men in heterosexual negotiations (Shefer & Foster 2009).

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While acknowledging the trends shown in this research, there is a move locally and abroad to take women’s agency more seriously. In South Africa, this is notable in the work of Tamara Shefer and colleagues.11 This is in line with international trends in feminist research, as exemplified in the work of Rosalind Gill and colleagues. For example, Throsby and Gill (2004) criticise research that concentrates on the negative effects that men have on women’s sexual and reproductive choices and in this way, perhaps inadvertently, characterises men as power-hungry or cruel. They contend that this sort of research focus is politically reductive, because it fails to capture the full picture of gender relations, including the negative effects that these also hold for particular men.

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The second research trend referred to above concerns men’s deference to women, specifically in relation to reproductive matters. Research indicates that male deference, and the form that it takes, is related to the ways in which men justify and make sense of female responsibility for reproductive matters. Women’s autonomy can be limited when male passivity is justified by the common construction of reproduction as a ‘women’s issue’ as opposed to a woman’s right. In this process, men may also retain dominance and exert their influence passively and indirectly, as a number of local and international studies show.12 As a result, women remain answerable to men and may find themselves caught between the ability to control their fertility and their partner’s potential disapproval, which sometimes entails violence or abandonment (Elfstrom & Stephenson 2012; Markens et al. 2003). In the third research trend, researchers explore joint decision-making and participants’ reports that reproductive decisions are arrived at by mutual consensus. Researchers note that simply taking a mutual decision does not equate to egalitarian decisionmaking, which is relatively less common. The latter is shown to occur in relation to more progressive constructions of reproductive choice in terms of women’s rights and bodily autonomy, which increases the likelihood of women’s preferences and needs being considered. In contrast, despite professing to collectively decide, studies also indicate that some men prefer to be involved in decision-making in order to 5


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retain control of choices and/or that women often adjust their own preferences or defer to their partners’ wishes.13

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The research that we have discussed so far deals with the negotiations and power dynamics of sexual and reproductive heterosexual partnerships, and the ways in which men are involved in decision-making: actively or passively, authoritatively or equitably. It is not, as we have mentioned, directly concerned with the processes of thinking or not thinking about, talking or not talking about, deciding or not deciding, and acting or not acting upon becoming a parent, much less men’s role in these processes. As far as our own research interest was concerned, therefore, we also cast our attention wider, and turned to the growing body of fatherhood research.

Research on fatherhood

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The topic of fatherhood has received increasing attention in recent years in South Africa, both in the popular and academic press. It features strongly in the work on boys and men that explores the social construction of heterosexual masculinities.14 These studies are important, because they address the previous dearth of South African research on men, especially work that addresses the topic from a gendered perspective. They also usefully incorporate men’s own experiences, until now largely undocumented (Richter 2009; Swartz & Bhana 2009).

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The increased attention to fatherhood in South African research has notably been spurred by the advocacy-based work of The Fatherhood Project. The project was started by the Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC) (now defunct) Child, Youth and Family Development research programme in 2003 (Richter 2004). A notable research output from the project was the landmark text Baba: Men and fatherhood in South Africa in 2006. The work contained in this text sheds light on some of the social and cultural meanings attached to fatherhood in South Africa, locating it among the various contextual issues – such as poverty, divorce, violence, HIV and systems of migrant labour – that shape parenting practices. An important contribution of this work is its illumination of the connections between gender constructions and men’s ideas about, and aspirations towards, fatherhood.

As far as decisions about fatherhood go, there is some indication that dominant constructions of fatherhood and manhood not only shape men’s parenting practices, but also their parenthood decisions. For instance, for many South Africans in the country, a father’s ability to provide materially for his children is central to constructions of fatherhood and impact on both fatherhood practices as well as reproductive decisions (Richter 2009). Many men who cannot afford to provide for their progeny may choose not to be present or actively involved in their children’s lives once the children are born.15 Others might delay having children in the first place or have fewer children.16 Significantly, however, the inability to provide financially for children does not necessarily stop men from having children, since being able to reproduce also has a strong social significance. Such work points to the 6


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meanings that fatherhood bears – as a marker of adulthood, gendered normality, or virility, for example (Morrell 2006).

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As it stands, research on fatherhood, both in South Africa and abroad, generally does not consider the issue that we wished to explore, namely, the process of becoming a father or not, in the sense of the decisions, thoughts, actions, talk and experiences that lead up to first-time fatherhood (whether biological or adoptive), or alternatively to childfreedom. The (mostly international) work that does exist concentrates, for the most part, either on how young men envision fatherhood17 or on fathers-to-be in relation to their transition to fatherhood.18 The latter usually looks at men from the beginning of the partner’s pregnancy through to the first few months after the birth. This literature is framed by transition theory and considers fatherhood as a major life transition (in relation to issues such as role changes, emotional adjustment, stress and support), usually in the couple context (Draper 2003; Peterson & Jenni 2005). Attention is mostly paid to the impact of this transition on men and their female partners, to men’s experiences and understandings of fatherhood as a major life event.19

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The most obvious limitation of the transition to fatherhood research is that it does not necessarily give us a sense of the process leading up to first-time fatherhood. For instance, we do not know much, as Rijken and Knijn point out, about ‘how much thought they [men] gave it, if they consciously weighed costs and rewards, what dilemmas they have faced and how they deliberate to reach a decision’ (2009: 766).

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In addition, there is some variation in the extent to which researchers problematise the normality of fatherhood as a stage in the heterosexual life course. While some researchers treat fatherhood as a normal developmental stage,20 others do question and problematise such entrenched assumptions about parenthood.21

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Limitations aside, these studies on fatherhood do shed some light on the topic in which we are interested. Overall, such studies show that many heterosexual young men value and aspire to have children, and that they may be more invested in fathering than is commonly believed. The majority of men in these studies expect or want to be fathers. Some male participants have attributed their desire to the anticipated emotional rewards of having children (Thompson & Lee 2011), though most have difficulty in explaining their motivations and aspirations for fatherhood. Significantly, qualitative findings show that the answers that are commonly given relate to a view of fatherhood as inevitable, as a ‘natural progression’ (Lupton & Barclay 1997: 119), or as central to constructions of masculinity (Morrell 2007) and men’s ‘relationship to the gender order’ (Henwood & Procter 2003: 341). Such findings strongly suggest that parenthood is not only viewed as an essential characteristic of mature adulthood, but is also an expected, even prescribed, stage in the heterosexual life course. Therefore, the studies that we have outlined provided us with some insights, but we were still left with many questions. As a result, we chose to focus explicitly on pathway/s to parenthood both in relation to men’s thoughts and aspirations towards 7


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fatherhood, as well as the process by which they may become fathers for the first time within the heterosexual-couple context. This involves a range of decisions, including whether to have children or not, when to do so, under what conditions, as well as preferences and ideals about the number of children and family composition. Therefore, in many ways, our research sought to deal with issues of heterosexual couples’ planning, choices, and decisions related to parenthood – which we frequently capture under the term ‘parenthood decision-making’ – and, in particular, male roles and participation in these.

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Our study: White, heterosexual men’s paths to parenthood in South Africa

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The literature discussed above forms the background against which we conducted our study on men’s roles and involvement in heterosexual pathways to parenthood. Our focus on heterosexuality was an attempt to foreground dominant subjectivities that frequently remain uninterrogated. We wanted to draw attention to the ‘gold standard’ of parenthood (Riggs 2007). For those closest to the ideal, parenthood is an unquestioned right, and having children is considered to be obviously desired and expected. We chose to home in on a particular social group in South Africa that have historically occupied a privileged social space: white, heterosexual Afrikaans people. We elaborate on our reasons for this choice in more detail a little later in this chapter, and also in Chapter 3.

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Drawing on narrative-discursive methodology and Butlerian theory (which are explained in more depth in Chapter 2), we posed the research questions outlined at the beginning of this chapter. We wish to highlight three things at this stage: (1) our use of narrative-discursive methodology that enables a focus on social, cultural and normative processes; (2) our decision to foreground the invisible norm which, we argue, has implications for those who do not fit this profile; and (3) our decision to interview both men and women concerning men’s pathways to parenthood.

Analysing social, cultural and normative processes

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Readers will note that in posing questions in the way that we did, we foregrounded our focus on such things as ‘discursive resources’, ‘gendered scripts’, ‘narratives’, ‘positions’ and ‘troubling’, rather than, say, men’s experiences or men’s actions. We were interested in the gendered constructions and associated power relationships surrounding men and their pathways to parenthood. The narrative-discursive method that we used calls attention to the ways in which accounts of the (non-) decision-making around parenthood are simultaneously resourced and constrained by larger sociocultural meanings, as well as how the speakers engage in reflexive work while giving an account of these life processes. The notion of a discursive resource is defined as ‘a set of meanings that exist prior to an instance of talk and [are] detectable within it’ (Reynolds et al. 2007: 335).

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It is common to a number of critical discursive psychological narrative analyses (Bamberg 2004), and follows the basic assumption of discursive psychology that talk is constitutive (that is, that it constructs rather than reflects reality). The notion of a discursive resource thus refers to prevailing sociocultural understandings (sets of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements, and so forth) present in society’s language practices and in the particular context in which a narrative is situated (Taylor & Littleton 2006).

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Within a narrative-discursive approach, individuals are seen as employing established and intelligible discursive resources available to them within a culture to produce stories of an event, person or experience (Smith & Sparkes 2008; Taylor 2006). In drawing upon particular discursive resources, the narrator creates a localised, contextual narrative (Taylor 2006) that becomes personalised by the unique circumstances of a particular life (Smith & Sparkes 2008). In addition to the key conceptual tools of discursive resources, we utilised the notions of scripts, canonical narratives, subject positions, and troubling and repair. These are explained further in Chapter 3.

A focus on normative subjectivities

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Given our interest in cultural gender scripts and power relations, our decision to focus on white Afrikaans-speaking people was strategic in the sense of turning the spotlight on the intersecting identity markers of heterosexuality, middleclass status, and ‘whiteliness’22 as the invisible norms against which marginalised groups are frequently inadvertently or purposefully judged. For instance, our interest in focusing on white people emerges from the observation that much of the reproductive research in South Africa tends to focus on black people, often in combination with economic disadvantage. It has been argued that this focus incorporates the majority of the South African population (Swartz & Bhana 2009), and the underlying rationale might be to give voice to those who tend to be marginalised in mainstream society. It is equally important, however, to ensure that the norms that underpin ‘whiteness’ or ‘whiteliness’ (as we prefer to call it) do not remain invisible and uninterrogated at the same time. Indeed, scholars like Melissa Steyn (2004) stress the importance of not only problematising ‘whiteness’ – especially in a context of socio-political transformation as in South Africa – but also to ‘particularize specific whitenesses’ (2004: 145) and to focus on ‘local inflections of whiteness’ (2004: 146). This involves attending to the politics of location: the ways in which various intersections of power operate upon social subjects within a particular context, including the gendered dynamics that operate within whiteliness (Steyn 2004; see also Steyn & Van Zyl 2009). Thus, the rationale for our research is not simply to attend to an under-researched area, but to understand the narratives produced by people who occupy a historically dominant position in South Africa, and the relations of power to which these narratives and the discursive resources they draw upon alert us. Despite being

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a minority group in South Africa,23 white Afrikaans speakers as a group have historically enjoyed privileged social status in this country under the white minority government. Indeed, as Steyn (2009: 150) argues, ‘the apartheid system was put in place in their name’. During this time,

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[d]eeply encoded patterns of paternalism and prejudice [were] an essential part of the Afrikaner nationalist tradition. Notions of superiority, exclusivity and hierarchy … existed as more or less conscious ‘habits of mind’. Together they comprise[d] a folkloric amalgam of popular beliefs and traditions in which the idea of human difference appear[ed] as part of the natural order of things. (Dubow 1992: 210)

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Ideas of difference in the logic of apartheid were not only centred on race, but also deeply gendered. White Afrikaans men enjoyed privileged social positions based on norms of unequal, authoritarian relationships with white women and children, as well as black people in general (Morrell 2006). Men were seen as the head of the household, which generally included not only the wife and children, but also domestic workers and labourers. This position was bolstered by the rhetoric of ‘family values’ based, to a large extent, on conservative Christian ideology. This position enshrined the male-headed household as the God-ordained cornerstone of Afrikanerdom (Du Pisani 2001; Steyn 2004).

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The end of apartheid represented a major break in terms of Afrikanerdom (Steyn 2004). The transition to democracy, the formulation of a slew of new legislation and policy, the demise of the National Party (that had been the ruling party in the apartheid government), and the changed nature of public debate presented a personal and social challenge to many white Afrikaners. Affirmative action, employment equity and black economic empowerment, in particular, shifted the ground for economically active people, specifically white males (Conway 2008). As with other groupings of people, white Afrikaans citizens in general had to adjust to social changes that were complex, at times contradictory, and that challenged the hegemony of Afrikaans ‘culture’.

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Within the broader context of socio-political change in democratic South Africa, gender equity has taken centre stage alongside debates concerning issues relating to such things as race, sexual orientation, poverty and service delivery struggles, health and HIV. Accordingly, the power that was rooted in traditional conceptions of male selfhood was challenged, giving rise both to a reassertion of these traditional conceptions, and to new and contested discourses of manhood and changes to the role of men in families (Morrell 2006). As a result, ‘Afrikaner masculinity no longer prescribes ideals of masculinity to South African society at large, to white men in general, or even to Afrikaans-speaking white men’ (Du Pisani 2001: 172). In terms of sexuality, the power relations in the broader socio-political arena – and the discursive resources that underpin them – have implications for the roles that women and men play in families and family formation. This is evident in struggles by lesbians, gay men and bisexual people (LGB) for civil rights, including those 10


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pertaining to marriage and parenthood. Heteronormative social arrangements have been questioned and, once again, these disputes have been reported on extensively in the media (Morison & Reddy 2013). Yet, despite de jure recognition of such rights, heterosexuality remains normalised, with same-sex relationships being ignored or denied at a social and institutional level or, worse, leading to violence as in the example of ‘corrective rape’ (Mkhize et al. 2010).

Extract 1

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The participants in our study all reflected at some stage on the nature of white Afrikaans ‘culture’, and most of them on the changes white Afrikaans-speaking people have undergone. Since the participants had volunteered for a study about Afrikaans people, being Afrikaans was a prior position that they had to negotiate in their talk. There were several negative depictions of Afrikaans culture in which certain Afrikaners commonly featured as highly traditional, rigid, conservative and religious. For instance, one of the younger participants described the Afrikaans culture as closed-minded, describing this mindset as the ‘box of Afrikanerness’ (Jakobus). Another said, ‘Afrikaners are sort of more traditionalist, more conservative, whereas maybe English, so to speak, is a bit more open’ (Riaan). Participants also emphasised changes in cultural norms. They often depicted the Afrikaans culture as in flux and stressed generational differences, distinguishing between ‘traditional’ Afrikaners and contemporary Afrikaans culture, as indicated in the extract below in which Jakobus speculated that older Afrikaans people and men might be unwilling to talk about the interview topic.

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Jakobus: Look I know you’ll probably get a lot of, probably, opposition, you know, or whatever you want to call it from men who say, you know, ‘We don’t want to talk about this topic.’ I’m quite free to say, look, I haven’t thought about it. It’s quite an interesting thing. But, you know, for me, I actually don’t mind saying, you know, when it gets to that point … I‘d really like to let a child grow up with the same values and morals that I grew up with, to become the person that I am, or am going to be. My parents actually grew up in an Afrikaans background, a huge Afrikaans background […] It was heavily dominated by a Dutch Reformed influence, a Calvinist background and all this stuff. When they had me and my brother, Davie, we were literally taken away from all that and we were, in a certain sense, we were made to consider our own viewpoints of the world. They promoted that, encouraged that. […] Um, my parents, I don’t know how they got to be how they are, but my grandparents are, especially on my mother’s side, regte egte Boeremense [genuine Boer people]. You ask my grandfather something like that [the question posed in the research interview] and he’ll show you the door. The thing is with us, we were exposed to a more liberal attitude and to be openminded about things, and to go out of your comfort zone, you know? Don’t just stick with the box and the tradition of being Afrikaans … I respect other cultures and I try to understand them, you know. (M2)24

In this extract, the speaker draws attention to generational differences. He distinguishes the generation of Afrikaners represented by his grandparents from his

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parents and his own generation. His grandparents are referred to as ‘real’ Afrikaners or ‘Boere’ – a term that was frequently associated with traditional and conservative Afrikaners – while his parents are portrayed as providing a liberal upbringing, which means going ‘out of your comfort zone’, and respecting ‘other cultures’.

The inclusion of women in the study

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So, if our focus is on white, Afrikaans-speaking men and their pathways to parenthood, why interview women as well as men? What would women have to say about this topic? Our decision must be seen, perhaps paradoxically, in the light of debates about how men are to be included in research on reproductive matters and the associated concern with not eclipsing women’s needs or detracting from the aim of empowering women. Reproductive research was, for a long time, characterised by a women-focus. In family planning research – the dominant approach to reproductive research until the early 1990s – the focus was on increasing female contraceptive usage. This was facilitated by a narrow view of reproduction as a biological phenomenon almost entirely devoid of any cultural and socio-political dimensions. This narrow understanding, however, has broadened in recent times, driven by various social issues, to a view in which reproduction is seen as embedded in the social, cultural, economic and sexual context. A consequence of this broadened view has been the inclusion of men in reproductive research and the emergence of a new paradigm in which reproductive issues are now generally framed, namely, the reproductive rights framework (Mundigo 2000).

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The debate on incorporating men into reproductive research was initially informed by the concern that men play a crucial, but sometimes restrictive role, in women’s reproductive health (Blanc 2001; Greene & Biddlecom 2000). Thus, the issue of how to incorporate men into research on reproduction came to be a thorny one, precisely because women’s (reproductive) autonomy is potentially at stake (Berer 1996; Ertürk 2004). A tension is evident in the literature between involving men with the ultimate aim of women’s empowerment versus involving men in recognition of men ‘in their own right’.

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Recent research that has focused on men ‘in their own right’ has considered men as partners who may potentially be constructively involved in women’s health and as beneficiaries of reproductive health services with their own reproductive needs and concerns. This shift is represented by two major trends in sexual and reproductive health research, Men as Partners and Male Equality approaches. Both are located within the reproductive health paradigm that is generally used to study and implement interventions related to sex and reproduction. The Men as Partners framework is underpinned by a commitment to gender equity and women’s empowerment, and aims to engage men in women’s sexual and reproductive health by addressing them as partners, both in the sense of being women’s intimate partners as well as in collaborating with women. In South Africa,

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this approach can be seen in the work of Dean Peacock and colleagues (for example, Peacock & Levack 2004; Stern et al. 2009) which deals largely with the intersection of violence and sexual and reproductive health – especially HIV – as well as in interventions such as the Men in Maternity intervention (Mullick et al. 2005). In contrast, the Male Equity approach attempts to take a broader view of men’s roles, ‘beyond their roles as women’s partners’ (Alan Guttmacher Institute 2003a: 4) and, frequently, ‘in their own right’ (Alan Guttmacher Institute 2003a, 2003b). Incorporating men in reproductive research with a view to including them in the broader reproductive health arena, is seen as beneficial to men themselves, their female partners, their children and the larger community (Varga, 2001).

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Though there is general consensus among gender scholars that attention to men is needed, feminists have also cautioned against the focus on men to the extent that women’s interests are sidelined and gender equity becomes only a vague and superficial research rationale (Cornwall & Esplen 2010). The concern is that as the equity agenda is marginalised, so too are the actual women whose potential losses in relation to reproduction are often significantly greater than those of men (Berer 1996; Ertürk 2004). A middle-ground position that attempts to address these concerns is found in the gendered and relational approach, which we adopt as a broad framework in which to study men’s practices (and which dovetails with the Butlerian theoretical approach we take).

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The gendered and relational approach to studying men’s practices moves beyond the consideration of men’s participation in the sexual and reproductive health of women, to a view of men ‘as actors with sexuality, health, reproductive, and concrete needs … [who are] considered in their interaction with women’ (Figueroa-Perea 2003: 114). The understanding of gender as relational that is apparent in this view usefully incorporates both ‘masculinities and femininities, women and men, the relations between them, and the structural context that reinforces and creates these power relations’ (Barker et al. 2010: 10).

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Since the gendered and relational approach utilises a power-based framework that takes cognisance of the reciprocal and interdependent nature of sexual and reproductive partnerships (Figueroa-Perea 2003), it is useful in avoiding undertaking an analysis of men and masculinity that excludes women and femininity. Our inclusion of women in the study was thus in recognition of the warning by some scholars (for example, Macleod 2007; Peterson 2003) that a focus on men or overemphasis on masculinity can serve to obscure the female signifier and can lead to inadequate theorising of gender as a relational concept. Constructions of heterosexual men’s pathways to parenthood only make sense and are understandable in relation to women’s pathways to parenthood. As Connell and Messerschmidt (2005: 848) state, when discussing this tendency in some work on masculinities, [g]ender is always relational, and patterns of masculinity are socially defined in contradistinction from some model (whether real or imaginary) of femininity. Perhaps more important, focusing only on the

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activities of men occludes the practices of women in the construction of gender among men.

The participants

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Thus the inclusion of both women and men in the interviews about male involvement in parenthood decision-making was an important part of our research design. Often researchers include men in studies of women’s sexual and reproductive issues, but this was reversed in our study. We included women as men’s partners. Following a gendered and relational perspective, the research study considers the ‘nature and dynamics of the gendered politics of reproduction’ (Browner 2005: 1), specifically in relation to becoming a parent for the first time. We were interested in hearing how women’s accounts resonated with the stories that men told us. We asked older women about their experiences in relation to the ways that their partners had been a part of their pathways to parenthood. We also spoke to younger women, with a view to seeing whether and how their accounts might differ from older women’s in terms of how they understood men’s roles in the process of becoming a parent for the first time and their expectations of their partner’s participation in this process.

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Tracy conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with two cohorts of participants about prospective or past pathways to parenthood. The interviews with all of the participants consisted of loosely structured, open-ended questions, with a main generic question and follow-up questions (see Appendix 1). The interviews took place in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Most were conducted in a small university town where the majority of the 23 white, Afrikaans-speaking participants resided at the time. All the participants were middle-class25 and identified as heterosexual. This group of 23 was comprised of 11 women and 12 men, further differentiated on the basis of two age cohorts, as discussed further below (a summary table of demographic details appears in Appendix 2).

Cohort One: Parents

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The first cohort was a group of older people who were recruited by word of mouth and with the assistance of the minister of one of the local Afrikaans churches. All the people who volunteered have children and, at that time, were aged between 39 and 59 years (with an average age of 46.7 years). These older participants were asked to give retrospective accounts of their experiences of deciding to become a parent within a heterosexual union, focusing specifically on men’s roles in these decisions. Consequently, we required each of the older participants to be a member of a longstanding monogamous couple. However, the participants were not, for reasons of confidentiality, partners from the same couple. Most of the participants were married to the partner with whom they had first had children. The exceptions were Stefanus (divorced), Esmé (remarried) and Annelie (widowed). Furthermore, all of the participants were parents, though we had been open to including childfree (or voluntarily ‘childless’) participants, and the majority had two or more children. Ilze 14


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(aged 50) was unique in that she only had one child. Parents of two children included Susan (aged 51), André (aged 42), Gerhardt (aged 46), Thys (aged 41), Maria (aged 39), Lettie (aged 53) and Stephanus (aged 59). Esmé (aged 53) had three children, who were born during her first marriage. Finally, Annelie (aged 49) and Koos (aged 48) each had four children.

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In terms of socioeconomic status of this cohort, eight of the 12 hold tertiary qualifications – four of the women (Maria, Esmé, Lettie, Ilze) and four of the men (André, Koos, Gerhardt, Thys) – and at the time of interviewing, most were formally employed and/or had partners who worked. Susan was working as a senior clerk. Two of the older participants were self-employed. André, an organisational psychology graduate, was practising human resources on a consultancy basis in addition to fulltime cattle farming. Two of the participants were working in administrative roles: Annelie as a legal administrator, and Maria as an administrator and trainer for a consultancy firm. Three of the participants were working in the education sector at the time. Esmé had been an educator and school principal for several years, and at the time of the study had moved into a high-level administrative role. Thys was still working as a teacher. Gerhardt was also working at a school, but as an IT technician.

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There were four participants who were not formally employed. Stephanus had retired from his full-time occupation as a church minister and at the time was acting as a caretaker of a local church. Koos had also retired, but was running a business that he had recently started. Two of the women had foregone formal employment to care full time for their children. Ilze had started a business when her child became a teenager, and was still running it at the time of being interviewed. Lettie, however, had never worked outside the home and described herself as a ‘home-maker’. She had completed a bachelor’s degree when her children were in high school, but had not sought formal employment.

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Cohort Two: Non-parents/Childfree

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The members of the second cohort were younger – ranging in age from 21 to 32 years, with an average age of 24 years. They were also recruited by word of mouth, with some assistance from the chair of the university’s Afrikaans society in accessing Afrikaans first-language students. In terms of their reproductive status, none of these participants had children; instead, having children was a future possibility and we asked them to tell us anticipated or prospective narratives about their ideas and plans in relation to parenthood, and specifically their views on male involvement in this process. About half of the male participants in this group expressed a definite desire to have children, though most assumed that fatherhood was inevitable. All the women wanted to have children, except Petro who said that she wished to pursue a career instead of motherhood. So, those who claimed to be undecided or ambivalent (that is, had some reservations or conditions) were mostly men. Franco, in particular, was reluctant to have children at all. In addition to being ‘non-parents’, none of the participants identified themselves as married or in life-partnerships at

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the time of interviewing, although just over half were in romantic partnerships, five described themselves as ‘dating’ and one (Johannes) reported being ‘engaged’. The remaining five described themselves as ‘single’.

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As regards the socioeconomic status of the group, all – with the exception of salesperson Johannes – held, or were in the process of obtaining, a tertiary qualification at the time of interviewing. This is unsurprising, given the location of the study. Six of the participants were still studying: Anel (aged 21), Mariska (aged 25) and Riaan (also 25 years old) were all postgraduate students. Dalena (aged 21) and Jakobus (aged 21) were completing bachelor’s degrees, in science and humanities respectively. Elize (aged 22) was working full time as an office administrator and studying part time. Franco and Petro (both aged 32) had both qualified as psychologists. Franco is a clinical psychologist and Petro’s specialisation is in children. Wouter (aged 28) also worked in the mental health sector at that time, completing his mandatory year of community service as part of his training as a medical doctor. Dawid (aged 32), an academic, was lecturing in the humanities faculty at the university at that time.

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The stories that these participants told were based on their imagined futures. This meant that they were not constrained by the ‘reality factor’ (Langellier 1999: 128) in the same way as their older counterparts in Cohort One. These participants could conceivably tell stories in whatever ways they wished. What was interesting, as we elaborate on in the discussion of our findings, was that these young people framed their stories in very similar ways to their older counterparts. They did so even when it meant casting themselves in a potentially negative light, by challenging or contradicting the researcher, or deviating from apparently dominant narratives about reproductive decision-making and planning.

Questioning the invisible and unquestioned norm: Our ‘unusual conversational move’

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As we have mentioned, when we initially embarked upon our research we focused on planning, choices and decisions related to parenthood, inviting people to tell us their stories about their ‘reproductive choices’ and ‘family planning’. We anticipated a degree of difficulty in participants’ talking about their past and, especially, future pathways to parenthood, mostly because the topic was personal in nature and because we imagined that younger people, especially males, might not have given it much thought. We were, however, surprised by how bewildered our participants seemed by our questions, especially by the bewilderment of older participants and how frequently they seemed to discuss tangential topics such as stories about pregnancies and labour or their parenting practices. The field notes written up by Tracy, who conducted the interviews, are full of reflections and observations that pointed to the difficulty in generating discussion on the topic: difficult to bring the obvious into the light […] ‘There’s nothing to talk about really’ seems to be the general feeling […] Interviewed SN this

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morning … once again the ‘nothing to talk about’ conversation […] It’s difficult to ask questions when there’s just nothing to talk about. How do I follow up on that? […] the younger men/people are more willing to discuss the topic, but otherwise it’s a non-topic, something vanselfsprekend [self-explanatory], nothing to discuss! (Field notes, 2008)

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As Tracy’s notes indicate, the narratives were framed by the lack of ‘storyworthiness’ of the topic. Becoming a first-time parent was framed as a non-issue and a non-choice, an imperative even, among married heterosexual people. As Koos commented, parenthood ‘is natural, so there’s no decision’. The participants were inclined to skirt around the questions about pathways to parenthood, making it difficult to get a straightforward answer about the processes involved.

Extract 2

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We became increasingly aware that this topic was troublesome for the participants through a few specific moments in which some of the participants voiced their bewilderment, asked for clarification or challenged the questions put to them. In the last-mentioned instance some people, like Ilze, stated outright that planning was not how things happened in reality and/or not the ideal, as quoted below. We provide two examples of such instances. Ilze’s quote shows a moment of both confusion and direct dissent. Elias’s quote clearly expresses confusion and he explicitly states how difficult the questions were for him to answer.

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Ilze: Ja, but what STORY, what do you mean by ‘STORY’? Tracy: Well, I suppose like, um, kind of the story of how you came to be a parent (.) […] So maybe you could tell me a bit more about […] you not wanting kids in the first place and then how it came to be that you decided=

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Ilze: =no, we didn’t decide to have [a child]; it just happened [laughter]. […] It comes from generation to generation. We do it the same way. We don’t even think about it. That’s why I said, I don’t know what you really want, we don’t talk about these things, it just happens. [Laughs].

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Tracy: That’s interesting. Then, here comes this person and says, ‘Let’s talk about this.’ What did you think? Ilze: [Laughs] Ja, there’s nothing to talk about [laughs]. It just happens. (F1)

Extract 3

Elias: Jis [gee], that’s a difficult one. Why did I want to have children? I think [pause] jislaaik!26 [Laughs]. Ja, this is a difficult one, huh? […] I think (.) it’s not because it’s the right thing to do. That’s not the right answer. […] I think both of us had the desire to have kids. Why? That’s a difficult question. It’s too hard! [Laughs] I never thought of it. Why, why? But I think I answered you there, there was the need, ja, the want for children. We really wanted children. (M1)

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In these extracts, we see how Ilze and Elias struggle to respond to the demands of the interview. Ilze asks, ‘but what story?’, implying that there is no story to tell, which she reiterates more directly at the end, stating that there is ‘nothing to talk about’. Elias’s response is slightly more subtle. He pauses, laughs, confesses to having difficulties, and uses slang (jis, jislaaik) to indicate surprise. Instances like these, along with our general reflections on the interviews, helped us to see that our participants did not necessarily understand the topic in the same way that we as researchers did. Before data analysis even began, it was obvious to us that our participants were quiet on the topic of male involvement in reproductive decision-making. Our participants might have been speaking a lot to us, but they were not actually saying much about what we wanted to know, namely, the story of how they came to be a parent or how they imagined this process would occur. Thus, the answer to our central research question (How do participants explain or envisage male involvement in decisions or processes related to becoming a parent?) seemed to remain elusive to some extent. As we progressed with the research, we became increasingly aware that participants’ silence on the topic had little to do with resistance or indifference, but rather had to do with the taken-for-granted nature of parenthood for married heterosexual adults. In the extracts above, Ilze indicates that ‘it just happened’, ‘we don’t even think about it’; she also alludes to social expectations in the form of ‘it comes from generation to generation.’ Elias, in searching for an answer, eventually settles on ‘the need’ to parent. We slowly began to see that such sidelining of ‘deciding’ and ‘planning’ in the interviews and their alternate construal of parenthood as a non-choice disguised their inability to discuss the issue at hand. Significantly, sidelining and reframing reinforced procreative heteronormativity (a key theme that will be developed in this book).

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With these insights in mind, we turned to alternative ways to understand what we had achieved in our research. We came to see that what we produced in the interviews were ‘veiled silences’ (see discussion below). We came to understand the participants’ bewilderment as related to an unusual conversational move on our part as researchers.

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An unusual conversational move occurs when someone questions something that is generally taken for granted; in our case, asking people to account and give reasons for the desires, preferences and/or behaviour of married heterosexual people in relation to their pathways to parenthood. This is quite obvious in Ilze’s response (‘Ja, but what STORY, what do you mean by “STORY”?’) as well as Elias’s flustered reply cited above. By asking our participants to talk to us about male involvement in reproductive decision-making, we were questioning the unquestioned – and possibly even unquestionable – norm. Although we had not set out to ask difficult questions, we soon recognised the usefulness of our unusual conversational move in highlighting the exact issue we sought to investigate (namely, gender in relation to male involvement in reproductive decision-making). We thus saw that our unusual conversation move was, in fact, very useful, in that it highlighted the unspoken norm (the normality of biological parenthood for married heterosexual couples, that

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is, procreative heteronormativity), by showing up the lapses or ‘blind spots’, which indicate generally unacknowledged concerns and activities. Our unusual conversational move presented trouble for the participants for three main reasons: (1) creating the impression that we expected the participants to have meaningfully reflected upon their (future or past) pathway to parenthood; (2) the perception that men should, or were expected to, be active in reproductive matters; and, finally, (3) our (inadvertent) framing of our research within the language of choice.

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The first source of trouble was created by asking ‘normal’ heterosexual people to tell us their story about their (past or imagined) pathway to parenthood. Not only are enquiries about ‘normal’, taken-for-granted behaviour like procreation potentially confusing or intrusive, as discussed, but it was also clear that people had not reflected on this. As researchers Taylor and Littleton (2006) point out, people who volunteer to take part in interviews may feel pressure to be amenable participants and to provide the interviewer with useful information. It can therefore be potentially problematic not to have anything to contribute. The answers, like those above, are just as much an indication of the lengths that people went to in order to provide answers and not to leave Tracy with literal silences. Of course, we must also consider that not answering (remaining literally silent) would potentially make the participants appear foolish, especially since they were asked these questions by experts, lending the impression that there ought to be an answer and/or one that they had thought about.

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Similarly, it may have been awkward for participants to be asked about ‘male involvement’. They may have felt that this was the norm or the researchers’ expectation and they could potentially be seen in a bad light. This might have been exacerbated by changing expectations of fathers in recent years, particularly as the construction of the ‘new’ hands-on father has become more prominent, and men have increasingly been encouraged to take part in family, domestic and reproductive issues (Henwood & Procter 2003; Morrell 2006; Prinsloo 2006; Viljoen 2011). Responding to a young, educated woman may have made men, and their female partners, feel uneasy about admitting that this was not the case in their own lives, or not what they think would be the ideal.

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The final source of trouble for participants was our framing of the study in terms of choice, as we have already discussed to some extent. Our information letter and consent documents described the study as related to ‘family planning’ and ‘reproductive decision-making’, for example. This clearly draws on a way of thinking about having children that emphasises rational choice and has connotations of responsible citizenship and parenthood. This way of understanding and speaking about potential parenthood is commonly accepted in reproductive health planning and programming, and academic research. It can be thought of as a professional discourse, one which may not correspond very well to ‘real life’. This language of choice acted as a constraint on how our participants could tell their stories. It seemed to be difficult for participants to tell their stories about pathways to parenthood using the language of choice, and especially one in which men were 19


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involved in ‘decision-making’. This was especially troublesome for older participants who had to try to reconcile their own experiences – in most cases of a passive process of ‘going with the flow’ – with the idea of parenthood as an active choice, which may have appeared to have been supported by the researchers.

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Rather than remaining literally silent, participants responded to the trouble invoked by our unusual conversational move in such a way as to cover the fact that they had nothing to contribute directly to the topic. They changed the subject (redirected) or changed the terms of the interview conversation from choice (reframed) in such a way that it was not immediately apparent that there are in fact gaps or silences in the data: it does not speak to the question/s that was/were presented to the participants.

Veiled silences

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Our inability to obtain a real hold on our participants’ understandings of men’s roles and participation in parenthood decisions was not because participants did not literally speak. Indeed, the interviewees spent a great deal of time speaking about topics that were peripherally related to men’s pathways to parenthood. So, the silence that we speak of does not refer to actual silences. Rather, we have drawn on Lisa Mazzei’s work around silence (as we have also outlined in an earlier article (Morison & Macleod 2013b)). Mazzei (2007) takes a deconstructionist approach to argue against a binary view of speech as the counterpart of silence. Rather, she theorises ‘speech on a continuum between that which is voiced literally, and that which is voiced silently or metaphorically’ (2007: 634). Therefore, silences can be literal, in the sense of absence of speech, or metaphoric, in the sense that participants speak in such a way that sidesteps the real issue or avoids the question. Thus, Mazzei (2007: 363) understands ‘acts of avoidance, denial, deflection, reframing and intellectualizing … [as] neither inaction nor passivity but rather a silence that [speaks] without speaking’ (our emphasis).

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Silences, according to Mazzei (2003), may occur in qualitative data for various reasons. They may be intentional or related to the fear of offending; they may also be a result of the lack of awareness of one’s privilege (she herself concentrates on racial privilege). She also identifies a kind of silence that we found useful for our analysis, namely ‘veiled silences’. This kind of silence occurs when participants attend ‘to a different question, not the specific one offered by [the researcher] to generate discussion [so that] the answers that were given were silences’ (Mazzei 2003: 365). What is voiced silently or metaphorically, then, has to be listened to and analysed in relation to what is voiced literally. Significantly, these silences ‘serve as hints toward concerns and activities that are generally unacknowledged (that are taken for granted), which require a different kind of listening on the part of the researcher’ (Poland & Pederson 1998: 306). Mazzei argues that in listening to silence it is important to attend to ‘the returns, the interruptions, the resistances, the denials, the subtle eliding of text’ (2007: 363). Our task thus became how to analyse speaking silence. This involved, in addition to our performativity/performance analysis (discussed in more detail in Chapter 2), utilising three analytical tools. Firstly, we needed to 20


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reflect on how veiled silences were potentially ruptured but then smoothed over by us overtly questioning the accepted and taken-for-granted norm. Secondly, a significant aspect of listening for these silences involves researcher reflexivity and an awareness of the researcher’s own part in generating and perpetuating silences (we discuss researcher reflexivity in general later in this work). Finally, we analysed how the discursive actions of redirecting and reframing the issue of ‘male involvement’, as well as decision-making itself, allowed respondents to sidestep the issue of men’s roles in the process of becoming a parent and to (re)claim power by introducing topics that they deemed relevant and offering positive positions.27 Mazzei argues that ‘[a]nswering a question other than the one posed … results in a deflection that, although often not intentional, is purposeful nonetheless’ (2004: 30). Our task thus became to understand what kinds of purposes, or what norms, the deflection into other topics served. In such instances, participants’ speaking serves as ‘noise’ that ‘veils’, or masks, their inability or unwillingness to talk about a (potentially sensitive) topic. Talk about unrelated or peripheral topics can be theorised as ‘noise’, but important noise that, when analysed in relation to the ‘veiled silence’, can reveal the operation of specific power relations. As we shall show in this book, participants’ construal of childbearing as a non-choice disguised their inability to discuss the issue at hand and, significantly, supported procreative heteronormativity.

The role of procreative heteronormativity in making the topic troublesome

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The main argument that we develop in this book is that a complex array of discursive resources centred on procreative heteronormativity underpins men’s and women’s (non-)engagement with the topic of their pathways to parenthood. As will be seen throughout the text, an assumption of procreation and biological parenthood as an expected part of heterosexual adulthood was evident in participants’ talk. Having children was seen as a normative stage in the natural progression of heterosexual life, a progression that does not bear questioning or reflection. This is evident in the following statements made by two of the participants in the study.

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Extract 4

Koos: I think for me it was (.) it’s like (.) it’s a natural thing. If you get married then you have kids. It’s not that you decide ‘I want to be a dad’. You accept that that is the life. You grow up, do whatever studies you want to do, then you get a partner somehow and get married eventually and then you start with the family. That is natural, so there’s no decision. (M1)

Extract 5 Esmé: I suppose, getting married, like I said to you, that was the first step and so now the next step is to have children. When and how and where? (F1)

Koos’s comments recall those made by the Bangladeshi participant in Gipson and Hindin’s (2007: 196) study, ‘[m]arriage means having children and forming your 21


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family, so what is the need of discussion?’. Here we see how Koos and Esmé both describe having children, or ‘starting a family’, as part of a normative chain of events that is determined by the normal (heterosexual) life course. Parenthood is rendered as a stage that is expected to happen after a couple is married and, as Esme’s quotation clearly shows, it was depicted largely as a matter of timing; a question of ‘when and how and where?’ The issue of whether to have children, and why, was not up for discussion. The normality of parenthood, as described by Koos and Esmé, makes it a non-choice for heterosexual people. Choice, it would seem, centres on deviating from this expected norm by delaying reproduction or deciding not to become a parent.

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As seen throughout this book, there are two dominant discursive and social power relations that play a role in ensuring that the norm of having children remains invisible and unquestioned: heteronormativity and pronatalism. The first of these, heteronormativity, refers to the privileging of heterosexual relationships and identities based upon the assumption of female–male desire as natural and normal. Heterosexuality therefore becomes the default: the norm and ubiquitous expectation (Chambers & Carver 2008). Generally speaking, heterosexuals do not have to account for their sexuality or desires. Social expectations in terms of a range of behaviours, styles of interaction, living arrangements, and preference in terms of sexual partner are underpinned by an expectation of heterosexuality. It is only when people step outside of the norm of heterosexuality that they have to start accounting for their actions or choices, for example, gay men and lesbians who wish to become parents (Alldred 1996).

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‘Heteronormative practices and assumptions are manifest in diverse ways according to the cultural context in which they occur’ (Ryan-Flood 2005: 201). They are interwoven in overt and subtle ways into virtually every facet of life, from legislation governing partnerships and practices in the workplace to depictions of family life in the media, historical accounts and novels. The ‘automatic childbearing’ script, in which having children is seen as natural progression in an adult’s life (see our later in-depth description of this script), is underpinned by the assumption of a heterosexual union (or heteronormativity).

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The second discursive and social power relation that plays a role in obscuring the assumed normality of parenthood for heterosexuals is pronatalism. Pronatalism entails the encouragement of all births as conducive to individual, family and social well-being. Pronatalism can then be seen as operating on several levels: culturally, when childbearing and motherhood are perceived as “natural” and central to a woman’s identity; ideologically, when the motherhood mandate becomes a patriotic, ethnic or eugenic obligation; psychologically, when childbearing is identified with the micro level of personal aspirations, emotions and rational (or irrational) decisionmaking (by women or couples) … and on the level of population policy,

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when the state intervenes, directly or indirectly, in an attempt to regulate the dynamics of fertility and to influence its causes and consequences. (Heitlinger 1991: 344–345)

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Pronatalism thus refers to discursive and social processes operating at sociocultural, interpersonal and individual levels in which children and reproduction are valorised. These processes include drawing on religious or nationalist discourses, marginalising those who fail to have children, attaching value to children and constructing sexuality and gender in particular ways. We touch on these issues in more detail later in this book. For now it serves to say that, ultimately, pronatalist discourses render parenthood as something incontrovertibly valuable and desirable, for whatever reason (Meyers 2001).28

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So, although parenthood may be increasingly surrounded by highly voluntaristic rhetoric – especially in industrialised and Westernised settings – the effects of pronatalist discourses means that parenthood ‘choices’ are seldom as autonomous as what they could be (Meyers 2001). This is because the effects of pronatalist discourses not only foreground the attractions of parenthood, but also obscure its costs and, as Meyers (2001) argues ‘where there is only one real option and no genuine choice there is no autonomy’ (2001: 753). As a result, parenthood is the obvious choice and the default option. Therefore, when it comes to parenthood decisions, ‘nonchalance seems to be the rule [and] most people presume that children are necessary to personal fulfilment and never consider not having children’ (Meyers 2001: 746).

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These two power relations – heteronormativity and pronatalism – form part of the ‘grid of cultural intelligibility through which bodies, gender, and desires are naturalized’ (Butler 1990: 151), what Judith Butler calls the heterosexual matrix. Within the heterosexual matrix, gender is understood in a binary way, as either female or male. In addition, gender is also seen as complementary: a woman is what a man is not. Because a woman is distinct from a man, her desire is for a man, and vice versa (Prassad 2012).

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This way of thinking normalises and naturalises everything associated with heterosexuality. It promotes compulsory heterosexuality, the process through which heterosexuality is reinforced through multiple everyday interactions and structural features. This reinforcement occurs to the extent that heterosexuality appears as the natural outcome of human development, and other sexualities are rendered invisible, exotic or deviant. The culmination of the heterosexual matrix is procreation. Having children represents adherence to the expected heteronormative life course in which a man and a woman desire each other, form a partnership, usually through marriage, and then procreate. It reinforces and draws from gendered scripts in which women and men are expected to desire particular things (each other, children) and to act in particular ways (sexually, as mother/father). Procreation signifies, in this rendition, the fulfilment of heterosexual coupledom.

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These power relations, heteronormativity and pronatalism, combine to form what we call ‘procreative heteronormativity’: a powerful intersection of social and cultural injunctions and norms. Procreative heteronormativity refers to the pervasive takenfor-granted belief in the normality and naturalness of parenthood as a natural consequence of being a heterosexual woman or man. Based on this view, the assumption is made that the normal life path will involve meeting and marrying someone of the opposite sex and producing biological offspring. So, as mentioned earlier, the closer one is to the ‘gold standard’ of normality (which is the case for our participants, being middle-class and white), the more natural and obvious parenthood becomes, to the extent that it is taken for granted (Morison & Reddy 2013; Riggs 2007).

Changing tack and tackling different questions

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As we went through the transcripts of the interviews and engaged in the long, complex process of analysis, we realised that it was precisely procreative heteronormativity that was central to the stories that people told us and that promoted the veiled silences we witnessed concerning pathways to parenthood. We realised that we could not answer, at least not directly, the question of how white Afrikaans people speak about past or anticipated paths to parenthood and male involvement in decisions related to reproduction and parenthood. But what we could discuss, and what in the end is probably more illuminating about gendered power relations that are enacted among white, Afrikaans-speaking heterosexual people, is how they speak around past and anticipated parenthood ‘decisions’.

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And so, our analysis homed in on the discursive resources white Afrikaans speakers (re)cite when avoiding speaking about past or anticipated parenthood decisions. We examined the gendered scripts drawn on by participants in talking about peripheral topics and how these were implicated in gender power relations. We analysed the positions participants adopted within their narratives that created ‘noise’ around the central issue, and how these positions were troubled by the unusual conversational move that we inadvertently introduced into the interview conversation.

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What emerged was a clear picture of how procreative heteronormativity operates. Through the repeated process of refining our analytical work, we saw, in sharp relief, the functioning of the regulatory framework of procreative heteronormativity within the context of our participants’ lives. We noted how the various discursive resources drawn on by our participants knitted together to form a powerful intersection of social and cultural injunctions and norms. This regulatory grid of intelligibility that frames heterosexual people’s lives in subtle but powerful ways emerged in the analysis of our material and is presented in summary in the final chapter of this book. Before we get to that, we provide some background to the study in the following chapter in order to inform the ensuing discussion of the various components of procreative heteronormativity as evidenced in our study. There we describe the theoretical basis of our research, methodological developments, and the key analytical 24


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concepts and tools of our performative-performance method of analysis, including that of researcher reflexivity. In the subsequent chapters (3 to 6) we present the various discursive resources that make up the grid of procreative heteronormativity. We begin by showing how the assumption of automatic childbearing for married heterosexual couples made it difficult for participants to answer questions about parenthood decisions and to explicate their rationale for wanting to be a parent. We concentrate on the ways that the participants attempted to discursively ‘save face’ in relation to the (perceived) researcher expectations. We highlight the rhetorical strategies that participants utilised, in particular the deployment of a ‘romance and love’ script, the ‘canonical couple’ narrative and a ‘sacralised child’ script. We also highlight the centrality of the construction of the sacralised child – a contemporary class-based construction of childhood in which children are invested with religious and sentimental meaning in such a way that renders them priceless and their needs paramount (see Zelizer 1985).

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We then go on to show how participants filled the silence that our unusual conversational move created and justified the construction of heterosexual parenthood as a non-topic. We show how in doing so they defended the norm of automatic childbearing, by constructing it as an imperative. Parenthood was glorified through portraying it as a utopia that involves the noble sacrifice of parents in which the positives of parenthood outweigh its negatives. We demonstrate how this construction was drawn on to reinforce procreative heterosexuality and to denigrate non-reproduction in such a way that disciplines and discourages non-reproduction. This construction allowed those who forgo parenthood to be positioned as selfish, psychologically damaged or deficient. Thus, within ‘normal’ circumstances, childbearing was featured as a given in heterosexual unions and an inevitable outcome of marriage in particular. We show how marriage was viewed as the foundation for procreative heterosexuality, in which children benefit from the input of the ‘father–mother’ dyad. Finally, we show how the script that ‘children need both parents’ is translated into one in which fathers’ matchless contribution to children’s development through, in particular, the provision of a male role model, is emphasised. In the closing chapter, we draw together these various strands to show how they work together, creating a powerful regulatory system of procreative heteronormativity in which becoming a parent is a non-issue for those who occupy normalised, racial, heterosexual, age, health, ability and class status. We show also how these norms were resisted and how such resistance potentially creates new possibilities for parenthood. We end with a discussion of the implications of our findings beyond the study and the writing of this book.

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Notes Women are accountable for over 74 per cent of all contraceptive use (globally) in spite of the progress made in encouraging men to use male contraceptive methods (Barker & Olukuya 2007). In South Africa, according to the latest Demographic Health Survey, the uptake of formal contraception among women is relatively high, with a rate of 65 per cent among sexually active women (this varies according to ethnicity/race, age and level of education) (Department of Health 2003).

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We use the metaphor of a pathway, because it allows for the possibility that having children might not be connected to a rational, conscious decision, or to one deliberate choice. We acknowledge – and our research confirmed this – that having children is most often not linked to a rational or straightforward process: people often take a wait-and-see approach, leave things to chance, delay childbearing (sometimes until they can no longer biologically conceive), are coerced into sex and so on. We therefore also do not use this metaphor in the sense of a developmental transition, assuming that ‘normal’ heterosexual people will invariably reach the parenthood life stage. The term also describes the means by which people come to be parents (that is, conceiving their ‘own’ biological child, adoption, surrogacy, donor insemination, fostering), and it is therefore often used in relation to parenthood among lesbians and gay men. Our main intention in using this term, however, is to highlight that becoming a parent may involve a broader process, without active or obvious decision-making at all.

