People who are voluntarily childless, or “childfree,” face considerable stigma. Researchers have begun to explore how these individuals respond to stigma, usually focusing on interpersonal stigma management strategies. We explored participants’ responses to stigma in a way that is cognisant of broader social norms and gender power relations. Using a feminist discursive psychology framework, we analysed women’s and men’s computer-assisted communication about their childfree status. Our analysis draws attention to “identity work” in the context of stigma. We show how the strategic use of “choice” rhetoric allowed participants to avoid stigmatised identities and was used in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, participants drew on a “childfree-by-choice script,” which enabled them to hold a positive identity of themselves as autonomous, rational, and responsible decision makers. On the other hand, they mobilised a “disavowal of choice script” that allowed a person who is unable to choose childlessness (for various reasons) to hold a blameless identity regarding deviation from the norm of parenthood. We demonstrate how choice rhetoric allowed participants to resist stigma and challenge pronatalism to some extent; we discuss the political potential of these scripts for reproductive freedom. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available to PWQ subscribers on PWQ's website at http://pwq.sagepub.com/supplemental
AndenæsA. (2005). Neutral claims–gendered meanings: Parenthood and developmental psychology in a modern welfare state. Feminism & Psychology, 15, 209–226. doi:10.1177/0959353505051729
2.
BambergM. (2004). Narrative, discourse, and identities. In MeisterJ. C.KindtT.SchernusW.SteinM. (Eds.), Narratology beyond literary criticism (pp. 213–237). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
3.
BastenS. (2009). Voluntary childlessness and being childfree. The future of human reproduction: Working paper #5. St. John’s College Research Centre, University of Oxford and the Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Science. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
4.
BlackK. I.GuptaS.RassiA.KubbaA. (2010). Why do women experience untimed pregnancies? A review of contraceptive failure rates. Best Practice & Research: Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 24, 443–455. doi:10.1016/j.bpobgyn.2010.02.002
5.
BlackstoneA.StewartM. D. (2012). Choosing to be childfree: Research on the decision not to parent. Sociology Compass, 6, 1–10. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9020.2012.00496.x
6.
BrunerJ. (1987). Life as narrative. Social Research, 54, 11–32.
7.
ButlerJ. (1993). Extracts from gender as performance: An interview with Judith Butler. [Interview by P. Osborne & Lynne Segal, London, 1993]. Retrieved fromhttp://www.theory.org.uk/but-int1.htm
8.
DeOllosI. Y.KapinusC. A. (2002). Aging childless individuals and couples: Suggestions for new directions in research. Sociological Inquiry, 72, 72–80. doi:10.1111/1475-682X.00006
9.
DurhamW. T. (2008). The rules-based process of revealing/concealing the family planning decisions of voluntarily child-free couples: A communication privacy management perspective. Communication Studies, 59, 132–147. doi:10.1080/10510970802062451
10.
DyerS. J.AbrahamsN.MokoenaN. E.van der SpuyZ. M. (2004). “You are a man because you have children”: Experiences, reproductive health knowledge and treatment seeking behaviour of men suffering from couple infertility in South Africa. Human Reproduction, 9, 960–967. doi:10.1093/humrep/deh195
11.
EdleyN. (2001). Analysing masculinity: Interpretative repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions. In WetherellM.TaylorS.YatesS. J. (Eds.), Discourse as data: A guide for analysis (pp. 189–228). London, England: Sage/The Open University.
12.
FennellJ. (2006, 3). “It happened one night”: The sexual context of fertility decision-making. Paper presented at the meeting of Population Association of America, Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved fromhttp://paa2006.princeton.edu/papers/60825
13.
GarncarekE. (2010). Społeczność wirtualna na forum: Dyskusyjnym Bezdzietni z Wyboru jako grupa mniejszościowa on-line i off-line [Virtual community discussion forums: The childless by choice as a minority group on-line and off-line]. In KapralskaŁ.PactwaB. (Eds.), Agora czy hyde park (pp. 201–214). Kraków, Poland: Zakład Wydawniczy NOMOS.
14.
GibsonA.MacleodC. (2014). Beyond coming out: Lesbians’ (alternative) stories of sexual identity told in post-Apartheid South Africa. In McKenzie-MohrS.LafranceM. (Eds.), Women voicing resistance: Discursive and narrative explorations (pp. 29–43). London, England: Routledge.
15.
GillR. (2008). Culture and subjectivity in neoliberal and postfeminist times. Subjectivity, 25, 432–445.
16.
GillamM. L.NeustadtA.GordonR. (2009). A call to incorporate a reproductive justice agenda into reproductive health clinical practice and policy. Contraception, 79, 243–246.
17.
GillespieR. (2000). When no means no: Disbelief, disregard and deviance as discourses of voluntary childlessness. Women’s Studies International Forum, 23, 223–234. doi:10.1016/S0277-5395(00)00076-5
18.
GillespieR. (2003). Childfree and feminine: Understanding the gender identity of voluntarily childless women. Gender & Society, 17, 122–136. doi:10.1177/0891243202238982
19.
GoffmanE. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
20.
GrahamM.RichS. (2012). What’s “childless” got to do with it?(Working papers, 2(36), 8–15). Geelong, Australia: Alfred Deakin Research Institute.
21.
HadleyR.HanleyT. (2011). Involuntarily childless men and the desire for fatherhood. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 29, 556–568. doi:10.1080/02646838.2010.544294
22.
HeitlingerA. (1991). Pronatalism and women’s equality policies. European Journal of Population, 7, 343–375. doi:10.1007/BF01796873
23.
HirdM. J.AbshoffK. (2003). Women without children: A contradiction in terms?Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 31, 347–376.
24.