3

See, e.g., Dyer et al. (2004); Dyer et al. (2008); Ha’elyon (2006); Letherby (1999 & 2002); Remennick (2000); Throsby & Gill (2004).

4

See, e.g., Cooper et al. (2007); Cooper et al. (2009); Daniels (2001); Laher et al. (2009).

5

See Almack (2006); Distiller (2013); Donovan (2000); Lubbe (2007a & 2007b); Lubbe (2008a, 2008b); Ryan-Flood (2005); Swain & Frizelle (2013).

6

See, e.g., Berkowitz & Marsiglio (2008); Mallon (2004); Murphy (2013); Rabun & Oswald (2009). See also Biblarz & Savci (2010) for a recent review of the international research. For a South African perspective, see Lubbe and Marnell’s (2013) recent edited volume; to date, the first book of its kind.

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1

See review of South African research on teenage pregnancy in Macleod and Tracey (2010).

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Agrillo and Nellini (2008), and Blackstone and Stewart (2012) provide recent overviews of this work.

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See, e.g., Cooper et al. (2007); Kaufman et al. (2008); Ndinda et al. (2007); Rottach et al. (2009); Shefer (2009); Shefer and Mankayi (2007). For research further afield, see Chapagain (2006); Hoga et al. (2001); Hussain (2003).

10 Some more recent examples include Dunkle et al. (2004); Dunkle et al. (2007); Jewkes and Abrahams (2002); Jewkes et al. (2009); Peacock et al. (2009); Wood et al. 2008. 11 See, e.g., Shefer (2004); Shefer et al. (2012); Shefer and Strebel (2012). 12 See, e.g., Dyer et al. (2004); Hoga et al. (2001); Mankayi (2009); Nyanzi et al. (2005). 13 See Biddlecom and Fapohunda (1998); DeRose, et al. (2002); Hussain (2003); Markens et al. (2003). 14 Shefer et al. (2010). See also, e.g., Clowes et al. (2013); Engle (1997); Hendricks et al. (2010); Langa (2010); Madhavan et al. (2008); Mkhize (2004); Morrell (2005, 2006, 2007); Morrell et 26


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al. (2012); Morrell et al. (2003); Ratele et al. (2012); Richter et al. (2010); Swartz and Bhana (2009); Swartz et al. (2013). 15 Datta (2007); Mfecane (2008); Morrell (2006), Ramphele (2002); Richter et al. (2010); Shefer et al. (2010). 16 Eddy et al. (2013); Chapagain (2006); Morrell (2006); Roy (2006). 17 See, e.g., Edley and Wetherell (1999); Marsiglio (1993); Marsiglio and Cohan (2000); Marsiglio et al. (2000); Marsiglio et al. (2001); Morrell (2007); Thompson and Lee (2011).

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18 As explained in Note 2 above, our use the idea of pathways to parenthood is not used in this sense; rather we wish to indicate a process approach to considering first-time parenthood. See, e.g., Barclay and Lupton (1999); Finn and Henwood (2009); Henwood and Proctor (2003); Lupton and Barclay (1997). 19 Johnson and Williams (2005); Strauber (2009); Throsby and Gill (2004).

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20 For example, Marsiglio et al. (2001: 129) understand parenthood as a ‘transition from an adolescent to an adult identity’.

21 See, e.g., work by Lupton and Barclay (1997); Henwood and Proctor (2003); and Finn and Henwood (2009).

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22 In this book we prefer to use Paul Taylor’s notion of whiteliness (cited in Vice 2010) instead of the more common term ‘whiteness’. Paul Taylor (cited in Vice 2010) coined this term to refer to ‘a social location of structural privilege in the right kind of racialized society as well as the occupation of the epistemic position of seeing the world “whitely” ’ (2010: 326). The latter refers to the privileging of a certain, unremarkable worldview that is based on the universalised and normalised privileging of white bodies and associated ways of being. As we understand it, this is not unlike the usage of ‘whiteness’ in critical work, where the term is usually intended to refer to the location of structural advantage, a standpoint that may be taken, and a set of unmarked or unnamed cultural practices (Van der Watt 2001). Used in this sense, whiteness (like femininity or masculinity) is recited or enacted, potentially by anyone. Nevertheless, we feel that the term ‘whiteness’ lends itself to reification and thus being read (mistakenly) as the state of being white in a way that ties race to a material reality. In contrast, the term ‘whiteliness’ more easily captures the idea of a state of being (like haughtiness, or loneliness) that is not necessarily tied to the body.

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23 While nationally Afrikaans is the third most commonly spoken language in the country, white speakers of Afrikaans make up only 4.28% of the total population. In the Makana district where the study was conducted, the most recent census at the time recorded only 1 319 white Afrikaans speakers in a population of 74 544 (Statssa 2001). 24 Participant codes are provided with extracts to give demographic details: M denotes Male, while F denotes Female; 1 stands for Cohort 1 (older participants) and 2 stands for Cohort 2 (younger participants). 25 This was determined by occupation and educational background 26 Jis (and variants jissie or jislaaik) is the slang equivalent of ‘gee’ or ‘gosh’. Though of Afrikaans origin, the words are used ubiquitously by other South African language groups. 27 These tools are also discussed in our earlier article (Morison & Macleod 2013b). 28 See Chapter 4 for further discussion of pronatalism and how it operated in the participants’ accounts. 27


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2

Exploring the operation of procreative heteronormativity in participants’ narratives about pathways to parenthood

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The labour we undertook to understand the discursive sidelining of reproductive decision-making in the talk of our participants (such as the reframing and redirection mentioned in the preceding chapter) is grounded upon Judith Butler’s performativity theory and her work on the heterosexual matrix and heteronormativity. Using this theoretical frame to study men and the gendered constructions and power relationships associated with their pathways to parenthood fits in with the broader gendered and relational approach that we advocate (see discussion in previous chapter). Butler takes a relational view of gender and understands identity as difference, in that it is bought at the price of the exclusion of the Other. Therefore, for her, ‘gender difference is the product of a series of normative regulatory practices that work to secure a binary sexual model and to marginalise other forms of desire or object-choice’ (McIlvenny 2002: 124). We can see, moreover, that in this view, gender and sexuality are also interlinked. In order to explore how this occurs – the relational specificities and the mechanisms through which gender is produced, and also troubled – the theoretical concept of performativity is a particularly useful theoretical tool, as we explain in this chapter.

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Butler’s work allows us to see how gendered subjectivity is built around heterosexual reproductive relations in which women and men perform their ‘natural roles’ within families. In this book, we illustrate how this process unfolds in discussions around pathways to parenthood. However, the challenge for our study was how to apply Butlerian theory in our work, as other researchers (for example, Speer 2005) have also noted. We discuss this challenge in more detail in this chapter, focusing on how we address it with our own methodological development, which we call ‘the performativity-performance approach to narrative-discursive analysis’. This involves infusing Butlerian theory into the narrative-discursive method proposed by Stephanie Taylor and colleagues,1 in order to fashion a dual analytical lens. This combination of theory and method not only allows us to provide an empirical account of discursive practice and action, but also extends the narrative-discursive approach, as we shall explain further below. Part of the analytical strategy of this approach is the contextual consideration of the data. The context in which data are generated is contemplated in relation to the constraint that it places on the narrative, in the sense that it both enables and limits particular stories in terms of what can and cannot be said (Langellier & Peterson 2004). This has to do with the discursive resources at the narrator’s disposal as well as the audience for whom the account is told. At the most immediate level, 28


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this is the researcher who, to varying degrees, is implicated in the shaping of the account. The researcher’s role in the interviews and the interactional dynamics of the interview setting – including the relations of power – therefore forms the immediate discursive context for data generation and should be considered in the analysis. As we have already alluded, our attention to the interactional dynamics of the interview is one of the ways that enables us to understand the veiled silences that were being produced. Paying attention to them allows us not only to detect the veiled silences in our data, but also to pursue the taken-for-granted and that which goes unspoken, namely, the normative idealisation of procreative heterosexuality.

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We begin this chapter by outlining the central tenets of performativity theory and the major theoretical concepts that are important to our work, including the law of two sexes,2 performativity, gender trouble, the heterosexual matrix and procreative heteronormativity. We then discuss how these theoretical concepts are incorporated into the narrative-discursive method to form our analytical lens. We also outline the procedures and key concepts used in the analysis of the participants’ narratives. An important methodological tool that we single out is that of researcher reflexivity, which we have already discussed to some extent in the preceding chapter.

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Performativity theory: A challenge to the law of two sexes

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Performativity theory calls into question the ‘law of two sexes’ that underpins the heterosexual matrix. The heterosexual matrix, as readers will recall from Chapter 1, is the framework in which we recognise bodies and practices as gendered, as well as the ways in which they come to be seen as natural (Butler 1990). The law of two sexes divides people on the basis of anatomy into two discrete, opposing categories: female and male. In addition, these categories are assumed to be complementary, with attraction assumed between (but not within) these categories of people (Richardson & Munro 2012). This sets up the equation, or set of coherences: sex = gender = desire. Thus, to be recognised as a legitimate subject within the heterosexual matrix, one’s sex and gender must align and one must show desire for the ‘opposite sex.’

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Deconstructing this logic, Butler argues that the two-sex model of gender, which is currently dominant, makes sense through the lens of heterosexuality, because the opposition of desire in heterosexuality allows for the coherence of gender categories, and thus forms the basis of compulsory heterosexuality or heteronormativity (Boucher 2006; Richardson & Munro 2012). These terms refer to the contemporary dominance of heterosexuality and ‘the ways in which heterosexuality is both naturalized as universal and privileged as the norm, as a particular form of practice and identity, over other “non-normative” sexualities’ (Richardson & Munro 2012: 17, our emphasis). As a result, ‘alternatives’ to heterosexuality are seen as abnormal or deviant and something to be supressed. In this way, the dominance and privilege of the heterosexual norm is maintained, as homosexuality is actively rejected (for example, denial of full citizenship rights), as well as suppressed through daily

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interactions and structural factors (for example, the assumption of heterosexuality, the requirement that gay people ‘come out’, the structuring of official forms aimed at ‘wives’ and ‘husbands’). The status of heterosexuality then comes to be compulsory. Though this may have loosened in recent times in some places, heterosexual practices remain a significant part of the conditions for institutional belonging and citizenship (Richardson & Munro 2012).

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Procreation is one such heterosexual practice that bears tremendous social significance, if not the most, for full citizenship status (Turner 2001). Having children represents full adherence to the requirements of what it means to be an adult woman or man. The process of sexual desire for the opposite sex, partnering through marriage, and then producing children follows the expected and desirable pattern of the (heterosexual) life course and signifies the culmination of heterosexual coupledom. In this way, procreation can be seen as the end point of the heterosexual matrix. It extends the equation sex = gender = desire to include reproduction so that, in a sense, reproduction legitimises the heterosexual complementarity of the twosex model, through the literal joining of female and male to produce offspring. The heterosexual matrix is challenged both by non-reproduction (remaining childfree) and alternative parenting arrangements. As a result, it is protected through the power relations of heteronormativity and pronatalism, as we touched on earlier in Chapter 1. These power relations combine to form a powerful intersection of social and cultural injunctions and norms that we call ‘procreative heteronormativity’. Later in this book, we demonstrate the operation of these norms and injunctions as we discuss the various aspects of procreative heteronormativity that we identified in our study.

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Butler’s performativity theory deconstructs these beliefs by challenging their fundamental premise, namely, the law of two sexes. This law rests on a biological foundation, namely, the body. The body is seen as natural and precultural, and accordingly the existence of two discrete, yet complementary, sexes is seen as a biological fact. It is gender, in this view, that is social and seen to overlay the natural or biological (sex). This distinction between sex and gender has become popular, and allows feminists to address many of the forms of discrimination that rest on gender – that is, cultural expectations of how women and men should behave. While it has been useful, the sex–gender binary also means that biology has the final say, that there is no getting past the final reality of what we naturally are. Butler and other poststructuralists writing in the 1990s argued that the sex–gender distinction is false. Butler’s argument is that the body is not precultural; it does not exist prior to language. Though it certainly is a ‘real’ flesh-and-blood ‘thing’, we also make sense of the body itself. We ascribe meaning to particular bodies – dark-skinned or lightskinned bodies, those with a penis or vagina and so forth – which accounts for the variation across time and place with regard to how race and gender have been understood. Therefore, in Butler’s (1990) way of thinking, since both the sexed body and gendered identities are culturally and discursively produced, there is no real distinction between them. Sex and gender are, in her view, the same thing. The

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e x p l o r i n g t h e o p e r at i o n o f p r o c r e at i v e h e t e r o n o r m i t i v i t y

value of this view, of course, is that the sexed body is, at least in theory, no longer an impediment to change or resistance.

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As an alternative to the law of two sexes, Butler (1990) proposes the idea of performativity. This refers to the construction of gender ‘through ritualized repetitions of an aggregate of existing norms. These may be conveyed by gestures, attitudes, written and oral texts and so on’ (Van Lenning 2004: 38). The repeated, correct enactment of expected gendered behaviours and bodily styles has commonly been referred to as ‘doing gender’. ‘Gender is a sequence of repeated acts that harden into the appearance of something that’s been there all along’ (Salih 2007: 58) and each act cites the norm. ‘People cite all the time and through ongoing citation they become what they believe they are’ (Van Lenning 2004: 38). Each citation, as Butler calls it, is a copy of the norm: the perfect ideal of how certain social subjects ought to behave.

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For the most part, we do not wilfully enact, or even think about, our gendered behaviour, because it is obvious and natural to us. Yet, gender is also a crucial part of what it means to be a recognisable social subject. There are no genderless people and we are assigned a gender before we are even given our names – indeed our gender generally determines what these may be. This also means that we cannot stop doing gender. We must constantly and consistently repeat the normative gendered behaviours and bodily styles of our cultural context in order to be seen as a legitimate member of society. In this sense, gender citations are, on the one hand, culturally arbitrary (who may wear a dress or grow or cut their hair, for instance, has varied according to time and place). On the other hand, they are also deeply infused into the social fabric (McNay 1999).

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Citations of gender, as intimated above, also need to be socially intelligible or recognisable in order to work. This means that one must stick to what is discursively possible and acceptable. In terms of possibility, the most obvious way to think of this is using the example of language or vocabulary. We must use words that others will understand if we want to make ourselves understood. New words can of course be made up, but they must gain some acceptance by others if communication is to occur. Another example is that of the wardrobe, which Salih (2007) uses. Our gender performances are constrained ‘in the same way that one’s choice of clothes is curtailed, perhaps even predetermined, by the society, context, economy, etc … the subject has a limited number of “costumes” from which to make a constrained choice of gender style’ (Salih 2007: 56). Even though alteration is possible, one is still limited to the materials that exist. Perhaps more important is the issue of gender performances being recognisable. Using a new language or different material for clothing is certainly possible, but the consequences will be that one is not recognised or accepted as a legitimate social subject. This clearly suggests that social subjects are not ‘stuck’ in discourse, but there is the possibility of resisting, and even changing, gender norms. This is possible because gender is a process of materialisation during which the constraints of social structures are reproduced as well as potentially exceeded (McNay 1999). The possibility for

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change lies in the inevitable slippages, or imperfections, of each gender performance, whether they are unintentional or deliberate (Butler 1993; Van Lenning 2004). These produce anomalies or ‘troubling moments’ that cumulatively result in different ways of doing gender, and different sets of norms. As we have argued elsewhere (Morison & Macleod 2013a), discourses and gender norms can therefore gradually shift over time, although this must be done within existing discourses. For example, the idea of the ‘new’ man or father shows how views regarding men’s participation in the private sphere of the family have shifted. Likewise, lesbians who have children ‘challenge the gender binary when they must find new names for the roles of the “co-parent” ’ (Nentwich 2008: 211).

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Of course, any troubling of gender may also be regulated so that the norm remains unchallenged. Subversive parenting arrangements may, for instance, be assimilated into the norm and reiterate or naturalise the dominant heteronormative discourses about parenthood. For instance, in same-gendered families, one parent may be seen as the ‘butch’ father figure and the other as the ‘femme’ mother figure (Nentwich 2008). In this way, anomalies that threaten the norm can be explained away. These anomalies are also discursively regulated when they are suppressed through the continual exclusion of those who potentially threaten the heteronorm by positioning nonconformists as ‘Other’ and subjecting them to stigma and social sanctions. For instance, single, working, or lesbian mothers may be labelled as bad mothers because they fail to meet children’s ‘needs’ in some way, because they are not continuously present for their children or there is no male role model or ‘father figure’, which could impair normal child development (Morison & Reddy 2013). Those who choose not to have children at all, and so deviate from ideas about gendered normality, may be positioned in negative ways too (see Chapter 4).

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Supplementing performativity theory through the concept of performance

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Butler offers some useful theoretical tools for examining the processes of doing – and undoing – gender, but she provides no practical guidance on how to do this, especially regarding the analysis of language use in context. Performativity theory has been criticised for being vague, decontextualised and abstract, and as a result, difficult to apply to ‘real life’ situations (McNay 1999; Speer 2005). This is because Butler has not translated her discussions of context sensitivity and the (re)inscription of meaning into a systematic analysis of language use (Speer 2005). The difficulty with the application of Butlerian theory has not been helped by the complexity of Butler’s theorisation and her purposefully difficult writing style, which has led to various misinterpretations. In addition, it was only some years after the initial development of the theory that Butler herself applied the theory to empirical work, albeit in a limited way (Cadwallader 2009; Hey 2006; Segal 2008). Our solution to the challenge of how to apply performativity theory to discoursebased data is to bring in the idea of performance, teaming it performativity.3 The 32


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relationship of these two concepts has been discussed by Butler (1993) herself, as well as by other theorists (for example, Brickell 2005; Langellier 1999; Pilgrim 2001). The central concern in this discussion about performativity vis-à-vis performance is Butler’s anti-essentialist intention with regard to the notion of performativity. Though she describes gender as a ‘doing’, she is quite clear that gender is not a ‘performance that a prior subject elects to do’ (Butler 2007: 341, our emphasis). As we have explained above, and at greater length in other work,4 performativity does not imply ‘a voluntarist (even hyper-voluntarist) politics where subversive gender identities could be fabricated and reshaped at will; where subjects could deliberately make “gender trouble” ’ (Lloyd 2007: 57). Neither, however, is it a ‘form of determining where, depressingly, subjects [are] inextricably locked into oppressive relations of power but unable to change them’ (Lloyd 2007: 57). These are two common misreadings of performativity theory that we hope to avoid by taking up the ‘third way’ (Cawallader 2009) that is offered in Butler’s work, namely that the constructed nature of the gendered subject – specifically the need for constant recitation – is what allows for agency and for gender to be ‘turned against itself, reworked and resisted’ (Butler 1995: 45–46).

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Based on this third way, we believe that even though there is no pre-discursive subject, this does not mean that the subject cannot at times be active and reflexive, capable of thinking back, looking ahead and acting strategically (Brickell 2005), or, as Butler (1990) would put it, ‘taking up the tools where they lie’ (1990: 145). So, we are careful to stress that when we team performativity and performance, we are by no means suggesting that they are the same thing. We accept, as Butler takes pains to point out, that performativity is not a performance – in the sense of an actor playing a part. We therefore wish to retain the two concepts as separate, though we do believe that they are related (Brickell 2005; Langellier 1999). Performance is an essential element of doing gender – ‘performativity relies upon performance to show itself ’ (Langellier 1999: 136) – and is therefore a solution to the challenge of applying performativity theory.

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In order to supplement Butler’s notion of performativity with that of performance, we turn to current developments in discursive psychology and narrative theory around the notion of performance. This combination of performativity theory with the narrative-discursive method – our resultant performativity–performance lens –  therefore allows us simultaneously to apply the theory and to extend Taylor’s method. We turn to this in the following section.

A performativity–performance analysis: Building on the narrative-discursive method In order to analyse the data we had collected, we needed to find an analytical procedure that would allow us to apply Butler’s theories (she herself has said little by way of method). And so we fashioned an analytic lens that we call the performativity–performance approach to narrative analysis. This approach arose from the teaming of Butlerian 33


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theory with the narrative-discursive method. The narrative-discursive method is useful for our work, because it provides a concrete way of analysing the recitations of norms in situ, allowing us to explore how this occurs within specific interactive, social and discursive contexts. The method grew out of a shift in narrative theory towards the consideration of narratives-in-interaction or narrative performances. This shift was motivated by the attempt to acknowledge both the subject’s reflexivity and agency, and the constraint of the broader discursive environment. In this sense, the approach marries narrative analysis, which tends to focus on the former, and discourse analysis which tends to concentrate on the latter (Bamberg 2004, 2006).

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The narrative-discursive method acknowledges how the wider discursive environment is implicated in speakers’ talk as they draw on culturally available discursive resources to ‘do’ narrative in particular interactions and for particular discursive purposes (Reynolds et al. 2007). The method allows analysts to see the ways in which ‘available meanings are taken up or resisted and (re)negotiated’ (Taylor & Littleton 2006: 23). However, the focus is much more on the interactional dynamics and the discursive purpose of particular utterances (Morison & Macleod 2013a). Our introduction of performativity theory into this method allows for a greater attention to broader power relations, namely, the dynamic nature of discourses over time and the broader implications of trouble in relation to social norms – which we explain further in this chapter.

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Our performance–performativity lens thus enables us to attend to the performance dimension of narrative in relation to the performative dimension and makes it possible to elaborate on the politics of narration, both on the micro-level (in relation to specific interactions) and the macro-level, with regard to gendered norms and the broader political implications of ‘trouble’.

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There are a number of key analytical concepts that we use in the application of this method. These are drawn and developed from the narrative-discursive method. There is the core concept of discursive resources, as well as two different types of discursive resources, namely scripts and canonical narratives. Then, there are the tools that are used to analyse how people ‘do’ narrative and the micro-politics involved, namely the concepts of positioning, discursive tactics, trouble and repair. Understanding how we view these concepts and how we use them is important and we therefore outline the concepts and then the analytical procedure in the remainder of this chapter.5

Discursive resources The notion of a discursive resource, defined as ‘a set of meanings that exist prior to an instance of talk and [are] detectable within it’ (Reynolds et al. 2007: 335), is common to a number of critical discursive psychological narrative analyses (Bamberg 2004). Following the basic assumption of discursive psychology that talk is constitutive, the narrative-discursive method utilises the notion of a discursive resource in a critical discursive psychological sense. Hence, this concept includes 34


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the prevailing sociocultural understandings present in society’s discursive language practices and in the particular context in which a narrative is situated (for example, sets of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements and so forth) (Taylor & Littleton 2006). According to Taylor (2006), the notion of discursive resource coincides with the notion of discourse and discursive regime. This method therefore clearly resonates with Butlerian theory and in this aspect points to the performative dimension of narration.

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In drawing upon particular discursive resources, the narrator creates a localised, contextual narrative (Taylor 2006). Individuals employ established and intelligible discursive resources available to them within a culture and so produce a particular conception of an event, person, or experience (Smith & Sparkes 2008; Taylor 2006). These constructions, especially those pertaining to one’s identity or sense of selfhood, then become personalised by the unique circumstances of a particular life (Smith & Sparkes 2008). In the narrative-discursive method, narrative is therefore considered as a resource itself that comprises larger socially available meanings (Taylor 2006), including scripts and canonical narratives. Each of these will be explained further below. In our study, we seek to investigate what discursive resources white Afrikaans people (re)cited when discussing past or anticipated parenthood decisions.

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Scripts

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A script is a type of discursive resource, similar to what others who use the narrativediscursive method might call an ‘interpretative repertoire’. A script, or interpretative repertoire, is a ‘relatively coherent way … of talking about objects and events in the world’ (Edley 2001: 198) or ‘a culturally familiar and habitual link of argument comprised of recognizable themes, commonplaces and tropes’ (Wetherell 1998: 400). In short, it is a socially established way of speaking that determines what can be said about various topics (Edley 2001). The reason we use the term ‘script’ (rather than ‘interpretative repertoire’) is to introduce a dramaturgical metaphor that highlights how citations or performances are discursively constrained, in the sense of both restricting what is sayable or doable, but also enabling deviations or improvisations (for example, Salih 2007; Van Lenning 2004). Put simply, just as in a play or film, scripts establish what is possible and acceptable, but may also be improvised upon. We concentrate on the gendered scripts that our participants (re)cited, as well as the potential implications for gender power relations.

Canonical narratives Another kind of discursive resource that is of interest is the canonical narrative. This discursive resource provides culturally established and recognisable ways of characterising life events and experiences (Taylor & Littleton 2006). It is distinct from other kinds of resources in that it contains culturally familiar patterns of temporal ordering with distinctive socioculturally established end points. It therefore provides a familiar sequence and ‘confer[s] an apparent logic or rightness on certain 35


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ideas and connections’ (Taylor 2005b: 99). For instance, a current ‘Western’ example of a canonical narrative that is highly relevant to our research is the ‘dominant coupledom narrative’ (Taylor & Littleton 2006: 24). According to Taylor and Littleton (2006), this canonical narrative entails ‘the story of a life which progresses through the stages and events of [heterosexual] coupledom, such as courting, getting married and becoming parents’ (2006: 24). Narrators may utilise these larger cultural storylines, adapting their own personal stories accordingly (Smith & Sparkes 2008). So, for example, in Reynolds et al.’s (2007) study, single women structured their personal narratives to orient to the established sequence and narrative form of the coupledom narrative, regardless of the actual events of their lives.

Positioning

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For the purpose of analytic work, the concept of positioning is applied in a way that captures the Foucauldian notion of ‘being positioned’ in talk, as well as how narrators position themselves (Taylor 2005a). The concept of positioning ‘connects wider notions of discourses and dominant cultural storylines to the social construction of particular selves’ (Reynolds et al. 2007: 336). Narrative positioning allows us to see the narrator’s reflexive awareness and creative action within narrative performances, while bearing in mind that the performance is not enacted by a pre-discursive actor. Rather, the narrator can only utilise existing discursive resources that are culturally available.

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In this way, the concept of positioning balances being positioned (determinism) and positioning oneself (voluntarism) by proposing an active meaning-maker who (re)cites but also transforms available discourses (Peterson & Langellier 2006). Narrators do not simply recite received discourses or scripts, but are able to alter and resist them. Thus, narrative positioning captures speakers’ in-the-moment response to the discursive setting as they recite scripts according to the demands of that discursive context (both local and global), including its power dynamics. It also offers a concrete means of investigating how people (inter)actively utilise discursive resources to produce gender.

Discursive tactics The analytical concept of the discursive tactic is intended to capture the narrator’s reflexive awareness and creative action within narrative performances but, at the same time, to indicate that this is not a performance enacted by a pre-discursive, intentional actor, since she or he can only utilise existing discursive resources that constrain any performance. It also captures speakers’ in-the-moment response to the discursive setting as they reiterate scripts in different ways according to the demands of that discursive context (both local and global), including its power dynamics. In this vein, various rhetorical strategies to ‘save face’ point to the larger cultural survival strategy of maintaining the illusion of one’s own gender and the gender

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system as a whole (Butler 1990). This suggests the conscious and wilful, albeit necessary, taking up of the ‘correct’ position(s) in relation to one’s gender. Therefore, when a person (consciously) adopts the ‘wrong’ position or deviates slightly from the norm, this resistance forms part of the gradual alteration of scripts over time. This has implications for gender power relations more broadly. In our research, we sought to examine instances of troubled positioning that arose in relation to gender, as well as how narrators attempted to repair them.

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Trouble

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The notion of trouble in the narrative-discursive framework refers to the social constraints on narration. These include the onus to remain consistent in narration, potential audience challenges, and the possibility of occupying a negative or socially disadvantageous position. Gender performances specifically occur ‘within compulsory systems’ (Butler 1999: 190) with a view to the potential consequences of incorrect or failed performances. Accordingly, speakers face moments of ‘trouble’ when they appear to occupy either contradictory or undesirable positions (Taylor 2006). These two kinds of interactional or micro-level trouble may converge when speakers engage in inconsistent positioning, which may include negatively valued social identities.

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The unusual conversational move, to which we referred earlier, is a type of interactional trouble that is of particular interest to us because it alerts us to the presence of veiled silences. The unusual conversational move, readers will recall from Chapter 1, is a sort of interactional trouble that occurs in relation to the questioning of something that is generally taken for granted (a normative framework). In this instance, asking married heterosexual people about their motivations for parenthood is an unusual conversational move. The participants who subscribed to a view of childbearing as inevitable and therefore had not given thought to the matter, or who did not consider having children on our terms or as particularly storyworthy, ran the risk of appearing to be uncooperative or foolish. (Perhaps they thought that they were supposed to have reflected on this and have an answer?) Interactional trouble, in this instance, manifests as bewildered or challenging responses from participants and these, in turn, call attention to the silences or lapses around generally unacknowledged concerns and activities. As a result, we were able to make sense of why our participants did not seem to be speaking to the questions that we had specifically asked of them and ultimately to illuminate the unspoken norm, namely, the normality of biological parenthood in married heterosexual couples; that is, procreative heteronormativity (Morison & Macleod 2013b).

Repair ‘Repair’ involves discursive strategies, like the use of rhetoric or argumentation, which may also be called ‘rhetorical work’ (for example, Taylor & Littleton 2006) or ‘discursive tactics’ (as explained above). When interactional trouble occurs, 37


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speakers may reposition themselves in ways that are ‘interactively useful’ (Bamberg 2004: 221) by employing particular tactics to preserve positive positioning or ‘save face’ (Bamberg 2004). These may involve correcting or revising a previous position or drawing on new discursive resources, in order to forestall audience criticism or to avoid being negatively positioned. For instance, those who claimed not to have participated in reproductive decision-making, that their partners had been uninvolved, or that there had in reality been no decision, might appear irresponsible or ignorant. They could also be seen as disagreeable if they openly contradicted the interviewer. However, redirecting the topic to talk about parenthood practice allowed speakers to negotiate socially desirable positioning by referring to men’s parenthood involvement instead. Another way in which these negative positions were avoided was to shift the terms of the interview conversation and to frame the issue in an alternative way, as primarily about chance or circumstance. This alternative was portrayed as preferable for a number of reasons and therefore allowed alternative positive positions.

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The narrative-discursive method usefully extends the concept of interactive trouble to take into account the constraint of earlier accounts and the prior positions within them. Consistency across the various occasions that a story is recounted is seen as the maintenance of a continuous individual subjectivity.6 In addition, interactional trouble may also indicate the broader political effects of narratives. This may include the subversive potential of ‘incorrect’ gender performances: what Judith Butler would term ‘gender trouble’. Every narrative performance inevitably contains failures to replicate the norm, or troubling moments when the naturalness of certain constructions, like gender, is shown to be artificial. These instances have to be managed, which allows either for the perpetuation of existing norms, or for alternative ways of (re)citing particular discursive resources. So, we consider not only how repair work like redirection and reframing disguise participants’ inability to provide the sort of information that they may have perceived was desirable or would position them in favourable ways, but also how this serves the larger discursive purpose of supporting procreative heteronormativity (as we show later).

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Application of the method The narrative-discursive method has two iterative (or circular) aspects, on which we base our own analytical strategy. Though each refers to a different level of analysis, these aspects are not linear steps, but rather occur simultaneously. The one aspect attends to the performative dimension of the narrative as the analyst considers how this particular account is resourced and constrained by larger discursive resources. These may include canonical narratives or scripts, which could be normative or transgressive within that context (Langellier & Peterson 2006). The guiding question here is, ‘What discursive resources are drawn on?’ The analyst considers how the narrator has (re)cited or repeated norms and searches for commonalities within and between narratives, showing the commonalities across accounts, but also the diversity among the narrators’ voices (Taylor & Littleton 2006). 38


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The other aspect concerns the performance dimension of the narrative. The discursive resources are given contextual consideration with regard to how they are mobilised and to what discursive end, such as using particular discursive tactics to ‘save face’, reconciling ideological dilemmas, or warding off potentially troubled positioning (Taylor & Littleton 2006). The analyst asks how the particular discursive resources relate to that particular context and what purpose a particular utterance or construction in a particular narrative might serve in that context. Guiding questions include, ‘Why is it told this way?’, ‘Why here and why now?’ (Watson 2007) or ‘Why this now?’ (Wetherell 1998).

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An important part of this methodology is its attention to the locatedness and contingency of particular narrative performances (Riessman 2002b), and specifically to ‘the sequential or interactional environment of the talk itself … as well as the local context – the setting in which the talk takes place’ (Speer 2005: 23). For this reason, the context – which in other approaches is often thought of as just background – is brought to the fore, and analysts are deeply interested in the contextual shaping of the account (Gergen 2004). A central aspect of the immediate discursive context, to which we turn in the following section, is the role that the researcher plays in shaping the account (Bamberg 2004). We have already discussed how veiled silences became apparent to us through unusual conversational moves, in the form of direct questioning, and ruptured the silences of accepted and taken-for-granted norms. We have also considered how our analysis of repair work showed how the discursive actions of redirecting and reframing contributed to veiled silences in the data by allowing respondents to avoid the issue of men’s roles in decision-making and pathways to becoming a parent and to (re)claim power by introducing topics that they deemed relevant and offered positive positions. We have spoken less, however, of the ways in which discursive silences were linked to the negotiation of power in the research relationship, the researcher’s failure to question silences and, ultimately, the maintenance of these veiled silences. It is to this aspect of the research context that we turn to in the remainder of this chapter.

The interview setting and the co-creation of veiled silences

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Personal narratives, according to the narrative-discursive method that forms the basis of our analytical approach, are contingent upon the context in which they are generated. The account generated in the research interview is thus seen primarily as the construction of a collaborative account and analysed as a (co)produced narrative-in-interaction (Bamberg 2004). The people who participated in this research constructed their narratives within the constraints of, firstly, the broader and, secondly, the local discursive contexts. The first context refers to the historical present of both the legacy of apartheid policies and practices, the dynamic, shifting landscape of sociocultural and gendered politics in democratic South Africa, and the discursive resources made available in this space. This is the background to the study that we outlined in Chapter 1. The second context refers to the parameters of the audience – actual listeners (Tracy as interviewer) and anticipated hearers 39


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(the reader or other imagined listener from the past and present) – and also to the interactional dynamics. We focus on this immediate context of the interview setting in this section, locating ourselves as researchers in the study, especially with regard to our role in creating veiled silences.

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In the following section, we critically reflect on how the various aspects of the immediate discursive context shaped the generation of data, including the researcher’s subjectivity vis-à-vis our participants, the researcher as a cultural being enmeshed and complicit in reiterating the very norms they seek to deconstruct, and the researcher’s need to generate useful data. In this discussion, we focus especially on ‘the interactional, relational and power dynamics’ (Macleod 2002: 20) of the research within the interview setting and their role in the creation of veiled silences.

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Silences, as we show, were often co-created through researcher assumptions, researcher collusion and gendered defensive strategies. All of these features are related, in different ways, to the subjectivities of those involved in the interview conversation. As regards researcher assumptions, silences in the data were introduced when, based on her likeness to the interviewee, Tracy assumed that the participant shared a similar frame of reference to her own, and thus failed to clarify, probe or interrogate certain statements made by interviewees. This creates what we call ‘silences of similarity’. Silences were also created in instances of researcher collusion. This speaks to the issue of power dynamics in the interview context that are a result of the prior positions (age, race, class, et cetera) of both interlocutors. In this case, complicit silences may have arisen due to Tracy’s concern with keeping the interviewee talking, so that she permitted, or even encouraged, redirection or reframing, again failing to probe further, or ‘rescued’ participants by filling silences and – thereby keeping them veiled. A final way in which silences may have been co-created in the interviews was as a result of what we (following Arendell 1997) call ‘gendered defensive strategies’. This refers to the ways in which particular gender dynamics, rooted in certain power relations, contributed to the masking of silences. We shall discuss each of these features below.

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Researcher assumptions and the production of silences of similarity The insider/outsider positions occupied by the researcher reflect similarities and differences between researchers and participants; these at once enable certain ways of speaking and close others down. Tracy’s race and class positionings granted her insider status. In this regard, she was the same as all the participants and, consequently, these aspects (race and class) remained invisible and uncommented upon. This was apparent in comments about Tracy’s class background which was clearly supposed to be like that of the participants. For instance, one older female participant – who did not know Tracy’s background – stated that Tracy’s mother (like hers) also did not ‘have to’ work. Other than these few comments, our middleclass whiteliness was an invisible norm. Another silence in the data was around 40


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sexuality. Tracy’s sexual orientation, which is not visibly marked in the same way as racial and gender categorisations generally are, was assumed to be heterosexual, like that of all the participants. This was evident in the positioning of Tracy within the ‘normal’ heterosexual life trajectory through such comments as her getting married and having children one day.

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The silences of similarities that were related to race and sexuality were only shattered by references to certain ‘Others’. There were references to moffies7 (Ilze, Elias), for example, which could only have been made if Tracy was assumed to be heterosexual and to share a particular (heterosexist) worldview. There were more references to race than sexuality, in which black people were positioned as Other, as in Ilze’s reference to ‘those blacks’. Koos stated that ‘the black people have got this other culture. I see now when the daughter has a child then ouma [grandmother] looks after the child and then the daughter goes to work. That’s their way of doing it. […] That’s part of their culture. Luckily it’s not ours.’

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This comment can be read as invoking a shared culture between Koos and Tracy. This is an interesting rhetorical move, given the fact that being an English firstlanguage speaker rendered Tracy a linguistic outsider across the board and enabled a particular discursive tactic whereby Afrikaans culture was used as an explanatory resource, often as a way of justifying particular choices. The Afrikaner culture was generally constructed as conservative and even as oppressive or repressive, particularly by younger participants. This allowed for some participants to position themselves as different, or more progressive or liberal (see discussion in Chapter 1).

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Koos’s rhetorical manoeuvre is interesting in the context of the history of the AngloBoer war, the resultant conflict between English- and Afrikaans-speakers in South Africa, and the construction of Afrikaans culture as distinct from English culture. The term ‘culture’, however, can also be interpreted as a way of sanitising or disguising an ‘underlying racializing project’, as Macleod and Durrheim (2002: 778) argue. In the face of die swart gevaar (the black threat/menace) during apartheid, there was a concerted move to unite English- and Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans (Stadler 1987). Koos’s apparent inclusion of Tracy in ‘our culture’ emphasises racial identity in the face of black strangeness, minimising cultural or linguistic difference. Given the multiple insider/outsider statuses we enjoy vis-à-vis our participants, one could assume that insider status increases our understanding of their points of view, though this may not always be the case (Pillow 2003). For instance, as a young, childfree postgraduate student, Tracy was at that time most like the women from Cohort Two. A particular incident, however, made her aware of our mistaken assumption that she had a similar frame of reference to the women of this cohort. The incident occurred during the interview with Mariska when we were discussing the timing of childbearing and maternity/parents’ leave. Extract 1 Tracy: Ja it’s four months for women and two weeks for dads.

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Mariska: Really? Tracy: Ja (.) Swak [Bad] 8 hey?= Mariska: =That’s cool. [Laughter] Tracy: Hey, I’d need someone to take the night shift; I don’t function well without a lot of sleep! [Laughter]. (F2)

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In this exchange, Mariska and Tracy simultaneously comment on the two weeks parents’ leave that some South African institutions grant fathers – as seen by their overlapping speech. Their laughter reveals the realisation of their misunderstanding. Mariska considered the two weeks leave a positive thing, whereas Tracy did not. Tracy assumed that Mariska, who is an acquaintance and who positioned herself as having feminist leanings earlier in the interview, would share her thinking that the disparity in time allocation was unfair. She repairs the disjuncture created by misunderstanding with humour, drawing on the construction of ‘helper father’, who helps out at night. This is not a scenario that she would endorse ordinarily, however. Reflecting on why she said this, we understood this as an instance of collusion with Mariska that allows for the re-establishment of rapport, which may have been disturbed by the revelation of their different worldviews and the potential negative positioning of Mariska (as non-feminist). We turn to this issue in the next section.

Researcher collusion and complicit silences

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Moments of researcher collusion highlight our dependency on our participants in qualitative research. As Virginia Braun (2000) explains, reflecting on her collusion with heterosexist talk in focus group discussions: ‘The crucial issue of maintaining rapport with participants – which can be exacerbated by sensitive or difficult topics – might be at odds with a desire to challenge what participants are saying. Where rapport seems tenuous, the desire (or indeed ‘need’) to continue to collect data might override any desire the moderator might have to challenge the [participants’] heterosexism’ (2000: 139). Sara Willot (1998), cited in Finlay (2002: 537), discusses a similar difficulty in challenging the sexist talk of her male participants:

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As a feminist I want to see a change in the patriarchal relations between men and women. I would like this change to extend to my relationships with the research participants, but found it difficult to challenge directly. As a researcher I was careful to nurture relationships, to avoid stepping over invisible lines in which these relationships might be jeopardized, and to enter sympathetically into the alien and possibly repugnant perspectives of rival thinkers.

Like Braun (2000) and Willot (1998), we noticed that Tracy also failed to challenge (hetero)sexist comments in the interviews. Tracy sometimes found herself laughing at, or even joining in with, jokes that she would not ordinarily appreciate. With the younger women, she realised that she would sometimes highlight their similarities

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as she contributed to teasing references and stereotypes about ‘what men are like’. With some of the younger men she found herself softening her questioning of some of their remarks by joking about not understanding the ‘inner workings’ of men. We therefore noticed Tracy’s own complicity with gender norms and acceptance of certain gendered positions, especially in interviews with older men. For instance, one of the clearest incidents was when Tracy arrived at Koos’s home. He was on the telephone to his partner and said: ‘Die dametjie is nou hier’ (the little lady is here now).9 Upon listening to the interview and reading the transcript, we noticed how Tracy did indeed behave like a ‘little lady’, speaking in a higher pitch, deferring to Koos, being very ‘nice’ and polite, and so on.

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Terry Arendell (1997) attributes certain male behaviour to dominant gender norms that allow men to take up certain positions, and discusses her unease at having left much of this sexism and misogyny unchallenged. She maintains (citing Gurney 1985 in Arendell 1997: 362) that

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there are no ready prescriptions for female researchers’ coping with such situations. Obviously, a modicum of tolerance is necessary with respect to any behavior respondents may exhibit, otherwise very little field research would ever be accomplished. However, the question of where to draw the line is a difficult one. Perhaps the best strategy is to acknowledge the possible complications that could develop before one enters the setting.

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Arendell (1997) ultimately determines that her role in the research setting was to obtain the men’s stories, regardless of their shape or form, not to raise men’s consciousness or to correct their inaccurate assertions. Likewise, we concluded that although Tracy’s complicity stems from the need to continue to collect data – and thus to maintain rapport by endearing or ingratiating oneself with one’s participants – Tracy also wished to respect the participants’ worldview and narrative, which we had, after all, requested. She was aware that the participants had to go out of their way to take part in the interviews, especially since she (or the gatekeeper) had approached most of them, and we were grateful that they were willing to share their stories. Tracy was therefore careful to ensure that the participants were not inconvenienced and that the experience was not a negative one for them. While the power dynamics were often obvious to Tracy while she was conducting the interview, it was only later that her complicity in producing veiled silences in the data became increasingly obvious once the interviews were being transcribed. In viewing the data with the level of depth that analysis required, we were able to see how the concern of keeping the interviewee talking meant that Tracy permitted, or even encouraged, participants to redirect the conversation to other topics or to reframe the questions to suit the requirements of what they felt they could talk about. Such an instance of collusion is shown in the exchange quoted between her and Maria near the end of the interview. Tracy’s notes made after transcribing the interview appear alongside, and show her response upon reflection.

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Extract 2 Tracy: Thank you, it was very interesting [speaking to you]. Maria: Ja, I hope some of it will stick in your mind for your life. Listen, how old are you now? Tracy: 28. Maria: Oh, ja, that’s perfect. That’s why you must quickly … When are you getting married?

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Tracy: The 21st of Feb.

Maria: Okay, March, April, May ((counts nine months)) NOVEMBER [Laughter] Tracy: I have to finish this PhD, that’s like my child, my number one child!

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Maria: No, that’s wonderful that you’re able to do that first. Tracy: Mm, career-wise, get it out [of] the way … (F1)

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Tracy’s private responses after re-listening to the interview, shown above, indicate her complicity with Maria’s assumption that she would follow the ‘normal’ adult life course and her failure to challenge Maria’s assumption. Instead, Tracy positioned herself as the inductee and, together, Maria and Tracy co-constructed an account where Tracy postpones childbearing to ‘get it out [of] the way’, rather than make an alternative choice (for example, adoption or voluntary childlessness). Tracy’s collusion and reluctance to challenge Maria is indicative of a power disparity. Rather than ‘lying’ to Maria, Tracy fails to challenge her assumptions.

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Such responses suggest that even though we as researchers are ostensibly in control of the process, power is still negotiated in the researcher–participant relationship, often on the basis of their various social categorisations (for example, age, class, race, gender). Our dependence and collusion are indications of this negotiation. Researchers cannot refute our position of power, based on our status and relative control as researchers, with the power to define the research, the terms of the interactions, and even the power to attempt to minimise imbalances (Etherington 2007; Parker 2005); nevertheless, ‘neither should we deny that participants also have their power’ (Etherington 2007: 613). Rather, as the data we present here show, power is fluid and not permanently skewed in favour of the researcher (Etherington 2007). Power relations crisscross one-to-one relationships in complex and dynamic ways (Macleod & Bhatia 2008) and researchers may be simultaneously outsiders and insiders in relation to participants, occupying dual positions of power and subjugation (Pillow 2003). This is evident in our study in the ways that Tracy’s age and gender intersected with her professional positioning, producing paradoxical effects (Macleod 2002). On the one hand, her many participants expressed an awareness of Tracy’s institutional privilege as a ‘psychologist’ and joked about Tracy ‘analysing’ them. On the other hand, participants also often adopted a parental stance (for example, calling her ‘my 44


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girl’, inviting her for dinner) or emphasised their greater life experience in relation to Tracy’s and positioning themselves as an advice-giver (as we see in Extract 2 above). The latter self-positioning (as older and wiser, as an authority figure) may have counteracted the supposed expert status conferred by institutional privilege (Parker 2005).

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In addition to the dynamics associated with professional status and age, another important insider/outsider positioning was related to gender. Reflecting on the dynamics in the interviews, it is possible to see the intersection of other social categorisations with gender, which also played a role in the introduction, and masking, of silences. In the final section of this chapter, we concentrate on the gendered power dynamics in the interview setting that arose as a result of having a female interviewer. We focus especially on how gendered ‘defensive strategies’ – which we explain further below – allowed silences to become veiled.

Veiled silence and gendered ‘defensive strategies’

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Arendell (1997) points out how certain gendered behaviours could function as defensive strategies. She discusses how men would take control of the interviewing, asking her personal questions, questioning her interviewing techniques and competence with the recording equipment and so on, which women never did. Tracy experienced similar behaviour from some of the older men, who were inclined to take charge of the interview from the outset and launch into their stories, talking ‘at’ her. In two cases, it was literally impossible for Tracy to find an opportunity to intervene and redirect the conversation, and she had to wait until the men ran out of things to say before she could interject. In contrast, the women and younger men tended to defer to her and wait for her to direct the interview conversation. In fact, the older women tended to be frustratingly withholding, as she noted in her research journal:

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I’m pleased the [older] women’s interviews are over. The [older] women have tended to be more withholding than the [older] men … Many of them didn’t seem to know what I expected of them, while the men seemed able to chat quite easily about the topic. Could it be the ‘man thing’ that threw them? Either they don’t understand or they’re being protective [of their partners]. This could explain why some of them were cagey about their partners finding out that they’d participated or what they said. (Field notes, 2008)

At the time, we connected the women’s reticence to uncertainty about the topic, which surprised us as we had anticipated them being more comfortable talking about reproductive matters. However, as the excerpt from the notes above indicates, we began to realise that this was not necessarily the problem, since many of them recounted detailed stories of their pregnancies and birthing experiences – and men told similar stories. What appeared to flummox them, however, was the issue of male involvement in reproductive decision-making processes. Upon reflection, it 45


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appears that women and men were equally at a loss in this regard, but handled their uncertainty in different ways. Women tended to wait for Tracy to question them and then often focused on their own experiences in other related issues, like parenting. For instance, after the interview with Susanna, which was one of the last with the older cohort, Tracy noted the following in her field notes:

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Very focused on own role, not too keen to chat about partner. A lot taken for granted. Absence of partner in interview may point to ‘real’ absence – he simply does not feature! She seemed a bit nervous and at a loss of what I actually wanted to talk about. It’s like a non-subject!! So frustrating not to be able to bring to light all the ‘taken-for-granteds’ and I’m so conscious of not offending because she’s doing me a favour and is an acquaintance (possibly why she was reluctant to speak about her partner?). (Field notes, 2008)

Extract 3

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Men, however, masked their uncertainty for the most part by taking control or ploughing ahead. One man even criticised the topic as shown in the following extract with André, a farmer (this occurred at the start of this interview.) Tracy: I’ve supposed you gathered that my research is about= André: =boring subject!

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Tracy: ((surprised)) HEY?

André: It’s a boring subject [laughs]. Obviously you must do something, but couldn’t you have chosen something more=

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Tracy: = [Laughs] I don’t think it’s boring! I suppose “different strokes”, hey? (.) Well, I’ll tell you why I decided on the particular topic. [Tells background of what interested her in the study.]

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André: ((interrupting)) =okay maybe (good point?) but [if] I understand the motivation for choosing subject it will make it more clear, but if you look at it like (.) objectively= Tracy: [Laughs] Well, I suppose if Nguni cows are your thing= (M1)

Tracy was rather taken aback by this evaluation, as is evident from her similarly blunt response (‘hey?’). André was also one of the men who took control of the interview. He often focused on irrelevant topics like his career and his accomplishments. It may well be that the topic was deemed ‘boring’ because he did not have much to say about it. Another example of similar behaviour occurred with a younger man, Dawid, and Tracy’s difficulties are reflected in the notes she made after the interview: D was slightly defensive, it seemed to me. Many of his answers were quite flippant and it was quite a difficult interview. I wonder if he was

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either disinterested by the topic or if he felt put on the spot about something he hadn’t given much thought to. Interestingly, many of his answers were more thought through than many of the other men’s, even though there were several contradictions. He himself said that he attributed these to not really having a clear idea of his ideals and plans. It was hard to tell exactly where he stands because at times it appeared that he expressed indifference and at other times he spoke quite passionately about being a guardian/caretaker and giving to children. His adamance to adopt a laissez faire attitude to the topic also made the interview tricky as he often seemed to say ‘ja this or that, whichever, whatever’. He expressed difficulty at talking about something that is not immediately relevant and quite a nebulous topic for him. His defensiveness, indifference or even mild hostility at times could be due to this. (Field notes 2008)

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As Tracy’s notes reflect in relation to this particular interviewee, men were more inclined not to be silent, but to offer information, and some were also even hostile or openly annoyed. Reflecting on these gender dynamics alerted us to the fact that our participants were not entirely comfortable with the topic. We noticed that women and men dealt with their discomfort and uncertainty in ways that were culturally available to them. We came to see that their attempts to mask their confusion took on certain gendered forms. As we continued to critically consider and contemplate this trend, we saw that participants were unable to engage in the topic of male involvement in parenthood decisions on our terms and were most often ‘storying’ their experiences according to the discursive resources available to them. We began to see the general tendency of our interviewees to meander into various other loosely related topics as a redirection of the interview. This tendency towards redirection, as well as the reframing of the topic as related to non-choice functioned in such a way as to address the trouble that our unusual conversational move caused and ultimately to mask the silence in the data, supported by procreative heteronormativity.

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In this chapter, we have outlined the background of our study, with specific reference to our theoretical and methodological choices, and to the role of research reflexivity in making sense of the data generated. As we have explained, Butlerian theory affords us a way of understanding gendered, heterosexual relations that illuminates and helps to make sense of the (non-)responses of our participants. The difficulty was in the application of this method to discourse-based data, which resulted in our supplementation of performativity theory with the notion of performance via the narrative discursive method, which attends to narrative performances in relation to the constraint of the larger discursive milieu. This supplementation required some careful consideration of how we might understand the relationship between performance and performativity, as we have discussed. The result is the performativity-performance lens that we use for analysis. These theoretical and methodological developments have a number of useful outcomes, namely providing a tangible way for us to apply the theory; allowing us 47


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to extend the concept of performativity to capture the subject’s activity, reflexivity and agency during narration; and expanding on certain aspects of Taylor’s method (namely the mutability of discursive resources over time, and the connection of interactional and macro-level trouble).

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We have also outlined the analytical concepts that we use – these being discursive resources (specifically scripts and canonical narratives), positioning, trouble and repair, and discursive tactics – and how they are intended to be used in analysis. The contextual consideration of the data is a central part of the analytical strategy, which is based on the view that narratives are contingent on the context of their production and shaped by that setting. In this chapter, we have followed the directives of our methodological approach and sought to gain a contextual understanding of our data, homing in on the interview setting and the dynamics that exist between the interviewer and the respondents. We have shown how the researcher is also implicated in creating and maintaining veiled silences in the data. This occurred, as discussed, through researcher assumptions and complicity rooted in the researcher’s subjectivity vis-à-vis the participants, and also power differentials. We reflected on the gendered dynamics that contributed to the veiling of silences as women and men responded differently to the troublesome topic with which they were presented.

Notes

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As indicated in the previous chapter, our questioning of the unquestioned was not only troublesome for narrators in terms of being able to tell a story, but it also unmasks that which is taken for granted and remains unvoiced and hidden, in our case, procreative heteronormativity. The subsequent chapters present the findings of our study, showing the operation of procreative heteronormativity in the narratives of our participants, and how the theoretical and analytical concepts described in the preceding chapters were put to work.

See Reynolds et al. (2007); Taylor (2005a, 2005b, 2006); Taylor and Littleton (2006).

2

This phrase is used by Van Lenning (2004) in relation to Butler’s theorising about the sex/ gender binary.

3

We have written more extensively on this in Morison and Macleod (2013a, 2013b).

4

See Morison and Macleod (2013a).

5

This discussion is by necessity curtailed and readers are directed to other works for a deeper discussion of the development of our approach, namely, Morison (2011); Morison and Macleod (2013a, 2013b).

6

See Taylor (2005a).

7

Derogatory Afrikaans word for gay men.

8

Afrikaans word describing an undesirable situation, literally ‘weak’.

9

Tracy wondered at the time if the telephone call was made as an accountability measure, because Koos, a married man, would be alone in his home with her, a single young woman.

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3

Talking against choice and planning: Automatic childbearing, romance, love and the sacralised child

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The formal language of policy-making, research, medicine and reproductive health programming often implies that people’s (assumed to be heterosexual) pathways to parenthood should be based on rational and conscious processes. There is talk of planning one’s family, healthy or informed choice-making, the right to choose, partner negotiations and reproductive decision-making. Such talk coalesces around a distinct neoliberal view of an autonomous, rational subject: a subject that feminists and critical health psychologists have increasingly called into question (for example, Gill 2008; Lupton 1995, 2012). Research on communication and decision-making in heterosexual sexual and reproductive partnerships increasingly sheds light on a more complex and messy process than allowed for by official discourses with their emphasis on rational choice and decision-making. Instead, research findings suggest that reflection and communication about having children is rare, and that actively choosing to procreate is not the norm. They also illuminate a set of alternative, potentially competing, sociocultural values that centre on emotion and spontaneity (Fennell 2006; Rijken & Knijn 2009).

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Both these ways of thinking about heterosexual procreation (planned or spontaneous) were available as discursive resources for our participants and us, to draw on. They played a significant role in shaping the data generation – largely (but not exclusively) because we had relied strongly on the former to frame our initial research questions. Each of these discursive resources allows for positive subject positioning: firstly, as a rational, responsible citizen who makes informed, healthy choices, for instance, and, secondly, as someone for whom having a child is an act of love and the culmination of a loving, romantic relationship. Each can therefore be drawn on to suit particular discursive purposes. At times during data collection, these discursive resources were in tension, creating ideological dilemmas that had to be resolved. They opened up the possibility for negative positioning (as an irrational, irresponsible citizen, or as an unfeeling, unromantic, over-rational person), which had to be negotiated in talk. In this chapter, we concentrate on the ways in which the notion of choice comes to act as a constraint on narration. We show how our initial use of the family planning script set the tone for what stories could or could not be told by our participants. We originally made use of this script because we believed that it would be recognisable to participants, which may well have been the case. But the inadvertent result of asking about family planning was to frame the conversation in a way that implied that parenthood should be the result of active and/or collaborative planning and

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decision-making, and that men ought to be actively involved in this process. Our interview questions therefore created the unintended interactional conditions in which the family planning script, and its rhetoric of (rational) choice, became constraints around which participants had to manoeuvre. This script presented trouble for the narrators, because they could not necessarily tell the stories that (they thought) we wanted to hear. This was especially tricky for those who were already parents, since telling their stories on our terms – using the language of choice – meant potentially casting themselves in a bad light.

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This chapter shows the discursive tactics that serves to repair this trouble. The first tactic we illustrate is one in which participants engaged in expanding the notion of choice to accommodate values such as spontaneity, romance and passion which impede rational, active decision-making and support a passive scenario of automatic childbearing. This amounts to an improvisation on the family planning script. The second tactic we discuss shows how participants drew on alternative discursive resources (for example, the romance and love script; the canonical heterosexual couple narrative; and the sacralised child script). These are also socially valued and offer not only a way to tell different stories, but also a way to create desirable subject positions, as we have intimated. The power of these alternative scripts is shown in the fact that it was not only those who were speaking about their past pathways to parenthood that drew on these discursive resources, but also those participants who had not had children.

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In order to locate the analysis of how our participants undermined the family planning script, we begin this chapter with a background discussion of the family planning paradigm that dominated reproductive interventions and research for some time. In this discussion, we also touch on the ways in which white South Africans’ pathways to parenthood are historically intertwined with the country’s racialised past, particularly in the population policies of the apartheid state. Parenthood among white Afrikaans people in particular has been infused with fears of cultural and racial extermination and pronatalist rhetoric. Given our interest in the operation of pronatalist discourse as a part of procreative heteronormativity, it is worth unpacking the particular local inflection of pronatalism as espoused by the apartheid state. In addition, we track the changes in the family planning approach, tracing the emergence of the reproductive health and rights framework in opposition to a straightforward family planning approach. We show how some of the fundamental assumptions of the family planning paradigm (choice, rational decision-making) remain the mainstay of much reproductive health work.

Background: The family planning paradigm The family planning paradigm, which arose in the 1960s, preceded the nowdominant reproductive health framework. The initial impetus for the establishment of family planning programmes was the rapid increase in populations, chiefly owing to increased child survival, particularly in developing countries. Rapid population

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ta l k i n g a g a i n s t c h o i c e a n d p l a n n i n g

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growth was seen as having a negative effect on the economic and environmental sustainability of a country. It was deemed imperative to limit population growth through control of fertility and family size (Cleland et al. 2006). Optimal family size was linked to narratives about how many children one could ‘afford’ and when one could do so. People were reminded that raising a child requires personal resources in the form of time, space in the home and finances. An implicit obligation to others formed part of these programmes, in the sense of the social costs (in particular environmental degradation and economic decline) that were incurred when people had large families, and naturally there is also an obligation to one’s future offspring.

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The inception of a South African national family planning programme followed international trends and was rooted within a demographic framework. It was launched in 1974, during World Population Year; then Prime Minister BJ Vorster officially touted this development as part of the government’s acceptance of its ‘responsibility’ to support international population efforts (Kaufman 2000). While global concerns regarding population size were used to legitimise control of population numbers, in South Africa the covert agenda was state control of people’s reproductive practices as part of its attempts to decrease black fertility and to limit the number of children born to poorer (most often Afrikaans) white women (Klausen 1997).

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At the height of minority group fears of ‘white race suicide’ (Moultrie 2001: 12), the government introduced fertility management policies that were part of broader legislative measures (for example, the Group Areas Act) and repressive strategies to control (so-called) non-white population groups. The ‘coercive pronatalism’ (Heitlinger 1991: 345) of the apartheid state is evident in the measures that were taken at that time: the prohibition of induced abortion and the regulation of contraceptives (on the basis of race), as well as incentives for certain groups to procreate. At that time, state ‘legislation and public rhetoric promoted large, healthy white families’ (Kaufman 2000: 8). Those classified white were encouraged to have more children through incentives such as tax relief and child benefit payments. The strategy was supported by the go-forth-and-multiply Christian rhetoric, which imbued parenthood with a moral dimension, rendering procreation both a civic duty and a godly mandate. This was contrasted with strong anti-natalism for those from other racial designations, especially black people who were targeted for fertility control, sometimes forcibly (Brown 1987; Corrêa & Reichmann 1994; Heitlinger 1991). Researchers have pointed out that coercive pronatalism is linked to strong nationalism and the promotion of the traditional heterosexual nuclear family, with a breadwinner father and home-maker mother (Klausen 1997). This was certainly evident in the apartheid state where white people’s parenthood was presented as patriotic and altruistic. This is exemplified in the plea made by the then Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, MC Botha (cited in Guttmacher et al. 1998), for white people to ‘sacrifice [by producing] enough children to ensure [South Africa’s] continued existence as a Christian and Western country on the continent of 51


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Africa’ (1998: 191). White people were consequently encouraged to ‘have a Baby for Botha’ (Moultrie 2001). Such propaganda was explicitly directed at white Afrikaans people, playing on fears related to their perceived vulnerability at being both a racial and an ethnic minority; white Afrikaans women, in particular, were singled out and encouraged to aspire to the iconic role of the volksmoeder (mother of the nation) (Teppo 2009; Vincent 2000).

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In more recent years, the family planning perspective, both in South Africa and abroad, has been challenged. As a result, the focus has shifted to the rightsbased approach of the reproductive health paradigm, officially ushered into the mainstream by the International Conference on Population and Development held in 1994 (Mundigo 2000). Nevertheless, the stabilisation of population growth still features as a goal in discussions on family planning, particularly in the light of growing international concerns regarding environmental sustainability (Cleland et al. 2006), and maternal and child health (Lupton 2012).

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The current post-apartheid South African services are guided by the National Contraception Clinical Guidelines (Department of Health 2012a) and National Contraception and Fertility Planning Policy and Service Delivery Guidelines (Department of Health 2012b). These documents are ‘aimed at reprioritising contraception and fertility planning in South Africa, with an emphasis on dual protection’ (Department of Health 2012a: 2). The government agenda is now to empower people to take informed decisions regarding pregnancy, sexual relations and childbearing, as evidenced by the roll-out of free condoms and the passing of progressive legislation like the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1996, which legalises abortion on request up to 12 weeks, and thereafter under specified conditions. Remaining consistent with international policy, the current emphasis is on making adequate information available and, importantly, on gender equity (Cooper et al. 2004).

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In line with the gender equity agenda, emphasis is laid on involving men in sexual and reproductive decision-making (Cooper et al. 2004). This is a result of a shift from a woman-focus to a broader focus on gender power relations. Initially, population control, internationally and in South Africa, was intended to be achieved through a focus on (chiefly married, heterosexual) women’s fertility, specifically by promoting contraceptive usage among women (Greene & Biddlecom 2000). Criticism of ‘the over-emphasis on the control of female fertility – and by extension, their sexuality – to the exclusion of their other needs’ (AbouZahr 1999: 2) in the 1990s led to the replacement of the family planning approach’s demographic–economic underpinnings with, for the most part, a broader view of women’s empowerment and reproductive health and rights (Mundigo 2000). This shift notwithstanding, women continue to be the main targets of reproductive health programmes. This was (and often is still) true of research as well (either explicitly stated or implied); though it is recognised that it is necessary to look more broadly at men.1

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The constraint of the family planning script and neoliberal choice

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As indicated above, despite the move to a reproductive health rights paradigm, the family planning script, as we call it, remains an enduring discourse that is implicit in most sexual and reproductive health services. Consider, for example, the excerpts below, from the World Health Organization’s (2006) Decision-Making Tool for Family Planning Clients and Providers, and the South African Department of Health’s (2012b) National Contraception and Fertility Planning Policy and Service Delivery Guidelines. Both are framing statements of documents that form a foundation for services:

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The tool is designed for use by family planning providers to help their clients make informed choices about contraceptive methods and to give clients the information and help they need to use their chosen method successfully. It is an interactive tool that helps providers engage their clients in the family planning consultation, and it promotes clients’ participation in the contraceptive decision-making process. (World Health Organisation 2006: 1, our emphasis)

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Providing women with access to safe and effective contraception is a critical element of women’s health. Enabling women to make choices about their fertility is empowering and offers women better economic and social opportunities. Birth spacing also improves the opportunities for children to thrive physically and emotionally. Engaging men in sexual and reproductive health encourages shared responsibility in their roles as partners and parents. (Department of Health 2012b: 2, our emphasis)

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A key theme in these statements is the notion of choice. ‘Clients’ and ‘women’ are seen as making choices and engaging in a process of decision-making about fertility – choices and decisions that require careful facilitation and information. The imperative of choice has implications for the service providers for whom these documents are intended: they must provide services that ‘help’ the client in their choice and that ‘promote clients’ participation’. It also has implications for women. The act of making choices is, in the excerpt from the Department of Health, clearly tied to the woman’s health, to economic and social opportunities, and to child wellbeing. What is important to note is that it is the engagement in choice-making that is emphasised (rather than what choice is made, although it is likely that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ choices are implicit in actual services). Active decision-making is what is promoted, with the implication that those who do not engage in such conscious choice-making are putting their own and their children’s health, and economic and social status in jeopardy. The framing of our research invokes this influential sociocultural script: the family planning script. This script envisions, as articulated in the excerpts above, rational

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and more or less active decision-makers who do or do not choose to procreate, based on certain preferences and ideals. This is evidenced in the following responses from our participants: Extract 1

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André: I assume we discussed it … So it’s not like there was a slip-up and she got pregnant or something, so it was definitely something that was coupled to ‘Yes, we’ve made a decision’ … I cannot recall that we sat down and we had like a spreadsheet and we said, ‘Right, is the house big enough?’, because the house then was VERY small. [Laughter]. (M1) Extract 2

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Maria: We didn’t really sit and plan anything or look at the moon and the stars and whatever […] We didn’t sit and PLAN and take the diary and say, ‘I want this’ or ‘I want a girl’ or ‘I want a boy.’ (F1)

Thys: You should’ve sat down on a good day [laughs] and decided to become pregnant and what not. (M1)

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The participants’ quotes here clearly draw, albeit ironically, on the narrow idea of planning suggested by the family planning script: rational, conscious and explicit decision-making, with communication between partners. This narrow view of planning and decision-making has been called into question by researchers who suggest that ‘implicit’ (Rijken & Knijn 2009) or ‘passive’ (Fennell 2006) decisionmaking around procreation may be more common in heterosexual partnerships. This passive style of decision-making, also referred to as ‘automatic childbearing’ (Meyers 2001), is characterised by communication between partners that is indirect or non-verbal and assumes consensus (Rijken & Knijn 2009; Wolff et al. 2000). The (non-)decision-making process is reinforced by the familiarity or ‘normality’ of the choice and perceived lack of cost or risk attached to having children (Nauk 2007). It is also supported, as we demonstrate later, by beliefs regarding appropriate gendered behaviour and modesty (Hussain 2003; Mantell et al. 2006), and ideals of romance, love and desire (Fennel 2006). In the remainder of this chapter, we show how the participants talked around or against choice. The ways in which participants struggled to reconcile their own experiences with the ideal rational planning model does suggest that this model had little bearing on their actual lives. Of course, working within a discursive approach, we are not concerned with the truthfulness of the participants’ accounts, but with the ways in which they (re)present their experiences and speak about their ideas. So, what is interesting for our analysis is how the participants resolve the quandary between two powerful ideals (the family planning and automatic childbearing) and the discursive effects of doing so in terms of the ways that talking against choice supports procreative heteronormativity. We look first at how participants improvised

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on the planning script and drew on an expanded notion of choice that seemed to capture their own experiences. We then look at the tactics that they drew on to talk against choice, including the discursive resources that informed their talk.

Improvising on the family planning script: The discursive tactic of expanding the notion of choice

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The family planning script acted as a major source of constraint on narration, because we had used it to frame our inquiry and also because of the institutional authority that it carries. Participants were therefore obliged to engage with this script in some way. The difficulty for participants who were already parents was that this restricted view of planning, underpinned by rational choice, did not align with their own experiences. Nevertheless, the script also presented instances of trouble for younger participants, as it competed with other culturally valued notions about love and romance. It stands in contrast to explicit or active decision-making, as illustrated in the extracts above, in which partners plan proactively, negotiate and are aware that they are in a decision-making process.

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As the following extracts show, the narrators had to work within the constraints of their actual life circumstances, as well as particular understandings of what family planning is or should be. These extracts show how participants tried to align their personal narratives with the planning script.

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André: Um, that’s a bit difficult. I assume we discussed it, love and the need to have something that is born from us was I think the biggest drive, because she used contraceptives then and she stopped using it. So it’s not like there was a slip-up and she got pregnant or something, so it was definitely something that was coupled to, ‘Yes, we’ve made a decision.’ It was done because we loved one another. I think that was the main drive. Not to say that we have to have offspring to carry forward the [family] name […] They were both conceived out of love, but at a critical point when we said, ‘Right’ – I think we were married then three years, so we – ‘we’ve spent enough time together.’ We knew one another before that for many years. I cannot recall that we sat down and we had like a spreadsheet and we said, ‘Right, is the house big enough?,’ because the house then was VERY small. [Laughter] […] Planned in the sense of we would like to have a child, stop that [contraception] and it actually happened very quickly. (M1)

Extract 5 Elias: Lena was actually not planned. […] I went on an officer’s course in the Western Cape for six weeks. And we thought, ‘All right, after this we’ll plan.’ When I came back, Trudy was pregnant! [Laughs] So ja, she was not planned, Lena; although we were then ready for kids. It’s not that we put it off, we were ready and Trudy obviously went off the pill, things like that, and, ja, Lena was

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conceived. I was chuffed. I was chuffed. [Inaudible] Ooh, I was crazy when I heard that because I LOVE kids, ja, I REALLY love kids and wanting to have kids of my own. […] And then Lena came without us even talking about it, because I was (.) well, we DID plan it and Trudy went off, as you said, she went off the pill. So it was a planned [pregnancy]. (M1)

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The quandary that faces the speakers in these extracts is apparent. They struggle to reconcile their own experiences, in which decision-making was implicit or passive, with the narrow idea of planning suggested by the family planning script. Elias begins by confessing that his daughter’s birth ‘was actually not planned’ and that there was no explicit discussion. Yet, later he achieves an about-face – stating that ‘it was a planned [pregnancy]’ – by arguing that the birth was not unintended. Similarly, in Extract 4, André grapples with the idea of planning. He manages to negotiate a version of planning that, like Elias’s scenario, is based on a mutual desire to have children and thus intended and not related to ‘a slip-up’.

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The ‘slip-up’ André refers to references unintended pregnancy. The rhetorical work that both the speakers engage in suggests that unplanned or unintended pregnancy calls into question whether the pregnancy/child was wanted or not. André and Elias both labour considerably around the ideas of ‘unplanned’, ‘unintended’ and ‘unwanted’. Rather than saying that the pregnancies were unplanned, but wanted, their arguments distinguish between the lack of planning and their intention or desire to have a child. Admitting to an unplanned pregnancy would open a speaker up to being negatively positioned as irresponsible, negligent, or lacking in control. Of course, we often see how these troubled positions are repaired by referring to an unplanned pregnancy as a blessing or surprise, framing the event in alternative positive terms, that we pick up on later. Instead, both speakers extend the notion of planning to incorporate a more tacit process than is generally associated with family planning.

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This is achieved by highlighting two interrelated aspects that point to intention behind their behaviour and thereby construe their children’s births as planned, namely, ‘wanting’ to have children (the ‘wantedness’ of the pregnancy) and the discontinuation of contraception. This is summed up by the comment in Extract 4, ‘Planned in the sense of we would like to have a child, stop that [contraception] and it actually happened very quickly.’ This is also evident in Extract 5 as the narrator points out that both partners wanted to have children, were ‘ready’ to do so and were pleased by the pregnancy. It is the stoppage of contraception that allows him to retract his original statement and to conclude that this had in fact been a ‘planned [pregnancy]’. In this way, the speakers avoid the undesirable positionings associated with unplanned pregnancy, including questions about its ‘wantedness’. Parent participants thus challenged the narrow and simple notions of planning and choosing implied by the family planning script in order to accommodate their own experiences and preferences. As Fennell (2006) argues, reproductive decisions may entail a complex mix of active and passive decisions in relation to sex, fertility

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preferences and contraception; they are also located within particular contexts. Consequently, pinpointing the discontinuation of contraception as indicating the ‘decision’ to have children, a recurring feature in the talk of older participants, may signify a concrete action or choice in an otherwise passive or nebulous process. What was evident was the way in which the picture of rational planning was undercut by participants’ claims that their children were planned despite the lack of overt or explicit discussion. For instance, in the extracts above, both narrators describe the lack of overt verbal communication. André cannot recall discussion and Elias states that there was none; though both assert that the children were not unplanned. They base this claim on a passive decision-making model in which there is the tacit signalling of intention, usually through stopping contraceptive measures. Thus, they extend the meaning of family planning, generally associated with active decisionmaking, to include a scenario of passive decision-making that supports the notion of automatic or spontaneous childbearing.

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The issue of contraceptive use was an interesting one. For the most part, participants did not elaborate on how the cessation of contraception was initiated or negotiated. Men in particular gave no details, rather giving the impression of a harmonious decision. This can be seen in Extracts 4 and 5 above where the speakers make use of ‘partnership talk’ (Dixon & Wetherell 2004: 176). This way of speaking entails the use of pronouns such as ‘we’ and ‘us’ in order to emphasise the mutuality of decisionmaking while obscuring the specificities.

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By and large, the responsibility for contraception was constructed as falling within the domain of women. One participant reflected on men’s reluctance to take responsibility for contraception. She explains (and perhaps justifies) this as a result of conservative Afrikaner culture and gender norms. In the quotation below, she discusses her own inability to take contraception and male responsibility. Extract 6

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Lettie: No contraceptive worked for me. So, that is why [my husband] had a vasectomy at 30. So there comes your ‘what responsibility does the man take?’ … I think with the Afrikaans men, there is a bigger issue with vasectomies. I see it with my brother. He doesn’t want to go. A couple of Afrikaans men that I know that you speak to and they say, ‘No, it’s not my responsibility’ and, you, they think that they’re not gonna be man enough after that. It’s very much a macho thing, but the English men in general, I mean, all our friends that are English, there [are] a lot of men that have gone for a vasectomy. […] I think that [with] Afrikaans men it’s probably very different. The family planning was, and also the use of contraceptives, is very much the woman’s issue. That’s her problem. (F1)

This trend corresponds with the findings of other researchers (for example, Gipson & Hindin 2007; Mankayi 2009; Ndinda et al. 2007) who have also indicated that contraception is widely considered to be a woman’s responsibility. Some participants explained this as a norm of conservative Afrikaner culture.

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Taboos about talk of sex and reproduction have been observed in a range of contexts and are often also premised upon traditional constructions of gender, especially female shyness and submissiveness (Hussain 2003). Obviously this limits communication and discourages joint decision-making, regardless of partners’ contraceptive knowledge and general endorsement of family planning. The following quotation shows how limited communication was associated with conservative Afrikaner norms: Extract 7

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Maria: … we’re quite shy about these things. It’s not that we sit and say, ‘OK this is how it happens and on this day you [do] this,’ because we also didn’t have problems so it was very natural. […] We didn’t even (.) this is very personal, we didn’t even before we got married say, ‘Okay, are you on the pill? Or are we using this?’ … That’s how I felt and that’s (.) I think, how he understood it, is that it’s my responsibility and if I felt that it wasn’t then I should have told him. Still it was even worse in our mothers’ days. But the Afrikaners are very shy and not so open about things … So we never sat and spoke about it, you know, the technical side of things. (F1)

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Interestingly, Maria’s indirect and euphemistic references to reproductive matters as ‘these things’ and ‘the technical side of things’ echo the taboo around open discussion of these matters. This is reinforced by her comment that the information she is about to share ‘is very personal’, also possibly suggesting embarrassment at her inhibition. This allusion points to the interactional dynamics of the research conversation, where asking outright about reproductive issues may have created the impression that she should be able to speak openly. It also suggests a reflexive awareness of a deviation from the family planning script, which prescribes open communication by the speaker, and of the ‘correct’ or desirable response in this setting.

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In the descriptions of pregnancies as planned, there was also the intertwining of passive decision-making. For instance, participants do not report that a particular time frame was decided upon, but rather ‘deciding’ to stop contraception and then simply allowing things to run their course. Hence, it was possible to see traces of a competing script (discussed in more detail below) that is portrayed in popular culture and that encourages passive decision-making; this script centres around the ideals of love, spontaneity and romance. For example, in both André’s (Extract 4) and Elias’s (Extract 5) quotes above, having children is tied to love, between partners and for the prospective child. By improvising on the planning script so that it accommodates passive decisionmaking, participants were able to save face and to avoid undesirable social positioning. Another way in which participants were able to do this was by constructing this model as an unattainable ideal. This discursive tactic, which is illustrated in the quotes below, involves endorsing the script in principle, while dismissing it as impossible to adhere to in practice.

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Thys: In retrospect, I think I would’ve liked to have been different. You know you have a more romantic idea of how it SHOULD have been, in your mind. You should’ve sat down on a good day [laughs] and decided to become pregnant and what not, which wasn’t the case at all, even though it was a conscious decision. […] So, all of that happened, so, not a pretty story, in retrospect. At the time it didn’t seem to be that terrible, you know, when you just live through your reality. So that’s how they came into being, basically. […] Again, you live the life you’re presented with. So, at the time I did what I had to do, or what I thought I had to do, with the knowledge and experience at my disposal. (M1) Extract 9

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Lettie: Ja, look my story’s quite different. My pregnancies were not planned because nothing worked with me. […] Well, I had them without trying [laughter]. I often used to think it would have been so nice to say, ‘Okay now I’m going off the pill and now I wanna try,’ but I fell pregnant with everything. I had two miscarriages after Anita, so just no contraceptive worked for me. (F1)

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The constraint that the family planning script places is evident in the confessions above, in which the participants admit to falling short of the way things ‘SHOULD have been’. Thys’s appraisal of his narrative as ‘not a pretty story’ carries an apologetic tone and indicates the awareness that it has not lived up to the ideal, as well as the assumption that such a story was expected. Like Thys, Lettie tells a ‘different story’ in which rational decision-making does not feature. Trouble is repaired through the passive self-positioning as unable to choose due to circumstantial difficulties. Thys portrays himself as pragmatic and as having done the best that he could, given the circumstances of his life. The caveat that he and his partner’s decision was in fact conscious, positions him as someone who has only just missed the mark, rather than completely deviated from the ideal. Similarly, Lettie constructs active planning as preferential to her actual experience of two unintended pregnancies (one premarital) and positions herself as a victim of circumstance (faulty contraception) and not liable for her failure to actively plan the pregnancies.

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Interestingly, both construct family planning as a ‘nice’ or ‘romantic’ (that is, ideal) notion, unobtrusively calling the viability of the planning script into question and subtly undercutting the ideal by constructing it as unattainable or unrealistic, even naïve. It is possible to see how the speakers created a rhetorical divide between the ideal of actively planning children’s births and what happens in ‘real life’. In this manner, participants managed to keep from challenging the central family planning script (and the interviewer), while at the same time positioning themselves as not to blame for failing to live up to the ideal.

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Talking against the family planning script: The discursive tactic of drawing on the alternative construction of automatic childbearing

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When asking people about their chosen or imagined paths to parenthood, especially about what motivated them to want to have children, we were often met with fumbling and awkward responses, with bemusement, and even irritation, but very few clear answers. This is evident in some of the quotes above, especially Elias’s (Extract 4) who admitted that he had ‘never thought of it’, while Ilze claimed that for conservative Afrikaners whether to have children is something ‘we don’t even think about’. Many found it challenging to explain why they wanted to have children and, when it came to the older participants specifically, why they had become parents. Most struggled with this question, saying that it was ‘difficult’ (Elias, André). Some were surprised that we wanted to hear a story about something that ‘just happens’ (Ilze) and many were unsure of what Tracy expected from them in the interview or did not consider the topic particularly ‘storyworthy’, to the extent that one person openly declared it ‘boring’ (André). Our experience resonates with Meyers’ (2001: 752) observation that such

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awkwardness in accounting for oneself and testiness about one’s chosen course bespeak autonomy deficits. If women [and men] were autonomously becoming [parents] or declining to, we would expect to hear a splendid chorus of distinctive, confident voices, but instead we are hearing a shrill cacophony of trite tunes.

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This is evident in studies that have asked people about their motivations for parenthood. For instance, Throsby and Gill, who researched English couples’ use of IVF treatment, report that ‘neither male nor female participants were able to articulate clearly why they wanted children’ (2004: 335). Lupton and Barclay (1997), who studied anticipated and first-time fatherhood experiences among Australian men, report a similar finding. Significantly, in both these studies the participants – like our own participants – cited the naturalness and normality of parenthood in their responses. Throsby and Gill’s participants argued ‘that it [parenthood] was simply a natural and obvious progression’ (2004: 335). Such constructions were echoed by our own participants, who often described parenthood as part of a ‘natural progression’ (André, Riaan). The strength and persistence of this construction of the naturalness of parenthood is evidenced in studies that highlight its use among lesbian women discussing potential motherhood (Donaldson & Wilbraham 2013; Potgieter 2003). This sort of construction is quite clear in the following excerpt in which one of the younger women reflects on why she wants to have children: Extract 10 Elize: I think because it’s, I think, human nature to have kids and that, and the biological clock [laughs], I think that it truly is like that. You start wanting, I mean

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it’s not like we were programmed to do it, but that is nature, you know, have kids and get married. […] I think it’s just something that’s in us. Like, they say, everyone gets married. […] It’s life to have kids. (F2)

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Like Elize, most of the participants in Throsby and Gill’s (2004) study were unable to articulate their motivations for parenthood beyond expressing the desire to appear ‘normal’ and reported feeling distressed when people made the assumption that their childlessness was voluntary. The researchers state, ‘a theme that runs through the interviews is not the desire to parent but the construction of themselves as normal, in spite of their childlessness, where normality is always normatively determined according to conventional understandings of masculinity and femininity’ (Throsby & Gill 2004: 335). This is echoed in Lupton and Barclay’s report that fatherhood ‘was rarely represented as a “choice”. Rather, the participants described it as an inevitable and logical step for them in their relationships with their partners and part of their own development as an adult man … Having children was “a normal thing to do” according to Simon, or as Ewan commented, “it’s just a natural progression” ’ (Lupton & Barclay 1997: 119).

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The difficulty in answering questions around parenthood decision-making can in part be attributed to the taken-for-granted nature of having children for married heterosexuals, as expressed in the common construction of parenthood as the result of an unconscious, ‘natural’ process, and having children as an inevitable part of life for ‘everyone’. We make sense of these kinds of responses by (1) highlighting how the demands made on the participants in the context of the interview facilitated the (co)production of particular narratives and discourses, and (2) exploring how the script of automatic childbearing within the heterosexual life course fundamentally underpinned participants’ engagement with the topic.

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The extent to which parenthood was taken for granted became clearer to us, as we have discussed (see Chapter 1), when our participants responded directly to our unusual conversational move. A good illustration of this is Ilze’s surprised exclamation of, ‘but what STORY, what do you mean by “STORY”?’, in response to Tracy’s initial question about ‘the story of how you came to be a parent’. This exchange was quoted in Chapter 1 and shows some interesting rhetorical work on Ilze’s part. Ilze claimed that her own pathway to parenthood was unusual by ‘normal’ Afrikaner standards in that she fell pregnant several years after getting married. Her pregnancy was unplanned and came as a complete surprise to both her and her partner. She felt that she had no story to tell because for her, motherhood ‘just happened’; no explicit decision was made to have a child. However, for Ilze, the lack of a story is not simply related to her personal history. She constructed this as a normal turn of events: ‘no, we didn’t decide to have [a child]; it just happened [laughter] […] It comes from generation to generation. We do it the same way. We don’t even think about it. That’s why I said, I don’t know what you really want, we don’t talk about these things, it just happens. [Laughs].’ Speaking as an Afrikaner, she positioned herself as the rule and not the exception and there is a parallel that is constructed in her personal situation where having a child ‘just happened’ and the 61


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broader Afrikaans community where ‘it just happens’. She therefore not only had no personal narrative to tell, but maintained that there was ‘nothing to talk about’ with regard to the topic as a whole, since it is unusual for anyone to consciously reflect upon having children or planning to become a parent.

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Ilze introduced an alternative picture of a process that is spontaneous (‘it just happened’) and non-verbal (‘we don’t talk about it’) that she portrayed as the norm. This picture rests on the naturalness of parenthood in the heterosexual life course and is resourced by the widely shared assumption of automatic childbearing, which allowed Ilze and other participants to talk against choice and rejects the position of the autonomous individual who actively chooses. Automatic childbearing is founded upon the view of parenthood as an expected part of the heterosexual life course (as alluded to already) and the (largely unquestioned) assumption that one can and will become a (biological) parent (Meyers 2001). This assumption was shared by almost all of the participants. In fact, all the parent participants claimed that the possibility of not having children, or even being unable to have children, had neither occurred to them nor been discussed with their partners. Based on this assumption of spontaneous or automatic childbearing, these individuals therefore unquestioningly presupposed that they would have children upon entering the marriage relationship. Whether to have children was not really a matter for discussion. As regards Cohort Two, Tracy’s questions compelled younger participants to reflect on the matter.

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Thus, our unusual conversational move highlighted the entrenchment of the assumption of automatic childbearing within a heterosexual life course (that includes marriage – as discussed further in Chapter 7). In order to justify automatic childbearing, participants drew on alternative scripts, namely, the romance/love script, the canonical heterosexual couple narrative and the sacralised child script. These scripts are strongly associated with powerful sociocultural norms related to sexual decency, the expected life trajectory, and expectations of romance and physical and emotional pleasure. These scripts work together to remove parenthood from the realm of choice to some extent. Collectively, they serve to oppose the family planning script, and to reinforce passive decision-making and automatic childbearing. We shall discuss each of these scripts in turn.

The romance and love script In a paper outlining what she calls a ‘sex-focused’ framework with regard to fertility processes, Fennell (2006: 16) writes, Sex is deeply intertwined with our ideas about love, which we have defined as an irrational emotional force. To try to analyse sex (and love) as rational experiences is so far removed from people’s lived experiences of them that we cannot hope to capture reality with such an analysis. I challenge any reader to this paper to honestly claim that all their decisions about romantic relationships, sex and child-bearing were based entirely on rational calculations. 62


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Fennell (2006) builds her argument in an attempt to show the inadequacies of demographers’ rational ‘child-focused’ frameworks. How romance and love relate to sexual decision-making has, however, been taken up in other (non-demographic) research. For example, Diekman et al. (2000) found that in the context of the United States, the traditional romance script found in romance novels influenced readers’ willingness to engage in precautionary sexual health behaviours.

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The ways of the ‘irrational emotional force’ of love and romance, to which Fennell (2006) refers, vary contextually. In an ethnographic study exploring understandings of love and intimacy amongst young heterosexual middle-class Indians of Gujarati origin in the United Kingdom (UK) and India, Twamley (2013) found that participants in India saw love based on physical attraction as a lesser kind of love that does not take family and status concerns into account. In the UK, however, participants viewed love as something that should be spontaneous and entailing both physical and emotional connection. Love at first sight and love that is unconnected to concerns about material gain were considered desirable.

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In our research, the participants drew on a romance and love script that mirrors the one referred to by Twamley (2013) amongst her UK sample. The hallmark of this iconic script is spontaneity. It is informed by a complex array of sociocultural norms about passion, romance and gender roles that actively discourage rational or calculated action, including communication and collaboration at the couple level. This script was widely drawn upon across the cohorts; even though the childfree participants from Cohort Two were not constrained by the ‘reality factor’ (Langellier 1999: 128) in the same way as their older counterparts in Cohort One. For example, Jakobus described childbearing as ‘the culmination of [a couple’s] love for each other’ and ‘the supreme result of our undying love’, rendering having children as partners’ ‘expression of love’ (Franco) for each other. This echoes comments made by an older participant who explained his motivation to have children as being related to ‘love and the need to have something that is born from us’ (André – see Extract 4 above). This talk invokes powerful socially valued ideals and offers a way of constructing alternative narratives with positive positions.

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The romance and love script with its central ideal of spontaneity justifies and legitimates automatic childbearing. Picturing childbearing as the natural conclusion of heterosexual coupledom romanticises an implicit, passive path to parenthood. In fact, a lack of communication was construed as romantic and desirable: a result of being deeply in love and in tune with each other’s desires to the extent that when it comes to having children each partner ‘just knew’ (Maria) what the other wanted with regard to procreation. This is evident in the common tendency for older participants to use ‘oneness’ or ‘partnership talk’ (Dixon & Wetherell 2004: 176), as shown in the extracts below. Extract 11 Thys: It was an instinctive thing that we happened to just, sort of, ‘click’ and do it together. There wasn’t any pressure from any side or conflict about that at all 63


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[…] the decision to have children that sort of just happened for the two of us together. (M1) Extract 12 Stefanus: Actually we didn’t discuss it. We didn’t discuss it. We just got married. We love each other. We both love children, but we didn’t decide how many children we would have. As I said, after we were married we used contraception and at a point we said, ‘No, this is a burden, come let’s leave it,’ and then it happened. […] Let it take its course and see what happens. (M1)

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Maria: The main thing is that we knew upfront exactly how we were and what we were looking for. […] We didn’t even have to ask each other. (F1)

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These extracts show how participants from Cohort One used partnership talk and terms or metaphors that described commonality, as in Extract 11 where Thys refers to the ‘click’ of harmonious decision-making. They also emphasised mutual agreement, including the lack of conflict, about whether to have children or not. Speaking in terms of ‘we’ and ‘us’, they represented the couple relationship as one of unity with regard to parenthood decision-making. This is especially evident in Extract 12, for instance, where Stefanus states that ‘we said’ that contraception should be stopped. Of course, the discursive purpose of emphasising mutual consensus is what is of interest to us, not whether the participants are accurately or truthfully representing what happened. Oneness talk makes it unclear as to how ‘decisions’, to stop contraception for instance, were arrived at – especially since overt discussion is ruled out – or if there was any negotiation entered into, or dispute. Instead, the stoppage of contraception signals the acceptance of possible pregnancy, however slight or unlikely the chances of conception.

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The speakers above emphasise a passive pathway based on tacit understanding. This is most evident in Thys’s claim that the ‘decision … just sort of happened’. Fennel (2006) points out that the heterosexual couple context complicates the strict demarcation between active and passive decision-making. Since there are always at least two people who must make decisions, it could be that one partner is passive while the other is active. There may also be a number of contextual factors that influence who holds more sway, including, for example, ideas of male headship or women’s desire for male protection (Mantell et al. 2006). Therefore, ‘oneness/ partnership talk’ not only helps to talk against the planning script, but also conceals the specifics of how discussions and negotiations occurred, and may actually serve to mask inequity or disagreement, as well as the involvement, or lack thereof, of each partner. In the light of the fact that passive decision-making is encouraged by sociocultural beliefs regarding passion, romance and gender roles (Fennel 2006), it may very well be that it is male passivity that is concealed. It is not all that surprising that people who had already had children, and who had not themselves rationally chosen to do so, would tell stories that draw on the 64


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Extract 14

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romantic love discourse and that justify non-planning. The participants who were not parents, and thus not bound to any particular version of events, could very easily have endorsed the script presented by us, the researchers, and taken up the positive positions it allowed. Their stories could well have emphasised rational decisionmaking, and while it is true that they did at times draw on this script, they more often rejected it. The younger participants’ narratives often lacked specificity – most likely due to their speculative or hypothetical nature – but more often contained highly idealised and romantic portrayals of parenthood decision-making centred on popular ideals about love, passion and spontaneity in relation to childbearing. Like their older counterparts, they expressed a preference for spontaneity and minimal discussion or negotiation, speaking of childbearing in terms of ‘leaving it up to fate’ (Mariska) or ‘it just happening’ (Dawid). The younger participants commonly depicted both partners simultaneously reaching a point in time at which they mutually desired to have children and/or felt ‘ready’ to become a parent, negating the need for verbal decision-making. In fact, this was generally described as undesirable, as captured in Franco’s talk below.

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Franco: I’ve come to think about how babies SHOULD be made, or should come into being, quite a bit differently. […] this is definitely the romantic in me speaking [laughter]. I don’t think it ever happens like that, but the way I would like it to happen for ME is, um, well if you get together with someone you, obviously, you like her and you wanna be with her and you phone her and later you want to hold her hand and then kiss her … [laugh] […] OK initially it’s just attraction, but later on you, well I hope this is how it goes, that the longer you are with someone the deeper your love for that person grows. And I want then my kiddies to be a result of that love. I want to come to a place where I can’t express my love for the woman any more. Saying it doesn’t work. Having sex doesn’t work – I mean it still works to some extent, but I want to express it more. And then … so then my child should be an overflow of my love for my partner. […] See how I, how I see it really happening is that, and I mean this will never happen because you need to discuss it because there are practical issues, but just in my romantic world that doesn’t really exist it should happen … Ideally the man and the woman should sort of at the same time grow to this point and then it should just be, like, a spontaneous expression of love and then you have sex without the usual kind of … So (.) that’s ideally how I’d like it to be. Obviously it won’t be that way so I still don’t want it to be, ‘OK let’s discuss having a baby now,’ because that would detract from my romantic picture. [Laugh] But obviously you need to because there is finances and stuff, and one’s health and things like that. So, I guess you can say it a symbolic kind of thing. (M2)

In this extract, having one’s first child occurs as the culmination of a process of the unfolding of the heterosexual union which progresses through various stages or levels of growing intimacy. Although Franco’s statement, ‘then you have sex without the usual kind of…’ trails off, it could logically be finished with the words 65


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‘precautions’ or ‘contraception’. This echoes the older participants’ talk of engaging in sexual intercourse sans contraception as signalling non-verbal, tacit decisionmaking or agreement to conceive. Overt communication is rejected as unromantic and undesirable.

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What this extract also shows is the ideological dilemma that younger people encounter between the competing ideals of the love/romance script and the family planning script. An ideological dilemma refers to the contradictions of the argumentative threads that run through a particular account due to the use of different scripts of the ‘same’ social object (for example, men and children. These rhetorical inconsistencies form a source of trouble that necessitate repair (Edley 2001). This occurred because non-parent participants were able to adopt various positive positions offered by each of these scripts (planning versus spontaneity) more freely than their older counterparts, according to the demands of the interview context. We can see how Franco is torn between the planning script, with its signalling of a planned child as a wanted child, and the romance/love script that supports popular and powerful beliefs about the acceptable reasons/motivations for having children. In order to repair the trouble created by this quandary, Franco disputes the idea that ‘planning’ indicates that a pregnancy is wanted by arguing that it is actually unspoken consensus between married partners which indicates that a child is wanted. Franco resolves the dilemma by juxtaposing ‘reality’ – the ‘practical issues’ that need to be discussed – with his fantasy and so retains his romantic/ spontaneous scenario as the ideal.

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Like Franco, other younger participants often referred to explicit discussion about having children as an undesirable necessity, a ‘necessary evil’ as Franco put it, related to the practicalities of real life, such as financial and other practical concerns that require discussion. Of course, such discussions would relate to issues of when to have children and under what conditions, but not necessarily whether each partner wants to have a child in the first place. The only time this question arose was when Tracy introduced the possibility of not having children. The possibilities that they might not be physically able to reproduce or that a future partner might not want to have children were considered to be exceptional situations that disrupt the ‘natural progression’ and would necessitate some sort of overt discussion.2

The degree to which participants talked against rational planning indicates that the romance/love script still held some appeal and interactive usefulness for them, despite the power of the family planning script in this discursive setting. This script of romantic love allowed participants to cast passive or non-planning as positive and desirable, rather than associating it with irresponsibility or immaturity. The extent to which this script acted as a competing or counter-narrative is suggested by its widespread usage. Its strength is also indicated by the ways in which it allows participants to talk against the family planning model and, in many cases, to actively and overtly denigrate it. For instance, Thys remarked, ‘I do have a couple of friends who did go about it a little bit more scientifically.’ Likewise, Lettie spoke of family planning as ‘scientific’ and ‘mechanical’. Others, like André, portrayed active

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planning as unrealistic or even humorous, for example, he stated, ‘I cannot recall that we sat down and we had like a spreadsheet and we said, “Right, is the house big enough?” ’

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The denigration of the rational planning model and the positioning of those who actively plan their reproduction in various less positive ways allowed participants (particularly those who were older) to save face. They could explain or justify their less active decision-making in such a way that mitigated the potentially troubled positions of irresponsibility, impulsivity, negligence or recklessness in relation to procreation. These participants were also able to negotiate alternative socially desirable positions. Rijken and Knijn also report that their participants made ‘negative references’ (2009: 784) to those who plan parenthood.

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Such descriptions contrast with the widespread association of automatic childbearing/ passive decision-making with romance and love. In this rendition, the child is seen as an expression of a couple’s love for each other. In this way, participants could justify their own passive decision-making and/or lack of reflection on the choice to become a parent. The heterosexual couple is central in this script, for it is within the couple context that it is possible to leave things to chance and ‘go with the flow’.3 The centrality of the heterosexual couple is also evident in the following discursive resource, and therefore it overlaps with the romance/love script to some degree and ‘correlates with the nuclear family ideal’ (Bergnéhr 2008: 119). However, as we shall show, the next discursive resource functions as a canonical narrative, as it outlines a particular normative sequence of events according to expected developmental stages, one of which is parenthood.

The canonical heterosexual couple narrative

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‘Most developmental models include childbearing and -rearing as normal components of adulthood’ (Mollen 2006: 280) and this is reflected in the discursive resource referred to by Reynolds and Taylor (2004) and Taylor and Littleton (2006) as the canonical couple narrative. This canonical narrative reflects this developmental model of identity derived from psychological understandings of the heterosexual life course. We therefore name it the ‘canonical heterosexual couple narrative’, to highlight the heteronormativity of this discursive resource. According to the canonical heterosexual couple narrative, one progresses logically through various stages associated with the heterosexual couple and family towards maturity. This narrative is based upon the assumption that a ‘normal’ life progresses through these stages, so that this progression is seen as the typical life trajectory for adults who are assumed to be heterosexual (Taylor & Littleton 2006). The individual is depicted as contending with universal stages of development, usually designated as courtship, early marriage or newlyweds, parenthood, family with adolescents, ‘empty nest’, retirement and old age. This depiction is seen in Maria’s comment, ‘It’s like when you’re young and you’re newly married, you’ll see, you know, you go through stages. It’s 21sts, then it’s engagement parties, then it’s weddings, and kitchen teas

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and then it’s stork teas.’ It was evident that a developmental narrative interwove the participants’ talk as they referred to the progression, stages and steps of their unfolding lives, suggesting that individual development follows the progression of the life course. According to this logic, becoming a parent was also constructed as a mark of maturity.

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Such psychological constructions have saturated popular understandings, becoming a common-sense resource for speakers to (re)cite (Reynolds & Taylor 2004). As a result, this canonical narrative provided speakers with a wellestablished heteronormative cultural storyline with the recognisable ‘sequence of love, courtship, marriage, parenthood and continuing coupledom’ (Reynolds & Taylor 2004: 199) for their own stories, particularly seeing that they were not certain what the researcher wanted to hear from them. By constructing parenthood as a natural stage, the participants harnessed ‘the recognizable naturalness’ (Reynolds & Taylor 2004: 206) of the culturally established heteronormative life course in order to explain the lack of conscious reflection on having children and/or the failure to make a rational choice.

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This recognisability was discursively useful to older participants in responding to the questioning of behaviour, imposed by the interview situation, which would ordinarily be considered normal and natural. The use of this canonical narrative created an interesting pattern of responses among these participants. The extract below is illustrative of this pattern.