JowettA. (2015). A case for using online discussion forums in critical psychological research. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 21, 287–297. doi:10.1080/14780887.2015.1008906
25.
JowettA.PeelE.ShawR. (2011). Online interviewing in psychology: Reflections on the process. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 8, 354–369. doi:10.1080/14780887.2010.500352
26.
LetherbyG. (2002). Childless and bereft? Stereotypes and realities in relation to ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ childlessness and womanhood. Sociological Inquiry, 72, 7–20. doi:10.1111/1475-682X.00003
27.
MarkhamA. N. (2011). Internet research. In SilvermanD., (Ed.). Qualitative research: Theory, method, and practices (3rd ed., pp. 111–127). London, England: Sage.
28.
MarkhamA. N.BuchananE. (2012). Ethical decision-making and internet research 2.0: Recommendations from the AOIR Ethics Working Committee. Retrieved from Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR) website: www.aoir.org/reports/ethics2.pdf
29.
McNayL. (2013). Gender and agency: Reconfiguring the subject in feminist and social theory. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
30.
MeyersD. T. (2001). The rush to motherhood: Pronatalist discourse and women’s autonomy. Signs, 26, 735–773. doi:10.1093/0195140419.003.0002
31.
MooreJ. K. (2011). Constructing childfree identities online through the lens of feminist poststructuralism (Unpublished master’s thesis). San Diego State University, San Diego, CA.
32.
MooreJ. K. (2014). Reconsidering childfreedom: A Feminist exploration of discursive identity construction in childfree Live Journal communities. Women’s Studies in Communication, 37, 158–180. doi:10.1080/07491409.2014.909375
33.
MooreJ.Geist-MartinP. (2013). Mediated representations of voluntary childlessness, 1900-2012. In CastañedaD. (Ed.), The essential handbook of women’s sexuality (pp. 233–251). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
MorisonT.MacleodC. (2013). A performative-performance analytical approach: Infusing Butlerian theory into the narrative-discursive method. Qualitative Inquiry, 19, 566–577. doi:10.1177/1077800413494344
36.
MorisonT.MacleodC. (2015). Men’s pathways to parenthood: Silences and gendered norms. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press.
37.
MurphyD. A. (2013). The desire for parenthood: Gay men choosing to become parents through surrogacy. Journal of Family Issues, 34, 1104–1124. doi:10.1177/0192513X13484272
38.
ParrN. (2010). Childlessness among men in Australia. Population Policy Research Review, 29, 319–338. doi:10.1007/s11113-009-9142-9
39.
ParkK. (2002). Stigma management among the voluntarily childless. Sociological Perspectives, 45, 21–45. doi:10.1525/sop.2002.45.1.21
40.
ParkK. (2005). Choosing childlessness: Weber’s typology of action and motives of the voluntarily childless. Sociological Inquiry, 75, 372–402. doi:10.1111/j.1475-682X.2005.00127.x
41.
PomerantzA. (1986). Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims. Human Studies, 9, 219–229. doi:10.1007/BF00148128
42.
RabunC.OswaldR. F. (2009). Upholding and expanding the normal family: Future fatherhood through the eyes of gay male emerging adults. Fathering: A Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice about Men as Fathers, 7, 269–285. doi:10.3149/fth.0703.269
43.
ReynoldsJ.TaylorS. (2005). Narrating singleness: Life stories and deficit identities. Narrative Inquiry, 15, 197–215. doi:10.1075/ni.15.2.02rey
44.
ReynoldsJ.WetherellM.TaylorS. (2007). Choice and chance: Negotiating agency in narratives of singleness. The Sociological Review, 55, 331–351. doi:10.1111/j.1467-954X.2007.00708.x
45.
RiessmanC. K. (2000). Stigma and everyday resistance practices: Childless women in South India. Gender & Society, 14, 111–135. doi:10.1177/089124300014001007
46.
RobertsL. (2015). Ethical issues in conducting qualitative research in online communities. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 12, 314–325. doi:10.1080/14780887.2015.1008909
47.
ShapiroG. (2014). Voluntary childlessness: A critical review of the literature. Studies in the Maternal, 6, 1–15.
48.
Sullivan-BlumC. R. (2006). “The natural order of creation”: Naturalizing discourses in the Christian same-sex marriage debate. Anthropologica, 48, 203–215. doi:10.2307/25605311
49.
TaylorE. N. (2003). Throwing the baby out with the bathwater: Childfree advocates and the rhetoric of choice. Women & Politics, 24, 49–75. doi:10.1300/J014v24n04_03
50.
TaylorS. (2006). Narrative as construction and discursive resource. Narrative Inquiry, 16, 94–102. doi:10.1075/ni.16.1.13tay
51.
TaylorS.LittletonK. (2006). Biographies in talk: A narrative-discursive research approach. Qualitative Sociology Review, 2, 22–38. doi:10.1177/0018726708101043
52.
TerryG.BraunV. (2012). Sticking my finger up at evolution: Unconventionality, selfishness, and choice in the talk of men who have had “preemptive” vasectomies. Men and Masculinities, 15, 207–229. doi:10.1177/1097184X11430126
53.
ThrosbyK.GillR. (2004). “It’s different for men” Masculinity and IVF. Men and Masculinities, 6, 330–348. doi:10.1177/1097184X03260958
54.
VeeversJ. E. (1973). Voluntarily childless wives: An exploratory study. Sociology and Social Research, 57, 356–366.
55.
VeeversJ. E. (1975). The moral careers of voluntarily childless wives: Notes on the defense of a variant world view. The Family Coordinator, 24, 473–487. doi:10.2307/583032
56.
ZelizerV. A. (1985). Pricing the priceless child: The changing social value of children. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