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Susanna: Long, long time ago in 1980 … [Laugh] […] We met in ’80 and we were married in 1982, October ’82. It’s a long time ago, but I think, at that time I was 25 when I got married, so I didn’t want to wait too long before I had my first child. Also, we didn’t want to just get married and straight away have a baby. You want to have some time first, adapting your two minds, two people in the same house. So we were married [for] about a year and then we said, ‘OK, let’s decide.’ I was on the pill at that time. I started taking it when we got married, but it was a light one. […] So almost within two three months I fell pregnant. […] Ian was ’84, first boytjie4 [little boy], ’84. Then we had John and (.) I’m trying to think now (.) Then you sort of want to know about what we did and whatever with raising the child or was it basically just deciding about having the baby and that kind of thing? (F1)

This extract, which occurred at the beginning of the interview with Susanna, begins in classic storytelling/fairy tale format. What is significant is that is appears to encapsulate Susanna’s entire story and she struggles to think of what to add. Her final question seems to indicate uncertainty about what else to say. Like Susanna, other participants would begin by telling a similar version of the story above and would shortly be at a loss of what else to add. As in the extract above, they would indicate this by asking, for example, ‘So, ja, what more can I tell you?’ (André) or ‘What else?’ (Koos). Similarly, others would signal the end of the story by saying something to the 68


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effect of ‘and that was it’ (Esmé) or ‘and that’s basically it’ (Maria). This pattern points to the difficulty created by the imposition of the language of choice.

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However, this canonical narrative also presented a way for all the participants to save face. It offered them a means of positioning themselves as normal because of their compliance with the expected trajectory of the heterosexual life course. Therefore, participants were able to negotiate another positive, relatively powerful, position. In addition, they could potentially position those who deviate from this particular model as abnormal. This has implications for deliberate non-conformists (that is, the childfree by choice) who could be positioned as exceptions to the norm, and even troublemakers.5

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Accordingly, speakers frequently emphasised the ‘naturalness’ of parenthood, not because of a connection to some instinctive or innate capacity, but rather because of its expected and accepted place in the heterosexual life course. For instance, parenthood was described as part of a ‘natural progression’ (André, Riaan) or as ‘a natural thing’ (Maria, Koos). This notion of naturalness was repeatedly invoked by parent participants when explaining why they had not consciously reflected upon or made an obviously deliberate decision to become a parent, as shown in the following extract:

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Maria: So when we got married finally, we met in ((counts)) ’93 and in ’96 we got married, ’97 … we just knew that we didn’t want to wait long. I said I want my kids before I’m 30 and I think I was 27 and he was 26 when the first one was born. So, really, I think it was just a natural thing. We met each other, we’ve been together, we got married, ’96 married, ’97 fell pregnant, ’98 the first one was born. It was just a natural thing. (F1)

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This extract clearly resonates with the preceding extract, and the shaping of the canonical heterosexual couple narrative is evident. It is also clear that the naturalness that Maria evokes above is related to a particular sequence of events that is prescribed by this canonical narrative, which outlines the expected life trajectory of married, heterosexual adults. Likewise, the narratives of the younger, childfree participants were also peppered with allusions to the normative life course of heterosexual adulthood. For example, in assertions such as Elize’s [F2], ‘I want to be a parent. I think it’s life, [laugh] ja, [to] have a few kids. […] You start wanting, I mean, you know, [to] have kids and get married. Well, obviously get married and THEN have kids [laughs].’ In this quote, Elize links the wish for parenthood not only to a natural desire (‘you start wanting’), but also constructs it as a normal part of life. Notice how she carefully corrects the sequencing of her account to adhere to the ‘proper’ sequence in which marriage precedes parenthood. What is also apparent in this way of speaking is how parenthood is shifted from the realm of choice into that of heterosexual, romantic coupledom. Childbearing was repeatedly described as following logically on from marriage as ‘the next step’. In this

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manner, parenthood was construed as an inevitable outcome of marriage, as shown in the extracts below. Extract 17

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Koos: I think for me it was (.) it’s like (.) it’s a natural thing. If you get married then you have kids. It’s not that you decide, ‘I want to be a dad.’ You accept that that is the life. You grow up, do whatever studies you want to do, then you get a partner somehow and get married eventually and then you start with the family. That is natural, so there’s no decision. (M1) Extract 18

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Esmé: Well, it’s a case of getting married and then deciding it’s, because [of] being in teaching, (.) deciding it’s time to start a family. […] I suppose, getting married, like I said to you, that was the first step and so now the next step is to have children. When and how and where? (F1)

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Johann: Now I’ve got engaged and I’m getting married, that’s the next step. The norm is the very next step would be to have kids, but I’m not gonna. My very next step is not gonna be kids (.) It’s gonna be to get everything ready for BEFORE that happens. Um, then when everything’s ready, then I’ll do a moral inventory of myself and then see. […] That’s just to see if I’m mentally and physically and everything prepared for it, if I’m ready. (M2)

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These extracts demonstrate how the choice to become a parent is implied by the prior choice of marriage. Having a child is therefore to be expected once one gets married.6 As a consequence, there is no need for conscious deliberation and, importantly, overt discussion or decision-making between partners. What is also interesting is the way in which the speakers deploy the notion of choice. In this rendition of parenthood, the issue of choosing to be a parent is minimised or outright rejected, as we see in the extract above (17) where Koos explicitly states, ‘There’s no decision.’ The other two extracts highlight how choice was related rather to issues of timing and spacing. The focus here is not on whether to have children but when to do so. Esmé’s statement, ‘it’s time to start a family’, could imply a conscious deliberation to coordinate her teaching career with parenthood, but it could also point to social expectations around the appropriate timing of parenthood. This is supported by the construction of parenthood as ‘the next step’ after marriage. Likewise, Johann alludes to planning not in relation to a choice to have a child, but rather to ideal timing and conditions, as well as notions of readiness. Thus, the usage of the notion of planning is limited, since childbearing is ultimately still governed by the heteronormative life trajectory, with marriage as a key step in the developmental sequence. The inevitability of childbearing in the canonical heterosexual couple narrative is intricately entwined with the value attached to children, as epitomised in the sacralised child script, which we discuss in the next section.

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The sacralised child script

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The sacralised child script was drawn on by our participants in order to argue against the planning model. This script is resourced by pronatalist discourse that emphasises the value of having children. Pronatalist rhetoric functions in such a way that, on the one hand, parenthood and reproduction are glorified, while, on the other, non-parenthood is seen as a horrific possibility for married heterosexual people. Parenthood is glorified on the basis of the overwhelming positive sentiment that is attached to children, and the social taboo of admitting the hardships or costs of parenthood (Meyers 2001). A central component of pronatalism, therefore, is the positive meaning and value that is ascribed to children, which in turn is related to the functions children serve or the needs they fulfil for parents (Nauk & Klaus 2007).

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The worth assigned to children varies culturally and includes psychological, social and economic dimensions (Nauk 2007; Nauk & Klaus 2007). People may adopt an instrumentalist view of children, which centres on their contribution to the household, especially economically (Hussain 2003). They may also take on a sentimentalised view in which the most significant rewards of having children are deemed to be psychological (for example, positive emotional rewards) (Nauk & Klaus 2007; Rijken & Knijn 2009). The former instrumental view is usually considered to be a traditional view of children and associated with poorer settings, while the latter sentimentalised or sacralised view is deemed to be a modern, middle-class understanding, more prevalent in affluent contexts. However, a combination of these may also occur in particular settings (Zelizer 1985), as it did in our research context to some extent.

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A contemporary Western and distinctly middle-class construction of childhood, which sociologist Viviana Zelizer terms the ‘sacralised child’ (1985: 21), depicts children as emotionally priceless and invested with religious and/or sentimental value. What makes this view of the child distinct from other historical or cultural constructions of childhood is that children are valued exclusively in emotional terms. There is also a tendency to downplay their economic value in particular contexts (Meyer 2007). As a consequence, the child is viewed as a ‘blessed incumberance [sic]’ (McKelway 1908, cited in Zelizer 1985: 71). Children’s needs are deemed paramount, given precedence and placed above all other concerns (Lupton & Barclay 1997; Zelizer 1985). The corresponding construction of parenthood in this rendition of childhood is one of sacrifice and benevolence. Parenthood is viewed as an altruistic, selfless and even noble undertaking. This way of viewing, in particular, motherhood has been shown in South African research (Kruger 2003), in which women downplay ambivalence to mothering, instead constructing the mother as bountiful, giving and self-sacrificing. In the following extract, the sacralised child script is used in conjunction with the romance/love script to justify automatic childbearing. Extract 20 Franco: That’s ideally how I’d like it to be. Obviously it won’t be that way, so I still don’t want it to be, ‘OK let’s discuss having a baby now,’ because that would 71


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detract from my romantic picture [laughs]. […] Because then the baby becomes a [pause] result of a conscious decision. And I know that it should, because of the just the practical life. I don’t want my baby just to be a decision. I want Baby to be, because I want a baby. So that’s the other thing. I don’t want Baby to fulfil my wife’s needs. It must come into a place, a home, a relationship where it’s wanted but not…(.) for its own sake. […] if I follow the negotiation route then obviously my child isn’t that important, I think, and then I would be less likely to make other sacrifices. If it just happens in the more romantic way, then my love for the child is true and I wouldn’t mind making any sacrifice for the child or the relationship or the woman. (M2)

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In this extract, automatic or spontaneous childbearing is seen as ideal because there is no conflict that could call into question whether both partners truly desire to have a child. Negotiation is depicted as somehow detracting from the ‘wantedness’ of the child. In the extract above, the couple’s needs, in particular the wife’s, are depicted as conflicting with the child’s needs. Franco draws attention to his motivations for having a child, highlighting that they should not be related to self-interest or in order to fulfil his or his partner’s needs, but rather the child must be ‘wanted for its own sake’. Negotiation is construed as calling into question the wantedness of the child, since the individual is concerned with her/his needs and interests rather than the child’s alone. The intersection of the sacralised child script (‘my love for the child is true’) with the love/romance script renders the child as the end point or product of the heterosexual marital union, signifying the culmination of growing love, trust and intimacy within the heterosexual marital relationship. The child is the pinnacle or seal upon such a union and, as such, parenthood becomes something in which people willingly sacrifice for the good of the child and the partnership. In this way, reproduction was once more situated within the context of romantic heterosexual coupledom and participants minimised choice and promoted passive decision-making.

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Questioning people about parenthood choices, we have argued, was an unusual conversational move. It required participants to reflect on a topic that was very much taken for granted, because having children was largely deemed to be an inevitable and spontaneous event rather than a matter that required much reflection or active decision-making. In this respect, the interview context was discursively framed by the conceptualisation of the subject of becoming a parent as ‘parenthood decisionmaking’. This suggests an active process and rational, autonomous decision-makers and inevitably invoked the dominant family planning script. This family planning script is one that would be familiar to the participants as it has a long history, both internationally and in South Africa. Despite the racialised nature of the family planning programme in South Africa, the idea of the rational decision-maker around reproduction is well entrenched amongst white people. While reproductive health and rights provide the main framework for discussions, interventions and research regarding reproductive decision-making in South Africa, the notions of choice and of rational decision-making (the mainstay of the family planning script) continue to underpin reproductive service provision. 72


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Our framing of the interview thus created an onus on the speakers to engage with the notion of choice and rational decision-making, as well as the sources of trouble that this invoked. Trouble occurred on two levels. The first was in the form of the requirement to account and give reasons for their desires, preferences and/ or behaviour in relation to parenthood, something that many claimed not to have previously given much thought. The second was the requirement to ‘story’ their own narratives in the language of choice. These sources of trouble meant that participants either had to account for their deviations from the model of active, rational decisionmaking, or to oppose the notion of choice.

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Based on the assumption of automatic childbearing, the participants were able to negotiate the discursive constraints of the interview setting in such a way that the notions of family planning or decision-making were sidelined and, in turn, questions of male involvement in these processes became irrelevant. Parenthood for married heterosexuals was removed from the realm of choice, and automatic or spontaneous childbearing was justified through the deployment of the interweaving discursive resources, the romance/love script, the canonical heterosexual couple narrative and the sacralised child script. The romance/love script emphasises spontaneity, passion, romance, partnership and harmony; the canonical heterosexual couple narrative highlights the progression of the formation of the heterosexual couple within the typical life trajectory, from dating through to parenthood; the sacralised child script constructs children as emotionally priceless and inherently valuable, and renders childbearing as the natural outcome of a loving couple.

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Thus, the overall picture that emerges in this chapter is not one of a freely choosing, active agent. The operation of the various discourses that function together to minimise choice is illustrated in Figure 3.1.

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Romance/love script

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Automatic childbearing norm

Parenthood expected part of heterosexual life course

Spontaneity, passion, romance, children as expression of couple’s love

Canonical heterosexual couple narrative

Undermines family planning script;

Normative and naturalised sequence of life events

Promotes passive decision-making

Sacralised child script Children as emotionally priceless; parenting is emotionally rewarding and altruistic

Figure 3.1 Scripts that support the construction of automatic childbearing 73


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These discursive resources form part of a broader regulatory framework (procreative heteronormativity), which shall become clearer during the remainder of the book. In the following chapter, we show how the norm of automatic childbearing was reinforced to the point that childbearing was construed as a non-choice. The chapter is focused on the dual strategies of the glorification of reproduction (mainly through the emphasis placed on the value of children) and the denigration of nonreproduction which, together, render parenthood the only viable choice for married heterosexuals, constructing a ‘procreation imperative’. Notes

Despite this call for a broader consideration of men and male roles in sex and reproduction, studies have, for the most part, taken an instrumentalist view, with a concern for men’s negative impact on women’s reproductive health (and especially contraceptive usage) or simply a consideration of men as women’s partners. Researchers have increasingly begun to argue that this view needs to be expanded in order to capture a fuller picture of gender relations. This includes seeing men as actors with their own needs related to sexuality, health and reproduction, and considering the potentially detrimental ways in which men themselves are affected by gender norms (Figueroa-Perea 2003; Throsby & Gill 2004). See our discussion in Chapter 1 for the various responses and approaches to the inclusion of men in policy, programming and research.

2

See Chapter 4 for further discussion of the participants’ answers to questions about the possibility of not having children.

3

We discuss this more fully in Chapter 5.

4

Slang, used informally and affectionately [pronounced: boy-key]. The word is derived by fusing the English ‘boy’ with the Afrikaans suffix ordinarily denoting a diminutive, e.g., voëltjie (little bird) is the diminutive of voël (bird).

5

See Chapter 6 for a discussion of the stigmatisation of the childfree.

6

We discuss this issue and the ‘marriage–procreation bond’ (Carroll 2012) further in Chapter 5.

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4

Constructing a procreation imperative: Glorifying parenthood and denigrating ‘childlessness’

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Heterosexual parenthood was deemed by participants to be something that ought to ‘just happen’ as part of the unfolding life course and as part of the couple context, as we indicated in the last chapter. Having children, they indicated, requires little to no conscious thought or deliberation. In fact, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, most of the participants argued that having children is not a choice, but simply something someone does after finding a suitable partner with whom to have children, and moreover, something that a person should do. It seems, then, that not having children was most often not considered to be an option, and so, parenthood in fact becomes mandatory. We develop this argument in this chapter, showing how procreative heterosexuality creates a powerful mandate to reproduce.

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We show how the further rejection of choice builds on the assumption of automatic childbearing and constructs a procreation imperative. We demonstrate how pronatalist discourse resourced such talk, concentrating on two interrelated tactics, namely, the glorification of parenthood and the denigration of ‘childlessness’. The glorification of parenthood involves talk that ‘singles out women’s [and men’s] preferred course and trumpets its attractions; it conceals the drawbacks of embarking on this course and quells apprehension’ (Meyers 2001: 747). As we shall show, such talk concentrates almost exclusively on the positives of having children, largely the emotional rewards they provide parents. These rewards are further depicted as outweighing any costs, thus denying or downplaying the negative aspects of parenthood.

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In contrast, the other tactic, the denigration of parenthood, comprises talk that ‘scolds and humiliates those who dare to contemplate any alternative’ (Meyers 2001: 747). Thus, the second part of the rhetorical strategy involves stigmatising people who do not have children. They are seen as sad, mad, or bad: sad, for missing out on having children, with an envisioned life of loneliness, lack of meaning, regret and difficulties in old age; mad, because their childlessness is attributed to personal trauma, such as abuse or lack of the normal desires; and bad, because they forgo parenthood on the basis of their own needs and desires. On the whole, the negatives of being childless are emphasised, while any positives are denied or rejected as ‘selfishness’. These tactics are really two sides of the same pronatalist coin, as Diane Tietjens Meyers (2001) argues. She explores the question of women’s childbearing and motherhood choices in the United States, including a review of ‘women’s testimony about motherhood decisions’ (p. 744), extracted from qualitative studies, most of

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which were about voluntary and involuntary childlessness. Meyers’ (2001) analysis shows that these positive constructions of parenthood and negative constructions of childlessness work together to disavow any alternatives to parenthood. Forgoing parenthood is not an available alternative, particularly for women. Despite often being expressed in highly voluntaristic language (like family planning or reproductive choice), having children and becoming a parent is, in effect, an expectation and, ultimately, a non-choice. This is what we have termed the ‘procreation imperative’.

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In this chapter, we demonstrate how the glorification of reproduction and the denigration of non-reproduction work as a dual strategy that entrenches the notion of procreation as a non-choice, particularly for married heterosexual couples. We turn first to the glorification of parenthood and show how the positives of pregnancy and parenthood were singled out in talk that construed these in exceptionally idealistic ways. We also demonstrate how the negatives of parenthood were downplayed by most of our participants. We then turn to the second tactic, the denigration of chosen childlessness, discussing how not having children was spoken about in generally negative terms, and also how those who did not have children were positioned in various disapproving and demeaning ways.

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The glorification of reproduction

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The glorification of reproduction, and of motherhood in particular, has been reported on in South African and other research that considers the pronatalist context in which reproduction occurs.1 In our study, a romanticised scenario of ‘procreative heterosexual bliss’ (Meyers 2001: 762) was created through the portrayal of pregnancy and parenthood as utopic, while at the same time the potential drawbacks of parenthood were downplayed and expressions of reluctance muted. This serves to render parenthood as highly desirable and, as we shall show later, creates a standard to which childlessness is compared. This construction of reproduction and parenthood as an unquestionably valuable and deeply meaningful experience creates a powerful incentive for people to procreate, for automatic childbearing and therefore a passive decision-making process in which male involvement in decisionmaking becomes a non-issue.

Pregnancy and parenting as utopia The first rhetorical strategy that serves to glorify parenthood is the emphasis on the attractions of having children. This talk centred largely on the intrinsic value of children, and was thus largely resourced by the sacralised child script, as we see in the quote below, for example, in which Elias highlights the benefits that children bring to one’s life as he tries to explain why he wanted to become a father. Extract 1 Elias: I think (.) it’s not because it’s the right thing to do. That’s not the right answer. I think because (.) I had a passion for children I really wanted children of 76


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c o n s t r u c t i n g a p r o c r e at i o n i m p e r at i v e

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my own and I think (.) children just change or fulfils marriage. Uh, and obviously we would like companions as well. You know, it’s better than a friend. A child’s better than a friend. A child is family. I mean it is your, […] flesh and blood. It’s given by God, but it’s yours and there’s that bond there. I think that must be one of the big motivations for having children. Obviously to have a family and to share, to impart things to them and just to make the … You could be whole in a bigger sense just being married, not having children, but I think it’s just so much bigger when you’ve got children. It’s a sense of fulfilment. I think both of us had the desire to have kids. Why? That’s a difficult question. It’s too hard! [Laugh] I never thought of it. Why, why? But I think I answered you there, there was the need, ja, the want for children. We really wanted children. (M1)

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In his attempt to answer a ‘difficult question’ that he had not given prior thought to, Elias outlines a number of positive outcomes of having children, including (1) children as companions, (2) provision of meaning and fulfilment to life and, in particular, (3) perfection or completion of the heterosexual marital relationship. In this regard, children represent ‘a way to infuse value and significance into [one’s] everyday life [and to meet] the needs for meaning and companionship’ (Meyers 2001: 750). This construction reinforces parenthood as highly desirable for married heterosexuals. Children are therefore constructed as having value in and of themselves and as wanted for their own sake, as we see in Elias’s somewhat convoluted answer, which in the end amounts to something along the lines of: ‘we wanted to have children because we wanted children.’

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Romanticised constructions of parenting were most obvious in the narratives of young people and even featured in the narratives of those who did not wish to be parents. This attests to the pervasiveness and power of the sacralised child script. Although many younger participants were generally open to alternatives to biological parenthood (and a few had entertained the possibility of voluntary childlessness), the majority of the young people were, as Meyers (2001: 746) describes it, ‘extraordinarily illusionistic’ about potential parenthood, as demonstrated by the following examples:

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Mariska: I think I’d like the privilege of watching something that me and whoever else have created being here. […] I’m just aware that I have a huge capacity to love and I think I’d like to, I don’t know, just see … […] I just think it’s a huge privilege to have children. […] I just really want to bring out the beauty and the creativity and the potential … […] I think when you’re with somebody and you realise, ‘Wow this could potentially be somebody that I want to spend the rest of my life with,’ like, imagining YOU having kids together. ‘Cause there’s so much beauty within the two of you to then produce something out of that. I think that for me has been like, wow, that would be really amazing. It’s something I think about but I can’t ever imagine happening because it would be so wonderful. I think that has got a large part to do with it. […] I think it’s just that fascination of what my own

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spawn would look like [laugh] and seeing myself in my kids. I just think it would be an amazing experience. (F2) Extract 3

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Johann: I think it will be AWESOME. I think it will be awesome to be a dad. Um, to see your kid and help them along the, you know, try to keep them on the right path to the best of your ability. […] I think to be a dad would be awesome. (It would be?) someone that would love you unconditionally. Your kid is gonna love you unconditionally, it doesn’t matter what you do. And you will love your kid unconditionally, it doesn’t matter what the kid does, what he or she does. So, it’s unconditional love straight away. When that kid’s born it’s there. It doesn’t matter what the kid does [or] what you do. Okay, obviously you’re gonna have fights with the kid. You’re not gonna agree on everything, but there’s definitely that unconditional love. I’d say there’s more love between – I don’t know if it’s right to say it – but there’s more love between kids [and their parents] than what there is between husbands and wives, maybe, ‘cause it’s unconditional. It’s a different bond totally. That kid is part of who you are. […] But ja, I’d love to have kids, it would be awesome. (M2)

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These extracts paint a romantic picture of parenting. The superlatives ‘amazing’, ‘wonderful’, ‘awesome’, ‘wow’ and ‘privilege’ are used to describe the anticipated experience of having one’s own child. In the first extract, Mariska depicts procreation as the creation of ‘beauty’, ‘creativity’ and ‘potential’; she views childbearing as the ultimate outcome of the heterosexual marital union and parenthood as a space in which you have the ‘capacity to love’. The second extract also portrays heterosexual parenthood as a potentially wonderful experience, citing ‘unconditional love’, the opportunity to help children ‘on the right path’ and a sense of belonging that emerges from biological connectedness. Indeed, work by Ratele et al. (2012) shows that biological parenthood is highly prized in South Africa and valued over other forms of parenting. Above we see that through the biological tie, the parent–child relationship signifies a unique relationship that bestows an enduring attachment that persists in the face of disagreement. According to Smart and Neale (1999), owing to the impermanence of the marital/sexual bond in contemporary society, many men now see the parent–child bond as the only remaining enduring relationship. Hence, children represent a more certain, permanent way of fulfilling one’s emotional needs. While it is true that there are many joys to be had in children’s companionship and in caring for them, what was significant about this talk was the emphasis on children as a way of infusing value and significance into daily life and into the heterosexual union. As Morell (2000: 317) puts it, ‘a child is presented as a magic bullet, a guarantor of joy and fulfilment’. In this way, parenthood is portrayed as utopia that is the pinnacle of an individual life course and heterosexual union. In addition, not only was parenthood presented in this idealistic way, but the potential costs entailed in having children were simultaneously downplayed, as we shall show in the following section, thus completing the picture of ‘procreative heterosexual bliss’.

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Costs-versus-rewards rhetoric

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At the same time as participants enthused about the value of children and joys of parenthood, they downplayed the costs of parenthood. As Nauk (2007) points out, such estimations of low risk encourage a spontaneous, unreflexive decision-making process. We noticed that in most cases the costs of parenthood were rendered insignificant in comparison to the rewards that children bring. The investment of the child with religious and sentimental meaning eclipses all the difficulties, hardships, and costs (including and especially financial costs) involved in parenthood. These were generally considered to be a necessary sacrifice of parenthood. In this vein, the participants engaged in ‘costs-versus-rewards’ rhetoric that maintained a pronatalist construction of children (and childbearing) as all-important.

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This rhetoric was common, especially among parents, who perhaps had more invested in defending their (non-)choices than participants from Cohort Two. The following excerpt illustrates how this rhetoric was employed:

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André: So the fact that the kids were born, if I can go back to that, it was not a coincidence, it was a blessing if I look at the whole biological process and, logically, the pleasures that go with it as a father and with your wife and the hardships also. There were severe hardships. […] What else matters? If other things start mattering more than these things then these things don’t matter and life is ultimately about this. I mean, (this house can be worth?) nothing, worth absolutely nothing. I came to that point also when I realised it. Now life is just fun. I don’t want to change the kids for anything, because you can just get worse especially in today’s time and age. Both of them academically [are] very strong, lovely personalities, friendly … ((Trails off)) (M1)

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André’s claim that having children is more important than material possessions shows how the financial costs of parenthood were generally downplayed. This was common to most of the narratives. For instance, Ilze said, ‘So, not having a child, we would have had more money, but it doesn’t weigh up. [I] wouldn’t change it.’ Another common theme illustrated in André’s quote is the way in which the ‘pleasures’ of having children outweigh ‘severe hardships’. There are many more examples of such talk: Jakobus spoke about the potential costs of fatherhood, and he maintained that ‘the sacrifices do not surmount the value of having this child lying in my arms.’ Esmé, reflecting back on her own experiences, said, ‘You know, Tracy, it’s up and down, but still (.) I think any child (.) it’s something special for any parent.’ Likewise, Annelie claimed ‘there are so many good times as well that it cancels out those difficult times.’ The construction of the positives outweighing the negatives is given extra force by the construction of children as a ‘blessing’, in other words, both God-ordained and something for which the appropriate response is appreciation. This echoes other participants’ admonitions for considering the costs of having children as overshadowing the rewards. For example, Jakobus argued that a child ought to be 79


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regarded as a ‘gift and not a burden [or] responsibility’. This prescribes the appropriate attitude that one should have towards childbearing. In this light, minimisations of the drawbacks of parenthood can also be interpreted as ‘management of troubles talk’ (Wilkinson 2000: 367). That is, a socially desirable response that grants positive positioning, lest any accounts of difficulties are construed as complaining and allow narrators to be positioned in a troublesome way.

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Another related way in which the negatives of parenthood were diminished was by portraying them as a sacrifice – importantly, one that is willingly and gladly made. The notion of sacrifice was seen as a requirement of parenthood and associated with notions of responsibility and duty. These could be seen as alternative positive positions to those contained in the planning script that are underpinned by the ideas of responsibility and civic duty. Parenthood is thus associated with a moral injunction in that having children was constructed as a blessed burden (Zelizer 1985), thus clearly drawing on the sacralised construction of childhood, which we described in the preceding chapter.

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In this vein, participants construed parenthood as part of something larger than the individual and her/his preferences and desires; most often as a biological imperative or godly mandate in order to save face for not having gone about family planning in a rational manner. This is illustrated in the following extract. It is possible to see that Thys displays some degree of wry self-awareness.

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Thys: That is (.) one of those weird questions that I think all parents struggle with sometimes. I mean, you go through hell with children. [Laughs] It’s not a walk in the park, it really isn’t, and then every so often you reach that point where you ask yourself, ‘Well, what if they weren’t here at all?’ Say, for instance, they go for a sleep-over at a friend’s house and all of a sudden you’ve got the house all to yourself and it’s all quiet and peaceful. You think, ‘Oh wonderful, bliss’ and then within half an hour you get that panicky feeling, ‘My God, what’s my purpose here?’ or, ‘What will I do with myself all the time if there were no children to look after?’ You do, and it’s a terribly anti-intellectual feeling and realisation, but you do find reason for your own existence because they are there. That wasn’t the reason why you wanted them, not consciously at least, but now you can’t see any point to your going through all this work and trouble and toil if it wasn’t for them. If they weren’t around you’d just chuck it all and bugger off and do something else. They give you a reason to carry on, which is terribly middle-class and it keeps you tied into the system for the rest of your life. You will pay the bond so that the kids can have somewhere to go and you realise that full well and you accept it gladly, in our case. [Laughs] It is a funny thing. I mean, when you do that. I think it’s just biology kicking in, you know, telling you, ‘You’re doing your little bit for the survival of the species, so shut up and put up,’ or something like that [laughs]. But, you do, you just, I guess when everything works, then you just happily accept that, even when you become aware of it. I guess some people don’t accept that and

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then things might not work out well. I don’t know, but in our case at least, even when they drive you to complete distraction you can’t imagine your life without them at all. (M1)

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In this extract, parenthood is represented as a selfless act, since one should ‘happily accept’ any sacrifices for the child’s sake as well as for greater humanity. The comment on the ‘terribly middle-class[ed]’ nature of his altruistic self-positioning implies a degree of reflexivity and ambivalence, as does the passive self-positioning of ‘anti-intellectual’ or irrationality (that is, not having ‘chosen to have children’). This dilemma is resolved through self-positioning as one who is ‘doing [his] part’ for the human species. Reproduction, therefore, is constructed as not being motivated by self-interest, but rather obedience to one’s instinctual drives, despite intellectual reservations or resistance.

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Renditions of parenthood as biologically driven clearly situate parenthood outside of the domain of choice, and in other interviews a biological discourse was also used to depict procreation as an (often uncontrollable) biological imperative. Ideas of contributing to humanity, continuity, and species survival are deployed to construct having children as something that one does because one is ‘supposed to’ (Gerhardt) as a (good) member of the human species. Similarly, the portrayal of reproduction as a Godly mandate (especially common among Cohort One) places childbearing beyond personal interests.

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This particular construction of procreation as altruistic also offers a way of regulating deviation from the norm, since those who forgo parenthood can be positioned as selfish and irresponsible, even as troublemakers, as we elaborate further in the following section. We shall show how, in addition to downplaying the drawbacks of parenthood, the potential advantages of remaining childfree were unacknowledged. Instead, in comparison to the glorified construction of parenthood, the prospect of childlessness was portrayed as a distressing possibility and the idea that someone would voluntarily choose to remain childfree was deemed unfathomable and even unlikely.

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Indeed, in our study, childlessness (voluntary or otherwise) was, for the most part, notably absent from the narratives of the parents or those childfree participants who wished to be parents. This resulted in a silence around the topic in the bulk of the narratives, suggesting that (voluntarily) not having children was something that people had not necessarily even considered. This is certainly evident in Annelie’s response to the question regarding whether she and her partner had ever considered or discussed not having children. She answered, ‘No. No, we knew. I think every couple dreams of having a child.’ According to this statement, having children is not simply desired by all couples, but something to which they aspire. This response reiterates the findings of other research on parenthood decisions. As Meyers reports, ‘Most people presume that children are necessary to personal fulfilment and never consider not having children’ (2001: 746). For instance, Maria said:

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Extract 6 Maria: … we didn’t even have to ask each other … I always wanted [children] and I also never had this thing of ‘What if I can’t have?’ Those things didn’t come up in my mind. You get people who are scared. I think it because you hear these days of so many people who cannot fall pregnant. I think it’s because we’re more aware of these things. No I never, I just knew I will have. I think it’s also because to me it was a religious thing. I think I believed that it will work out for me. (F1)

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Normalising the desire to become a parent in this way reinforces the assumption of automatic childbearing and in turn creates the potential for the lack of this desire to be seen as unusual and for the negative positioning of those who forgo parenthood. The silence in relation to the possibility of not having children was usually only ruptured by Tracy’s questioning (for example, about whether there were considerations about not having children, how they imagined their lives would be/would have been without children, any regrets related to having children) or circumstances that called automatic childbearing into question (for example, difficulty conceiving, the possibility of not being able to have children, or a future partner who does not share the desire to be a parent).

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The denigration of non-reproduction and the horror of childlessness

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The widespread construction of parenthood as a ‘normal’, inevitable and desirable part of heterosexual adulthood has implications for those who do not become biological parents. Research in a range of contexts documents involuntary childlessness as a social experience with many negative repercussions.2 Distress is often the result of being unable to achieve a desired social role (Greil et al. 2010) and stigmatising social responses.3

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Findings from this work point to the gendered dimensions of the value of biological parenthood, for instance, procreation as a marker of ‘real’ manhood, which entails virility and potency. This was indicated in a South African study in which male respondents faced with infertility commented on feeling less than a man: ‘ “You feel like you are half a man” one patient said. And another one explained: “You see, you are a man because you have children. But if you don’t have children some other guys say you are a woman” ’ (Dyer et al. 2004: 963). Similarly, involuntarily childless men in Throsby and Gill’s (2004) study (discussed earlier in Chapter 3), described being ridiculed by colleagues or friends and having their potency questioned. The researchers also note how women took the blame for infertility (in cases of malefactor infertility) and allowed people to assume the inability to conceive was theirs. Research on women’s involuntary childlessness shows that ‘the notion of deficiency associated with infertility covers many aspects of female identity, such as sexual identity, normative femininity and maturity’ (Ha’elyon 2006: 181). Such experiences of stigma may be particularly profound for women who cannot conceive, since 82


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‘powerful pronatalist cultural discourses have contextualized the meaning of the term “woman” around the inevitability of a desire for motherhood, and the centrality of motherhood to understandings of feminine identity’ (Gillespie 2001: 140).

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Negative or stigmatising responses to infertility do not only highlight the gendered dimensions of pronatalist discourses, but also show the value that is placed on biological parenthood. Being able to reproduce, and to produce one’s ‘own’ biological offspring, is accorded high social status in most places in the world. For example, Ha’elyon (2006) points out how Israeli society considers childlessness a form of social deviance. The extent of Israeli pronatalism is revealed in the fact that the national health insurance system subsidises all kinds of reproductive technologies and every Israeli woman is entitled to an unlimited number of IVF treatments for no charge, up to the birth of two children. In her study of heterosexually partnered women undergoing these treatments, Ha’elyon reports that the women regarded adoption as an ‘an act of “defeatism”, whereas the value of biological parenthood [is] maximized and filled with meaning’ (2006: 189). The view of adoption as an inferior or even undesirable alternative to biological parenthood has been reported anecdotally by adoption agencies in South Africa, as well as in research (see Cooper et al. 2009; Mokomane et al. 2011). Our own study also echoes the preference for procreation as a path to parenthood over alternatives, such as adoption, fostering or caring for a relative’s child.

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Our participants generally spoke about adoption as noble or charitable. Dawid maintained, for example, that it provides an opportunity to ‘get involved in an orphan’s life who doesn’t have any opportunities’. By and large, however, adoption was deemed to be an alternative or even last resort in cases of infertility, as exemplified by Johann’s comment: ‘My first choice would be biological. If I can’t biologically, then it would be (.) artificial insemination and if that doesn’t work, then I’d adopt.’ Other participants pointed to the value of having one’s ‘own children’, as in the extract below: Extract 7

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Mariska: I don’t really know if I’d want to adopt or to foster children, because, I don’t see it as a replacement, but it’s sort of, like, thinking if I can’t have my own children then I don’t really want to. […] I know that there’s that whole, like, there’s lots of kids who don’t have moms and dads and you could be available, which I’m all for, but I don’t know if it’s something that I personally could do. It’s quite weird, I actually thought about it a couple of days ago and I think I would be absolutely devastated if I couldn’t have my own kids. (F2)

Like many others, Mariska constructs adoption as an act of benevolence rather than a viable pathway to parenthood. Some even spoke about the potential risks or dangers of adoption related to not knowing a child’s genetic heritage, and so constructed adoption as ultimately undesirable. The value placed on producing one’s own children suggests that negative responses to childlessness are as much about the potential social consequences (shame, stigma) of failing to reproduce as 83


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the perceived negative personal consequences (like loneliness). Pronatalism is thus clearly at work.

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In contrast, while those who cannot conceive may experience stigma, the overwhelming response to involuntary childlessness (infertility) is that of pity, since those who are unable to conceive can hardly be blamed for failing to live up to the expected cultural norm. In contrast, as Gayle Letherby maintains, ‘the “voluntary” childless are viewed as selfish and deviant and portrayed in ways that emphasize this: as aberrant, immature, and unfeminine’ (2002: 10). This is evident in a number of studies – mostly of Euro-American origin or from the ‘global North’ – that consider perceptions4 and representations5 of voluntary childless or childfree people, as well as personal accounts and experiences of voluntary childlessness.6 These studies have most often focused on women. Some researchers have also reported on the stigmatising responses that voluntarily childless people encounter (Gillespie 2000; Letherby 2002) and how they manage this stigma.7 Unlike with involuntary childlessness, deliberately eschewing parenthood threatens procreative heteronormativity, as Park explains:

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[T]he deviance of the voluntarily childless lies not only in the fact that they do not have children, but primarily, and especially for women, in the fact that they do not want them. This is in contrast to the involuntarily childless, who embrace the parenting role in principle … parents find the voluntarily childless threatening as their lifestyle challenges parents’ sense of distributive justice, their convictions that the rewards of their choice offset the sacrifices and that marriage and children are the best routes to personal happiness. (Park 2002: 22, 24)

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In the following section, we show how deliberate non-parenthood troubles procreative heterosexuality and how this threat was discursively regulated through Othering tactics in which adult heterosexuals who forgo parenthood are positioned negatively, as deviant Others who are sad, mad, or bad.

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The tactics that we shall discuss operate against the pronatalist backdrop of ‘procreative heterosexual bliss’ (Meyers 2001: 762) – in which procreation is valorised, parenthood romanticised and children portrayed as sacred – and the concomitant horror of childlessness. Glorified renditions of parenthood acted as a foil for childlessness so as to render this a horrific and distressing possibility, as the following extracts illustrate:

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Mariska: I also realised that there would be a big part of me that would die, in my soul, if I wasn’t allowed that privilege. I also thought that I would lose out on quite a big part of experiencing life in the sense of what that period is like. […] I think children add a lot of colour and beauty and joy to people’s lives. I think also, as parents, they’re your personal delight. It’s like a little part of who you are and just seeing how much, doing my teaching prac, just seeing how much amazingness is

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crammed into one little life. I would definitely (.) I would be absolutely devastated if I was told that I couldn’t have my own children. (F2) Extract 9 André: I cannot imagine tonight sitting in this huge house with myself and Nenna, just the two of us. Maybe you would adapt to circumstances, but I think it’s a very lonely life. The children bring fun and adventure and activities and incidents into the house. It’s just unbelievable. Again, we’re blessed to have two children who are very (.) normal. (M1)

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Esmé: I won’t change them, not at all, and you know that is something that through everything I’ve never yet regretted having the children. Never once in my life did I think what a pleasure it would have been if they weren’t around. I can’t think [of] my life without them. If I’ve got to have my life over again I will have the three of them over again. I won’t change anything with them. […] Tracy: How DO you imagine your life would be if you never had children?

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Esmé: I think it would have been terrible. It really would have been terrible. (.) If I didn’t have children of my own I would have adopted children. I can’t imagine myself without them. (F1)

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These extracts clearly show how having one’s own children was valued and the negative attributions given to a childfree life: loss, devastation, loneliness and emptiness. It is clear that childlessness is the corollary to the construction of children as a source of fulfilment. Esmé hints at the possible advantages of a childfree life (‘what a pleasure it would have been if they weren’t around’), but denies entertaining such ideas and ultimately dismisses this alternative as ‘terrible’. Indeed, participants seldom acknowledged potential advantages of not having children; these were glossed over or dismissed, as we show later. Similarly, they also rarely admitted any drawbacks in their pictures of ‘procreative heterosexual bliss’ – though André’s intimation of the possibility of children being not ‘normal’ provides a slight disjuncture in the neat picture of children as a source of fulfilment in contradistinction with childlessness. For the most part, as other research corroborates, not having children was ‘unfathomable, full of fears of social isolation and of the need to constantly justify that choice’ (Park 2002: 23). Quotes such as those above suggest that parenthood choices may also be motivated by fears of the consequences of not having children, not only to the perceived benefits of parenthood, as other evidence suggests (Meyers 2001). Thus, to sum up, deliberate or chosen non-parenthood troubles procreative heterosexuality in ways that involuntary childlessness does not, precisely because of its voluntary character. The decision to remain childfree can be seen as a deliberate and active deviation from the procreative heteronorm (Mollen 2006). The refusal of parenthood by heterosexual people, especially married heterosexuals, potentially

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contradicts dominant constructions that glorify parenthood and flouts heterogendered imperatives to procreate. This threat to the heteronorm is discursively regulated by means of stigmatising tactics that highlight the disadvantages and fears associated with remaining childfree, and in turn work to reinforce the construction of procreative heterosexual bliss. In our study, we encountered various regulatory tactics at work in our participants’ accounts. These involved the positioning of those who forgo parenthood negatively, as deviant Others, as we discuss below.

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‘Othering’ tactics: Negative positioning of the voluntarily childless or ‘childfree’

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Meyers argues that in addition to ‘trumpeting’ the attractions of parenthood, pronatalist discourse simultaneously ‘scolds’ and ‘humiliates … those who dare to contemplate any alternative’ (2001: 762). The voluntary childless are admonished for being selfish and positioned in other negative ways as somehow deficient or even deviant. There are, as we have reported above, several studies that document such stigmatisation of voluntary childlessness and marginalisation of the childfree. Denigrating talk functions as a regulatory mechanism for heteronormativity and matches and reinforces idealised pronatalist constructions (Meyers 2001). Negative positioning of those who are voluntarily childless discursively relegates them to the position of deviant Others, so that one who eschews parenthood becomes an abnormal ‘unsubject’, as Butler (1991:20) calls it. In this way, they are also rendered exceptional and challenges to the dominant construction of procreative heterosexuality, and normatively determined gender identities are supressed.

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We explore three main discursive tactics deployed by participants to position the childfree as Other, namely, childfree people as (1) deficient (that is, as lacking in various ways); (2) damaged or deviant; and (3) selfish. We shall show how negative attributions and stereotypes of childfree people serve to further reinforce idealised heteronormative formulations, such as those discussed in the preceding chapter.

The deficient Other: The childfree as sad

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Viewing the experience of voluntary childlessness through what Morell calls ‘the lens of deficiency’ (2000: 313), participants frequently constructed those who deliberately chose childlessness as somehow lacking and unfulfilled, or as having failed, desolate, and wasted lives, as found in other research (Gillespie 2000, 2003). These sorts of constructions contribute to the negative, even pejorative, positioning of the (voluntarily) childless. Indeed, as Graham and Rich note, the term ‘childless’ is often used (in their case in Australian print media) as a ‘discreditable descriptor’, given that ‘childlessness can be perceived as a form of non-normative social behaviour and thus may also become a discreditable attribute’ (2012: 10), particularly for women. Morell (2000) maintains that the prominent enmeshment of motherhood and ideas about adult femininity makes it nearly impossible to conceive of women who are

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childless without considering them in terms of absence, lack or deficiency.8 These stereotypes are not exclusively associated with women, though there is less research that documents the stigmatising responses faced by voluntarily ‘childless’ men.9 Our participants’ responses in this study show that childless men were also positioned as lacking, particularly if they were married. Thus, marital status was seen as significant in terms of how people are viewed, as seen in the following extracts in which the narrators discuss childless couples that they know: Extract 11

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Thys: I referred to another couple that we are friendly with and they only had their first children after they both had turned 40, 41, they only had their children. We always compared ourselves to them, you know, sitting there with our kids, not being able to go away spur of the moment and go and camp somewhere and what not and the two of them being able to do it and we PITIED them. [Laughter] Instead of pitying OURSELVES, we pitied them! (M1)

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Gerhardt: We know people with no kids and when you see them you definitely think that they would love to have children. They’re maybe alone, they haven’t left anything behind, [or] when they’re old they don’t have kids to look after you in your old age. […] I think that is definitely sort of built into us, maybe, programmed into us. I think that the decision not to have kids at all is a bigger decision, most probably, than the one to have kids. (M1)

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Koos: […] my brother doesn’t have kids. That’s also in the back of your mind. I’m not 100 per cent sure why he doesn’t. It’s something in the family that wasn’t discussed finally, whether it’s his wife that can’t fall pregnant or what the problem is. I’m not too sure, but he’s older than me and he doesn’t have children and that’s in the back of your mind as well. So you are the only family member that can carry on the family. In our tradition, or in our culture, to carry on with the family name is quite an important thing. (M1)

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These extracts illustrate how childless couples were described as lacking and a childfree life is portrayed as deficient and inferior to family life. This is achieved in a number of ways. Firstly by discounting the potential positives associated with childfreedom. Instead, those who are childless are rendered as objects of pity (Extract 11), and as lonely and alone (Extract 12). Thys implies that the relative freedom that his friends had due to not yet having had children is meaningless in relation to the joys of parenthood. The second way in which childlessness is constructed as inferior is by discounting the possibility that it could be truly voluntary or accepted. This is evident in Koos’s speculation that his sister-in-law might be infertile. Gillespie (2000: 228) contends, referring to findings from her own research, that such ‘reframing [of] participants’ accounts of

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childlessness as involuntary through ideas about hidden infertility … emphasised others’ perceptions of the “unfortunate” nature of childlessness’. We pick up on this way of speaking later, discussing how this way of speaking effectively minimises choice and therefore regulates trouble posed by voluntary childlessness.

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The third way in which childfreedom was rendered inferior, which is evident in the quotes above, was by seeing as losing the opportunity to leave a legacy or a contribution to broader society with a child as the next generation, seen as being the most valuable thing to ‘leave behind’ (Extract 13). Conversely, chosen childlessness was construed as entailing a lack of productivity or meaningful contribution to humanity.

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The positioning of childfree people as deficient or lacking renders the decision not to have children curious. In Extract 12 above, Gerhardt describes this as ‘a bigger decision than the decision to have kids’. Speaking in terms of the decision to have or not have children, the narrator constructs having children as the standard or default option, possibly alluding to the notion of automatic childbearing (referred to earlier) where little or no conscious thought is dedicated to becoming a parent.

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Owing to the middle-class background of the participants, instrumentalist and economic constructions of children’s worth as evoked above by Gerhardt did not feature much. However, as Meyer points out, various ‘social issues tend to be marked by the predominance of different discourses [but] these trends are patchy’ (2007: 87) as discursive resources exist side by side and reinforce (or oppose) one another. In Extract 12, an instrumentalist/economic script works to position childfree people as missing out on an essential value of having children, namely that they might care for their parents in their old age. Similarly, Koos positions his brother as missing out because he has no children to carry on the patriarchal name.

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The underlying assumption in these extracts is that married couples ought to have had children by a particular point. Koos’s story about his brother suggests that the individuals in question have not attained the expected developmental milestone. These extracts also show the marriage–procreation bond (discussed further in the following chapter) that forms part of the strong imperative or obligation to procreate. We can see therefore that even temporarily refraining from procreating as a married couple amounts to the deviation from the ordinary life course and opens married childless individuals up to being positioned as potentially defective and lacking. The Othering of childless/childfree people positions them in highly undesirable ways and, more importantly, positions them outside of the norm. This way of speaking therefore is a regulatory script that disciplines non-adherents. What is also evident as part of this regulation is the diminishing of choice, once more, to which we alluded above (see also Chapter 3). We see above how participants constructed others’ childlessness as involuntary, in such a way that this heightens its unfortunate nature. Participants frequently made, or referred to, the assumption that childless people they encounter would in fact like to have children. Elize expressed this quite vehemently, saying, ‘I think 88


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Extract 14

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most people, even people that choose not to have kids, deep down they want to have kids but they just wouldn’t say it out loud.’ Her comment shows not only the presumption that childless people are not being forthcoming about their true desires, but also the moral censure attached to chosen childlessness. Petro also referred to this assumption, claiming that her family attributed her voluntary childlessness to unfavourable circumstances beyond her control: either being infertile or unable to find a suitable partner. Childlessness was often construed as a temporary choice for young people in ways that downplayed or muted their reservations about parenthood, as found by Gillespie (2000) and Meyers (2001). This was achieved by drawing on the canonical heterosexual couple narrative in which procreation features as a definitive end point. In line with this narrative, it is commonly believed that childbearing is a sign of adulthood or maturity (Chadwick 2006; Reynolds et al. 2007). Those who did not have children were seen as not yet ready or not having attained the developmental milestone. Those who expressed a wish to opt out of parenthood were deemed immature and liable to regret their choice.

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Anel: That would depend on how young we were. I think a lot of young people think that they don’t want children. So, I think it would depend on the age of the person that I met. […] If that person’s sort of mature in everything. If I met someone who was mature in everything else except that they wouldn’t have kids, then I probably wouldn’t pursue it. […] If I met someone who didn’t want kids and I wasn’t sure if it was just because you know he’s not mature enough to think about life in that way, ‘cause he’s still in the ‘I’m gonna get everything out of my life and my career and education’ and thinks that maybe kids are a hamper on that then I’ll say to him, ‘You know just be aware of the fact that I do want kids one day.’ I think that it’s important to think about the maturity of the person that you’re talking to. I, personally, think that girls should always date older guys because I think that girls mature much faster than guys. (F2) Extract 15

Tracy: And that response of, ‘Just wait, you’ll change your mind’?

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Petro: And then they, another thing that more and more I see, that they actually force their grandchildren on you. So, ‘Just hold the baby, if you hold them then you will like …’ And I’m like, ‘I can hold the baby and the baby is beautiful and I can love the baby, but it does not … […] It’s your child will you please take it back home [Laughter] I don’t want it.’ But they think that a little thing like that, being a silly girl you didn’t think this through so (.) we will HELP you to make the decision. (F2)

In Extract 14, the desire to have children is described as an age-appropriate phenomenon. This also is gendered, since the narrator claims that ‘girls mature faster than boys’ do and have the tendency to become preoccupied with motherhood at a younger age. The association of maturity and childbearing is evident in the statement

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of a future partner as ‘mature in everything else except’ the desire to have children. In this extract, expressions of the wish to remain childfree are discredited as related to immaturity, as the narrator states that many ‘young people think that they don’t want children.’ The rhetoric of choice is employed here and voluntary childlessness is constructed as a temporary decision related to the self-oriented, youthful desire to ‘get everything out of life’ and pursue career objectives. The inference is that upon reaching maturity, one will inevitably change one’s mind and/or be prepared to make the appropriate sacrifices (to set one’s ambitions aside) in order to be a parent.

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This sort of dismissive response is also evident in Extract 14, in which Petro shares her experiences of people attempting to persuade her to change her mind about remaining childfree. In this extract, voluntary childlessness is also linked with immaturity, as the speaker reports being positioned as ‘a silly girl’. Other researchers have also noted how childless women are frequently regarded as immature or childlike (Gillespie 2000; Letherby 1999). Gillespie (2000: 228) reports that her participants

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described how others saw them as not yet having passed into the normal adult female role, and therefore had not yet made the ‘normal’ adult decision to become mothers. Thus, participants were simply posited as future mothers, who would change their minds with the onset of maturity and the assumed ‘inevitability’ of heterosexual partnerships.

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Petro also describes pushy relatives who wish to ‘help [her] to make the decision’, presumably by showing her what she might be missing out on or by triggering some sort of maternal response through exposing her to infants, claiming that they believe that she has not thought through the decision. The implication, as pointed out in other research (for example, Gillespie 2000 & 2003), is that she does not know her own mind and will inevitably change it upon realisation of the repercussions or gravity of her choice. This was also implied by other participants, such as Stefanus, who maintained that his daughter and her partner had initially ‘said that they don’t want children, until they realised what they were saying’. The insinuation of such ‘conversion tales’, as Carmichael and Whittaker (2007: 127) refer to them, is not only that ‘[d]ecisions to remain childless are not necessarily irrevocable’ (p. 127), as those researchers found, but also that one will inevitably regret one’s choice. As a result, childfree people are regarded with scepticism and mistrust (Gillespie 2000 & 2003; Mollen 2006). Those who wished to remain childfree had to talk against this belief that people will either change their minds or regret their decision. In the following excerpts, for example, the narrators address the possibility of regretting the decision not to have children: Extract 16 Franco: I think there’s a possibility that I might regret [it] if I don’t have kiddies. But I can’t say exactly why. Um, I might, I think that I might regret it – not having children – just as much as it’s likely that I’ll regret having children. […] if I don’t 90


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have kiddies I don’t know what I’m missing out on, if I do and I regret it for some or other reason, I mean it must be a pretty serious regret, because it’s your own child and stuff like that. So if I have to, have to, like, work out statistically to minimise my regrets, then I’ll still lean on the not having children. If I have to minimise my possible future regret and then if you have a kiddie you might not regret it so … [Laugh] Um, I do think when you have a child you add a whole dimension to your life and that’s got the potential to be wonderful and great, but if you’ve never had that dimension then it’s OK. I’ll be OK. (M2)

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Petro: The road less travelled … [Pause]. That’s why I actually had to think it through. If you make the decision then you know why you made it and there will always be, it’s probably biologically programmed into us and emotionally, that you would like to and that there will be a missing of. If I had my own little one and then when I’m sixty then there’s actually somebody to look after me when everybody else dies, in that sense. So, maybe yes, I’m sure that there will be a yearning, there will be a missing, something that’s not complete. But having thought through it, and actually logically and sanely made the decision. So it’s, you made the decision, you have to live with it. (F2)

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Both the narrators engaged in the rhetoric of choice in order to argue against the widespread belief that they will inevitably be disappointed in their decision. Positioning themselves as rational agents of choice, they juxtapose the emotional and/or thoughtless ‘urge’ to procreate with the properly thought-out and considered choice to remain childfree. The insinuation is that this is not done by people who have children. The speakers recognise that some loss may be incurred by remaining childless, but maintain that potential regret would be minimised by their rational approach and even alluded to the possibility of regret involved in having children. This counter-positioning of those who choose to procreate implies that there may be negatives to having children too. This disrupts the relative silence or muting of the disadvantages of parenthood and, to some degree, challenges the construction of parenting as an entirely positive experience.

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Yet, at the same time neither speaker significantly counters the image of childlessness as loss. Both reiterate the common pronatalist belief that children ‘add a whole dimension to your life’ and that ‘there will be a missing.’ Rather, they repeat the construction of the voluntarily childless as entailing ‘yearning’ and potential social isolation or loneliness. This is part of a common trope in Cohort Two regarding the fear of ‘missing out’ or ‘losing out’ in regard to parenthood. It is interesting to notice that even those participants who expressed a wish to abstain from childbearing or reluctance about parenthood alluded to the possibility of ‘missing out’, and described their choice to remain childfree in these terms of lack and deficiency. This demonstrates the power of the sacralised child script. As a pronatalist discourse, it potentially obscures both the disadvantages of parenthood, as well as the potential benefits of ‘non-parenthood’.

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The psychologically damaged Other: Childfree as mad

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Research indicates that ‘chosen childlessness is often incomprehensible to others who feel the need to express their bewilderment’ (Gillespie 2000: 230). This was certainly apparent in some of the participants’ reactions, especially members of Cohort Two, to the hypothetical scenarios of infertility or of a future partner who wishes to remain childfree. These scenarios were most often introduced by Tracy’s questioning, which disrupted the taken-for-granted nature of future parenthood. Their sense-making attempts involved assigning particular (more acceptable) motivations to chosen childlessness that helped to render this unexpected, ‘deviant’ desire understandable. This is similar to the reports of participants in Rosemary Gillespie’s qualitative study, in which she interviewed 25 British women who were voluntarily childless (see Gillespie 2000, 2003). These participants maintained that ‘others frequently disbelieved that they had chosen childlessness. They described how their choice was often re-cast by others as different more “legitimate” explanations were superimposed’ (Gillespie 2000: 227). We have already shown how some people used infertility or the inability to find a suitable partner to understand childlessness. We now turn to look at explanations that hinge on the psychological or emotional state of those who refuse parenthood. These explanations ultimately reserve the notion of the desire to procreate as a normal and universal desire, and imply that there is, or must be, something wrong with someone who wishes to abstain from procreating. Again, they also minimise intentionality to some extent.

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A common construction of future partners who did not wish to procreate was of an individual who is reluctant about, or fearful of, parenting due to bad childhood experiences (for example, divorce or child abuse) that cause psychological or emotional trauma. This sort of explanation is based on the idea that children from certain non-ideal contexts, like a fatherless family, may be more inclined to perpetuate these undesirable conditions in their own lives.10 Importantly, it individualises deviant desire and allows it potentially to be explained away as an anomaly, since, under normal circumstances the person would choose to procreate and even be ‘cured’ or convinced. This is evident in each of the following extracts, which emphasise the potential for the reluctant partner to be persuaded to change her or his mind.

Extract 18

Jakobus: Ja (.) uh, it’s a good question because it depends on the background of that person. You know, say the girl was (.) or the guy was abused when he was a child and fearful of these things. That’s pretty hard to beat. If the conviction is so strong, it’s out of hand, but at least if you can have, if the negotiation can bring out things, because I struggle to believe in the other person, knowing everything that there is to know about you which is relevant to the relationship. There’s nothing that can break it if all is on the table. So, that’s why I think the conversation would probably develop in saying that, ‘OK, you don’t want to have a child, I do, let’s …’ Um … hmmm … ja, it’s quite a hard one! Hmmm. Jis, I’d

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Extract 19

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say, ‘OK, you don’t want a child well, you know, please tell me the reasons … OK reasons are you were abused [as] a child. I’m very sorry to hear about that‘ … Jis, well not so formal [laugh] […] Then, I think, if it’s not against her will, I’d take her to a crèche [laughter]. I’d probably take her to my old crèche that I went to and we’d spend the day there, or spend like an hour or so there. You know, just to let her have some time with children if she hasn’t already. And if she still has that conviction in her, then I’d say, ‘Well, times have been fun. You know what I want, I know what you want.’ Then, ‘Is it going to be advantageous to both of us if we carry on?’ And if the answer is ‘no’ then we stay friends. At least if I’ve given an opportunity to her to consider it and have time with children to, um, come to terms with it. I don’t think you can ever come to terms with a thing like child abuse, but just come close to it and experience the love and care of a child, which she never had, and the love that you give to that child, or the love being given to that child. You can see that sometimes not all people are evil towards children. (M2)

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Dalena: I will ask him his reasons. Maybe he had a very bad child experience. Maybe his parents weren’t good to him and therefore he feels that he won’t be a good father to the children. Maybe it’s psychologically (.) maybe he’s (.) something [is] messed up there ((points to her head)) or something [laugh]. So we’ll have to sort out our issues. Take the skeletons out the closet; fix him before he can actually get involved. He needs to fix his life and fix his problems and his bad memories before he can go into something. Ja, I’m pretty sure that if someone had issues in their lives and you’re there and you help them through those issues. I mean it’s useless telling the guy, ‘Sorry I’ve got feelings now for you but I can’t have you because you don’t want to have children so I’m just gonna push you away, I don’t need you anymore.’ I would work through their problems with them. I’d be the support for them and help them understand that having children isn’t bad. (.) It all depends on why they don’t want to have children. […] Most of my friends I’ve spoken to have said, ‘Look, I don’t want to have any children, because what if I get divorced? Then they’re going to end up like me!’, type of thing. So, there’s a lot of pain involved. (F2)

Jakobus and Dalena indicate that they would call on their potential future partners to account for their lack of desire for children (put everything ‘on the table’; ‘ask him his reasons’), in a way that those who wish to procreate do not. In contrast, those who deviate from the norm must provide explanations, which are then judged as adequate or not. The reasons that are offered in these extracts are deemed as acceptable or understandable reasons that a person would opt out of having children. These reasons include child abuse and other painful childhood experiences, fear, coming from a divorced family, and/or psychological ‘problems’. The suggestion is that such a decision is made due to emotional damage of some kind, to being ‘psychologically messed up’, as Dalena put it. The implication is that there must

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be something wrong with a person who could make a choice that could have no discernible positive outcomes.

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The speakers are aware of the conundrum presented by the possibility of their future partner not sharing their desire to have children. On the one hand, they wish to preserve their relationship while, on the other, they want to fulfil their desire to have children. Explaining the choice to remain childfree as related to some sort of personal upset or psychological distress offers a way out of this dilemma because of the possibility that the recalcitrant partner could be ‘fixed’ or cured of their misapprehension about childbearing, as noted earlier. For instance, Jakobus suggests that he would take his partner to a crèche in order to expose her to children. This is reminiscent of Petro’s account of relatives trying to persuade her to change her mind by exposing her to their grandchildren (see Extract 17 above). Positioning the partner who wishes to remain childfree as deviant or abnormal, however, justifies the resolution that it should be this partner who capitulates rather than the other way around. So, clearly, refraining from having children is not entertained as a viable option, as found by Morell (2000).

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It is evident that this discursive tactic, in which the deviant desire to remain childfree is individualised, and even pathologised, allowed the narrators to retain their own positive positioning. Narrators positioned themselves as understanding and helpful in relation to their future partner’s understandable concerns and ‘problems’, rather than as someone who wishes to get her or his own way in a conflict of interests. Had they considered possible positive or advantageous reasons that someone might wish to remain childfree (for example, greater personal freedom or time to give of oneself to a particular cause), then they themselves may have run the risk of being positioned as selfish or unreasonable. However, by positioning their future partner as someone who might otherwise have chosen to procreate, this choice remains desirable and normal.

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The selfish Other: The childfree as bad

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Ironically, at the same time as any pleasures or benefits to remaining childfree are ignored, the argument that voluntarily childless people are selfish was also deployed. In this rendition of the discursive tactic, the possible advantages of childlessness (for example, greater personal and economic freedom) were acknowledged, but the childfree were described as ‘intrinsically selfish and unwilling to make the sacrifices that parenthood requires’ (Carmichael & Whittaker 2007: 124). So, although the possibility of accruing advantages from childlessness is acknowledged, this is still portrayed in a deviant, socially unacceptable light. This is evident in the extract below, in which Dalena responds to Tracy’s question about how she imagines a childfree life. Extract 20 Dalena: Self-consumed, to be honest. If I didn’t have children, if I didn’t have a relationship, I’d be me, myself and I. I’ll probably end up wearing the best fashion. 94


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I’ll live in an incredible flat somewhere. I don’t think I’ll own a house. No, I won’t own a house. I’ll have a flat somewhere in a ‘larney’11 area. Or, alternatively if I don’t do office work, I’ll be travelling along with my entomology professors or something, going around the world, doing new experiments, getting out there, travelling, but I don’t want that, it’s so empty. There’s no purpose almost. I want to have children definitely. I don’t really want to picture my life without them. (F2)

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Dalena describes the childfree life as one that is ‘self-consumed’ and ‘empty’, largely because it is supposedly focused entirely on one’s own needs and interests. Dalena also draws on the familiar stereotype ‘of the hard, ruthless, unfeminine, childless “career woman” ’ (Gillespie 2000: 227) that is commonly used in relation to childfree women. Choosing to pursue a career instead of having children defies the ‘ethic of caring’ (Wager 2000: 391) that is central to motherhood, and by extension to womanhood. Such women display attributes that are more desirably associated with men (ambitious, competitive) and result in women being viewed as self-oriented (Wager 2000), as we see in Dalena’s quote. In contrast, children are again construed as the only thing that imbues life with meaning and purpose, so that sacrificing one’s own interests for them is seen as more desirable than ‘selfishly’ pursuing one’s own interests or attaining one’s own goals.

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From this extract, it is possible to see that the indictment of selfishness is firmly entrenched in the construction of the sacralised child, in which children’s worth outweighs any sacrifice made on their behalf (Zelizer 1985) and forms part of the broader, overarching preoccupation with serving children’s interests and/or needs. Within this script, children should not be conceived in response to an individual’s own needs. Likewise, abstaining from having children should also not be motivated by the desire to fulfil one’s own needs. As a consequence, those who choose to meet their own needs through remaining childless violate the notion of altruism that permeates talk about both parenthood and parenting decisions. The accusation of selfishness is therefore an indictment of focusing on one’s own needs in relation to reproduction, for whatever reason (Gillespie 2000).

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Accordingly, the potential to be labelled selfish acted as a constraint on narration. For the most part, the choice to remain childfree was met with disapproval and, as in British researcher Gayle Letherby’s (1999) findings, the childfree were often construed as too selfish to have a child.12 For example, one participant stated, ‘I just get so pissed off when there’s people that can have kids and they don’t want babies’ (Elize). This was also evident in childfree people’s reports of being overtly questioned, criticised or admonished for their choice. For example, Petro tells of the questioning she experienced in relation to her wish to remain childfree, ‘Why do you want to go on studying? Why do you want a career?’ Petro showed an awareness of this potentially troublesome position, stating that she would be seen as ‘very selfish not to have [a child]’. Mollen (2006) and Gillespie (2000) report similar findings in the United States and UK respectively. In line with the theme of altruism, having children was constructed as a noble endeavour for a cause greater than oneself. The belief that having children is a 95


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positive contribution to humanity or a way of making a difference was expressed by several participants and is illustrated in the following two examples. In these extracts, choosing to refrain from having children due to non-ideal environmental conditions is construed as a less honourable choice. Attention to altruism on a broader scale appears to anticipate the counter-argument that those who choose not to procreate under suboptimal conditions are in fact considering children’s wellbeing. This is evident in the extracts below. Extract 21

Extract 22

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Anel: A lot of people don’t want children merely because they feel that the world is such a horrible place to bring children up in. I think that’s a very pessimistic view and I think having children is a hopeful act as well. […] There is the feeling that you want to leave something behind I think. Especially with people who feel that they’ve accomplished a lot in their lives, they want to give that accomplishment to someone else or give them the tools to accomplish something as well. For me, I’m very big on education so […] having a well-educated, conscious child, someone who’s conscious and curious about the world around them and may someday go on to make a big contribution (.) I think your children are your last hope of contributing something to the world, indirectly. Maybe even people who feel like they haven’t accomplished a lot in life, but for me I’ve always felt that I’d love to leave my child with the tools to change the world. (F2)

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André: Unfortunately, now there are so many irresponsible things happening. It’s actually heartbreaking. I don’t know where the world is going. It’s actually a disaster. We are still fortunate. […] I don’t know what they ((points in the direction of his children in the next room)) will experience.

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Tracy: If you had thought of that before you had children, do you think that might have put you off?

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André: [No]. I think that’s also an irresponsible way of thinking about it because then you deny your own responsibility, because who must change the world? […] So, I think it will be a sad day when people start saying, ‘We are not going to have children,’ because I think it’s selfish. It’s totally selfish (.) but again that’s my personal opinion. We must control the world. If everybody controls the world in a responsible manner and enjoys it also, I mean, jis it’s a great place. […] Every time has got its good and bad. How would it be if the 1820 Settlers13 had said, ‘Not the hell, we’re not going to have children in this place’? If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have been here. (M2)

The speakers in these extracts invoke ‘the socio-political, religious, and familial idealism of creating the next generation’ (Mollen 2006: 278) inherent in pronatalist discourse, suggesting that it is the children who must ‘make a big contribution’ (Extract 21) and ‘change the world’ (Extract 22). The belief that it is better not to have children under less than ideal conditions could itself be considered noble (as 96


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some participants did argue). Instead, this anti-natalist stance is deemed ‘pessimistic’, ‘irresponsible’ and ‘totally selfish’. This indicates a lapse in the child-centred view, where it is in actual fact not children’s best interests that are being advanced, but the parents’ or humanity’s interests – their legacy or ‘last hope of contributing something to the world’ (Extract 21). Hence, childbearing was pictured as part of a larger endeavour that renders it an act of self-sacrifice and altruism, as indicated by the allusion to the bravery and selflessness of the 1820 Settlers in Extract 22. According to this argument, one has a responsibility to humanity, so that failing to reproduce is equated with failing to take up this responsibility and as the ultimate form of selfishness, as suggested by the penultimate line of Extract 22.

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Talk that valorises reproduction and talk that denigrates non-reproduction and the childfree are, according to Meyers (2001), two sides of the same coin. Crucial to this project is the uncontested construction of the sacralised child: the guarantor of personal and marital fulfilment. Against the idealised images of natural parenthood, the horror of childlessness is juxtaposed in such a way that non-reproduction looms as both undesirable and unfeasible. This is heightened by the failure to take into account any possible advantages of non-reproduction. Collectively, these two ways of speaking about parenthood – the simultaneous glorification of reproduction and denigration of non-reproduction – serve to discursively render procreation as the only viable choice, for married heterosexuals, that is. This is graphically depicted in Figure 4.1.

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The procreation imperative

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Denigration of non-parenthood

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Selfish Other

Damaged Other

Deficient Other

Glorification of parenthood

Parenting = altruistic

Rewards outweigh costs

Parenting as utopia

Underpinned by sacralised child script

Figure 4.1 Illustration of the twin strategies making up the procreation imperative

Idealised renditions of, specifically, biological parenthood call into question the autonomy of those who choose to procreate, particularly when one considers the degree to which biological parenthood is normalised. Hence, for many the wish to be a parent is reported to be a largely unconscious desire, formed well before adulthood. Thus, biological parenthood emerges as the preferred life path, rendering alternatives undesirable, even unthinkable. As a result, ‘[h]eterosexuality is not only normative, it is imbued with a procreation imperative’ (Meyers 2001: 758) and incorporates a 97


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pronatalist injunction of compulsory parenthood for married heterosexuals (what we have termed ‘procreative heteronormativity’). This renders the topic of active decision-making, and male involvement therein, superfluous.

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However, as Butler (1993) asserts, the ‘unthinkable’ is always fully within the culture, threatening to undermine its norms, and so, deliberately chosen childlessness, particularly among married heterosexuals, troubles the norm of procreative heterosexuality by disobeying the mandate to reproduce. Hence, as we have shown, this threat must be managed. Consequently, such instances of non-reproduction were rendered anomalous – and so, dismissed or explained away – or overtly disparaged by positioning dissidents as Other, that is, as deficient, damaged or selfish. Since non-reproduction is not acknowledged as having any real advantages or seen as a truly viable choice, those who do choose it voluntarily were met with incredulity, mistrust and even animosity, as speakers openly denigrated non-reproduction.

Notes

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In this way, the norm of procreative heterosexuality was defended. This builds on the construction of reproduction as a non-choice introduced in the preceding chapter, emerging here as an injunction to procreate. As we have already intimated in this chapter, this injunction appears to be most powerful for married couples, and in this way married men who do not procreate are also stigmatised. In the following chapter, we highlight how central marriage is to the construction of heterosexual procreativity, operating as a pivotal ‘transitional point’ (Reynolds & Taylor 2004: 206) within the heteronormative storyline. Although, we argue, it functions largely as an invisible norm – since it is a given – marriage is significant to the concealment of male involvement in reproduction.

See, e.g., Frizelle and Kell (2010); Ha’elyon (2006); Jeannes and Shefer (2004); Kruger (2003); Meyers (2001); Park (2002); Zecchi (2005).

2

Dyer et al. (2004); Dyer et al. (2008); Ha’elyon (2006); Riessman (2000, 2002a); Remennick (2000); Throsby and Gill (2004).

3

Ha’elyon (2006); Riessman (2000); Remennick (2000); Throsby and Gill (2004).

4

See, e.g., Koropeckyj-Cox and Pendell (2007a, 2007b); Koropeckyj-Cox et al. (2007); Vinson et al. (2010).

5

See, e.g., Graham and Rich (2012); Hadfield et al. (2007); Rich et al. (2011).

6

DeLyser (2011); Lunnenborg (1999); Shaw (2011); Wood and Newton (2006).

7

DeOllos and Kapinus (2002); Durham (2008); Durham and Braithwaite (2009); Park (2002); Veevers (1973, 1975).

8

See also, for example, studies by DeLyser (2012); Gillespie (2000, 2003); Graham and Rich (2012); Hird and Abshoff (2000); Letherby (2002); Maher and Saugeres (2007); Morell (2000); Rich et al. (2011); Rowlands and Lee (2007); Shaw (2011); Vinson et al. (2007); Wager (2000); Wood and Newton (2006).

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9

Some exceptions include Park (2002, 2005) and Lunnenborg (1999), who discuss North American and British men’s own perspectives on chosen childlessness; Parr (2010), whose work sheds some light on Australian men’s chosen childlessness; and Terry and Braun’s (2011) study of Australian men who have ‘pre-emptive’ vasectomies.

10 We shall return to the issue of absent fathers in Chapter 6. 11 Slang, from British for upper-class/smart. 12 See also Letherby (2002).

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13 A large group of white British colonists, settled by the British government and the Cape colonial authorities in the Eastern Cape in 1820 in an attempt to defend the eastern frontier of the colony against the amaXhosa.

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5

Children need a mom and a dad: The marriage–procreation bond and the conjugalisation of reproduction

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A common thread running through most of our participants’ narratives was that parenthood is largely a matter of timing. In a discursive context in which parenthood is a deep-seated and enduring expectation, those ‘who are married or in stable heterosexual relationships need less to consider whether or not to have children but rather when to have children, how many to have or in what social context to have them’ (Sevón 2005: 463, our emphasis). What we found in our study was that marriage was depicted as governing the appropriate timing and acceptable conditions for reproduction to occur. In this chapter, our attention focuses on the containment of heterosexual reproduction within the marital alliance, showing this containment – termed the ‘marriage–procreation bond’ – to be a fundamental element of procreative heteronormativity. We also link this trend to the micro-politics of the interview setting, in terms of the immediate discursive purpose it accomplishes, showing how the matters of timing and ideal conditions formed part of the broader rhetorical manoeuvre in which the original question of male involvement in the initial decision-making around parenthood is sidelined.

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Within the overriding assumption that ‘love leads “normally” to marriage’ (Reynolds & Taylor 2004: 201), childbearing was constructed as the logical end point or ‘culmination’ (as Jakobus put it) of this relationship, bringing to bear powerful sociocultural norms of love/romance and the canonical heterosexual couple narrative that support automatic childbearing, as outlined in Chapter 4. This idea was maintained by the construction of marriage as a crucial ‘transitional point’ (Reynolds & Taylor 2004: 206) within the heteronormative storyline.

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This construction governs and regulates childbearing in several ways. Firstly, it creates and maintains the marriage–procreation bond, in which procreation is seen as the purpose of marriage. This is clearly an important dimension of procreative heteronormativity. Secondly, it construes marriage as a prerequisite to childbearing. Thirdly, it secures marriage as a moral context in which childbearing is legitimated, thereby sanctioning some reproductive decisions and censuring others (Macleod 2003; Meyers 2001). We shall elaborate on these ideas in this chapter. What became clear in our analysis was that, in addition to marriage being seen as providing the ideal conditions under which children should be born, these conditions were also thoroughly gendered. At a macro-political level, this kind of talk works to preserve gendered family roles, as we explain in this chapter. It rests on the assumption that marriage and the creation and maintenance of the nuclear

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family – a male–female dyad with children – is both normal and, importantly, beneficial to children.

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Talk about children’s ‘needs’ featured prominently within the discussions about the ideal conditions for childbearing in order to legitimise the heterosexual nuclear family form as the most appropriate context for childbearing. ‘Needs’ talk was used in various ways by the research participants to accomplish particular situated purposes. Implicit in their talk were the expert voices and often psychologised understandings of childhood and parenting. We shall outline two discursive tactics in which participants made recourse to the rhetoric of children’s needs in order to construct the heterosexual marital alliance as the best place to meet the child’s needs: firstly, the ‘stable foundation’ script, which depicts marriage as providing the necessary security and continuity to childrearing and, secondly, the ‘children need both parents’ script, which renders marriage the ideal arrangement for fulfilling those needs.

Procreation, marriage and the family

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In South Africa the social context of intimate relationships is variable. Customs around marriage (for example, the payment of a bride price, how negotiations around marriage are conducted, wedding ceremonies, et cetera) are not uniform. In addition, it is widely acknowledged that apartheid was disruptive of traditional heterosexual family forms among black people. In post-apartheid South Africa, a greater diversity in family forms and living arrangements has emerged. These changes have been brought about by a range of societal trends. For example, the spread of HIV and/or AIDS has left many children without adult caregivers, and has led to the phenomenon of child-headed households. The movement of more women into the workplace has led to an increase in dual-income heterosexual families (Posel et al. 2011; Posel & Rudwick 2013). Legal and attitudinal shifts have allowed for divorce, lone parenthood, and the official recognition of same-gendered marriage and parenting (Lubbe 2008b). We have also witnessed a decline in marriage rates, increased cohabitation of heterosexual couples among black South Africans1 (Posel et al. 2011) and a delay in marriage age among their white compatriots (Posel & Rudwick 2013). Despite these changes, marriage continues to hold cultural value and significance. On the one hand, those who are married enjoy a range of legal protections and benefits and access to various rights, such as inheritance, tax benefits, medical insurance, child custody and adoption. On the other hand, married people are also accorded social status and are seen as officially entering ‘normal’ family life (Reddy 2006). As a result, even though it may no longer bear resemblance to the lives of most people, statistics suggest that traditional nuclear families form only about a third of all family forms in South Africa (see Holborn & Eddy 2011). Yet, the sequence of love, courtship, marriage, parenthood and permanent coupledom, to which we referred in Chapter 3, perseveres as dominant narrative of contemporary heterosexual adult

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life, with marriage seen as the vital point of transition that cements a partnership and legitimates childbearing (Reddy 2006).

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Indeed, ‘procreation within marriage traditionally has been endorsed by all major religious groups, has been seen as a central developmental stage in adulthood, and has been recognized as a sign of full adult status and of patriotic citizenship’ (Park 2005: 376, our emphasis). The containment of reproduction within marriage has historically been regulated through the lack of legal and social recognition given to ‘illegitimate’ children and the vilification of ‘unwed’ mothers (for example, Delius & Glaser 2006). Such moral judgements have arguably been relaxed in present years (as seen in changes in South African laws regarding illegitimacy and paternal rights). Yet, as Macleod (2003) argues, they have not disappeared. She maintains that these ideas linger as absent traces that give meaning to talk about ‘teenage pregnancy’. For instance, in the scientific literature on teenage pregnancy, Macleod (2003) notes how when pregnant young women were married, the pregnancy was deemed less problematic or assumed to be intended, and moreover, professional concerns about the social, and even physiological, consequences of early reproduction tended to fall away.

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These sorts of responses suggest that issues of morality are still at play and point to ‘the assumption of marriage and the creation and maintenance of a male-female dyad with children as normal and beneficial’ (Macleod 2003: 24) both to the child concerned and society at large. This is evident in concerns about the ‘breakdown of the family’, as expressed in a recent report from the South African Institute of Race Relations, titled First steps to healing the South African family, where it was stated, ‘When only 35% of children grow up living with both of their biological parents, we should be alert to the risk that dysfunctional families are damaging the prospects of our younger generations’ (Holborn & Eddy 2011: 15). Here we see that the lack of both biological parents (that is, the mother–father dyad) is equated with dysfunction and the married two-parent heterosexual family is upheld as the normative ideal. Such concerns are also repeatedly raised in relation to ‘female-headed’ households, and the dangers of ‘alternative’ family forms (Budlender 2003; Morison & Reddy 2013).

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We return to the issue of the threat posed by the ‘broken family’ and its regulation in Chapter 6. For the purposes of this chapter, we wish to concentrate on another aspect of the containment of childbearing within heterosexual marriage – or the ‘conjugalisation of reproduction’ (Macleod 2003)  –  namely, the marriage–procreation bond, which we explain below. The emphasis here is on the normalisation of the marital alliance and the associated value judgements, which are often couched in terms of ‘what is best for the child’ or veiled by scientific neutrality (Alldred 1996; Woodhead 1997).

The marriage–procreation bond The ‘marriage–procreation bond’, as Laura Carroll (2012) terms it, refers to the pronatalist idea that having children is the point and purpose of marriage. This belief was expressed by several older participants who saw children as the obvious 102


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children need a mom and a dad

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outcome, and even the purpose and function, of marriage. For instance, Stefanus said, ‘If you’re married and you have sex eventually a child will come.’ Later in the interview, he reiterated this sentiment when commenting on those who are reluctant to have children due to non-ideal conditions. He said, ‘If you are scared of the circumstances then you mustn’t even get married.’ In this way, becoming a parent was depicted as an obvious outcome of getting married. As Koos stated, ‘If you get married, then you have kids. It’s not that you decide.’ Parenthood is therefore not a choice for married heterosexual people, but instead is implied by the prior choice of marriage. Other studies have also reported participants’ belief that ‘marriage self-evidently brings children’ (Gipson & Hindin 2007: 779), in both ‘developing’ settings, such as Gipson & Hindin’s (2007) study in Bangladesh, and ‘developed’ contexts, like in Rijken & Knijn’s (2009) research with Dutch couples. These findings, along with our own, suggest that the marriage–procreation bond still holds sway when it comes to people’s thinking about parenthood.

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This marriage–procreation bond has a long social and legal history in the West and farther afield. It has strong Judeo-Christian roots, demonstrated in marriage rites, biblical injunctions and church sanctions against non-procreative and/or extramarital sex. Religious sentiments around procreation within marriage have been reinforced socially and legally in most contexts (Carroll 2012). In South Africa, although marriage takes on a range of forms (including polygamous marriages and customary marriages), the heterosexual marriage–procreation association was firmly entrenched during apartheid within white Afrikaans communities through, firstly, religious and social moral injunctions against pre-marital or extra-marital sex (specifically from within the Dutch Reformed Church to which most white, Afrikaans-speaking people belonged), and, secondly, the provision of reproductive health services to white married women (Department of Health 2012a).

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The marriage–procreation bond weakened in the West somewhat during the course of the 20th century, largely due to challenges by the women’s movement and a shift in legal discourses from an emphasis on procreation to individual rights, resulting in the legalisation and wide uptake of contraceptives (Carroll 2012).2 In recent years, ideas about the purpose of marriage have expanded to include companionship, personal fulfilment and sexual enjoyment. These trends have also found currency in South Africa, particularly after the demise of apartheid. Nevertheless, as our findings and those of other studies suggest, the marriage– procreation bond has not been severed. We therefore still encounter, on quite a large scale, the assumption that children will be the automatic outcome of a marriage (Carroll 2012). It is clear, therefore, that this construction is an important aspect of procreative heteronormativity. The marriage–procreation bond means that having children is essentially a non-choice or imperative within the marital union and as a result, in our study, for the majority of the participants the question was not whether to have children, but when to do so and under what conditions, as we discuss next.

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Marriage as ‘the first step’ before having children

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Our participants spoke of stages and steps in the unfolding of their lives; talk that draws on a psycho-developmental discourse, as discussed in Chapter 3. This discourse resources the entrenched canonical heterosexual couple narrative with the recognisable ‘sequence of love, courtship, marriage, parenthood and continuing coupledom’ (Reynolds & Taylor 2004: 199). This familiar and ‘normal’ progression through the culturally prescribed phases of heterosexual adulthood was used, as we also discussed, to legitimate automatic childbearing. We now wish to highlight the construal of marriage as the first step or precursor to having children, so that having children was not only rendered a matter of timing, but as a matter of particular timing in the life course, namely, after marriage, as shown in the following excerpts. Extract 1

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Gerhardt: We always wanted children and I think you always sort of wonder when’s the right time. […] I think there was always a combined (.) ‘We will have kids,’ and when we had the children, ‘It’s time now.’ […] I think it was always a combined decision, a combined process of, ‘We want children and when are we going to?’ (M1)

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Koos: When you get married there’s a natural (.) God-given urge to multiply, the only thing is, I suppose, to decide when to start. Well, we were I think married for (.) My oldest daughter was born in ’84 and we were married in ’82. I think it was ’84. So we didn’t wait too long. (M1) Extract 3

Esmé: Ja, I suppose, getting married, like I said to you, that was the first step and so now the next step is to have children. When and how and where? (F1)

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In these extracts, the notions of automatic childbearing and passive decision-making are upheld as having children is depicted as a foregone conclusion and a matter of course that requires no discussion. In Extracts 2 and 3, marriage is most clearly depicted as a prior choice after which childbearing is a given. Instead, the issue of timing is raised. Following Koos’s logic in Extract 2, the construal of parenthood as a natural, even God-given and inevitable part of the normal life trajectory essentially renders it a non-choice and renders a couple’s discussion of their fertility preferences needless (Gipson & Hindin 2007). This serves not only to regulate the timing of childbearing, but also helps to ensure that childbearing is contained within the nuclear family. This is reinforced by the moral judgements in talk about marriage as an ideal condition for childbearing that centres on claims about what is best for children, what children need, and who is fit to parent, that we discuss later. We interpret the focus on timing and ideal conditions – which were construed as choices – as a way in which older participants could engage in choice talk and thereby adopt more agentic positions than those allowed by the construction 104


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of conjugalised parenthood as a non-choice. In talking about timing and ideal conditions, these participants could position themselves as responsible and active decision-makers orientated towards children’s needs. This rhetorical manoeuvre also acted as a reframing tactic that put the discussion back on track, so that it creates a picture of a pathway to parenthood that coheres with the dominant pronatalist, heteronormative view of heterosexual adulthood.

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Interestingly, however, when it came to the stories of the younger group, marriage was also either explicitly named as a necessary condition for parenthood or treated as an obvious, unproblematic fact. For instance, Elize said, ‘Well, obviously get married and then have kids [laughs]!’, and Jakobus maintained, ‘First, we have to get married, I mean, that’s a given.’ Such statements can be seen as the deliberate self-positioning within the conjugalised heteronorm that had to be stated, unlike in the case of the older participants who already occupied the socially acceptable priorposition of married parent. Only Dawid questioned the assumption of marriage as a necessary precursor to parenthood. For the rest, this assumption was only explained or justified – as we show later – when they were explicitly asked about it by the interviewer. There was little or no reflection on the idea that it is only within the marriage context that ‘decision-making’ can spontaneously unfold.

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Like the nuclear family, procreation within heterosexual marriage is so commonsensical that it does not need specifying (Alldred 1996: 150). This norm was even taken for granted to some extent by us as researchers; we realised in retrospect that Tracy had only questioned the younger, unmarried participants about their construction of parenthood as most appropriately occurring after marriage. This seems to indicate just how ordinary and taken for granted the containment of reproduction within marriage is. Granted, however, it was easier to question the unmarried participants about their assumptions, since questioning the older, married participants about why they felt they wanted to be married before having a child would have been another unusual conversational move, and this may have deterred Tracy from rupturing the silence around this norm. It is only those Others who are defined as different from the parenting ‘gold standard’ or naturalised category (married heterosexual) – such as ‘spinsters’, ‘bachelors’, those ‘living in sin’ or who are gay – who are seen as remarkable and may thus be questioned regarding their relationship status and reproductive intentions.3

Marriage as a stable foundation for the couple and their child When asked about their stated preference for marriage, the unmarried participants (from Cohort Two) justified this by constructing the ‘married couple situation’ (Anel) as advantageous to the child. This is similar to Swedish researcher Disa Bergnéhr’s (2007: 119) findings from a study with young child-anticipating men and women. In the focus group discussions she conducted, she notes ‘a recurring affirmative positioning of the nuclear family’ (para 15). She reports also that the timing of parenthood was constructed as ‘being contingent on the intimate relationship’

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(para 15) and that participants expressed a desire for a permanent partnership, either marriage or ‘forever-lasting love’, before having children; in this way a ‘romantic love discourse correlates with the nuclear family ideal’.

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Our participants similarly spoke about the necessity of achieving relationship stability prior to becoming a parent, drawing on common-sense ideas about children’s need for continuity, security and stability. This was deemed to be best secured through a legally binding marital union, which was described by members of Cohort Two as a ‘foundation’ for childbearing or, in Wouter’s words, a ‘foundation of stability’. Marriage was therefore constructed as the best way to meet children’s needs and the most appropriate setting for parenthood, as illustrated in the following extracts. Extract 4

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Tracy: OK, […] you mentioned that you would have to be married, why would that be important for you? […]

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Jakobus: I think marriage is a symbol. It’s a symbol of unconditional love for one another that you are willing to take the step. The thing is, I will be completely insecure to have a child with someone before we declare that unconditional love for one another because the having of the child would be the culmination of our love for each other and basically it would be the supreme result of our undying love […] for one another, yeah. And that is why it would basically be, I wanna say, irresponsible to have a child before you’re married because there are so many things that can … they say that marriage is a dinosaur, but at least it’s better than having no recognition of anything. I think that’s why I’d rather get married. I think it would be (better for the child?). Oh, yes, I don’t think, I KNOW. To have a stable household, like I said, it would be because he’d have no problems with us, he or she, thinking, ‘Oh hell, mommy and daddy might split.’ Because ai […] Ja, I’ve got a lot of friends whose parents did divorce and it is pretty traumatising. I was also pretty traumatised by these things. Ja, that is a very good question, whether it is better for the child that we are married. I think it’s better for the child because I mean the thought of abandonment is inconceivable, it’s absolutely terrible. The parent, if he’s not willing to take responsibility for it at least let him have a duty under the law to take care of that child. (M2)

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Anel: I don’t condemn people who have kids before they’re married. It happens. Sometimes it happens on purpose, sometimes it happens by accident and you make the best of the situation, but I think if you were planning a child and you were planning to raise a family [then] I just think it’s the responsible thing to do. If you have a baby and you’re not married there’s nothing wrong with your family, but I just think if you’re planning, if you have the advantage of knowing beforehand I want my child and this is the ideal situation that I want my child in. (F1)

Jakobus explicitly states in the quote above that having married parents is ‘better for the child’, because the married couple’s relationship represents ‘a stable household’ 106


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and makes the child feel secure. Anel indicates that marriage is the ‘ideal situation’ for raising children. Heteronormative marriage and the nuclear family, comprising a female–male dyad with (biological) children were thus construed as ensuring the child’s emotional wellbeing. This rendition is resourced by the romance/love script that provides the impetus for the marital bond and is reinforced by the allusion to potential negative consequences related to children in families outside the conventional ideal: the trauma caused by divorce and the fear of abandonment (Extract 4). Consequently, participants expressed a desire to be married before having children.

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It is evident in the quotes above that Jakobus and Anel were not only responding to Tracy’s questioning, but also addressing the broader discursive context. In defending the necessity of marriage, participants had to talk against possible counter-arguments that circulate within larger debates about the relevance or necessity of marriage in contemporary society (possibly with which the interviewer might sympathise, given her line of questioning). Acknowledging counter-arguments in this way contributes to the rhetorical force of one’s own argument (Riley 2003). This can be seen in Jakobus’s reference to the claim that ‘marriage is a dinosaur’ and Anel’s indication that she does not condemn people who have children before marriage. Counterarguments – that marriage is unnecessary, no longer relevant, or outdated – hold the potential for troubled positioning as old-fashioned or conservative. In order to avoid this negative positioning, the participants engaged in ‘needs’ talk to construct an alternative socially desirable position of ‘good parent’, who gives forethought to children’s wellbeing.

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Needs talk can provide moral backing for a wide range of arguments (Alldred 1996), as we noticed in our study. Participants used the idea of children’s best interests and needs to legitimate, for instance, both the procreation imperative and voluntary childlessness, as shown earlier. Here we concentrate on how the discursive resource was used to construct the heterosexual marital context as the best place to meet the child’s needs. This is evident in the extracts above where unwed parents are positioned as ‘irresponsible’. In advocating for marriage before childbearing, Anel invokes the idea of ‘planning a child’, and the lack of planning (‘an accident’) appears to be associated with a lack of forethought or regard for the needs of one’s child. She thus unusually engages the family planning script, which was ordinarily talked against for the most part. This script is thereby teamed with needs talk in a way that lends moral force to her arguments. Of course, this moral dimension is not obvious, because it is expressed by means of a discourse of concern (Alldred 1996). Like Anel, most participants avoided adopting moralising or judgemental positions and rather positioned themselves as concerned for the welfare of children, and even society at large. Some even explicitly denied morality as the rationale for their defence of marriage. Retaining the emphasis on children’s wellbeing, they stressed pragmatic reasons for marriage over moral ones. This ‘practical considerations talk’ (Edley & Wetherell 1999: 189) is evident in Extract 4 above, where Jakobus refers to the ‘recognition’ that marriage affords. Hence, those who failed to comply with 107


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conjugal heteronorms were not openly castigated, but they were subtly positioned outside the norm and only covertly on the negative side of a moral boundary. Indeed, non-conjugalised childbearing may only be tolerated, as in Extract 5, because it is assumed to be temporary, in this case related to ‘an accident’, that is, an unplanned pregnancy (Alldred 1996).

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In line with our findings, other researchers have found that the ‘notion of stability for the child is firmly linked to living with the biological mother and father’ (Almack 2006: 8). Thus, this argument is based on the heteronormative assumption that the phrase ‘both parents’ refers to the biological parents and, therefore, consisted of a woman and a man. This illustrates how children’s wellbeing was cited as a rationalisation of the claim that heterosexual marriage is a necessary or ideal condition for childbearing. This discursive tactic therefore upholds heterosexual marriage as the ideal and, by implication, stigmatises any alternative arrangements, including non-biological parenthood.4 As we discuss further in the ensuing section, marriage functions in such a way as to hold in place and maintain the heterosexual matrix.

The heterosexual female–male dyad as mother–father dyad: ‘Children need both parents’

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The discursive tactic in which participants claim that children need both parents functions on the premise that each (biological) parent has a unique and indispensable role to play. These distinct roles are based upon the parents’ (and child’s) gender in such a way that the female–male dyad becomes the parenting dyad. Hence the phrase ‘both parents’ clearly implies a female parent and a male parent. The belief that having a mother and a father (preferably married to one another) is best for children is based upon the discourse of heterosexual gender complementarity, which underpins the heterosexual matrix.

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To reiterate briefly, this discourse is predicated upon ‘an understanding of gender as a fundamental and complementary difference between “man” and “woman”’ (Folgerø 2008: 136). Consequently, femininity and masculinity are complementary opposites so that each term may be defined by what the other lacks (Butler 1990). Following on from this construction, the traditional heterosexual nuclear family is built by transposing the central parenting relationships onto a central sexual relationship so that parenting is gendered – ‘mother’ and ‘father’ come to reflect traditional characteristics of heterosexual femininity and masculinity which are found in a wife and husband respectively (Donovan 2000). The assumption, therefore, is that there is a natural distinction between motherhood and fatherhood (LaRossa 1997) and, importantly, that children’s ‘healthy psychosocial development depends on the parents’ complementary gender roles’ (Folgerø 2008: 125). Each parent is seen as having a distinct and developmentally necessary parental role to play by virtue of her or his gender (Folgerø 2008). The central feature of this discursive tactic, therefore, is the maintenance of a gender difference between parents, so that parenting was construed as a fundamentally 108


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gendered enterprise. Yet, as historian Ralph LaRossa points out, ‘from a number of vantage points, in fact, it can be argued that [parents] are more alike than not’ (1997: 15). Accordingly, participants tended to accentuate differences and ignore similarities, spending a significant amount of attention on delineating the distinction between motherhood and fatherhood.

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Such constructions are most obviously supported by a traditional gender script in which the subject positions of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are analogous to those of ‘woman’ and ‘man’. This script supports the gendered division of roles, as well as the unequal positioning of women and men according to the gender binary. Parenting work and paid work are therefore constructed as separate spheres and expressed as the familiar breadwinner versus caretaker roles (Kendall 2007). In addition to this script, participants also drew on a contemporary gender script to argue that the involvement of both female and male parents assists with child development or wellbeing. The contemporary gender script reflects some of the changing gender norms within present-day society, for instance, the entrance of women into the paid labour market and the ideal of hands-on fathering. According to Kendall (2007), this script is a composite of the traditional and contemporary, more progressive gender norms. It incorporates the ideals of equitable gender relations, fairness and role-sharing into traditional understandings of gender. These ideas are encapsulated in a script that we term the ‘egalitarian gender script’. A notable feature of this script, as it was deployed in the narratives, is that it de-genders parenting by downplaying the differences between fathers and mothers. In contrast, the contemporary gender script retains the gendered division between parents (in that each is allocated a unique role), while allowing some overlap between roles. In this sense, it reflects changing gendered norms and can also be thought of as an improvisation on the traditional gender script; it has been increasingly pervasive as gender roles undergo change. In the following, we outline how participants constructed unique parental roles, using each of these gender scripts – firstly, the traditional gender script and, secondly, the contemporary gender script.

Constructing unique parental roles using the traditional gender script

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The traditional gender script was utilised most often in order to fashion mothering and fathering as distinct, especially since participants were able to (re)cite it without having to do much justification (unless the positions that they negotiated were troubled). Participants from both cohorts drew on a traditional gender script to argue that parents can make a unique and necessary contribution to their children’s lives primarily by virtue of their gender. The use of this script, and the gendered parental positions it supports, can be seen in the following extracts. Extract 6 Koos: So, I thought that my wife must stay with the kids – and she also thought that, it’s not that there was any problem with that – until they are a certain age so that she can teach them the values from that age that we want them to have.

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Extract 7

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So that was important and I based it basically only on that advice from the book that says that for the first six or seven years you’ve got to lay the right foundation and that would make a big difference later on. […] in the family structure as I’m used to it the dad is responsible for winning the bread and even if it might’ve been better for me [to look after the children] (.) or if we had to switch, it would be abnormal for me to be winning the bread and I’m looking after the kids, but I’m sure … But I think that she has a better way with kids, especially when they’re that size ((gestures)). I’m more the wise guy at the end of the [day], supposed to be, [laughs] that would give advice and would be overall the manager I reckon, if you can put it that way. But doing the day things, ‘Clean up here, you threw this out or wash your hands before you eat, did you brush your teeth this morning,’ a woman is more, I would say, (.) they concentrate on nitty-gritty things. A man is not like that. That’s why they use women to pack parachutes because they are focused on small things and doing them right. They look at the smaller picture and the man looks at the bigger picture, I think. So, I think it’s better for the woman or the wife to do that job, of laying that foundation. (M1)

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Anel: I think that it’s such a team effort, but I think that men and women also play a different role in kids’ lives. […] Having daughters, I think, [would be easier] for a mother than having sons would be for a dad, er, than having sons for a mother. There are things that a woman can speak to about to a woman that a man can’t (.) not in the same [way]. (F1)

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In Extract 6, Koos performs rhetorical work to support his decision that his partner should forgo paid employment and be the primary caregiver to their children. Notably, he potentially sidesteps being positioned as unfair or by engaging in ‘oneness talk’ (Dixon & Wetherell 2004: 176), which foregrounds commonality, as he draws attention to the fact that his partner agreed with the arrangement. He bases his argument on innate gender differences, what women and men ‘are like’ – as illustrated by the parachute packing anecdote. Hence, Koos evokes ideas of normality that are biologically based. Significantly, to further support his claim, he refers to children’s wellbeing, for instance, when he alludes to the advice of a childcare text. This forms a large part of his justificatory tactic as he argues that it is ‘better’ for children to have a female primary caregiver. In so doing, Koos invokes the notion of intensive mothering. This model of appropriate caregiving ‘tells us that children are innocent and priceless, and that their rearing should be carried out primarily by individual mothers and that it should be centred on upon children’s needs’ (Hayes 1996: 21, cited in Almack 2006: 6). Intensive mothering is therefore characterised by the following beliefs, clearly evident above: (1) the mother should be the primary caregiver; (2) the child’s needs should guide suitable caregiving, rather than the mother’s (for example, the ‘need’ to be taught ‘values’); (3) parenting should be labour-intensive (so that mothers/parents spend the maximum allowable quantity of time with their children), financially expensive and emotionally absorbing; and (4) caregiving should draw on expertise, such as parenting manuals (Kendall 2007).5 110


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In Extract 7, Anel renegotiates her earlier position on the topic, that parenting should be ‘a team effort’ and not determined by gender (discussed prior to this). This renegotiation is evidenced by the words ‘but’ and ‘also’ in the first sentence. She bridges the ideological dilemma that is presented by referring to children’s wellbeing. This allows her to smooth over the contradictions as she changes tack and argues that women and men play different roles in their children’s lives, thereby advocating the gender-based division of tasks between heterosexual parents. Women are constructed as being able to relate to daughters more easily because they have certain experiential knowledge that men do not have.

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All the participants expressed the belief that parents relate better to their ‘samegender’ children. These relationships were portrayed as based on commonality and friendship, and same-gender children were often referred to as ‘companions’ who engaged in gender-specific tasks with parents; described as ‘guy stuff ’ or ‘girlie stuff ’ (Mariska) or similar. For instance, when commenting on gender preferences, Dalena asserted, ‘I want a companion for myself as well in a child, but I want the first one to be a boy for the husband.’ The very idea of children as companions suggests parent–child relationships that are rooted in a sacralised view of children (Lupton & Barclay 1997; LaRossa 1997). As a result of the view of children as gendered companions, the ‘pigeon pair’ (Elias) of one girl child and one boy child was seen as ideal. (Although a general preference for sons was usually expressed over a desire for daughters). As Johann explained it, ‘A boy and a girl would be perfect, obviously, one for mom and one for me [laughs].’ However, it is obvious that the primary criterion for companionship was gender. No mention was made of other sources of similarity or difference, such as shared interests or similar character traits.

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In order to maintain the positioning of mothers and fathers as distinct – and therefore both necessary to the child – it was imperative that participants maintain a binary model of gender, in turn sustaining the dualistic episteme of the ‘two-sex model’ and reinforcing the heterosexual two-parent norm as the ideal condition for childbearing (Folgerø 2008). Participants inevitably hit up against gender trouble in their attempts to maintain this binary, requiring rhetorical repair labour, as shown in the following section.

Trouble and repair around parenting and the traditional gender script The entrenching of the woman/man dichotomy in biology performs a naturalising discursive function in that it ‘constructs a “natural” and “universal” connection between anatomy, character, and desire’ (Folgerø 2008: 137). Therefore, not only does each parent have a distinctive role to play in the life of a child, but there are particular things that only a woman or a man can offer a child, based on gender sameness (that is, father–son versus mother–daughter) or difference (that is, mother–son and father–daughter). The assignment of distinctive roles inevitably becomes troubled, however, as parents perform tasks outside the gendered binary, as evidenced in the following extract:

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Extract 8 Anel: Like, my dad once went and bought me pads and tampons for me when I was in Standard 66 and it wasn’t weird at all because my mom was sick and my dad was going to town. When he came back we sort of tortured him and said, ‘How did you ask the lady for it?’ [Laughs] We tortured him about it. But, you know, that type of thing, I think, is important to divide between one parent and the other. (F2)

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Anel initially indicates that her father purchasing tampons was not ‘weird at all’. The very use of these words anticipates trouble, which Anel goes on to repair. The teasing circumscribes the purchasing of tampons as a woman’s issue and associates it with male embarrassment; it is the mother’s task to take care of the daughter’s needs in this regard and to purchase tampons for her. The crux of this story is that the father’s performance of this task was exceptional, and repeat performances were to be discouraged.

Trouble occurred not only when parents performed tasks outside the gendered binary, but also when children did, as the next extract shows. Extract 9

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Elias: A mother wants to do things with the daughter; a father wants to do things with sons. I was alone, hunting and fishing alone. […] I’ve been taught since I was about three years old, I’ve been going with my dad hunting and fishing; and Ryno exactly the same. […] But that is nice and I think that is probably one of the reasons why I would really [have] liked a son. So I can impart the knowledge I have of these things to him and have a companion. Today, it’s the best thing that’s happened to me, to have the kids. I mean, like on the weekends when we have time we go fishing, myself and Ryno, and Trudy and Lena spend time together. Lena also goes out with me quite often, even hunting. Even hunting, she goes with me. This year she will be shooting her first buck. She’s not crazy about it, but I think it’s a challenge for her. (.) You know, it’s better than a friend. A child’s better than a friend. (M1)

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The narrator (re)cites stereotypical gender constructions (as reflected in the pursuits associated with men here) rooted in a dualistic model of gender. Gendered parenting roles are linked to children’s wellbeing, with Elias suggesting that manly skills, like hunting and fishing, are passed down from father to son. He also discusses his desire to ‘impart the knowledge I have of these things’ to his son. Accordingly, an important function of same-gender relationships was the belief that parents could and should pass on necessary gendered skills to their offspring. Thus, around interests and activities, such as fishing or hunting, the question is whether this behaviour coincides correctly with the sexed body, that is, with what one essentially is. This is why the narrator runs into trouble when discussing his daughter joining the hunting trips; this is not considered appropriately feminine behaviour. In order to avoid the troubled positioning of the daughter in relation to gender, because she is engaging

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in non-stereotypical gendered behaviour, this activity is treated as an anomaly. He comments that she ‘even’ goes hunting with him. He also points out that ‘she’s not crazy about it’ and that it’s challenging for her, which suggests some rhetorical work around gender. This shows how maintenance of the gender binary is required when it is breached by incorrect gender performances.

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This repair work, however, also points to some difficulty in fashioning cross-gender parent–child interactions. Although participants did maintain that ‘opposite’ gender parents were important to children’s wellbeing as part of the argument that children need both parents, this presented some trouble at times. This trouble arises when cross-gender parent–child interactions are in contravention of gender norms, as seen above. This can also be seen in the following excerpt. Extract 10

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Mariska: I definitely believe that the father needs to do the disciplining because the mom does the nurturing and the caring and whatever, but I hope that the way that he would go about disciplining our children would be in a gentle, loving manner, but still firm […] Ja, emotionally available to the children. To play a big role in their lives, practically, like take them fishing and do, like, guy stuff with them, if there’s a son, then to do that with the son, and if there’s a girl then to do girly things with the girl. I mean, not like have tea parties with the doll. Tracy: Hmm, it sounds quite sweet though.

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Mariska: That is quite sweet actually. So, I mean, a bit of that would be really cool as well. I’ve heard stories of dad’s taking their daughters out since they’ve been little for a milkshake every once a week. Then they have connecting time and they go and they watch a movie. They’ve done that right up until the age of eighteen. I’d really, really love that to be there as well. (F2)

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Trouble occurs in this extract when the father is portrayed in an unusual gendered interaction, indicated by the speaker’s floundering after the statement that a man should ‘do girly things with the girl’. It appears that she has difficulty in determining what exactly fathers and daughters ought to do together. This appears to be due to the demarcation of correct gender activities within parent–child interactions, that is, ‘guy stuff ’ versus ‘girly things’. This former is associated with the outdoors (as masculine pursuits often were), while the latter is linked with domesticity and the private sphere. However, Tracy’s comment introduces the modern, socially desirable subjectivity of the involved father and assists with repair of the gender trouble to some extent. Mariska concedes to a compromise in which a father can do ‘a bit of that’ (that is, engage in ‘girly things’ with daughters), but ultimately it is the construction of a scenario that mimics the recognisable form of heterosexual female-male interaction, based on traditional roles, namely a date. This serves to repair the gender trouble by maintaining a dualistic construction of gender that is based on difference.

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Constructing unique parental roles using the contemporary gender script

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Since gender constructions are subject to change, participants, usually from Cohort Two, also invoked a contemporary gender script in which both fathers and mothers are involved in caregiving and in tasks not conventionally designated as part of their gender role. The contemporary script extends traditional gender norms to some degree, as we shall show, but it does not significantly challenge or transcend these. Rather, it amounts to ‘an uneasy compromise’ (Kendall 2007: 150) between the opposing traditional and egalitarian gender scripts. The egalitarian script works to de-gender parenting practice: mothers’ and fathers’ roles are not differentiated and both parenting work and paid work are construed as equally important to women and men. Of course, this means that this script is not especially useful in supporting the argument that children need both parents – that is their mother and father – since either parent could perform various parental roles. However, when this script is combined with the traditional gender script to form the composite gender script called the ‘contemporary gender script’, it preserves the gendered differentiation between mothers and fathers. What is pertinent to our discussion, thus, is how this script, while promising equality, helps to maintain gendered parental roles.

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It is the preservation of these gender roles that make this script useful in maintaining the argument that both parents are necessary to children’s welfare. Specifically, participants maintained that both fathers and mothers ought to be thoroughly involved in their children’s lives in order to ensure their optimal development and wellbeing. In so doing, they inserted fathers into the private, domestic sphere, traditionally the preserve of mothers alone and fashioned a unique parental role for men, though not one that usurps the placement of women as best suited to parenting. As ‘helper’ parents, men might ‘cook supper every now and then’ (Mariska), ‘help with nappy changing’ (Elize), or engage in activities like going for walks and watching children’s sport.

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The deployment of the contemporary gender script was not associated with concerns around gender equity. Rather, it was resourced by the sacralised child script and needs statements, and altruistic parenting was extended to the father (as helper) in order to meet the emotional needs of the child. Extract 11

Petro: I think because we are sensitive in the field and we’ve already seen what it does to little ones if they don’t see mommy and daddy all the time. So you’re just more aware of it. […] That’s why I’m so set on a little one needs a mom and a dad and ideally live in Sweden where you can have a mom and a dad. […] I just thought that basically, ja, you need to be available in any which way, especially Dad, because how many times do you hear, “I saw my dad (.) whenever”? [Pause] You basically then need to stop being human because you need to be available all the time. It doesn’t matter if you’re having an off day. You have to put on your smile and be there for the little one because it’s your responsibility. So, emotionally,

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physically, financially, spiritually, […] you need to be there in every possible way that you can. […] So, emotionally a father needs to be there. It’s not the mom’s job to dry off tears and tell them it’s gonna be okay. The dad must actually get his hands dirty as well and help changing the diapers. I’ve got an example. Somebody working with me, he is the absolute ideal father. Any little one to have him is just [fortunate]. He wakes up at night to feed the little one so wife can sleep. She’s a stay-at-home mom, but he is so involved because he made that decision that he’s gonna be involved. (F2)

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Extract 12

Petro: So, a dad needs to be emotionally involved from the start, not from, “Okay, ja you’re a boy now and you’re 13 years old= Tracy: =let’s go fishing?”

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Petro: Ja, that’s it. No, from the start if it’s a little girl you need to be emotionally involved or if it’s a little boy. You need to help when the little one is ill or when it’s not going well or if the little one is dirty. You can’t say, ‘Ooh I’ve got to be up early tomorrow morning so I’m going to sleep.’ That’s nonsense. Tracy: So those traditional roles, that’s not ideal for the child?

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Petro: No. No not for a little [one] (.) Well, we all survived with it. We’re not too damaged, but I mean ideally. (F2)

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In these extracts, the welfare of the child forms the rationale for the intensive involvement of both ‘a mom and a dad’. This is expressly articulated as a needs statement. This is lent further authority in that it is presented as the speaker’s professional opinion. Speaking as an expert (child psychologist), she uses the collective ‘we’ to position herself within a community of specialists. This has the effect of substantiating her claim, as well as emphasising the prevalence of the detrimental effect of parental absence on children. Consistent with this positioning, she draws on ideas about parenting informed by developmental psychology models and strongly underpinned by the ideology of intensive mothering. Good parents, in this vein of thinking, sacrifice their own needs for their children’s wellbeing, whether they are female or male. As such, this altruistic model of parenting therefore extends some of the requirements traditionally placed on women to fathers and advocates some degree of paternal participation in parenting. The narrator’s reference to living ‘in Sweden’ is an allusion to an earlier exchange regarding contexts where both women and men are more easily able to share parenting. While this argument could support equally shared co-parenting – as envisaged by the egalitarian script – it is clear that fathers are cast in a secondary role to mothers and they are required to be emotionally involved and to help mothers. Hence, ultimate responsibility for parenting does not lie with the male parent. Indeed, men who help out, such as her colleague to whom she refers for illustration, are positioned as exceptional, since they voluntarily take on tasks that are not strictly required of them as fathers. Their children are described as fortunate, since they 115


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have a father who is willing act in their best interests. So, rather than a concern for gender equity, this extract seems to centre on the absent or emotionally uninvolved father – hence the call for father involvement. This is evident in the way that Petro singles out the father (‘especially Dad’) and notes his absence as an especial concern.

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Petro encounters trouble in the form of her own experiences as a child when questioned about ‘traditional roles’. Her strong statements of the requirement of male parental involvement are contradicted by the childrearing style of her parents’ generation, subtly referred to in her indication of ‘we’ are not too damaged. In order to undo the potential trouble of her being positioned as ‘damaged’, she indicates that she is talking about the ‘ideal’ and that therefore it is possible to do well under different circumstances (‘we all survived’). This repair does not undo her initial statements, as ‘survival’ and ‘not too damaged’ can be contrasted with the rosy picture of intensive mothering and (helper) fathering.

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In this chapter, we have demonstrated how marriage is a central determinant of parenthood decisions, regulating the timing of parenthood. We highlighted how marriage is construed as ensuring children’s wellbeing, because this setting ensures that their need for stability and security is met and provides the continued presence of a female and, especially, a male parent. Hence, children’s wellbeing was cited as one of the chief rationalisations of the claim that marriage is a necessary or ideal condition for childbearing and reference to children’s needs provided an effective defence of this heteronorm. The rhetoric of children’s needs serves to legitimate childbearing exclusively within heterosexual marriage. In this manner, reproduction is ‘conjugalised’, that is, marriage coincides with and contains reproduction (Macleod 2003). This, in turn, supports a particular family form – the heterosexual nuclear family – which comprises of two married, heterosexual parents and their biological children. This can be seen in Figure 5.1, which graphically illustrates the key justificatory tactics that were used to render children the sine qua non of marriage and render decision-making a matter of timing alone.

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Justificatory tactics (Resourced by ‘needs talk’)

Heterosexualised conjugalisation of reproduction

marriage as transitional point in heteronormative life script and antecedant to parenthood

Marriage as stable foundation for meeting children’s needs

Traditional gender script: unique and necessary gendered parenting roles (e.g. breadwinner/caregiver)

Heterosexual mother–father dyad meets children’s needs

Contemporary gender script sharing of parenting roles while maintaining gendered distinction (e.g. helper–father)

Figure 5.1 Justificatory tactics supporting the conjugalisation of reproduction 116


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With childbearing being firmly intertwined with heterosexual coupledom, the possibility of parenthood is discursively removed from the realm of choice. In the context of heterosexual marriage, having children is an imperative and the issues that are pertinent are those of timing and ideal conditions for parenthood. As participants concentrated on these issues, the question of male involvement in the parenthood decision-making process receded even further as this process was construed as largely determined by established heteronorms in which particular circumscribed gender roles preexist. This does not just amount to the concealment of male involvement, but an active defence of the status quo. ‘Needs’ statements allow value judgements and normative relationships to appear as timeless and universal facts and lends them moral force (Woodhead 1997). References to children’s best interests involve judgements about what is beneficial for a child and how this ought to be achieved (Alldred 1996). The discursive resource of protecting ‘the best interest of the child’ is founded upon the construction of the sacralised child, whose interests and needs are most important, trumping even those of the parent (Zelizer 1985). Common-sense ideas, value judgements, and normative prescriptions – such as the idea that a child needs married heterosexual parents – are presented simply as timeless, universal facts or descriptions of something inherent within a child’s so-called nature. This obscures the sociopolitical preoccupations underwriting the production of these ideas and their political and value-laden character. Allusion to children’s ‘needs’ particularly lends moral force to arguments and as a result such talk carries tremendous authority that compels others to act (Lawler 1999; Meyer 2007; Woodhead 1997).

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Marriage, as the stable foundation for the heterosexual couple, puts in place and maintains the heterosexual matrix as the female-male dyad becomes the parenting dyad. We have shown in this chapter how both the contemporary and the traditional gender scripts were drawn on to support the discursive tactic in which the presence of both a female and male parent was construed as constituting an ideal condition for childbearing. Within the traditional gender script, parenting was envisaged as a profoundly gendered enterprise, significantly one that ideally occurs within the heterosexual family. This script draws on and upholds ‘the regulatory illusion of heterosexual coherence’ (Butler 1990: 173), through the notion of heterosexual gender complementarity. This concept was drawn on to construct the roles of father and mother as distinct from each other, and to argue that the presence of both parents is important to a child’s wellbeing, since each parent makes a unique contribution to a child’s life. Based on this logic, it was argued not only that the two-parent heteronorm best serves children’s needs, but that children need both parents, especially their fathers, to fulfil a specific, gendered role in their lives. Thus, conceptions of children’s wellbeing were tied to a particular family form. The contemporary gender script allows for ‘an account that maintains underlying power structures while “evolving” to incorporate social change’ (Riley 2003: 107). This script therefore allows women and men to be positioned in roles not traditionally assigned to them as it integrates changes in the culture of parenthood

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that dictate what ‘good’ parenting entails. This, in turn, allows for the negotiation of newer, socially desirable positions, such as the caring or ‘hands-on’ father or working mother. However, parenting is still fundamentally based on traditional gender roles and uneven power relations, as the female partner in the heterosexual couple features as the main parent, with the male partner as secondary, ‘helper’ parent. Women are still positioned as best suited to meet children’s needs and therefore required to take on the bulk of parenting and domestic work in conjunction with their non-parenting roles (Kendall 2007). This serves to maintain parenting as an ideally gendered practice and not one in which women’s and men’s contributions are interchangeable.

Notes

This trend began due to the disruptive influence of apartheid laws, but has continued to the present day. The trend is attributed to economic constraints and the continued value placed on the traditional custom of paying bride price. Cohabitation offers a culturally acceptable alternative to marriage, particularly when children are born. See Posel et al. (2011) and Posel and Rudwick (2013).

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It can be argued, therefore, that expressions of concern for children’s needs are located in relation to broader anxieties about changing or transformed gender relations and the perceived threat to the (nuclear) family. Part of this apprehension, to which we turn in the next chapter, is related to the expected roles of heterosexual men in families, as well as same-gendered families (Alldred 1996). As we intimated, amidst talk of children needing both parents, there was a definite concern expressed with regard to father absence. In the next chapter, we show how this was especially apparent when talk turned to children’s need for a father figure or male role model. Hence, following on from the construction of female and male parents each being able to uniquely meet a child’s needs, fathers in particular were positioned as making a matchless contribution to child development, thereby offering men a particular role within the traditional nuclear family. We turn next to the argument that children need fathers and the implications of this argument and how it plays a role in supporting procreative heteronormativity by bolstering contemporary versions of the hetero-patriarchal family.

See Chapter 3 for a discussion on the rights-based approach of the sexual and reproductive health paradigm.

3

See Reynolds (2008); and also Reynolds and Taylor (2004).

4

We discuss the stigmatisation of non-conjugal or ‘fatherless’ family forms in the following chapter.

5

For work on this in a South African context see, for example, Chadwick (2006); Frizelle and Hayes (1999); Frizelle and Kell (2010); Jeannes and Shefer (2004); Kruger (2003, 2006); Long (2009).

6

Standard 6 in the educational system of the previous regime is equivalent to current Grade 8.

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6

Daddy issues: The role and rule of the father

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The concern with the presence/absence of men within families is a prominent issue in discussions about fatherhood in both public and academic settings. This is evident in two major common themes in debates and research on fathering which were also evident in our participants’ talk. The first theme concerns the benefits of fathering in which a unique familial position for men is constructed. The second highlights the negative consequences of absent fathers and the dangers of fatherlessness. We shall speak to each of these trends in our participants’ talk, linking each to the literature on fatherhood. In the previous chapter, we noted how arguments about children’s need for both parents often singled out men’s presence or absence. In this chapter, we pick up on this tendency, showing how it is related to broader concerns about changing gender relations.

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Where before we saw particular gender scripts and the rhetoric of needs drawn on to bolster the heterosexual alliance in the previous chapter, we now see how these were utilised to defend and reinforce the father role within this alliance. We focus on a new needs statement that materialised, namely that children need fathers for optimal development. As we show in this chapter, fathers were depicted as necessary to children’s wellbeing and as making a distinctive contribution to their lives. We therefore examine talk that builds on ideas about childrearing conditions.

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Parenthood and childrearing, as we have indicated previously, was a familiar, alternative subject around which talk could cohere, given the fact that the topic of male involvement in reproductive decision-making had been rendered a non-topic and was effectively silenced by the construction of automatic childbearing. Talk about fathering allowed for a focus on men, albeit not on the topic introduced by the researchers. Particular constructions of fathering and ideal childrearing conditions reinforced the canonical heterosexual couple narrative, the associated norm of automatic childbearing, and thus procreative heteronormativity that rendered male involvement in parenthood decision-making a non-topic. We shall show in this chapter how participants fashioned a unique role for men in families, based upon child developmental needs that can be met only by a male. This argument was driven by the potential negative developmental outcomes of failing to meet these needs, particularly normal gender development. The fatherless family was thus seen as a problem. It was depicted by participants as posing a threat not only to children’s welfare, but as a potential cause of societal decline. As we discuss below, the various strands of this argument work together to valorise (a particular

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kind of) manhood and, in turn, fatherhood, thereby (re)asserting a place for the father in the (heterosexual nuclear) family.

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We start this chapter by providing some background in terms of how fathering practices have shifted in accordance with changing gender norms. Little research has been conducted on white fathers in South Africa, and in particular Afrikaansspeaking white fathers. We provide a brief summary of the research that we could locate. Thereafter, we detail how the two main themes (the advantages of father presence and the dangers of father absence) played out in our data.

Background: Changing gender norms and constructions of fatherhood

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Constructions of fatherhood have varied across time and place, and are intertwined with understandings of what women and men are or should be like. In his broadranging historical analysis of the ‘modernisation’ of Western fatherhood, Ralph LaRossa (1997) links parenting practices to changes in gender relations. His work shows how various sociocultural and political shifts in the West have resulted in the configuration of fatherhood with which we are most familiar today, as well as how Westernised constructions of the father as economic provider, companion and male role model became institutionalised.

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LaRossa’s (1997) research demonstrates the surprising level of father involvement of previous generations of fathers in Westernised settings. In particular, he demonstrates that colonial fathers were tasked with the moral and spiritual welfare of their offspring. At this time, children’s moral wellbeing was a central concern, and the role of moral pedagogue was specifically assigned to fathers because of men’s supposed lack of emotionality and superior moral fibre in comparison to women. As a result of this particular construction, the colonial father was considered to be the ‘natural parent’ while mothers were less important (LaRossa 1997; Lupton & Barclay 1997). A similar construction of Afrikaans fathers has been noted in South Africa, particularly given the infusion of the male-headed patriarchal family with religious and moral correctness (Du Pisani 2001). As in the West, South African fathers were almost always given custody of their children in legal disputes, with some exceptions (see Robinson 2003). This is the reverse of the current situation, a situation brought about by the increasing attention focused upon children’s emotional and psychological welfare, also referred to as the ‘sentimentalisation of childcare’ and the ‘sacralisation of childhood’. This, largely a middle-class phenomenon, was driven by broad-ranging socioeconomic changes and expert discourses, which emphasised emotional and psychological wellbeing over religious concerns with regard to children’s moral and spiritual welfare (LaRossa 1997; Lupton & Barclay 1997). As childcare became sentimentalised, it became increasingly associated with femininity, with women being assigned the main parental role, to the extent that women are often solely defined by it (Gillespie 2003; Morell 2000; Sevón 2005; Wager 2000). 120


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d a d d y i s s u e s : t h e r o l e a n d r u l e o f t h e f at h e r

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More recently, with increasing rates of female employment, ‘the traditional expectations of gendered family roles, that is, of men as breadwinners and women as full-time homemakers, are not necessarily possible’ (Alldred 1996: 149). The customary provider role no longer falls automatically to fathers. Instead, mothers can take on economic provision in addition to their traditional caretaker role and thereby meet the needs of children that have been conventionally assigned to the father. As a result, men’s position within the family, both in South Africa and elsewhere, has become more precarious and the preoccupation with father presence has amplified (Alldred 1996; Morrell 2006). These changes have been met with backlash: claims that women have taken men’s jobs and pushed them out of the family, or at least out of their leadership role, and sparked panics around the disintegration of ‘the family’. As a consequence of the undermining of clear-cut parental roles for men as men, further emphasis on other roles, including the provision of unique male role modelling, is required.

Research on white South African fathers

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The shifts referred to in the previous section are also evident in the South African context, though with localised inflections. Clowes (2006) found that, during the 1950s, articles produced in magazines aimed at white audiences downplayed white men’s identities as fathers, with childcare being depicted as the responsibility of housebound white mothers. This, significantly, was in contrast to depictions in the popular magazine Drum in the early 1950s in which black men were frequently portrayed as fathers in domestic situations (this later changed with black men increasingly being shown in work contexts or on their way to work). In more recent times these representations have shifted as the socio-political context of South Africa has undergone transformations. This is evident in Prinsloo’s (2006) work that shows how men are now represented in caring and responsible roles in the ‘soft news’ sections of South African media (both imported and locally produced) – although in hard news, fathers are generally associated with misfortune, asocial deeds, murder, abuse, disputes and familial wranglings.

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Transformations in gender roles may be experienced in unique ways for white, Afrikaans men, alongside anxieties of being part of an ethnic minority group, and feelings of loss and victimisation in a changing racial order (Steyn 2004). The narrative of father involvement has, it appears, been taken up by white men in South Africa, at least to a certain extent. Smit, in a survey of white English- and Afrikaansspeaking married fathers in dual earning households, found that ‘although the remnants of “the husband/father as head of the family” still exists, some men have moved towards … more involvement in the family and domestic sphere’ (2002: 411, 412). Khunou (2006) also conducted interviews with white Afrikaansand English-speaking divorced fathers who pay maintenance for their children. A frequent theme was how these men wished to be more involved in decisions that impact on their children’s lives and to be more involved in everyday activities regarding care of their children.1 121


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A notable article that sheds light on some of the current cultural constructions of white Afrikaans fathering is Viljoen’s (2011) research, which examines representations of fatherhood in Maksiman, an Afrikaans Christian magazine that ran between 2001 and 2006. The magazine mostly contained lifestyle articles and had a regular feature, titled Jou Kinders (Your Children), as well as several general articles on fatherhood.2 Maksiman’s representation of fatherhood was in contrast to depictions of fathering in magazines produced in the past. Viljoen’s (2011) analysis shows how fatherhood was depicted as a significant and important aspect of Afrikaans, Christian male identity. An emphasis was placed on the father as the financial provider for the family alongside indications that the day-to-day aspects of childrearing should not only be of concern to the mother, and that having children is a team effort. This is summed up by Johann’s description of contemporary parenthood: Extract 1

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Johann: In the old days dad used to be the provider. Now the mom and the dad are the providers, but I’d say Dad plays a role as the protector as well. Um, ‘cause if the kid gets into, I don’t know, trouble or whatever, Dad’s gonna be there to protect. Mom’s also gonna be there to protect, but dad’s got the muscle to stand up, you know, for that. Mom also, but I mean … There’s so much expected of dads, of men, they’re the strong one, they have to be and it doesn’t work like that anymore. Men and women are equal, so you mustn’t look at it as the dad being the protector and the mom being the … with the kid or whatever. It works both ways. In the old days it used to be dad’s the protector and the provider, but it doesn’t work like that anymore … I mean we’re in it together. So, we both must, both people must give the same. If I give 100 per cent, mom must give 100 per cent. (M2)

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In Johann’s quote, we see the reference to changing gender norms – especially gender ‘equality’ – and the speaker’s own attempts to reconcile traditional gender constructions (such as ‘dad’s got the muscle’) with newer ones (where it ‘works both ways’). Notably, egalitarian parenting arrangements are premised fundamentally on the child’s welfare in which both women and men are present and involved. This was evident in the previous chapter where we also pointed out participants’ preoccupation with the presence of a father or ‘father figure’ in children’s lives. Indeed, as we showed, as in Johann’s quote above, participants had to do some rhetorical work to fashion a unique parental role for fathers by arguing that having both parents is important for children’s welfare. We now turn to examine the concern with fathers’ presence in particular. We saw in the previous chapter how the notion of the gender-specificity of parenting allowed participants to assign female and male parents distinctive functions in the family. Continuing on this tack, and appealing to gendered renditions of parenthood, in much of their discussion the participants allocated various roles to fathers specifically, arguing that fathers make a unique contribution, as we discuss below. Through the assignment of these roles, fathers were positioned as absolutely necessary to children’s development and welfare; these aspects are discussed in detail below.

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The unique contribution of fathers to child development

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In our study, participants referred to a range of functions fulfilled by the father, these being stability, instruction in independence and life skills, moral and religious guidance, and male role modelling. This resonates with other South African research. For example, Clowes, Ratele and Shefer report on similar positive roles that South African men ascribe to their fathers (in this case including social fathers). These include being a provider and protector, teaching the men about being independent, modelling interdependent behaviours such as nurturance, respect and forgiveness (Clowes et al. 2013), always ‘being there’, and engaging in a dialogical ‘talking’ relationship (Ratele et al. 2012).

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Our participants depicted the father as providing stability and security through his presence in the family; this is illustrated by the following extracts:

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Wouter: Well, I guess, sort of the one person in like a time of crisis that you can always go back to and ask for guidance. […] I mean also, probably, as a provider also sort of being a stabiliser in the family, you know. Ag, it’s difficult to say exactly, taking care of business or whatever. Ja, I mean, for me, the father’s always sort of been the one that does need to provide, you know. In terms of a lot of things, in terms of financial stability, things like that. Like I say, it’s difficult to talk around these things when you haven’t thought about it all that much. (M2)

Riaan: You know, my main thoughts sort of centred around, you know, the role of the father being the sort of stabilising part of the family and then basically someone that guides through his own way of doing things. And then obviously all the other things like just physically taking care of things also comes into it. (M2)

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Koos: In rugby,3 you know the fullback, or even in soccer? The wife and the kids they are like in the scrum, they’re talking and planning and doing things and discussing certain things. Then they will get out of it and the opposition will come and break through and at the END OF THE DAY, what I’m saying is I’m alone at the back. You’ve gotta sort out the problem. There’s a high ball coming on you or there’s somebody and only you are there. They will try and tackle and go mad in the front, but what I’m saying is you always carry the, as a man, you always carry the responsibility. They will plan things and when things go wrong, then they come back to me and now I must solve this thing, you know? (M1)

These extracts show how the father’s mere presence is seen as beneficial, as well as offering stability through continued financial provision, offering guidance, problemsolving and the somewhat more vague and general task of ‘taking care of business’ [Extract 2] or ‘taking care of things’ [Extract 3]. This recalls the discussion in the previous chapter regarding the stability that marriage provides for the child, in 123


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which it was implied that children need stability and security for their wellbeing. The construction of the father as stabiliser positions the father specifically as meeting these needs. This stabilising influence was picked up in Ratele et al.’s (2012) study in which the most common phrase used by the (racially diverse) participants to describe a good father was ‘being there’. Indeed, as Lawler asserts, ‘fathers … represent a bulwark against social disorder largely by just being there’ (1999: 70); the quality of care that is provided is often deemed irrelevant (Silverstein 1996). Interestingly, Clarke and Kitzinger note, the reasons why fathers/father figures are necessary are often not spelt out. It seems, therefore, that this notion is such cultural common sense, that arguments for the necessity of men in families do not require much explanation or justification. Rather, ‘it would seem that the mere presence of a man is what is important’ (2005: 148–149).

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Another common construction among our participants was that of the father as instructor in independence and life skills. The pedagogical or instructive function of fathering was drawn on in various ways to differentiate masculine care from feminine care. It was described as distinct from mothering, which was usually seen to comprise routine day-to-day childcare or the ‘nitty-gritty’ parenting tasks, in Koos’s words (quoted in the previous chapter). Hence, paternal contribution to children’s physical, emotional and psychological welfare was represented as less direct than maternal input. Participants often described fathers as mentors, guides and teachers. Masculine care was related to teaching children independence, and life skills, as well as challenging children and encouraging them to explore their surroundings. This resonates with other research indicating that fathers are seen as promoting independence of girl and boy children through the sorts of activities that fathers ought to engage in with children beyond the domestic sphere (Brandth & Kvande 1998). In Viljoen’s (2011) analysis of Maksiman, for instance, she notes that men were told that it was their responsibility to ensure that their children developed healthy habits.

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In a similar vein, fathers were also positioned as moral or religious pedagogues (or guides). For instance, Riaan, in discussing the role of the male parent, indicates, ‘Right and wrong, this is right, this is wrong, you did what was wrong, got a hiding, you learnt very quickly which was right.’ Taking a slightly softer moral line, Franco commented as follows, ‘if you don’t just focus on the boy, [then] just how to be a good person. I can say a lot about that but I think that summarises it quite nicely. Ja, and how to love yourself and your family and the world, people …’ This particular positioning draws on a fairly well-established construction of the father as a moral and religious pedagogue, which can be traced to colonial understandings of fatherhood (Lupton & Barclay 1997). Finally, participants most commonly positioned fathers as male role models. This undertaking can also be seen as an extension of the father’s function of being an instructor or mentor to children because it entails modelling or passing on unique attributes and skills on to children. No mention was made of ‘mother figures’ or ‘female role models’. Gender role modelling was depicted by participants to be a

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paternal function. This is remarkably similar to Folgerø’s findings in his research on same-gendered parenting in Norway. According to Folgerø, his informants defined

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the issue of ‘role models’ to be a question of fatherhood, of the value of having a father participating in the care for the children. The informants clearly looked upon fathers as ‘role models’, while mothers simply were mothers. Mothers can certainly be good or bad, but the informants did not consider it necessary to argue that mothers are needed to ensure that children have ‘female role models.’ For this reason, there are plenty of discussions of fatherhood in the interviews while the gender specificity of being a mother was either absent or implicit in the interviews. (2008: 136)

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The preoccupation with male role models and the relative silence about the equivalent of ‘female role models’ points to the concern with the presence of men in the family rather than with women’s presence (see Clowes et al. 2013; Ratele et al. 2012). The preoccupation suggests that the presence and availability of mothers is largely taken for granted, and is clearly based upon the positioning of women as best able to meet children’s primary needs. Significantly, of all the tasks that were assigned to fathers, this function focuses on men as men and delineates a unique role for male parents, one that only they can fulfil. We shall therefore focus on this construction in the rest of this chapter, because it provided a strong basis for arguing that men are particularly needed in families and thus maintaining a gendered rendition of parenthood, as well as a thoroughly heteronormative family form in which fathers are offered a special place.

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In the following, we discuss how the construction of the male role model is underpinned by the script of ‘masculine domesticity’ (LaRossa 1997: 33). This script, we shall show, functions primarily to valorise manhood and to distinguish fathers from mothers. We then outline how men are constructed as male role models with respect to their sons and with respect to their daughters.

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The script of masculine domesticity The fundamental premise of the script of masculine domesticity is ‘that men have a “special something” garnered from nature or nurture, or both, that allows them to make a unique and, depending on your perspective, positive contribution to an activity’ (LaRossa 1997: 33). This script is a key resource for constructing fathers as gender role models (LaRossa 1997). LaRossa (1997) maintains that this construction of fatherhood describes a particular middle-class (Western) model of participatory fatherhood, in which a central feature is the celebration of the manly way in which domestic activities that are usually conducted by women, such as childcare, are performed by men. This script is evidenced in the following extract:

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Extract 5

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André: A good father should be an all-rounder. You must be. I bake the nicest cakes. I cook. I can clean this house better than the maid4 [can]. I actually give her lessons. I can be a ruffian. I can lie in the bed and [laughs] have a fart competition with the boys. You understand? I can kill a puff-adder; I’ve done it plenty of times. I’m an excellent horseman (.) rider. I am an outdoors type. The kids go camping with me. At the church I’m the leader elder. So in terms of all the extremes I can really do anything. I think I’m very soft-hearted in essence. I cry. Not the emotional crying that people say, ‘Oh this guy …’ but with compassion. If I see something that really touches my heart, a nice movie, I’ll be the one that sheds a tear, because I’ve got either sympathy or empathy for what is going on. I love animals. I (.) like nice things. So I think I’m sort of balanced, I can do anything. I can do needlework, I can iron. […] I think it was just how I am. I can really bake the nicest cake. I’ve got a cake that I bake for the church fête every year. I bake weekly cakes. I’m also giving Sunday school so if I don’t [inaudible] with the kids, then I’m also baking for them on Sunday. Even our maid says that I’m a (.) cordon bleu (.) whatever it’s called. She says I’m the best and my wife can just get a recommendation. [Laughter]. (M1)

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In this extract, stereotypically feminine activities are incorporated into André’s construction of the father, which he describes as ‘an all-rounder’. Rather than a source of potential embarrassment, these activities are an achievement in that they actually bolster the traditional construction of manhood as based on achievement and conquest. André performs domestic tasks in addition to being ‘a ruffian’, an outdoorsman, killing snakes, riding horses, camping and so forth. So, upon the face of it, this may appear to be a less stereotypical rendition of masculinity, but, ironically, it is framed in distinctly masculine terms of competition and accomplishment. As Wetherell and Edley (1999) point out, often what is celebrated in such positioning is not so much the performance of non-stereotypical gendered tasks (such as sewing or crying) per se, but the courage (or benevolence) as men to engage in potentially demeaning activities. As Wetherell and Edley state, ‘being a gender non-conformist trades on the hegemonic values of autonomy and independence’ (1999: 350) that, paradoxically, are associated with stereotypical masculinity. Certainly, this extract conveys a tone of pride as the narrator professes to have performed these tasks better than women. André’s argument features the interjection of manliness into domestic work characteristic of the masculine domesticity script (LaRossa 1997) which allows participants to ward off any gender trouble that might arise as a result of engaging in domestic tasks, which are assumed to be appropriately feminine tasks. This assumption is evident in the extract above as the speaker calls on feminine expertise (of his partner and ‘the maid’) to validate his superior performance of these tasks. His accomplishment rests in the fact that he performs these activities ‘better’ than the women who are supposed to perform them. He also calls on the masculinised professional cordon bleu (or blue ribbon) chef to legitimate his position as superior to 126


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females in domestic issues (particularly cake-baking). Despite this self-positioning (of superiority), it is because these activities are rightly considered feminine that he must call on the opinion of women to make his argument (and arguably one of whom, the ‘maid’, who has the least power in the household).

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André’s descriptions of himself as an all-rounder, balanced and able to do anything are all socially desirable attributes. His engagement in both traditionally female and stereotypically male behaviour is described as engaging in ‘extremes’, thereby constructing masculinity and femininity as polar opposites. Hence, this description reiterates and reinforces the ‘two-sex’ model of gender (Butler 1990). The speaker portrays himself as somehow straddling the gender divide and claims to have gained mastery over both domains. His unconventional behaviour is not taken for granted, but considered to be related to a personal capacity. Moreover, he engages in rhetorical work to explain his ‘unmanly’ behaviour, but does not similarly qualify any of his manly pursuits, that is, those that he is expected to perform. For instance, discussing his essential soft-heartedness and his ability to cry he qualifies that this is not emotional but related to compassion, thereby disavowing emotionality, which is conventionally associated with femininity, in favour of compassion, which is a desirable (gender-neutral) human quality. His crying is thus constructed as rational or reasonable. He cries for a reason and his initial statement, ‘I cry’, is eventually recast more moderately as ‘shed[ding] a tear’. The speaker therefore constructs himself as a well-integrated man, unafraid to act in terms of personal preferences, thereby rendering the position he has negotiated a positive one.

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As LaRossa (1997) maintains, this particular construction of manhood does not (significantly) trouble gender norms. Instead, it assists in distinguishing fatherhood and motherhood and enshrining men’s place in the family since men are seen as able to make a unique and positive contribution to the domestic realm. Therefore, although the participation in something ostensibly feminine could potentially allow speakers to be positioned as unmanly and create a troubling moment, this behaviour is qualified by rhetorical work so that speakers appear as ‘gender rebels’ (Wetherell & Edley 1999: 347), but not gender troublemakers. Similarly, Julia Nentwich (2008) argues, gender trouble is prohibited by rhetorical work around unconventional gender behaviour. When narrators attempt to explain or justify unconventional gender performances, the radical potential of these troubling moments is undermined. Justifications of this nature reify the gender binary exactly because the narrator must articulate valid reasons or explanations for their behaviours, desires and pleasures, rather than taking these for granted. Accordingly, Nentwich (2008) contends that in order to truly challenge the binary, unconventional gender performances would have to be enacted in an unquestioning manner, as though they were a given, or supported by arguments that are based on different, non-stereotypical assumptions (for example, a man arguing that he engages in domestic work because caring for his family’s welfare is important to him and not because he is ‘helping out’). Nevertheless, even though the gender binary is ultimately reproduced, this construction of manhood does create slippages

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and opportunities for change, as it stretches the boundaries of masculinity to incorporate unconventional behaviour.5

Father as male role model

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The most distinctive and fundamental task of domestic masculinity is that of being a manly guide to children (LaRossa 1997). As one young woman described it, a father should ideally ‘show them how to be a man and to be a woman and how to treat women and how to treat men’ (Mariska). Role modelling was described most commonly as teaching boys to be men or teaching girls how to relate to the opposite sex. Notably, this was the case for both sons and daughters. Although, ‘teaching a boy to be a man’ was most common, fathers were also deemed to be exemplars of masculinity for their daughters.

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‘Normal’, ‘healthy’ child development was frequently described by participants as including gender role modelling, whereby the adult sets an example for children of the ‘correct’ gender behaviour. This mostly relies on the child observing the adult and participating in certain activities with him. The notions of modelling or teaching used by the participants has certain connotations that resonate with the social psychological concept of socialisation, in that fathers were seen as instructing children in the proper performance of their gender. This could be indicative of the broad impact of psychology, particularly developmental psychology. The circulation of psychological concepts and terms – such as that of a gender ‘role model’ or ‘identification’ – in public debates regarding children’s needs and best interests inform not only popular understandings of gender, but also of good parenting (Folgerø 2008; Clowes et al. 2013).

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‘A basic assumption in common understanding, deriving from [these] psychological concepts, is that men and women are different, and that it is important for a child’s development to experience this fundamental difference within the family and among the carepersons’ (Folgerø 2008: 138). The construction of gender role models is therefore founded upon the notion of heterosexual gender complementarity (that is, the belief underpinning the heterosexual matrix that femininity and masculinity are complementary opposites and act as counterparts to one another). Next, we outline the differentiated gendered role modelling assigned to fathers with regard to their sons and their daughters.

Teaching boys to be men Based on the notion of heterosexual gender complementarity, fathers were seen to have a particular affinity with their sons by virtue of their shared gender, as discussed in the preceding chapter. Their task was to display appropriately manly behaviour for the son to emulate and to impart masculine skills and knowledge, as the subsequent excerpts illustrate.

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Extract 6

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Riaan: (I think it’s about?) striking a balance, as I said now, striking a balance between being, you know – especially if you’re a male child you identify with your father a lot quicker – it’s a balance between teaching you to be a man and what you’re supposed to do and being sensitive to your skill set or your emotional profile. But, ja, it is very difficult to, especially if you’re a father and you’re living your life and trying to guide the young life and sometimes the two get mixed up a bit. But that’s life and most of us come out of it OK. So ja, my ideal father is definitely, from a male-child perspective, is just to, to make you know what it is to be a man and a male and what your duties are. […] My dad thinks very scientifically, very […] rationally, very knowledgeably. Whereas I’m sort of more of my mom’s side, I’m more (.) I talk to people a lot easier than my brother does. I’m a lot more sensitive in certain aspects, but my dad’s managed to […] figure out which way to treat both of us without demeaning either of us … Tracy: Um, the whole kind of teaching the child, your boy, to be a man, what does that entail?

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Riaan: The way my parents raised us (.) very traditionally, you know, respect women and never hit a girl, that sort of stuff, the sort of traditionalist views […] And also, just there was no confusion, are you a guy, are you a girl type of thing. It sounds a bit [inaudible] in this new PC world, but that’s just the way it [was]. You knew where you stood and what your role was, you were going to be the head of the house, you know, you had to provide for your family. Now that’s … Tracy: And do you think that’s more specifically a dad’s job? Riaan: I think with the male child, definitely. I think a mom [inaudible] provides more of the emotional side of things, thinking about people’s feelings and what not, whereas your father sort of, you know, this is right, this is wrong. (M2)

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Extract 7

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Tracy: A role model? [in response to Dalena’s assertion that her husband must be actively involved in her children’s life]. Dalena: An incredible role model. He must be taking him on hunting trips, fishing trips, do boy things. He must be there when he goes to his first bar type thing, if he ever has to go out for something. The father must be there for his first drink. That’s not my duty. I think mine would be with the girls. (F2)

Extract 8 Lettie: [M]y father never did anything with my brother because he was an alcoholic. When my brother came along that’s when the alcoholism really started. So, in my brother’s case he actually looked up to Wayne [Lettie’s partner], he was his role model and his father figure. From when he was little – I got married when I was 22 [and] he was 12, so he was just going into his teenage years – and until today. His sport that he did he played cricket and he played squash, but he was 129


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specifically good at cricket and that was all through Wayne’s influence because he played cricket. And he loves motorbikes, he’s got a motorbike again and that’s because Wayne rides motorbikes. (F1)

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In these extracts, the father, or father figure, is constructed as modelling correct behaviour and imparting certain values so that boys develop a ‘proper’ identity as heterosexual men. In Extract 6, Riaan invokes the psychologised notion of identification. Fathers and mothers are depicted in a gender stereotypical way and as complementary opposites. The mother is disqualified from being a gender role model for her sons by virtue of her gender which equips her to be an emotional caregiver instead. It is the father who instructs sons on the correct masculine behaviours and duties, while taking each child’s individual personality differences into account. Riaan argues that this task is specifically the role of the father in relation to the son, as does Dalena in Extract 7. The young boy in Extract 8 ‘looks up to’ a father figure and imitates his manly behaviour. The child is involved in his pursuits. These are stereotypically masculine leisure pastimes and are unrelated to the more pragmatic aspects of parenting work. The father surrogate (what is referred to in the literature as a ‘social father’) then implicitly counterbalances the potentially negative effects of having an absent father.

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Masculinity is associated in these extracts with conduct and the performance of gender-appropriate tasks. The speakers focus on traditional gender norms (for example, respecting women), duties and roles (for example, provider, head of the home) and stereotypically manly pursuits (for example, playing sport, riding motorbikes, going on fishing or hunting trips, drinking alcohol). These kinds of norms were evident in Viljoen’s (2011) analysis of the advice given in Maksiman to fathers in relation to their sons, in which treating the son like a man, loving the son in a non-‘sissy’6 manner, being the son’s hero, and sharing sporting activities (especially rugby) and hunting were featured.

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Gender in these renditions is not strictly associated with innate traits but rather with correct performance. In Extract 8, for instance, the participant’s partner is positioned as a role model and a surrogate for a father who ‘never did anything with [her] brother’. The job of the man is to teach or model the correct gender performances. In this respect, the participants invoke the notion of socialisation whereby the boy child learns appropriate behaviour from an older man. The assumption is that outward behaviour, what one does, should be consistent with what one ‘is’, as determined by the sexed body. Based on this assumption, a gender performance can be deemed (in)correct. This is evident in Extract 8 in the reference to confusion over one’s true gender identity (whether one is a ‘guy’ or a ‘girl’). So, if one is seen to be biologically male, one is expected to enact proper masculinity and to display the appropriate traits of masculinity. Talk of gender role modelling was therefore based upon an understanding of gender as emanating from a stable ‘gender core’, which is then attributed with a series of gendered coherences (Butler 1990). In Riaan’s case: man = masculine = ‘scientific thinker’/rational, while woman = feminine = emotional/relational. So, though Riaan describes himself as associated 130


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with stereotypically feminine traits (‘more of my mom’s side’, Extract 6), he is able to avoid the potential gender trouble related to this positioning – which he intimates could be ‘demeaning’ – by referring to individual variation in the form of ‘skill sets’ and ‘emotional profiles’. In this manner, an essentialist, dualistic construction of gender is maintained.

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The reference to possible gender confusion ‘in this new PC world’ also calls to mind a crisis narrative. Traditional masculinity is depicted as threatened by changing gender norms, trivialised in this excerpt as mere political correctness, and vulnerable to change. Moreover, the interweaving of ‘what is right and what is wrong’ with normative gender behaviour, imbues gender performances with a moral dimension. There is a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ way to perform gender. This implies not only that traditional masculinity, and positions associated with masculinity (for example, head of the home and the others mentioned here) are valid and reasonable, but that they ought to be defended. Thus, importantly, it is possible to see from the examples above that the discursive purpose performed by much of this talk was to bolster traditional renditions of manhood. Furthermore, in addition to instructing a boy child in his ‘true’ or ‘correct’ gender, it is also evident from these examples that masculine care has a moral function of preventing moral decay or degeneration.

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Providing girls with exemplars of masculinity

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In talk about the father’s role in relation to daughters, the emphasis was placed on the father as an exemplar of masculinity within the heterosexual relationship. This is based upon the heterocentric assumption that girls will grow up to have a relationship with a person of the opposite sex. In the following extracts, the father is portrayed as, what would be described in psychological terms, ‘an agent of socialisation’ for girls. Extract 9

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Lettie: I’ve got friends that have got two boys, now the little daughter does more sport than what those two boys ever did. So, there’s a scenario there where the father doesn’t really push them to do sport or let’s go and do this together and yet the girl is doing everything that they never did. So why should you keep on trying to have a boy, because you might have a boy and he’s not interested in fishing or watching rugby, you know, he might be interested in drama and art. So I don’t think it’s gender-specific. It shouldn’t be gender-specific, the involvement of the parents, because with that fishing that you do with them at the river, it’s bonding time and you teach them how to interact with members of the opposite sex for when they’re older. So, I think that in that respect a father’s involvement is just as important. (F1)

Extract 10 Annelie: I think the special way in which he respected them and the way he spoke of his kids and the way he treated me with respect and love. I think that taught them that there must be a perfect relationship between a husband and 131


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wife. We had our differences but they always knew that we loved and respected each other. […] Um, he always kissed me hello or goodbye and when I cooked he’d come and stand behind me and whisper in my ear, always called me ‘lovey’ and never yelled at me. (.) I think that’s important especially for a girl to see that your father respects your mother and the man that you’re going to marry one day must respect you like that. (F1)

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In these extracts, fathers are portrayed as providing an exemplar for future heterosexual partnerships. In Extract 9, the father teaches his daughters how to behave in future cross-gender interactions. The reference to the opposite sex clearly denotes a particular conceptualisation of gender. Similarly, in Extract 10, the father sets the example of an ideal (marriage) partner. The mother and father’s respectful and loving marriage relationship is envisioned as an example of the ‘perfect’ heterosexual relationship. Thus, it is precisely the man’s difference from his female partner and his daughter that qualifies the father for this task. A mother cannot perform this role in her daughter’s life and so the father has a unique role to play.

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This resonates with the advice given to fathers in relation to their daughters in Maksiman (Viljoen, 2011). Parenting in these features was frequently cloaked in references to princesses and winning the heart of the girl. Given the familiar storyline of fairy tales in which princesses generally live happily ever after once they have married their prince (who has to face some obstacles to win the heart of the princess), the injunction to prepare daughters for gendered heteronormativity would not be lost on fathers.

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It is clear that the notion of gender complementarity makes sense to participants in father–daughter interactions. For example, in Extract 10, sport and fishing are portrayed as a more appropriate activity for boys, although the speaker mentions that there may be variation in this when boys are not interested in these conventionally manly pursuits. Following this binary logic, although the speaker uses gender-neutral pronouns in the ensuing example of a non-gender-specific interaction, ‘fishing with children’, the audience can infer that the parent is a man and the children are girls, since fishing has already been described as a masculine occupation. Hence, as with father–son interactions, gender role modelling reiterated dualistic, traditional understandings of gender. To sum up thus far, the idea that children benefit from the unique care that men provide reinforces the belief that ideally children need to have their (biological) father fully and continuously present, preferably residing in the same home as both the children and their mother. The welfare of the child was depicted as being at stake should this ideal condition not be met, as we show in the following section. This tactic relies on the potential negative outcomes if the child is deprived of a father figure and/or an involved father. In the following section, we shall show how participants’ narratives displayed the premise, as also shown in Folgerø’s research, that ‘grow[ing] up with a mother (female) and a father (male) is an imperative prerequisite for a “normal” development of personality, enabling boys to develop an

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identity as heterosexual men and girls to develop an identity as heterosexual women’ (2008: 138). The corollary to this was the portrayal of non-nuclear family forms, specifically in which a male parent is not present, as a potential risk factor in healthy child development.

The absent father and the dangers of fatherlessness

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Much attention has been focused on absent fathers and especially on the consequences of fatherlessness for children, both in the South African and the international literature, and emphasis has been placed on increasing men’s positive involvement in the lives of their children. In South Africa, The Fatherhood Project was launched by the Human Sciences Research Council in 2003, (partly) in response to ‘The absence of men from households and low levels of father support for children’s care’ (Richter 2004, cited in Madhavan et al. 2008: 647), thereby endorsing the presence of fathers in the home. A key research output from this project was the ground-breaking book Baba: Men and fatherhood in South Africa (Richter & Morrell 2006). A prominent theme in the book is fathers’ absenteeism, especially in black households. A number of chapters, notably those by Richter (2006); Denis and Ntsimane (2006); Engle et al. (2006); Hunter (2006) and also the closing chapter by Beardshaw (2006), highlight the benefits of fathering for children and advocate promoting and facilitating male participation in childcare, including through ‘social fathering’ (where maternal or paternal uncles, grandfathers, neighbours and teachers play a significant role in a child’s life).7

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Father absenteeism has been attributed to constructions of manhood that discourage men from taking on parental responsibilities, in particular the frequent association of ideal fatherhood with the traditional construction of father as provider, a role that is not readily available to all men (Richter 2009). In addition, the negative consequences of fatherlessness for children have been highlighted. For example, in a report of a study on absentee fathers in the Johannesburg area, the researchers state, ‘this situation presents social and developmental challenges [for children]’ (Eddy et al. 2013: 3). In South African family policy, father absence – along with HIV and AIDS, poverty, gender inequalities, unwanted pregnancies and orphaned children – has been identified as weakening family life (Ratele et al. 2012). Such statements and claims, however, may inadvertently or subtly imply that families without fathers are inherently pathological spaces for child development (Silverstein 1996). Implicit in these discussions about the right kind of family, as we discuss in this chapter, are ‘anxieties about changing and changed gender relations’ (Alldred 1996: 141). By and large, concerns about male absence in families centre on the supposed threat to the heteronormative nuclear family and the perceived moral decay associated with this threat, not only in South Africa (Ratele et al. 2012), but also elsewhere (Alldred 19968; Silverstein 1996). The influence of fathers on children’s development has been a key feature of research into fathering in the last few decades. There is a substantial body of work that 133


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indicates the benefits of father presence and/or involvement in their offspring’s lives.9 For the most part, the positive contribution that fathers make to children has been emphasised. In reviewing longitudinal studies on fathers’ involvement and children’s developmental outcomes, Sarkadi et al. (2008) show how studies assert that active and regular father engagement with the child contributes to positive behavioural, social and psychological outcomes for the child.

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Yet, Silverstein argues that ‘[m]uch of the father absent research has overstated the importance of fathers in the lives of their children’ (1996: 7). Negative consequences for children ‘cannot be assumed to be attributable to the absence of a father, but rather to a range of socio-political variables’ (Silverstein 1996: 7) which disadvantage mother-only families. In a similar vein, Morrell contends that ‘it is difficult to show that the physical absence of the biological father is as serious for the child as is often argued’ (2006: 18) and that men’s presence can also have negative consequences for children.

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In our own research, the consequences of an absent father were highlighted by most participants, especially for male children. In this section, we detail how the threat that fatherlessness poses to children’s wellbeing underpinned participants’ claim that children need a father. The perceived threat to children’s psychological development that may arise as a result of failing to provide them with a father figure is based upon a ‘pathological approach’ (Woodhead 1997: 68) to defining children’s needs, where ‘ “[n]eed” here does not presume qualities that are intrinsic to children; it is an inference from the relationship between certain qualities of mothering and a valued consequence for children’ (Woodhead, 1997, p. 68, our emphasis). As we show next, it is exactly mothering that is at issue, even though the talk focuses on father absence.

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We demonstrate in the following sections how the ‘broken’ or divorced family was portrayed as creating undesirable family forms that are detrimental to children’s welfare. The broken home in this rendition is when the hetero-patriarchal family form is disrupted. The notion of the family broken through divorce has significant social currency and is used in a range of spaces to denote not only the personal decline of children raised in such circumstances, but also social decline (see, for example, Molepo et al.’s (2010) analysis of South African teacher ratings of the impact of parental divorce on academic achievement of children and Wilkinson’s (2013) discussion of how the broken couple relationship is seen as a source of major political problems within British society). The irony of the broken home script is that the patriarchal nuclear family on which it is based is a relatively recent invention in the West, and has never been the dominant framework in South Africa or other parts of Africa (Clowes et al. 2013). The broken home is seen as creating the conditions for father absence, to which we turn next. The corollary of the matchless contribution fathers make to children’s development through, inter alia, the provision of male role modelling is that, should this be removed, dire consequences will follow. What is at stake in the narrative of father absence is biological fatherhood, rather than what has been termed ‘social

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fatherhood’. In the latter, men who are not biological fathers play a key role in children’s lives, fulfilling the functions generally assigned to biological fathers in nuclear families. Researchers in South Africa have documented the centrality of social fathers for a range of men (Clowes et al. 2013; Ratele et al. 2012). In talking about the dangers of father absence, these relationships are occluded. Clarke and Kitzinger’s research shows, however, that arguments that hinge on the dangers of fatherlessness (in their context in relation to lesbian parents) not only overlook men beyond the immediate family, who can act as social fathers or father figures, but that these men are often dismissed as inadequate role models. The researchers contend that arguments that ‘orient to normative definitions of who counts as a (good) male role model’ (2005: 149) play into oppressive understandings of sexuality and gender, inadvertently admitting that families with no fathers are inherently deficient, and supporting restrictive constructions of parenthood.

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Concerns about fatherless families causing social problems have a number of potential outcomes. They potentially restrict women’s freedom and autonomy in relation to mothering; create a narrow focus on the family space that circumscribes influences on children to this arena alone; divert attention from questions about the quality of care relationships and children’s experiences; and deflect from broader cultural analysis of issues by placing blame on individual mothers (Alldred 1996). We focus in this chapter on the propensity to blame, even demonise certain women/ mothers, as a result of such talk.

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The ‘broken’ or divorced family

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It is the heterosexual union that ties conceptions of stability and security to the nuclear family. As we showed in the previous chapter, many participants argued that marriage meets the child’s need for stability and security. The upshot of this argument, to which we now turn, is that a broken home is harmful to the child. In such talk, the heterosexual conjugalised nuclear family form was usually taken for granted as the ideal childrearing context. The reconstituted ‘broken’ family was characterised as unsound and as potentially detrimental to children’s wellbeing. For example, in the following extract, Esmé, comments on her anxiety that her divorce, which happened when her children were fairly young, might have adversely affected her children: Extract 11

Esmé: I suppose any person would have wanted to make sure that their marriage would have stayed solid, to give that to them, but I won’t change them [the children] at all. […] I prayed and asked that [God] takes away all of the negative, horrible memories. So there’s [sic] parts that I can’t remember and I accept that that is how He works. It’s just every now and then when I hear someone talking about their background that I will ask the kids, ‘Is there anything you would change?’ you know, ‘Are you OK? Just checking up.’ [laughs] (F1)

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Here, talking about her ‘regrets’, Esmé intimates that a ‘solid’ marriage is an ideal condition that a parent provides to ensure the wellbeing of their offspring. The idea that she has to check up on her children indicates some apprehension that their personal history might have affected them negatively. The possibility that they may have benefited from the termination of an unhappy and fraught marriage was not considered by Esmé or any of the other participants when discussing divorce. Instead, the dangers of the ‘broken home’ were focused upon, based on the notion that the stability of the parents’ marriage extends to the children, as reiterated in the following extracts. Extract 12

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Lettie: I think they had the stability of their parents. Even when they were going to school – and I’m sure you remember too – there was then already a high divorce rate. There were lots of kids from broken homes and I think they [her children] loved the stability. What happened through all the years is they would bring kids from broken homes home because our house was always seen as a safe house. On both sides there [are] friends that still regard us as surrogate parents because of that. They all adored Wayne because he used to have such an easy relationship with kids in general. (F1)

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Jakobus: I’ve got a lot of friends whose parents did divorce and it is pretty traumatising. I was also pretty traumatised by these things. Ja, that is a very good question, whether it is better for the child that we are married. I think it’s better for the child because I mean the thought of abandonment is inconceivable, it’s absolutely terrible. The parent, if he’s not willing to take responsibility for it at least let him have a duty under the law to take care of that child. (M2)

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The underlying assumption in these extracts is of the normality and benefit of marriage and the creation and maintenance of a male–female dyad with children. Lettie constructs the heterosexual nuclear family as stable and safe and, by implication, single-parent families as the opposite. She maintains that she and her partner were able to provide children from divorced families with the security that they otherwise lacked. Similarly, in Extract 12, divorce is described as distressing and painful for children, while having married parents allows them to feel secure. Notably, Lettie specifically refers to ‘broken homes’ (where most people usually spoke of divorced families). This particular construction (of broken homes) not only bears connotations of dysfunction and damage to the original ideal family form but it is also morally loaded, as further suggested by the reference to the ‘already … high divorce rate’, which links the ‘broken’ or divorced family to broader societal decline. As we see in Extract 13, there was an especial concern with paternal absence. In this excerpt, the official recognition of the parents’ union is represented as beneficial to children, because it legally obliges parents to care for their children. The masculine pronouns suggest that it is unmarried men, in particular, who ‘abandon’ their

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families and are less inclined or unwilling to care and take responsibility for their offspring. This, once again, invokes the undesirable subjectivity of absentee father, often referred to in popular discourse as the ‘deadbeat dad’ or a ‘feckless father’ (Lupton & Barclay 1997; Smart & Neil 1999) and points to similar pragmatic reasons for marriage. In particular, the divorced or so-called broken family represented a particular threat to children’s wellbeing because it was seen as depriving them of the stability and security ostensibly offered by the heterosexual nuclear family and, especially, by the father. The ‘broken’ family was condemned for creating a family form devoid of a father and it was this specifically that was seen as jeopardising the welfare of children and even broader society. As a result, fatherless families were delegitimised and stigmatised, as Macleod (2003) also shows in her research on the construction of teenage pregnancy.

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The fatherless family and the threat of the single mother

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Much of the attention that fathers receive in relation to children’s welfare is focused on absent fathers (as in Extract 13 above, for example). In both popular and academic discussions in South Africa and elsewhere, it is the father’s physical presence/absence that is considered to be a determinant of how children – and, in particular, boy children, as we shall show – turn out (Clowes et al. 2013; Lawler 1999). Likewise, in this study in comparison to the concern expressed for fatherless children, there was a relative lack of concern regarding mother absence. This can be seen in Extract 13 above, where Jakobus refers to a parent who is ‘not willing to take responsibility’ in the masculine and arguing that at the very least such men should have a legal obligation to do so. A women’s absence, in contrast, is unthinkable and would most likely meet with disbelief (Alldred 1996).

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This lack of concern with the mother’s presence/absence is not to say that people believed that mothers are not important to children’s wellbeing. On the contrary, motherhood is increasingly defined in terms of psychological discourses of children’s needs (Alldred 1996; Kruger 2006) and in our study, as already mentioned, mothers were most frequently positioned as the ‘primary meeters of [children’s] needs’ (Lawler 1999: 70). This was, however, unremarkable, since such gender positioning is within the usual ambit of the female gender role (Dixon & Wetherell 2004; Frizelle & Kell 2010). It was presupposed that a mother would be present in her child’s life as the guardian and primary caretaker. This was the invisible norm and as a consequence, the mother’s absence was not conceived of as a real possibility in the same way as a father’s might be. When discussing single parents, it was therefore the fathers who were presumed to be absent and the mothers who were the sole parent – though this was typically articulated in gender-neutral terms. The blame, thus, for how children turn out is not portrayed as lying primarily with the absent father, but instead with the single mother. Consequently, in the context of divorced or ‘broken’ families, participants focused on the potentially harmful effects of lone motherhood, which was depicted as suboptimal with regard to the

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ideal childbearing conditions. Notably, the term ‘single mother’ highlights a woman’s unmarried status and this is precisely the cause of why she is judged as lacking. Single mothers ‘are deviating doubly from their role: failing in their duty as mothers to provide an “adequate family” (actually implied to be the adequate family), instead selfishly denying children a father, and failing to be “wifely” by selfishly denying men their rights to their children’ (Alldred 1996: 146). A ‘good’ or ‘normal’ mother is married (and heterosexual) and has no needs beyond those which benefit the child, and certainly no desires, bar the desire to have a child (Lawler 1999). This is evident in the following excerpt. Extract 14

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Anel: The chances that I will go overseas [next year] to do my masters are quite strong, or the year after. So it’s a long way off. My parents are always like, “We want grandchildren.” […] I’d love to give them a grandchild. I’d love to. My mom would be an awesome grandmother, but it’s not about the grandmother, it’s about the grandchild. I wouldn’t want her to have the pleasure of having a grandchild, little baby, for three years and then deal with my child’s issues of having been the child of a single mother, a single or unwed mother for fifteen more years or fifty more years, it’s not fair. (F2)

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This extract illustrates the belief that was expressed that a single mother scenario is detrimental to the child. The subjectivity of single mother featured as an undesirable Other. In Anel’s case, her decision to postpone childbearing in order to further her studies is rationalised through the presentation of child-centred motives in which the best possible childrearing conditions should be met. She implies that she ought to be married first before she considers having children, or her child will have ‘issues’. In this way, heterosexual bonding and marriage are depicted as being in the child’s best interests. Maternal presence alone thus is deemed insufficient for adequate parenting, as shown in other research (Lawler 1999). Children’s need for security and stability was firmly linked to living with the married biological mother and father (as we showed in Chapter 5) and, furthermore, fathers in particular were construed as offering stability to their offspring.

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Moral panics around children co-occur with those about mothers. Although often couched in terms of concern for children, the children in these narratives gendered too. The concern has almost exclusively centred on boy children [and is] linked to the concern (though already confounded with cause) over gendered development of boys growing up “without a father figure” and so they can be implicitly invoked as “outcomes” in discourses of lone mothers. (Alldred 1996: 142)

The claim that children need fathers has therefore not only been linked to the interrelated concerns regarding the loss of male authority in the home, but more especially to the so-called feminisation of boys in the mother-dominated family (Lupton & Barclay 1997). The threat of the feminisation of boys was attributed more or less explicitly to sons who do not have an ‘active’ male role model to instruct them 138


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on ‘how to be a man’. The implication is that the proper development of boy children is contingent not only on the father’s presence, but also on his active contribution to the psychological and emotional development of his offspring (Clowes et al. 2013; Lupton & Barclay 1997).

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What is at issue is the reproduction of appropriately hetero-gendered children whose biological make-up corresponds with their gendered identity, who behave in prescribed ways, and, importantly, whose desire is heterosexual (Alldred 1996). As research on same-gendered families indicates, arguments about who is fit to parent raise fears related to children’s sexuality. This is particularly obvious in public debates about same-gendered parents (Morison & Reddy 2013). In these debates, children in same-gendered families are construed as ‘at risk of experiencing “confusion” about their gender and sexuality, and, at worst, may themselves become lesbian or gay’ (Clarke & Kitzinger 2005: 138). So, what is at stake is the ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ rearing of boys, and to some extent, girls too (Alldred 1996). Indeed, while the focus was certainly far more on boys than girls in our study, the concern was not entirely for boys.

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Extract 15

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As we discussed earlier in this chapter, fathering was depicted as distinct from mothering, and for that reason necessary for both daughters’ and sons’ wellbeing. We showed that fathers were often constructed as exemplars of masculinity and models of cross-gender interactions for their daughters. The following two extracts illustrate concerns about fatherlessness and the threat of the single mother for both boy and girl children.

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Dalena: From what I’ve witnessed and what I’ve learnt (.) from reading books, from seeing things, it’s something psychological I think when it comes to, um, when parents split and the child ends up with the mother, they’re usually softer, more feminine, almost squeamish about everything, little wussie type of boys, no backbone, because they don’t have that active father role in their lives and they don’t know how to relate to a man. So, I want my, the husband must be VERY actively [involved] in the son’s life to make sure that he doesn’t turn out to be a little Barbie doll. […] That’s not my duty. I think mine would be with the girls. Tracy: Okay, so would Dad be the ‘guardian’ of the boy too? [In response to her comment that a father is his daughter’s guardian]. Dalena: In a very different way, more teaching him how to be a man, whereas with the girl he’d be guarding what he needs to guard in that girl, making sure that the boy that gets involved with the girl behaves himself. (F2)

Extract 16 Anel: I think a lot of people underestimate the role that men play in girls’ lives and I think a lot of girls underestimate the role that their parents (.) their DAD played in their lives. I mean, that’s a whole another issue, the whole ‘daddy issue’. I can

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just think of two of my cousins who grew up without their fathers. One of them is the same age as me and she’s got a kid. She’s living with her boyfriend and she jumps from one boyfriend to the next for as long as I’ve known her. It’s a very obvious, some people say it’s just a stereotype, but it’s not, it really makes big, big difference in a kid’s life. (F2)

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In these extracts, talk of potential harm to children is linked specifically to the absence of fathers or male role models and the presence of the single mother. In order to make this argument, influences on the child is seen in terms of the parents only and the influences beyond the mother–father dyad are overlooked (Alldred 1996; Clarke & Kitzinger 2005). Dalena overtly discusses the supposed corrupting influence of femininity on boy children in fatherless families, a concern that was generally not made explicit. Here Dalena denounces not only the divorced family, but specifically single mothering, by arguing that this is detrimental to ‘psychological’ welfare. She cites expert knowledge (what she’s ‘learned … from books’) regarding the feminisation of boys in such cases and positions fathers as a counterbalance to the potentially threatening feminine influence of sole mothers. As the gender role model, it is the father’s task to guard against the failed masculinity, represented by the ‘wussie’ and the ‘little Barbie doll’ boy, through active involvement in appropriate gendered activities. It is clear that this argument is premised upon the notion of heterosexual gender complementarity. Not only are femininity and masculinity constructed in terms of difference as distinct categories, but there is also an opposition created between identification and desire (Anonymous 1995). Boy children identify with their fathers by virtue of their shared gender, which uniquely qualifies the father to ‘model’ the appropriate gendered behaviour for boys. The issue in this excerpt is the lack of someone deemed ‘biologically male’ to display the traits of masculinity, and possibly also sexual desire for women (as the word ‘wussie’ may suggest). Hence, such binary gender distinctions come to exist also through the invocation of heterosexuality (Butler 1990).

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Accordingly, it is possible to see how the boundaries of masculinity are policed in Extract 15. In this extract, the threatening spectre of failed gender performance looms as the effeminate ‘wussie’ or ‘Barbie doll’ boy. These unsuccessful and unacceptable performances of masculinity are associated with femininity and, potentially, with homosexuality. They are explicitly designated as Other or abject positions that define the boundaries of the dominant category of ‘normal’ masculinity. These positions, then, form the constitutive outside – that is, they act as markers for the constructed inside of the norm and grant it social significance. One could say then that these abject positions are necessary for the definition of ‘correct’ manhood, since they assist in determining what it is not. Of course, their existence continually threatens the norm and so they must be constantly disavowed as ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’. The concern, therefore, is with the maintenance of proper masculinity, even though the speaker refers generically to ‘the child’. As with boys, speakers in both extracts above stress the potentially negative outcomes of damage and loss to daughters should the father be absent. Having a father is 140


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considered to ‘make a big difference’ to girl children. Anel’s allusion to ‘the whole daddy issue’ in this extract calls upon a popular term used to describe emotional issues that result for girl children as a consequence of absent or minimal fathering. In Extract 16, father absence is equated with implied sexual and reproductive deviance in adulthood (having a child early, jumping from one boyfriend to another). Thus the breaking of the heterosexual bond perpetuates nonconformity to procreative heteronormativity.

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Anel explicitly argues that the active contribution of fathers to their children’s psychological and emotional development is important regardless of a child’s gender (Extract 16). Arguing against gender-specific parental parent–child interaction was common among women, especially younger women. This trend could suggest resistance to the greater burden of care that is placed on female parents. Rather than arguing for shared parenting though, father involvement is depicted as necessary for children’s wellbeing and, in so doing, fatherhood is valorised.

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Thus, the ‘families need fathers’ discursive tactic not only valorises fatherhood and pathologises the ‘broken’ family, but often undermines and blames single mothers for any problems that their children may encounter (Andenæs 2005; Kruger 2006; Macleod 2003). This tactic is also used to denigrate lesbian families (Clarke & Kitzinger 2005). Children’s so-called needs are therefore inferred from the relationship between mothering and a particular desired outcome for children. Accordingly, the quality of the father–child relationship is not actually of concern – merely the father’s presence, which female parents as the assumed primary caregivers ought to ensure, along with other ideal conditions. The blaming of single mothers suggests that it is in actual fact mothering that is under scrutiny (Lawler 1999). The failure to provide adequate conditions therefore results in the blaming of women, rather than men.

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The single (unmarried or divorced) mother is overtly repudiated in this talk and represents the constitutive outside of the heteronorm, delineating what good parenting entails. This can, therefore, be seen as an excluded subjectivity. She is the aberrant or abject (un)subject which ‘haunts signification as its abject borders’ (Butler 1993: 188) and therefore forms the constitutive outside of the hegemonic norm, that is the conjugalised two-parent nuclear family (Macleod 2003). In other words, the single mother is the ‘Other’ who both threatens and constitutes the norm of the whole and functional family, defining its boundary (Butler 1993; Macleod 2003). Moreover, the single mother represents a threat to the heteronorm, as does the ‘threatening spectre’ (Butler 1993: 3) of failed gender in the form of effeminate masculinity. Both the single mother and the effeminate boy child must be repudiated so that the need of a male presence, a particular kind of male presence in the family, can be asserted.

Enshrining the role and rule of the father The positioning of fathers as gender role models for both girls and boys fashions a unique role for fathers. Mothers may be able to provide for many of the same needs 141


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as fathers do (for example, financial provision, protection), potentially infringing upon traditionally masculine territory, but they cannot be male role models to their children. Thus, the positioning of fathers as male role models serves to enshrine the place of men within the nuclear family. Some have argued that such talk can be read in the light of the (perceived) threat to men’s established positions within the family, which has traditionally been the source of men’s power and authority. Broader social changes, like rising divorce rates and women’s economic empowerment, make men’s position within the family more precarious, especially in the light of women’s relatively greater power and authority over the domestic sphere (Finn & Henwood 2009; Henwood & Procter 2003; Smart & Neale 1999) and considering that men’s relationship with their children is defined primarily in the context of their bond with the mother, through marriage or a biogenetic connection (Silverstein 1996).

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The patriarchal family

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However, it appears that what is at stake is not only the heterosexual nuclear family form, but men’s traditional role as family head, that is, the patriarchal family. As we have shown, there was greater concern for boys’ welfare than girls with regard to father absence. This was reflected in the particular concern with male role models and the relative silence about the equivalent of ‘female role models’. Fathers were seen as especially important to boys’ ‘normal’ development – especially their gender development. Underlying this issue seems to be a concern with reiterating or bolstering particular traditional constructions of masculinity and so ultimately the patriarchal male-headed family form.

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Most participants alluded to men as authority figures within the family. This resonates with Clowes et al.’s (2013) participants’ construction of their fathers as the head of the household: as dominating and in control. At times, our participants spoke of the patriarchal family through direct reference to ‘head of the household’ (for example, Riaan, in Extract 6 above, maintains that a father must teach a son his proper role, including being the ‘head of the house’). At other times, this was nuanced in metaphors that explained and justified the gendered hierarchy. Below are two more examples, also from men’s narratives. Extract 17

Elias: Firstly, I am the head of the house [laugh] and Trudy supports me. Trudy would not do anything, would not take a decision without consulting me. That is one of those things in our house that I must really say, it is quite biblical. She supports me 100 per cent there. If the kids want something, want to do something, I’ve got to be consulted first. In that I’m not saying that Trudy doesn’t make decisions. If she has to do something that doesn’t affect the whole family, she does it and I don’t have a problem with that because … uh … Yes, I am the head of the house. (M1)

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Extract 18

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Koos: What I always say, in the later years, I’m like a fullback and that’s exactly how I feel. In rugby, you know the fullback, or even in soccer? The wife and the kids, they are like in the scrum, they’re talking and planning and doing things and discussing certain things. Then they will get out of it and the opposition will come and break through and at the END OF THE DAY, what I’m saying is I’m alone at the back. You’ve gotta sort out the problem. There’s a high ball coming on you or there’s somebody and only you are there. They will try and tackle and go mad in the front, but what I’m saying is you always carry the, as a man, you always carry the responsibility. It’s part of being a father, so it’s not that I’m … (.) it’s just something that I’ve recognised a few years on that that is one of the roles that you are playing as a father. […] When I talk to my friends that have more or less the same kids, they all have the same experience. (M1)

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Elias overtly positions himself, stating that he is the authority in the family and holds decision-making power. Koos also depicts himself as being in a position of control and as ultimately responsible for the family. Both these speakers, however, show an awareness of potential accusations of unfairness or even sexism, and of course Tracy’s subjectivity as a female researcher must also be taken into consideration in this respect. This is most clear in Extract 18 when Koos states, ‘it’s not that I’m …’ trailing off and leaving us to surmise that he was alluding to being unfair or domineering. Consequently, both speakers justify their self-positioning. Elias argues that his position is biblically sanctioned and, engaging in ‘partnership talk’ (Dixon & Wetherell 2004: 761) emphasises that he has his partner’s cooperation. Koos also spends a moment justifying his role, describing it as ‘part of being a father’.

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Such justificatory work suggests that this male positioning is not necessarily accepted by all, and indeed it was outright rejected. For example, Dawid spoke about parents ‘working as a team’ and ‘collective’ decision-making. Constructing the father as ‘guardian–caretaker’ who ‘can act in different roles’ he rejected the ‘dominant model of the picturesque family’ with the ‘monolithic’ patriarchal father. Hence, we also see some repair work occurring in these extracts. Repair also continued after the excerpts above. For instance, Elias went on to qualify his role of disciplinarian, which forms part of the overall role of head of the home, and to emphasise his emotionality. He made use of softening statements, claiming that he attempted to be more approachable and emotionally involved than his own father was. This shows how, as parenting has become sentimentalised, the emphasis is less on a hierarchical father–child relationship in which the father features as patriarch, and more on relating to children in such a way that their individuality can develop fully (Lupton & Barclay 1997). In order to accommodate these changes, Elias and Koos therefore contrasted themselves with their own fathers, to position themselves as modern, more involved fathers.

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The contemporary gender script and the male-headed household

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Many participants used a contemporary gender script to accommodate male headship to changing gender norms. These participants constructed a version of modern fathering in which male authority is retained, but in a moderate manner. Most often, they contrasted the modern father with the emotionally distant, uninvolved patriarch of yesteryear. This modern father is different, because he is required to be involved with his children to some degree, whether just emotionally or by contributing to their care. This tactic works by placing ‘extreme’ constructions of masculinity – such as the traditional emotionally distant and authoritarian patriarch – as a counterpoint to the ‘emotionally involved’, and perhaps even ‘hands-on’, modern father. In this manner, constructions that retained many of the characteristics of traditional manhood were construed as modern and more moderate or reasonable. This can be seen in the following extracts.

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Mariska: I don’t want to be married to a dictator. Glory! I want to be married to somebody who’s quite calm and confident within himself and doesn’t have a huge macho ego with something to prove so that his family lives under the fear of him opening the door. But I do want him to be like the voice of the house. It would be really nice if he could cook supper every now and then. I really think that it’s important that he’s part in the younger days of fetching kids and bathing kids. I think that’s something that should be done together. I think it’s probably a little bit of the feminist in me. Just because I’m a woman it doesn’t mean that I want to be in the kitchen cooking and cleaning and cleaning the house. I’ve also got a career that I want to pursue. There are also interests that I have and I want to be treated as an individual and for him to keep that in mind from the time that we’re dating to the time that we’re old and sipping gin and tonics [laughter]. […] I think if it was any other way I would end up quite resentful towards him. If I have to look back now at my parent’s marriage, that’s pretty much how it was and to make matters worse, there wasn’t very much (.) the distance and the love grew less because my dad just wasn’t doing his part. He wasn’t disciplining and she pretty [much] took over and she just got gatvol 10 and had enough. (F2)

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Elize: It must be someone that’s also strong-willed and sincere and loving and caring so that he can be, not strict on them, but teach them wrong from right, but not in an abusive way like some men can be. Like with Morné [ex-boyfriend], from what I could see, he’d be a very controlling dad. I think he would push his child too much. I want to push my kids to be better people but I don’t want them pushed to the point that they are 16 and drink and [take] drugs and all that stuff. They must feel comfortable to be able to come and talk to us. […] He must be loving and want to spend time with them. It mustn’t be like a chore to him. It must be

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that he wants to do it, like go for walks on the beach and go to watch their games and that. […] And nappy-changing would be nice! […] Morné was Afrikaans and that stereotype that comes out. It’s almost as though everything that was done to him he carries over, but I want my husband to also listen. I don’t want to be like, ‘Okay, I’m married, you wear the pants.’ It must be common ground. ‘Okay I’m the mother, you’re the father and if there’s a problem we’re raising OUR child. We’re not raising your child or mine.’ (F2)

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These young women both overtly talk against traditional gender norms in which men ‘wear the pants’. In this respect, the speakers (re)cite a newer gender script, as evidenced by the reference to ‘the feminist in me’ (Extract 19) and the use of the phrase ‘common ground’ (Extract 20) to describe role-sharing. Once again, Tracy’s subjectivity as a woman must be taken into consideration in interpreting these statements. Yet, at the same time, these speakers reaffirm traditional constructions of masculinity as the ideal father features as an authority figure and disciplinarian. This potential contradiction is resolved by the contemporary gender script which, as discussed earlier, is a composite of the traditional and egalitarian scripts. Male partners can be considered to be helper-parents and parenting roles remain gendered (‘I’m the mother, you’re the father’) and bound to gendered assumptions of what they should entail.

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Additionally, these narrators invoke a more reasonable, modern construction of the man as household head. The extreme construction of the ‘dictator’ with ‘a huge macho ego’ is juxtaposed with man who is ‘calm and confident within himself ’ and ‘the voice of the house’ in Extract 19. Mariska’s own father could also be thought of as an example of an Other – or an extreme rendition of stereotypical masculinity – with whom to contrast a reasonable construction of manhood. In Extract 20, Elize echoes this. She describes a ‘firm’ but loving father who disciplines the children, contrasting this with a less desirable rendition of aggressive manhood and stereotypical Afrikaner manhood. She claims that she wants her future partner ‘also to listen’. This model of the nurturing, listening and forgiving father was evident in the research by Clowes et al. (2013) and Ratele et al. (2012) in South Africa.

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This construction of the firm but loving modern father is not a new one, according to LaRossa (1997). It has its roots in (conservative) Christianity and colonial constructions of fatherhood. As we have mentioned, fathers, considered the natural parents in the 19th century, were enjoined to emulate God the Father and to be both just and ever-loving. Men were also religiously bound, according to a particular biblical interpretation, to be the authority figure in their homes. The construction of the firm but loving modern father may therefore incorporate changing ideas about men’s roles, whilst retaining traditional renditions in which men have greater authority in the household. These constructions allow social change whilst ultimately keeping underlying power structures intact (Riley 2003). Based on these common understandings of the father role, the discursive tactic that constructs men as uniquely able to meet their children’s needs by virtue of being men,

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enshrines men’s place in the heterosexual nuclear family, but may also be implicated in defending established male roles within the traditional family space, such as head of the home, and thereby supporting male authority. This tactic may literally support the rule of the (modern) father and forms a powerful defence of the traditional, hetero-patriarchal family form, and preserves the place of fathers within it. Morrell points out, in fact, that ‘the absent father argument’ (2006: 18) can be used to restore traditional norms that promote female dependence and lack of autonomy. This is evident in right-wing men’s movements that associate absent fathers with the ‘crisis in masculinity’ and urge men to reclaim their traditional leadership role in the family (Morrell 2006; Silverstein 1996). Such rhetoric ‘emphasizes fathering in an effort to re-establish the patriarchal family as the dominant model of family life’ (Silverstein 1996: 6). Thus, we contend that the primary purpose of such constructions is to deal with threats to male authority. This authority has traditionally proceeded through the family. Marriage and male headship was a normalised and the taken-forgranted invisible norm, as reported in Macleod’s (2003) analysis of literature about teenage pregnancy.

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Earlier, we showed how fathers were distinguished from mothers according to the gender binary, so that the female–male dyad of the heterosexual couple becomes the mother–father dyad. Harnessing this construction of gender, participants then argued not only that ‘it is important for a child’s development to experience this fundamental difference within the family and among the carepersons’ (Folgerø 2008: 138), but that the presence of a father was especially important to both girls’ and boys’ development. In short, the argument was that children needed fathers. Men were positioned as fulfilling the important roles of family stabiliser, mentor or guide, the moral pedagogue responsible for instilling certain (androcentric) values, and, most significantly, being a gender role model to children. The function of gender role model is most significant amongst these fatherly functions, since it is a role that a woman – precisely by virtue of being a woman – cannot fulfil. Hence, more than any other role that the father performs, the task of modelling the appropriate gender performances – which serves to reproduce an acceptable construction of masculinity – is the one which preserves men’s position in the family. Thus, the positioning of fathers as male role models serves to valorise masculinity and fatherhood and so to enshrine the place of men within the heterosexual nuclear family (Folgerø 2008). As indicated by Ratele et al., these kinds of renditions of the positive influence of fathering on children has been used ‘by policy makers and the public to perpetuate notions of an idealized heteronormative, nuclear family thus demonizing and devaluing non-normative ways of “doing” family while reproducing a binaristic gendered notion that both a male and female parent is essential in this unit and therefore casting a punitive lens on those families and those men and women that do not ‘fit’ this normative framework’ (2012: 554). The necessity of fathers in children’s lives was reinforced by the juxtaposition of the positive role that fathers play with the potential harm that can come to children from fatherless families, as well as the broader implications of social decay that

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might result. Fatherless families were depicted as producing an unstable home environment, inappropriately gendered sons and daughters who may themselves go on to perpetuate this non-ideal family form. The latter points to the recurrent theme of blaming women, as those who should meet children’s needs and the taken-for-granted ‘natural’ caregiver, for failing to provide optimal childrearing conditions – including a father figure – rather than the absent male parents.

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Therefore, at the same time as fatherhood was valorised, the place of mother as primary caregiver was firmly entrenched and certain kinds of mothers were denigrated. In contrast, de-gendered parenting roles, advocated by many feminists, allow for not only more equitable heterosexual parenting relationships, but also a greater diversity of family forms (Kendall 2007; Silverstein 1996). Silverstein (1996) argues that an emphasis on fathering as nurturing that holds equal weight to mothering, in the sense that fathering is ‘seen as equivalent to mothering’ (1996: 6) would grant legitimacy to men as primary caretakers in both heterosexual and same-gendered families, without potentially denigrating mother-only families. This, she argues, would also allow men to assume greater responsibility in the private world of the family and thereby remove the significant impediment that the double burden presents for heterosexual mothers. This sort of approach differs from many of the advocacy-oriented approaches to involving men, because it consciously works against overvaluing fathers and relying on arguments based on the valorisation of fatherhood and manhood.

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The condemnation of non-marital contexts as potentially detrimental to the child and the Othering of single mothers reinforce the heterosexual nuclear family as a normative standard in society and the ideal context for optimal childhood development (Almack 2006; Folgerø 2008; Macleod 2003). The rhetoric of children’s needs was mobilised in such a way as to reiterate the structural and ideological underpinnings of the traditional heterosexual nuclear family, which was presented as the most appropriate context for ensuring children’s optimal development. The findings of this chapter are summarised in Figure 6.1 below. Dangers of fatherlessness to child development

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Fathers’ unique contribution to child development

• Broken family script

• Masculine domesticity script

• Threat of fatherless families and single mothering

• Father as role model script

BOLSTERS Contemporary versions of hetero-patriarchal family (accommodates male headship to changing gender norms)

Figure 6.1 Illustration of the talk that serves to enshrine the role and rule of the father

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The dovetailing of the-fathers’-unique-contribution-to-child-development discourse and the-dangers-of-fatherlessness-to-child-development discourse bolsters contemporary versions of the hetero-patriarchal family. This discursive tactic in which fathering is valorised acts against the de-gendering of parenting advocated by progressive scripts in which parenting is depicted as equally shared (Kendall 2007). Ultimately, it justifies the two-parent heteronorm, as the presence of both a female and male parent is once more discursively construed as a crucial requirement for children’s healthy development. In upholding the two-parent norm, premised upon the law of two sexes, the canonical heterosexual couple narrative is reinforced. This discursive resource is central to the construction of procreative heterosexuality and the norm of automatic childbearing. Not only is a particular family form defended – the heterosexual nuclear family – but hierarchical gendered positions, heterosexual coupling, and the procreative imperative are disguised and, amidst the noise of talk about fathers’ influence on children, how and why men become fathers silenced. Notes

See also Smart and Neil’s (1999) critical discussion of this topic.

2

The name Maksiman is an amalgamation of ‘maksimum’ (maximum) and ‘man’. The magazine had a short run partially because of the difficulty of securing advertising and partially because the main readership was female. The editor explained that ‘women bought the magazine in order to learn how to help the men in their lives out of what they deemed to be an identity crisis’ (Viljoen 2011: 312). As Viljoen (2011) notes, this understanding of Afrikaner masculinity being in crisis would inform constructions of fatherhood in the magazine.

3

A British team game, like American football, traditionally played by men.

4

A common term, of British origin, used to refer to a woman who is employed to do domestic labour (now more formally called a ‘domestic worker’). Traditionally, this labour has usually been performed by black and coloured women, and this still tends to be the case.

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1

See Silverstein (1996) on the expansion of the fathering role for women and gay fathers.

6

A ‘sissy’ is a person regarded as effeminate or cowardly.

7

See also other work on father involvement by Eddy et al. (2013); Langa (2010); Madhavan et al. (2008); Richter et al. (2010); Townsend et al. (2005).

8

Interestingly, however, Alldred (1996: 150) points out that there was no similar concern for children, and boys especially, growing up without a ‘father figure’ during war time in the UK. She explains this lapse as a result of there being no threat to the traditional heterosexual family, given that men were away ‘doing manly things’ (p. 150) and would return to take up their previous gender roles.

9

Joseph Pleck (2007) summarises the theoretical perspectives, explaining why father involvement benefits children; see also Silverstein (1996).

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10 Afrikaans expletive similar to ‘fed up’ [pronounced: Gh-uh-t-fol, with a guttural G].

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7

Gender norms, procreative heteronormativity, resistance and possibilities

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We started the research reported on in this book wanting to investigate the discursive resources white Afrikaans-speaking men and women (re)cite when speaking about past or anticipated parenthood decisions and men’s involvement therein. In doing so, we wished to uncover gendered scripts that were drawn on these narratives, as well as how participants positioned themselves in relation to the stories that they told about male involvement in parenthood decision-making. Drawing on our theoretical and methodological understandings, we also sought to understand how troubled gender positions may arise in the talk and how these moments would be resolved.

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As indicated in Chapter 1, we were led, as we engaged in reading through and thinking about our data, to change tack in our analysis somewhat. Given the veiled silence that prevailed in our data through participants’ reframing and redirecting the conversation away from our unusual conversational move, we shifted our analytic gaze to the discursive resources our participants drew on in avoiding talking about male involvement in parenthood decision-making. This shift, we argued in Chapter 1, allowed us to make visible and analyse in-depth the operation of pervasive gendered norms that underpin gendered power relations concerning reproduction amongst this group of people (middle-class, white Afrikaans people). Throughout this book, each chapter has focused on these various norms that work together to form a grid of intelligibility in relation to heterosexual reproduction (which we discuss later in this chapter.)

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The modification that we introduced in our research aims speaks to the fluid nature of qualitative research, which is also its strength. The iterative nature of the research process requires that researchers are mindful of the complexities of social life. Important insights are gained not through slavish application of technique, but rather through careful interrogation, repeated readings and integrative analysis of the material. They require the careful infusion of theory and methodology into the analysis. It is precisely the richness of our chosen theory and methodological extensions that we feel assisted us in painting a deep analysis that speaks not only to the macrolevel of performativity, but also to the micro-level performances associated with reproductive (non)decision-making. The strength of our theoretical approach lies in providing an integrative picture of power relations, and in showing how these power relations may be entrenched and how they may be resisted and changed. It is the latter point (the slippery process of the simultaneous entrenchment and bending of norms) that we take up in this final chapter. Most of this book has been 149


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taken up with illuminating the regulatory grid of intelligibility that procreative heteronormativity represents. We have drawn out the various discursive resources, canonical narratives, scripts, subject positions and discursive tactics that knit together in a powerful intersection of gendered injunctions and norms. But in between this, we have shown how troubling may occur, how resistance is enacted. From this we may start to see how, in Butlerian terms, gender trouble may occur, how resistance and subversion may take place incrementally due to the dynamic nature of discursive resources, and the slow bending of citations.

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We start this chapter by taking a step back, once again, as we take stock and consider the meaning and implications of our work through considering our findings in relation to the backdrop against which they occur. We provide a broad overview of the bending of gendered norms within the white, Afrikaans-speaking community over a period of time (with the transition from apartheid to democracy being a key feature in the shifting of these norms). We then turn to summarising the reframing and redirection that resulted in the veiled silences, as well as the key components of the regulatory framework of procreative heteronormativity, as evidenced in this research. This is followed by a discussion of how some discursive resources may be drawn on as counter-narratives that undermine procreative heteronormativity. We single out the powerful sacralised child script for further discussion, showing how it, paradoxically, was used not only to resource procreative heteronormativity, but also to oppose it.

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Finally, we discuss the implications of our research in terms of public health interventions and the cultural framing of reproductive choices. We draw on a framework of reproductive justice to argue for deconstructive work of the powerful gendered injunctions surrounding procreative heteronormativity, for reflexivity with respect to the notions of choice and planning that are so fundamental to much reproductive health work, and for the careful opening up of a multiplicity of narratives and discourses concerning sexuality and reproduction.

White Afrikaans people and changing gender norms

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In Chapter 1, we noted how, historically, the male-headed household was viewed as the God-ordained cornerstone of Afrikanerdom (Du Pisani 2001; Steyn 2009). This rendition of the family was reflected on by some of our participants and can be seen in Tracy and Ilze’s discussion below of Afrikaans women’s and men’s roles in the family. Extract 1 Ilze: Now you see, in the Afrikaner culture, the woman stays at home bringing up the child, that’s her role. Dad goes out, work, bring in the finances and that’s his role. And you don’t discuss that, we don’t argue about it, that’s it, end of story. So, that’s the way we did it. I did all the homework, all the schoolwork, signed all the books and so, went to all the parent-teacher things, normal Afrikaner home. That’s it, no difficult decisions. 150


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G e n d e r n o r m s , p r o c r e at i v e h e t e r o n o r m at i v i t y, r e s i s ta n c e a n d p o s s i b i l i t i e s

Tracy: And no disagreements either?

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Ilze: And no disagreements. You walking that path and that’s it, no left or right. [Laughter] If you have your relationship and your things the way God wants it. [Hand gesture to indicate hierarchy]: husband, wife, child … God, husband, wife, child, there’s no problems. If you’ve got that right you don’t need a psychologist, you see [laughs]. You know, you must realise … Afrikaners don’t talk about those things. It comes from generation to generation. You go to church, you do your things the godly way and … that is it. You don’t, you don’t, there’s not a lot of arguments about these things. We do it and we get it over and done with and end of story. Tracy: OK. [Laughter] Do you think that there might be some value in discussing it?

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Ilze: It works and you don’t go wrong with a thing that works. It works and why go and argue about something if you know it works, you see? If you believe in your Bible and you read your Bible and God tells you to do it that way, who are you to argue? (F1)

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As we see from Ilze’s comments above, these power relationships were bolstered by the importance granted to the view of the father as patriarch or household head (Morrell 2006). This role was enshrined and protected within the apartheid state through the rhetoric of religion and ‘family values’, according to which the maleheaded heterosexual family was seen as the cornerstone of healthy society (Du Pisani 2001). The discourse of Afrikaner Nationalism served to enshrine this role, positioning men as patriarchs, providers and protectors and women primarily in maternal roles as ‘mothers of the nation’ (Vincent 2000; Teppo 2009). This was echoed in the paternalistic role adopted by the state and the ‘nationalist discourse that defined the white community in virile, masculine, and heroic terms’ (Conway 2008: 422).

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Contestations around gender in the changing South African socio-political landscape have resulted in conflicts and different renditions of masculine identities (Morrell 2006). Of consequence has been the broader imperative for men to assume responsibility in family life and in so doing facilitate equality for women. The increased uptake of nurturing and care work by heterosexual male parents serves to broaden understandings of manhood and fatherhood, paving the way for the legitimation of a range of men’s parenting practices (Silverstein 1996). There are, therefore, competing discourses that have emerged. Tamara Shefer and Keith Ruiters (1998), writing in the early years of democracy, noted a ‘marginal’, ‘moderate’ male voice admitting to the need for gender reform. More recently, Peacock and colleagues highlight some men’s commitment to partnering with women to end gross forms of oppression like sexual and gender-based violence (Colvin & Peacock 2009; Peacock 2007; Peacock & Levack 2004; Peacock et al. 2008). The notions of the ‘new man’ who takes up domestic responsibilities and supports gender equity and ‘new father’ who engages in sexual and reproductive health issues and nurturing his children have also been optimistically remarked upon by gender scholars (for 151


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example, Morrell 1998). Some white Afrikaans men have taken up this subjectivity of ‘new man’, which we noted in some instances among male participants, like Jakobus, Thys and Dawid. These men distanced themselves from conservative Afrikanerdom and in particular the construction of the patriarch. For example, Thys and Dawid consistently positioned themselves as rebels within the Afrikaans community, as seen in the quotes below.

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Extract 2

Extract 3

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Thys: [W]e are outsiders in the Afrikaner community to a large extent. We don’t subscribe to just about anything that they believe in, hence all the fighting with my father. So, we knew beforehand that we would raise our children without any military presence, without any racism, without any reference to ‘black’ and ‘white’. We tried to do that as much as we could. (M1)

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Dawid: You see, part of the last 16 years of my life have been exactly to remove or disentangle myself from those forms of control. Whether it was from my family or church or Afrikaner establishment was in a sense to divorce myself from exactly those forms of control. (M2)

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Here we see how Thys describes himself as an ‘outsider’ and Dawid seeks to ‘disentangle’ and ‘divorce’ himself from the control of the ‘Afrikaner establishment’. Dawid was also reluctant to form a conventional paternal relationship with future offspring, noting that he would prefer to be ‘a friend’ to a child. Many participants, especially the women, rejected traditional gender norms, as the extracts below show: Extract 4

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Lettie: I grew up in the home and I saw that just with everything in general, ‘I’m the boss and you’re just there,’ you know? And I didn’t want that in a marriage, I wanted an equal partnership (.) and with the childrearing and everything it was equal. So, I think that also, Afrikaans, you know, my generation, back then it was still very much, ‘The raising of the kids and all of that, that’s your department. My job is to go and earn a living and kids the house and everything else is your priority.’ (F1)

Participants, especially younger women, endorsed modified renditions of this role; for example, there were those who endorsed constructions of the new father who takes up their end of the domestic burden and/or childcare, as the extracts below illustrate. Extract 5 Maria: You get your Afrikaans dads that are still in the old school, old ideas of, you know, the mother cooks and looks after the kids and drives them around and he’s the breadwinner and he goes to work and when he comes back he must relax

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and everybody must do their job. I think you still get a couple of those men, but the ones that I know are very involved. Especially, if you look at younger Afrikaner boys, they know that it’s okay for a boy to bake pancakes and it’s okay for you to look after the baby when the mother needs a break and goes shopping. So I think that the ones that aren’t involved are the exception. Also, I think it’s just a matter of people must be very sure who they marry and who they are before they get married. That’s a fact. I recently heard about someone who fell pregnant and they had a little girl and now she’s about two, but they’ve got no relationship and he’s not involved at all, because to him this whole thing is now just a hassle. It’s like a mountain that he must get back to every night. (F1) Extract 6

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Dalena: I want him to be actively involved. I want us both to give 110 per cent and not just a 50/50, because you’ll have a 50/50 per cent child, you know, sort of a half nitwit [laughter] [inaudible]. Ja, I want 110 per cent from both, despite work, because obviously both of us will be working, we both have a degree, if my boyfriend is the man, I feel it is. Then although we’ve both got science degrees and going to be very busy in our lives one day, still 110 per cent of our lives must be given to them. (F2)

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Instances of contradiction and dissent, such as those cited above, represent the gradual and partial bending of gender norms (Van Lenning 2004). These ways of speaking, based on newer gender scripts, exist alongside and in competition to already existing discursive resources as an alternative resource for speakers to draw on. Yet, established ways of speaking remain powerful and the norms they underpin are often durable, as can be seen in Maria’s quote where paternal care is still deemed secondary to maternal care. Thus, despite the changes in gender norms that we have discussed, in many areas, the basic tenets of gendered power relations formed under apartheid remain intact. We noticed this in our study, especially among older participants, as the following extract shows. Extract 7

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Tracy: OK. I’m imagining though that things are quite different now. Or are they’re pretty much the same within the Afrikaans community? Ilze: They’re still the same … Exactly the same. OK. ‘Cause the way you’re brought up, that’s the way you continue. ‘Cause in your generation your mom also had to go out and work. My generation, my mom also worked, but that was not the norm. But, the younger people, mom goes out to work, but there’s always a granny or somebody in the background that lay down the Afrikaner foundations. You go to church, you do it the way mum and dad did it and it works for us and so it will work for you. Still to this day, an Afrikaner man will die, he will die before he pick up dishcloth and do dishes. Ja. Little simple things like that. They will not change a nappy, you can forget about that [lowers voice]. They are the providers, end of story … Ja, and protector, that thing goes together. Don’t ask them to

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baby-sit the children while they’re still very little. They just tell you take them with you or get somebody or take them to Granny. That’s not their role. [Laughter] Tracy: All right, there’s a part of me that thinks, “Mm, that’s a little bit unfair.” Ilze: [Laughs] No, it’s not their role. Look, you get the exception to the rule. Some dads will do that, if they’re really children people, you know, they like children, but the norm? No ways! (F1)

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The complexities around gendered norms referred to above are reflected in the simultaneous entrenchment of the grid of intelligibility of procreative heteronormativity together with the troubling of this regulatory framework that we highlighted in this book. In the following sections, we highlight how participants avoided talking about male involvement in parenthood decision-making, and the regulatory framework that these veiled silences, upon analysis, revealed.

Negotiating a troublesome topic: The role of veiled silences

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We indicated in Chapter 1 that the silence we found around the main problematic of this research (namely, white Afrikaans men’s involvement in parenthood decisionmaking) suggested that it was difficult for participants to construct a story about their transition to parenthood in terms of choice, and especially one in which men were involved in decision-making. We have argued that the silences indicate that, overall, the topic itself was troublesome. This occurred, firstly, at the interactional level and, secondly, at the broader discursive level as procreative heteronormativity and its attendant norms came under fire.

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In the light of the silence on the issue of male involvement, it was beneficial to have triangulated the data by including younger participants in the sample in the current study. Their inclusion assisted in showing that the silence was not necessarily a generational phenomenon – although there were some differences between the cohorts – but rather rooted in a strong attachment to particular sociocultural norms and a defence of the status quo. The fact that the members of Cohort Two drew on and defended the ideal of automatic childbearing indicates the power of the norms and ideals that underpin this construction. Similarly, it was useful to adopt a gendered and relational view, and to include women’s voices, as this prevented the positioning of men as disinterested or uninformed with regard to parenthood decision-making. Instead, it was possible to see the ways that women endorse and are complicit in particular constructions of heterosexual procreativity that may render them more accountable than men with regard to reproductive decision-making and 154


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ultimately do themselves a disservice. Women’s perspectives therefore enriched the account significantly and provided a broader, more nuanced view.

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The participants’ responses to trouble act as a form of repair, both at the interactional and discursive levels. For example, when participants framed their stories in relation to the love/romance script and the norm of automatic childbearing, parenthood was construed as compulsory and, consequently, the issue of each partner’s involvement in decision-making becomes redundant. The construction of parenthood as part of the heterosexual life course, circumscribed by marriage, allowed participants to rearticulate the matter at hand in such a way that men’s roles and contribution to any decisions related to parenthood were discursively shifted to the background. Participants could thus mitigate any troubled positioning that may result from the failure to meet researcher (or broader) expectations.

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We pinpointed three distinct sources of trouble, namely, (1) trouble arising from our unusual conversational move; (2) changing gender norms and the desirability of male participation; and (3) the ideological dilemma of being caught between constructions of parenthood as related to either choice or chance. In relation to the first source of trouble, the main trouble that emanated from our unusual conversational move, we have shown how the topic under question was something that many claimed not to have previously have given much thought to. The notion of veiled silences suggests that speakers may have felt obliged to say something, albeit unrelated.

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In a similar vein, there may have been the perception that men should be active in reproductive matters in light of changing gender norms around men’s involvement in reproductive matters, possibly compounded by Tracy’s positioning as a young female professional researching the topic. The position of the ‘uninvolved man’ was therefore troublesome. It acted as a potentially spoiled position for the male participants themselves, as well as for the women who were speaking about their own partners.

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The final source of trouble, the choice/chance ideological dilemma, refers to the conundrum of being caught between two contradictory conceptualisations of childbearing: (1) the scenario (inadvertently) introduced by the researchers, which frames the topic as one of choice or matter of family planning and, (2) the spontaneous, automatic scenario in which childbearing is a non-choice. The latter aligns parenthood to chance and, importantly, also holds potentially positive positions, since this scenario is supported by powerful sociocultural discourses of love, romance and ‘normal’ heterosexual adult development. It was therefore possible for participants to negotiate alternative positions. Hence, while participants did at times attempt to conform to the former scenario when it was interactionally useful to do so, as we have discussed earlier, more often than not they constructed parenthood as a non-choice. Participants sought to repair this trouble by using two main discursive tactics that served to mask or ‘veil’ their silences, either redirection and reframing. 155


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‘Acts of avoidance, denial, deflection, reframing, and intellectualizing’ (Mazzei 2003: 363) – of the kind evident in our analysis of participants’ responses to our questions about men’s participation in parenthood decision-making – serve to veil silences by creating ‘noise’ and so allows narrators to save face. We speak to these discursive tactics (reframing and redirecting) below.

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The topics that the participants chose to focus on served to redirect the interview conversation in two main ways. Firstly, the relatively passive positioning that the construction of automatic childbearing offers narrators was offset by their foregrounding of associated decision-making (that is, timing and ideal conditions) as an area in which active choice could be exercised. These decisions, however, were also pictured as largely governed by the traditional norms of the typical heterosexual life course, specifically marriage. Therefore, associated choices were highly constrained and also appeared as essentially determined by the natural progression of events marked out in the usual lifespan, thereby cohering with the overall picture of spontaneous or automatic childbearing.

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Secondly, people’s stories about parenting were not only a familiar reference point around which their stories could cohere, but were also an arena in which men’s involvement could be foregrounded. The participants commonly described a scenario in which male roles were minimal prior to conception and birth of their child and even during its infancy. The lack of male participation prior to conception (for example, in decisions around contraception, timing, and so on) was justified by citing either the redundancy of doing so (based on the idea that childbearing should be spontaneous) or certain cultural norms that prevent women and men from discussing sexual and contraceptive matters. This was reinforced by constructions of women as ‘broody’ or driven by their ‘biological clocks’ and therefore ‘naturally’ more concerned with parenthood than men.1 Both female and male partners constructed family planning, and specifically the use of contraception, as a female domain. In contrast, many older participants discussed how they or their partners had been involved in parenting their children, while younger participants recited the construction of the ‘hands-on dad’ as their ideal. In this way, trouble was ameliorated as male involvement was brought to the fore – redeeming uninvolved men somewhat – and to some extent circumventing the issue of male involvement in parenthood decision-making. In addition to redirecting, participants talked against the family planning script, reframing the topic and removing it from the realm of choice to some extent. Participants invoked a scenario of ‘automatic childbearing’ in which having children happens spontaneously with no, or very little, conscious deliberation or overt discussion. In order to achieve this reframing, the participants drew on two central and interconnected discursive resources, namely, the romance/love script and the canonical heterosexual couple narrative. Their talk was also reinforced by the sacralised child script. Drawing on these discursive resources allowed the narrators to cast passive or non-planning as positive and desirable and, in turn, to save face. They could explain or justify less active decision-making in such a way that mitigated

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the potentially troubled positions of irresponsibility, impulsivity, negligence, or recklessness in relation to procreation and negotiate alternative socially desirable positions. Sometimes active planning was even openly disparaged in relation to the more romantic or ‘natural’ pictures of automatic childbearing that they evoked. For example, family planning was pictured as scientific, calculating and emotionless.

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As discussed in Chapter 2, repair regulates the discontinuities or anomalies that disrupt gender norms (Butler 1990). Instances of interactional trouble are explained away or talked down so that narrators avoid gender trouble and perform gender acceptably, according to the general expectations of them (see Morison & Macleod 2013a).

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Veiled silences and the entrenchment of procreative heteronormativity

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Other than allowing for participants to ‘save face’ or engage in repair work, veiling silences allows the deep-seated assumptions underpinning talk to remain hidden. In the case of our research, these assumptions cohere around procreative heteronormativity. The analysis we have presented in this book draws attention to these assumptions, assumptions that gel together to form a neat grid of cultural intelligibility. The bullet points below provide, in summary form, the main features of these assumptions that build off each other, namely, that • masculinity and femininity compose polar opposites; • gender complementarity leads to a woman desiring a man and a man desiring a woman: the heterosexual matrix and ‘compulsory heterosexuality’; • the heterosexual matrix dovetails with the deployment of a romance/love script and a canonical heterosexual couple narrative that outline particular heterosexual interactive patterns and a sequence of life events; • childbearing is an inevitable end point of the heterosexual life trajectory; • in the heterosexual life course, childbearing is preceded by marriage; • children are emotionally priceless and therefore create ‘procreative heterosexual bliss’; • married heterosexuality imposes a procreative imperative which results in the Othering of those who choose to, or cannot, conform; • children are the purpose of marriage which renders timing as the only reproductive discussion, though this is also ultimately described as governed by phases in the life course; • the heterosexual man–woman dyad must be translated into the heterosexual father–mother dyad, in which each parent is assigned a unique gendered role; • the hetero-patriarchal family is maintained through enshrining the role and rule of the father; • the heterosexual matrix, heteronormativity and hetero-patriarchal families are reproduced through the construction of the patriarchal male role model and the threat of the fatherless family.

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These assumptions cohere into a regulatory framework of procreative heteronormativity in which social norms reinforce one another and in which particular gendered practices and desires are naturalised.

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Our aim in this book has been to show the performative and performed aspects of procreative heteronormativity. We have presented a range of discursive resources, scripts, canonical narratives and discursive tactics in the preceding chapters that underpin the operation of procreative heteronormativity as evidenced in the talk of our participants, white, middle-class Afrikaans people. The data presented in this book show how a range of discursive resources at play in this context dovetail into cultural injunctions that render overt decision-making about having children a nontopic. Procreative heteronormativity, at least in the context in which this research was conducted, is underpinned by a range of overlapping and mutually constitutive discursive resources and practices, namely • an automatic childbearing script that draws on and reinforces a romance/love script, a canonical heterosexual couple narrative and a sacralised child script: spontaneous childbearing is justified through an appeal to passion, romance, partnership and harmony, the assumption of heterosexual partnership as a normal and healthy part of a life trajectory, and a view of children as emotionally priceless and inherently valuable; • the related procreation imperative that glorifies parenthood and denigrates non-parents as selfish, damaged or deficient: idealised versions of biological parenthood are juxtaposed with non-reproduction in a manner that renders the latter undesirable or unfeasible; • the hetero-sexualised conjugalisation of reproduction, in which marriage is seen as the transition point in a heteronormative life trajectory and the basis from which childbearing automatically proceeds: heterosexual marriage is seen as providing the stable foundation for meeting the needs of children; and • the hetero-patriarchal family in which fathers are seen as having a unique, but gendered, contribution to children’s upbringing and the dangers of fatherlessness are emphasised: the two parent heteronorm is justified along with gendering of parenting practices.

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The interweaving grid of intelligibility surrounding procreative heteronormativity is summarised in Figure 7.1.

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Canonical heterosexual couple narrative

Sacralised child script

Heterosexual mother–father dyad meets children’s needs

Automatic childbearing

Glorification of parenthood The procreation imperative

Heteropatriarchal family

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Denigration of non-parenthood

Procreative heteronormativity

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Unique father contribution

‘Dangers’ of fatherlessness

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Heterosexualised marriage– procreation bond

Romantic love script

Marriage as stable foundation meets children’s needs

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Figure 7.1 The grid of intelligibility or regulatory normative framework: Procreative heteronormativity

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Of course, this is not to say that there was no dissent in the narratives and that these supported a set of monolithic or seamless systems of power relations. We now return to the instances of contradiction or resistance to the norm that were alluded to in the analysis. Though these comprise a relatively small part of the responses, were more the exception than the rule, and at times also not directly related to the central problematic, it is important to consider contradictions and voices of dissent because these often indicate moments of resistance in the narratives and the possibility for the subversion of norms.

Dissent and contradictions: Using the sacralised child script and the rhetoric of children’s needs Many participants who deviated from the norm harnessed the powerful sacralised child script and the rhetoric of children’s needs. It is evident from our analysis that talk of children’s welfare or needs is not transparent or apolitical talk. Rather it is political and theory-laden talk that obscures the socio-political preoccupations underwriting its production through its claims to describe something inherent within a child’s so-called nature. It is powerful talk which carries tremendous authority that compels others to act (Lawler 1999). The power of this script, as we explain, is that it can be mobilised towards a number of, sometimes contradictory, 159


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discursive purposes: explanatory, justificatory, regulatory, and, as we now consider, also as a means of resistance.

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Thus far, our analysis has shown how the sacralised child comprised an overarching discursive resource and a powerful and persuasive discursive tool to defend the norm. We have demonstrated how this script was implicated in the reiteration of the structural and ideological underpinnings of the traditional heterosexual nuclear family, so that it ultimately contributes to the reinforcement of hetero-patriarchal norms. This project of normalisation is, in essence, a hetero-patriarchal project, which proceeds through the specific construction of sacralised childhood, and ultimately reinforces and reiterates the heterosexual nuclear family and the power of the father role within it. Nevertheless, it occurs amidst a range of other conflicting and contradictory discursive resources that provide opportunities for subjects to oppose, reject and transform, as well as to support this project at particular times and for particular purposes.

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Dominant discourses, such as the sacralised child script, are never totalising, but instead ‘give rise to the eruption of difference and the subversion of meaning’ (Gillespie 2000: 231). It is the changeability and instability of discourses that allow for resistance and for identical formulae to be used for contrary purposes (Lawler 1999). The rhetoric of children’s needs could therefore be used for the purposes of resistance (for example, to justify the deviation from the usual heterosexual life course for those who refrain from having children or do so outside of marriage). This allows for the possibility of resistance, to contest Otherness (as discussed in Chapter 5) and to resist, and possibly subvert, hetero-patriarchal norms.

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Speakers who used the sacralised child script capitalised on the strength and social desirability of this resource and exploited its weaknesses or ambiguities to their advantage, warding off trouble. Like all speakers who mobilised the sacralised child script, they had to operate within its constraints. This script allows speakers to negotiate positive, socially desirable positions, as selfless, noble, productive members of society. It also allows for the negative positioning of dissidents who flout the norm (by not having children, for instance; see Chapter 8). At the same time, accounts are constrained by the central premise of this script, namely, that children’s needs and wellbeing are paramount. As a result, narrators had to guard against speaking in such a way that would allow them to be seen as acting against children’s best interests or putting their own needs first. This is seen in repair work, that is, the frequent qualifications made by narrators with regard to their preferences and intentions in instances when these could be interpreted as being placed above the child’s needs or as selfish. Yet, this central premise also offers a way to resist norms, precisely because ideas about children’s ‘best interests’ and ‘needs’ are not objective, despite being presented as rooted in evidence about children’s nature (Lawler 1999). The appearance of speakers’ neutrality – and more importantly of their benevolence – makes this talk powerful, and the subjective character of what exactly children need means it is also changeable. This makes the sacralised child script a particularly useful discursive resource for defending a range of positions or norms, 160


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which was capitalised on by those who used this ‘identical formula [for] contrary objectives’ (Foucault 1990, cited in Lawler 1999: 81) than what we have emphasised thus far (that is, to defend procreative heteronormativity). Such talk was evident in three main discursive tactics: (1) the inversion of the attribution of selfishness by the childfree; (2) young women’s repair of troubled positioning by redefining children’s needs as a way of pursuing their own (non-domestic) interests; and (3) the rejection of traditional gender roles (namely, intensive mother/breadwinning father) by arguing that children need both parents to ensure optimal development.

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The first resistant discursive tactic involved younger participants who did not want to have children countering attributions of selfishness by repositioning themselves as altruistic and positioning certain people with children as selfish instead. Participants reconfigured their potentially socially unacceptable choice by stating that they were making a sacrifice by not having children. (We alluded to this tactic very briefly in Chapter 4, when discussing reactions to anti-natalist sentiments). Their argument was that it is selfish to have children if the optimal conditions to meet children’s needs cannot be insured. Non-ideal conditions comprised of unsuitable or unsafe locations (in South Africa and generally), environmental concerns, and inability to be an intensive parent (usually owing to competing career demands) or to provide the ideal childhood. In this way, narrators could avoid being positioned as selfish. In addition, they could also position parents or people who want children as selfish instead. The reverse attribution of selfishness rested on the arguments that people (1) fail to reflect on whether they should have children or not, especially in terms of their ability to meet their prospective offspring’s needs, and (2) have children for the ‘wrong’ reasons, often to meet their own needs.

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What is at issue then is precisely what it is that children need, and those who used the tactic above presented extreme case formulations in which children’s needs were essentially unfulfillable due to unobtainable ideals (an ideal childhood, ever-present, intensive parents) or prevailing adverse conditions (crime, ecological conditions). The next tactic also revolves around determinations of what it is that children need. In this instance, the speakers attempt to reconstruct to some extent what good parenting/mothering entails.

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This second resistant tactic was drawn on to justify the delaying parenthood, which also amounts to a deviation from the norm. It was evident mostly in the narratives of young women who wished to postpone childbearing in order to pursue activities not associated with traditional renditions of femininity and the demands of motherhood and domesticity, such as pursuing higher education, a career or travel. This is a particular dilemma for young women in contemporary society who are often caught between the contradictory mandates of ideal femininity (traditionally premised upon selflessness and domesticity) and self-development (Williams 1991). By redefining what children need, female participants were able to represent their own needs or interests as congruent with those of the needs of the child. This tactic allows these women to use the very same formulation that potentially positions them in a restrictive manner to resist some of the demands of femininity, without 161


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creating gender trouble (Lawler 1999). Such reformulations of children’s needs, as evidenced above, allow younger women to partially ‘bend’ the gender norm of intensive mothering.2

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The final tactic also challenged traditional parental roles on the basis of gender, as narrators described a scenario of co-parenting based on fairness and gender equity. This tactic also occurred predominantly in the accounts of younger women, but also in those of younger male participants and some of the older participants. It is likely no coincidence that these tactics of resistance featured more strongly in the narratives of Cohort Two, since the tendency for younger participants to deviate from the norm might reflect shifts in gender norms and, concomitantly, ideas about men’s and women’s relationship to reproduction and parenting. Drawn on in conjunction with the egalitarian gender script, participants constructed the input of both parents as crucial to optimal caregiving. The sacralised child script therefore operated as a counter-narrative to traditional gender scripts and was prominent in justifying parental role-sharing. It resourced talk that advocates the importance of both mothering and fathering for appropriate child development.

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It is possible to see, therefore, that there are spaces for dissent in the formidable regulatory framework that encloses procreative heteronormativity. In particular, the sacralised child script can work both in the normalisation of hetero-patriarchal arrangements (like the nuclear family) and heterosexual procreation and in undermining these, to some extent. There are, however, inevitably limitations to the destabilisation offered by any particular resource, including this script. This is because resistance must always be articulated from within the existing discourses which unavoidably bear the vestiges of heteronormativity and may thus simultaneously resist and reinforce the heterosexual matrix, regardless of the speaker’s intention (Butler 1990). In the case of the sacralised child script, the central premise which is rooted in a construction of children as intrinsically valuable may be taken advantage of for more progressive discursive purposes, as shown here, but at the same time restricts its subversive potential. A potential drawback of utilising this particular tactic is that the needs of the child may take precedence over those of the parents, especially the mother, and, in turn, take priority over fairness and justice in relation to childrearing. As Andenæs points out, ideas about good parenting are often [i]nspired by the kind of developmental psychology that has constructed children as abstract individuals with universal needs, [so that] it is possible to turn one’s gaze away from the actual conditions of those responsible for the children. It then becomes of minor interest who these people are, whether they are men or women, and what their life circumstances are. (2005: 214)

So, as far as the project of de-gendering or queering parenting is concerned then, this script may be limited as long as the focus is on what is best for children and not on gender equity. This is reflected in the argument that children need ‘both parents’

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which challenges the gender hierarchy and blurs the gender binary to some degree, but nevertheless retains its binary demarcation (Nentwich 2008: 224). So, although mothers and fathers may perform the same tasks, men and women are still believed to be different entities and the unquestioned analogy of mothers with women and fathers with men remains. The discursive work done by participants may either reify or trouble the norm and it is therefore ‘important not only to engage in alternative practices, but also to discursively subvert the heterosexual norm when accounting for or justifying a specific form of parenthood’ (Nentwich 2008: 211) – as we intimated earlier in the book.

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Implications

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Nonetheless, these instances of dissent may allow for shifts in gender discourses or scripts to occur over time and allow different subjectivities to operate. Understood from a Butlerian perspective, gender trouble involves ‘slowly bending citations’ (Van Lenning 2004: 30). Resistance and subversion occur incrementally due to the dynamic nature of discursive resources. So, even while discursive resources may contain the residues of heteronormativity, variations or improvisations of existing gender scripts allow for gradual and partial bending of gender norms that produce various – often competing and conflicting – ways of understanding gender roles (Gillespie 2000; Van Lenning 2004). So, despite the durability of the construction of parenthood as a natural, pre-given phase in the life cycle of heterosexuals, as shown in this study, there is room for manoeuvre and possibilities for change in the gender power relations effected by this construction.

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In closing, we turn to the issue of the further implications of this research. What meaning can it have beyond the academic exercise of in-depth qualitative research? On one level, the answer is self-evident in the mere writing of such a book. If gendered norms are deconstructed, if the manner in which the various discursive resources that underpin a particular normative framework are laid bare, if how various discursive tactics serve to reinforce the normative grid of intelligibility is exposed, if the troubling/resistances to these norms are highlighted, then this work, in and of itself, contributes to the cultural reframing of these very norms. We believe, however, that there are implications beyond the simple writing of such a book (and the assumption that some people will read it). In order to outline these, we return to a key document in relation to reproductive health referred to in the introductory chapter, namely, the Department of Health’s (2012b) National Contraception and Fertility Planning Policy and Service Delivery Guidelines. These guidelines, drawing from the reproductive health rights framework, emphasise choice and responsibility: Enabling women to make choices about their fertility is empowering and offers women better economic and social opportunities. Birth spacing also improves the opportunities for children to thrive physically and emotionally. Engaging men in sexual and reproductive health 163


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encourages shared responsibility in their roles as partners and parents. (Department of Health 2012b: 2, our emphasis)

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The question of the extent to which women are in fact able to exercise these choices and the reasonableness of the assumption of individual responsibility has been taken up by reproductive justice advocates. The reproductive justice framework represents a shift away from concentrating on women’s control over their own bodies (their ‘choice’ and ‘rights’) to a broader analysis of racial, economic, cultural and structural constraints on women’s reproductive (non-)decisions and capacities. The emphasis, in this framework, is on how choices and rights are exercised in contexts of great inequality. The multiple ways in which women face discrimination and abuse in relation to reproduction are highlighted (West 2009).

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The obvious focus of the reproductive justice approach is on women in disadvantaged circumstances, with the forced sterilisation, high maternal mortality rates and rates of unsafe abortion, barriers to accessing services amongst women in living in poverty being highlighted. The provision of safe, affordable and accessible health services that recognise social injustices and that serve to undo reproductive inequities are strongly advocated. ‘The clinical lens of reproductive justice’, it is argued, ‘gives health professionals a critical opportunity to connect family planning and other aspects of sexual and reproductive health with disparities and complexities that impact our patients’ lives’ (Gilliam et al. 2009: 243).

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What our research shows, however, is that even among those without many structural constraints, and with all the advantages accrued through whiteliness and middle-class status, the question of reproductive ‘choice’ or reproductive ‘responsibility’ remains moot. As we have shown in this book, our participants, who are middle-class and occupy a position of relative cultural and economic advantage, were simply unable and unwilling to story their reproductive ‘decisions’ in this way.

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Our research thus draws attention to the limitations of both a reproductive rights approach and to a reproductive justice approach based primarily on structural inequalities. In terms of the first of these, we have illustrated throughout this book how participants spoke against choice and family planning in ways that renders meaningless the statement cited above (‘Enabling women to make choices about their fertility is empowering’ (Department of Health 2012b: 2)). Participants drew, instead, on a grid of cultural intelligibility that spoke to social and personal relations that are much more complex than the assumption of ‘choice’, ‘rights’, or ‘responsibility’. Secondly, in terms of reproductive justice, paying attention to the structural constraints that underpin many reproductive health inequities is, we argue, simply inadequate to create the kinds of conditions envisaged in the social justice programme underlying the notion of reproductive justice. In addition to attending to these structural features (which clearly are important), attention needs to be paid to the multiple ways in which normative frameworks cohering around gender, heterosexuality, pronatalism, coupledom, and the denigration of non-conforming identities (childfree people, 164


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fatherless or same-gendered families) perpetuate particular gendered power relations. Our research has highlighted how programmes of action premised on reproductive justice need to come to grips with the manner in which the narratives and discursive resources underpinning procreative heteronormativity set up restricted possibilities for people, value and endorse only particular reproductive subjectivities, perpetuate inequitable gendered relations around reproduction and parenting, close down possibilities for sexual and reproductive diversity, and vilify those who do not conform to the norm.

Notes

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Given the broadly gendered relational approach that we followed in this book, the question of reproductive justice that is relational nature also needs attention. At the moment, much of the literature on reproductive justice centres on women. While there are clear historical reasons for this, the limitations of such a focus have been illuminated within the reproductive health rights approach (as discussed in Chapter 3). We argue that it is important to recognise men as reproductive beings who are invested in particular understandings of sexualities, reproduction and parenting, who form an integral part of the gendered matrix that coheres around reproduction, and whose lives are enacted within the spaces, gaps and silences enabled by the grid of intelligibility of procreative heteronormativity. The praxis of reproductive justice (be it through policy or practice work) requires the deconstruction of the gendered relational discursive frameworks and material realities that promote inequitable gendered arrangements around reproduction, while at the same time enabling the construction of alternative stories that start to unpick health and social inequities for both men and women.

See Chadwick (2006) for a discussion of these kinds of constructions.

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See Morison and Macleod (2013b) for a more detailed exposition of this discursive tactic and its effects.

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Appendix 1: Interview guides

A. Cohort 1 (Parents) Main questions:

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MEN: I’m interested in your story about becoming a parent, especially about how you and your partner were each involved in the process and any decisions that it involved. Could you please tell me your story about becoming a parent? [Vertel my asseblief jou storie omtrent ouers word. Ek wil ook graag hoor hoe jy en jou eggenoot elkeen betrokke was by dié besluite?]

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WOMEN: I’m interested in your story about becoming a parent, especially about how you and your partner were each involved in the process and any decisions that it involved. Could you please tell me your story about becoming a parent and the role that your partner played/ how your partner was involved in the process? [Vertel my asseblief jou storie omtrent ouers word. Ek wil ook graag hoor hoe jy en jou eggenoot elkeen betrokke was by dié besluite?]

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Possible follow-up questions/probes: • Could you tell me about any discussions about having children that you might have had prior to becoming a parent? What sorts of things did you talk about? • Could you tell me about any disagreements that you might have had? What sorts of things were these about? How did you resolve them? • Could you tell me if either of you have more say in the discussions? Who/ why? • Did you discuss parenting, that is,, how you’d each be involved in parenting your child? What are some of the things you spoke about? • Could you tell me about why you (and partner) wanted to be a parent/to have a child? • Please tell me a bit more about the timing of your 1st child. Subsequent births? • How did reality compare with your plans? • How do you think you might change things if could do it over? • Could you tell me about any thoughts or discussions of possibly not having children? • How do you think your life might have been if you didn’t have children? • Could you tell me about anything that might have changed your mind about becoming a parent? 167


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B. Cohort 2 ‘Non-parents’ Main question: I’d like to hear about your future plans concerning parenthood. You may start wherever you like, take the time you need. I’ll listen first, I won’t interrupt. I’ll just take some notes in case I have any further questions for after you’ve finished telling me about it.

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Possible follow-up questions/probes: • Could you tell me a bit more about why you do/don’t want to become a father/mother? • How do you think others would respond to your decision? Is this an important factor to you? (Childfree) • Are there any other motivations for your choice? • How you think your life/one’s life should be (ideally) when you decide to have your first child? • And in terms of timing? • How would you image your life if did/did not have a child? (positive and negative) • How might/does this affect your thinking about having children? • Let’s talk about your partner, is this something you should/would discuss with her/him? • How/when/where do you imagine the subject would be raised? By whom? • What if you disagree? (See vignettes below)

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Stimulus material (a) Letters from men’s magazine Used as stimulus material, and followed up by these questions: • What do you think about the reader’s question? • What would your response be (1) as the advice-giver AND/OR (2) as the man’s partner?

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Letter 1:1

I’ve decided not to have children, ever. When would be the best time to mention this to a woman I’ve just started dating? Charles, Raleigh, NC Girl Next Door answers: Before the first time you have sex. It’s at this point that she may see a future involving you and several little yous. When you tell her, she may try to convince herself that she can handle never becoming a mom (even if she’s always wanted kids) -- or, worse, that she’ll be able to

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Source: http://www.menshealth.com/cda/advicedetail.do?site=MensHealth&channel=sex.rel ationships&conitem=5026851ef6e4b010VgnVCM100000cfe793cd____&expertId=52e3b0a3 38243010VgnVCM100000cfe793cd____#

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Appendices

change your mind over time. Both are equally bad news. Emphasize that your no-kids policy isn’t up for debate. Ever consider a vasectomy? When the inevitable subject of birth control popped up, that would surely make your point. Letter 2:2 I’ve changed my mind about kids. How do I tell my wife I don’t want any? Thomas, Dayton, OH

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Jimmy the Bartender answers: Guy comes in here and orders a nice dark beer. Then, mid-pour, he changes his mind to half a shade lighter. Even though I’m thinking he’s crazy, I dump out the good stuff, grab a new glass, and give the man his ladylike light beer. But your turnabout, Tommy boy, isn’t the same as swapping the burger for the pastrami. You’re telling your wife that one of the fundamental connections you two had before you were married no longer exists. I’m not saying you should change the way you feel, but you’d better not hem and haw, hoping she’ll change her mind if you wait long enough. Tell her straight. Tell her now. This is so big she’ll likely call it quits. If a woman wants kids, well, bud, she has every right to have them. With someone who wants to be a dad. (b) Article from men’s magazine: Used as stimulus material, and followed up by the question: What are your thoughts on this extract?

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Stry julle oor babas kry? [Are you fighting about having babies?] Manwees3; 4 Februarie 2007 (Deur Ilse Salzwedel)

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Jy sien dit al: jou eie mini-me saam met wie jy kan rugby speel op die grasperk, of wat jy kan saamsleep viswaters toe. Net een probleem: jou vrou wil glad nie kinders hê nie, iets wat jy eers besef het toe die knoop al deurgehaak en stewig geknoop was. [Translation: You see it all: your own mini-me with whom you can play rugby on the lawn, or drag with you to the fishing hole. Just one problem: your wife does not want children at all, something you only realised when the knot was already looped and tightly tied.]

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Source: http://www.menshealth.com/cda/advicedetail.do?site=MensHealth&channel=guy. wisdom&conitem=3bd1f931d7cb9110VgnVCM20000012281eac____&expertId=b15999edb bbd201099edbbbd2010cfe793cd____# Afrikaans men’s magazine (translates as ‘Being a man’) 169


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Appendix 2: Demographic details Cohort 1 (Reproductive status: Have children) Age*

Relationship

Occupation

Highest education

42

Married

Farmer and human resources consultant

Tertiary

Annelie

49

Widowed

Legal administrator

Secondary

Elias

43

Married

Police officer

Esmé

53

Remarried

Educator/teacher

Gerhardt

46

Married

IT technician

Koos

48

Married

Self-employed

Tertiary

Lettie

53

Married

Homemaker

Tertiary

Maria

39

Married

Administrator and trainer

Tertiary

Stefanus

59

Divorced

Retired minister

Secondary

Susan

39

Married

Senior clerk

Secondary

Thys

41

Married

Teacher

Tertiary

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Secondary Tertiary

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Tertiary

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*Average age: 46.5 years (men); 49.1 years (women); 46.7(all) Age range: 41–59 years (men); 39–53 years (women); 39–59 (all)

Cohort 2

(Reproductive status: Do not have children) Age**

Relationship

Occupation

Highest education

Anel

21

Dating

Postgraduate student

Tertiary

Dalena

22

Dating

Undergraduate student

Tertiary

Dawid

32

Single

Lecturer

Tertiary

Elize

22

Dating

Office administrator

Secondary

Franco

32

Single

Clinical psychologist

Tertiary

Jakobus

21

Single

Undergraduate student

Tertiary

Johann

29

Engaged

Salesperson

Secondary

Mariska

25

Dating


Tertiary

Petro

32

Single

Child psychologist

Tertiary

Riaan

25

Single


Tertiary

Wouter

28

Dating

Medical doctor

Tertiary

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Pseudonym

**Average ages 24 years (men) and 24.4 years (women) Age range 21–23 years

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Appendices

Appendix 3: Transcription conventions

Meaning

end of line =

Shows that the next person started talking over the first speaker/or interjected a comment

(.)

in middle of speaking indicates a speaker’s brief space between spoken words

[pause]

Indicates a space longer than the brief space of a (.)

[laughs]

a short burst of laughter from the speaker

[laughter]

general laughter

(Word?)

Indicates that the word or phrase in parentheses sounds like what was heard, but not certain

…

In the middle and at end of a line means the person trailed off

[ ]

Indicate editing – clarification (what the speaker probably meant) or translation from Afrikaans to English

[…]

Part of conversation omitted from transcript

((text))

Additional comments from transcriber, e.g., context or intonation.

CAPITALS

Capitals mark speech that is obviously louder than surrounding speech (contrastive emphasis)

Jo: …end line [ Sam: ] begin line…

Indicates overlapping speech

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Symbol

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About the authors

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Tracy Morison (PhD) works as a researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council. She is a research associate of the Rhodes University Psychology Department and Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme. Her current work addresses issues of ‘choice’ and decision-making in relation to parenthood, as well as other issues related to gender, sexualities, reproduction and reproductive justice. She is also interested in qualitative methodology, particularly discursive and narrative methods, and feminist theories.

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Catriona Macleod (PhD) is Professor of Psychology and SARChI chair of the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme at Rhodes University. Her major scholastic contributions have been in two main areas: sexual and reproductive health and feminist theory in Psychology. She has written extensively in national and international journals in relation to teenage pregnancy, abortion, sex education, feminist psychology and postcolonialism. She is sole author of the multiaward winning book ‘Adolescence’, pregnancy and abortion: Constructing a threat of degeneration (published by Routledge). She is editor-in-chief of the journal Feminism & Psychology.

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Index

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A abortion 51 legalising 52 unsafe 164 absent fathers 119–120, 137 and anxiety about providing 133 blaming mothers for 135, 141 and crisis in masculinity 146 dangers of 133–135, 146–47 effect of on mothering 134 vs other socio-political variables 134 absent mothers, inconceivable nature of 137 abuse as reason for childfreedom 92–94 adoption 83–84 affording children 51 Afrikaner culture see culture altruism see sacrifice anomalies, assimilation of 32 apartheid 39, 50, 51–52, 101 gendered nature of 10 and religion 151 authority, male see male authority automatic childbearing 22, 54, 62 73, 75, 159 and autonomy deficit 60 and heterosexual life course 156 and passion 158 reframing as responsible decisionmaking 105

C canonical heterosexual couple narrative 50, 62, 67–70, 73, 159 see also sequence of life events fairy tale format of 68–69 and fathering 119 and marriage 100 proper sequence of 69 rightness of 35–36 and spontaneous childbearing 158 and two-parent norm 148 child-headed households 101 childbirth, death in 164 childfreedom/childfree people 81 curing 94 as deficient Other, sad 86–91 as deviant 85–86 disbelieving 92, 93–94 as empty 95 immaturity of childfree people 89 as sad, mad or bad 75, 84, 85–97 as troublemakers 69 reframing of stories of 87–90 tactics to convert 89–91 childhood, sentimentalisation and sacralisation of 120 childlessness see also infertility denigration of 75, 82, 97 horror of 81 as normal if temporary 61 pity 87 stigma of 82 unfeminine nature of 95 voluntary see childfreedom voluntary vs involuntary 81–83, 84 children age- and gender-appropriate wish to have 89–90 appropriate gendering of 139 as blessed encumbrance 71 conflict about having 168–169 costs vs rewards 78–79 as fulfilment 77 as gendered companions 111 as God-given blessing 79

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1820 Settlers 96, 97

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B Baba: Men and Fatherhood in SA 6 best for the child see needs biological clocks 156 biological imperative 80, 81, 91 biological ties 78 blame 135, 137, 141 Botha, MC 51–52 boys, feminising of through lack of male role models 138–139, 140 boys to men, father role models 128–131 broken homes/families 136–137 Butler, Judith 1, 28, 30, 32, 33, 35, 98

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determinism vs voluntarism 36 development, universal stages of 67–68 developmental milestone of having children 88–89 disagreement about having children 168–169 discipline 144–145 discourse analysis see narrative-discursive analysis discursive resources 8–9, 24, 34–35, 67 discursive tactics 36–37 divorce 107, 135–136, 142 dominance, passive 5 dual-income heterosexual families 101 E egalitarian gender script 114, 162 emotion 49 employment equity 10 environment and population 52

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as inevitable 61–62 as purpose of marriage 101 choice 19, 49, 53, expanding the notion of 55 extent to which women can exercise 164 on Termination of Pregnancy Act 52 rational 50 restructuring story in the language of 73 vs chance 155 Christian ideology 10 civic duty 51–52, 80 colonial legacy on fatherhood 145 competitiveness, male 126 complicit silences 40, 43 conception other than usual 3 conflict stories 168–169 conjugalisation of reproduction 116, 158 consensus implied see implied consensus consistency and subjectivity 37 constructions of masculinity see masculinity contemporary gender script 114–116, 117–118 contraception 52, 103 discontinuing as tacit planning 56–57, 64 failure 59 and family planning 163 responsibility for 1 as women’s responsibility 57, 156 corrective rape 11 cross-gender parent-child interaction 113, 139 cultural intelligibility see grid culture/s Afrikaans vs English-speaking 41 vs race 41 conservatism of Afrikaans 11, 152 respecting other 12

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F fairy tales 132 families 101 alternative 102 hetero-patriarchal 157, 158 nuclear see nuclear families family planning 52, 163 racial nature of in SA 72 rights-based 52, 72 family planning script 49, 50–52, 73 constraints of 53 institutional authority of 55 vs love/romance 66–67 vs passive decision-making 62 vs sacralised child 71–72 father-child hierarchy 151 father-daughter ‘dates’ 113 father–mother dyad see parenting dyad fatherhood 6 biological vs social 134–135 broadening understanding of 151 Christian construct of 145 instructional role of 124 as a life transition 7 meaning of 7 Project, The 6, 133 valorisation of 141–143

D damage from previous generation’s parenting 115–116 data context 28–29 daughters see girls deadbeat dads 137 decision-making 8 avoiding discussing 149 egalitarian vs consensus 5 male participation in 117, 149, 156 passive see passive decision-making passive vs active 57, 64–65

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roles 108–109 roles and religion 143, 145 and sexuality 28, 29, 30–31 stereotypes 111–113 straddling the divide 127 tasks 111–113 traditional see traditional gender script trouble 28, 38, 127, 163 trouble see also trouble 33 trouble vs interactional trouble 157 generational differences 11–12 girls and daddy issue 139–140 girls and male role models 131–133, 139, 140–141 grid of cultural intelligibility 23, 159, 163

H Health, Department of 163 hetero-patriarchy 157, 158 and sacralised child 162 subverting 160 heteronormativity 22 and discursive resource 67 father’s role in preparing daughters for 132 questioning 11 heterosexual matrix 23, 28 nuclear family see nuclear families trajectory 69 heterosexuality naturalisation of 29 hierarchy father-child 143 gendered 142, 151, 153 religion and family 151 HIV and Aids 101 homosexuality rejection of 29–30 Human Sciences Research Council 133

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fathers absent see absent fathers balancing changing gender norms and patriarchy 120, 143, 144–146 financial support of children by 6–7 hands on 19, 156 as head of households 10, 120, 142–143, 151–154 as helpers 42 idealised 115 legal duty of care 136 as male role models 118, 123, 124, 128–133 playing secondary role in parenting 115–116 presence vs quality 141 providing security and stability 123, 124 relationship with daughters 132 relationship with sons 110–112, 128, 130, 139 as role models for girls 131-138, 139, 140–141 social see social fathering substandard, alcoholic 129–130 valorising role of 147 white South African 120–122 female-headed households 102 femininity 108 fertility treatment 3, 83

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G gender binary 23 biologically based differences 110 and clothing 31 confusion 131 defensive strategies 40, 45, 46–47 doing 31, 32 dualistic construction of 131 equity 12–13, 52 family roles 100–101, 120 hierarchy 142, 151, 153 maintaining illusion of 36–37 moral dimension of 131 norms, shifting 32, 121–122, 143, 144–145 and parenting 108–109 power dynamics 5, 153,164–165 rejecting traditional norms 151–153 reworking 34 role modelling 123, 124–125, 128–133

I ideal deviating from 59 identity and the Other 28 illegitimacy 102 implied consensus 54, 66, 70 infertility 84, 92 male vs female 82 insider/outsider status 41, 44 International Conference on Population and Development 52

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men as reproductive beings 165 Men in Maternity 13 moral judgements of unwed parents 102–103, 107 motherhood and adult femininity 86–87 and caring 95 glorification of 76 as patriotic duty 52 mothers assumed continued presence of 137 good or normal 138 unmarried see single mothers and unwed parents

J Judao-Christian influence 103 justice 164–165

N name carrying on the 87, 88 narrative positioning 36 narrative rightness 35–36 narrative-discursive method 8–9, 28, 34–35 iterative aspects of 38 National Contraception and Fertility Planning Policy and Service Delivery Guidelines 52, 163 nationalism 23 and heterosexual nuclear family 51 needs 102 children’s vs parent’s 161–162 and contemporary gender script 114 and justification tactics 116 rhetoric to support deviation from norm 159–163 statement 114, 117 talk 107, 116 and unique gendered parenting 110–111 negotiating parenthood vs automatic childbearing 72 neoliberal choice 53 new man 151 next generation, creating 96–97 noise 24 and veiled silences 21, 156 non-parenthood see childfreedom denigration of 159 normality 24 grid of cultural intelligibility 23, 159, 163 norms 8 questioning see questioning norms

.a c

L legacy, children as 88, 97 lesbian parents and fatherlessness 135 denigrating of 141 life transitions 7 listening kinds of 20–21 loneliness fear of as a reason to have children 91 love see romance and love cultural attitudes towards 63 unconditional 77

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K

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M maintenance see fathers Maksiman 122, 124, 133 male authority 142, 144–145 threats to 146 male–female dyad 102, 108–109 management of trouble talk 80 marginalised people 9 see also Other marital status and childlessness 87 marriage customs disrupted by apartheid 101 effects on children of an unhappy 136 legal benefits of 101 as a prerequisite to procreation 100, 104 providing security for children 101, 105–108, 116 as a transition point 100 marriage-procreation bond 100, 102–103, 159 see also conjugalisation of reproduction masculinity 6, 13–14, 108 Afrikaner 10 of boy children 140 broadening understanding of 151 fatherhood central to 7 and masculine domesticity 125–128 stereotypical 126 maternal mortality 164 maternity leave 41–42 Mazzei, Liza 3, 20

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O Othering 28, 32, 41, 157 of childfree 84 of single mothers 141 tactics 85–97

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P parent-child bond vs marital/sex bond 78 parental leave 41–42 parenthood 8 see also fatherhood and motherhood appropriate timing of 69–70 choosing for the ‘wrong’ reasons 161–162 as civic duty 51–52, 80 choice and autonomy 23 choice implied by marriage 70, 105 conflict about between partners 168–169 decision-making see decision-making downplaying negatives of 75, 78 first-time 14 as a given, non-choice 17–18, 22 glorification of 25, 71, 75, 97, 159 inevitable and God-given 70, 104 justifying delaying 161 mandatory 75, 80, 98, 155 motivation for 60–61 as a natural progression/stage 60, 61, 67–68 negotiated see negotiating parenthood as part of progressive intimacy 65–66 planned see planned parenthood stigmatisation of non-biological 108 timing as only choice 100, 103–105 who is fit for 104,139 parenting de-gendering of 114, 148, 162–163 dyad 25, 108–109, 116, 117, 146, 157, 159 gendered 108–109, 118 good 117–118 romanticised 76, 77 shared 111, 122 partnership/s 13 talk 57, 63–64, 143

passive decision-making 20, 72, 104 and passion 58 as a positive 66 based on tacit understanding 64 vs family planning script 62 vs irresponsibility 67, 157 pathways to parenthood 8, 14, 18–19, 20, 26 passive see passive decision-making for white South Africans 50 patriarchy 150–151 see also nuclear family and contemporary Afrikaners 152–153 and modern fathers 143 and negotiated sex 4–5 Peacock, Dean 13 performative theory 28 performativity 31, 32, 38 vs performance 33–34 voluntarism vs determinism 36 planned parenthood as mechanical and unromantic 66–67 population growth/policy 22–23 racial control of 51 poverty 6, 164 pregnancy teenage 102 unplanned see unplanned pregnancy as utopia 76 procreation as fulfilment of heterosexual coupledom 23, 30 imperative 75–76, 97–98, 158, 159 within marriage 102 procreative heteronormativity 19, 24, 29–30, 74, 98, 154 entrenchment through veiled silences 157–159 pronatalism 22, 30, 71 and apartheid 50, 51–52 coercive 51–52 and contributing to changing the world 96–97 gendered 83 tactics 75 psychologically damaged other, mad 92–94

.z a

nuclear families 101, 146 and patriarchy 142 and romance and love script 67, 106 as security 136 threats to 118

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R race/racism 3, 51, 72, 152 and pronatalism 50, 51–52 rationality vs romance 49–50 regret 90–91 religion 23, 103, 143 religion and apartheid 151 repair 37–38 reproduction as women’s issue 5 biological vs socio-political 12 reproductive health paradigm 52, 72, reproductive justice 164–165 research 149–150 focus 3 methods v–vi, 2 participants 14–16 power dynamics 39–40, 44–45 questions 167–168 respecting subjects’ world views 43 subjects 42, 54 vs consciousness raising 43 researcher collusion 42–43 gender subjectivity 143 professional status of 45, 46 reflexivity 21, 29 responsibility and fatherhood 123 right-wing men’s movements 146 rightness vs wrongness 35–36 rights-based family planning 52, 72 romance and love script 50, 62, 73, 158–159 and automatic childbearing 155 legitimising automatic childbearing 63–67 and nuclear families 106 and passion and spontaneity 58, 63, 73 and rational calculations 62 vs family planning 66–67 rugby analogy 123, 143

S sacralised child 25 and contemporary gender script 114 and needs statement 117 sacralised child script 50, 62, 73, 97, 159 and voluntary childfreedom 95 subversion of to support deviation from norm 159–163 vs family planning 71–72 sacrifice of parenthood 25, 71 saving face 36–37, 38 and passive decision-making 58 scripts 35 selfish other, bad 94–97 selfishness of childfree 75, 94, 96–97 sequence of life events 101–102, 104 sex coercive 5 moral injunctions against extramarital 103 taboos against talking about 58 sexism 143 of research participants 42 silence/s 2 continuum of 20 of similarity 40–42 veiled see veiled silences single mothers 137–138, 141 social fathering 130, 133 South Africa, post-1994 10 spontaneity 49, 58 and romance/love script 63, 73 stereotypical gendered tasks 111–113 sterilisation forced 164 story see pathways to parenthood subjectivity 37, 40 subversiveness 38, 159–163 survival of human race 80–81 system, children tying parents into 80

.z a

Q qualitative research 149 questioning natural behaviour 68 norms 16, 21

T taboos about sex talk 58 Taylor, Stephanie 28, 33 traditional gender script 109–113, 116 trouble and repair 111–113 trouble 32, 37, 73, 80 gendered see gender trouble interactive 38 sources of 155 truthfulness of research participants 54

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U unconditional love 77 unfeminine nature of childlessness 95 unique parenting roles 109–116, 117, 122 gendered 157 male 119–120, 122, 123–125, 127, 147, 159 unplanned pregnancies 102, 108 blessing vs unwanted 56 unusual conversational move 18–19, 20, 24, 37 bewilderment caused by 18 highlighting entrenchment of automatic childbearing 62 unwed parents 102–103, 107

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V vasectomy 57 veiled silences 3, 21, 29 co-creation of 39–40 and complicity 43 entrenching procreative heteornormativity 157–159 and gendered defensive strategies 45–47 and negotiating difficult topics 154–157 violence 5, 11 gender-based 151 voluntary childlessness – see childfreedom Vorster, BJ 51

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W white Afrikaans men, anxieties of 121–122 white Afrikaans speakers 10 white middle class heterosexuals 9 whiteliness 9, 26 women, discrimination and inequality 164 women’s economic empowerment 142 women’s shyness about sex talk 58 World Population Year 51

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