Collectivist Relationality and Individualistic Relationality: Pacific Mothers and Fathers Negotiating Agency and Identity in Post–Separation Care Arrangements for Children

Abstract

The degree to which agency and identity are experienced as individualised or relational constructs have been widely debated in the sociological literature. Yet, at the centre of these debates are Western notions and understandings of individualisation and relationality, including in family research. They have relied on individualised and nuclearised understandings and approaches to being a family that more closely approximate the lives of white Western middle-class nuclear families. Drawing on semi-structured talanoa (akin to interviews) with separated heterosexual Pacific parents, specifically ten mothers and five fathers, living in New Zealand, I contribute to individualisation and relationality debates by examining how agency and identity are enacted following separation. In particular, I examine the way that Pacific mothers and fathers grapple with tenets of individualisation and relationality in terms of how and with whom they organise and negotiate care arrangements for children. My research demonstrates how Pacific gendered norms and values operated in ways that differentially shaped the kinds of decisions that mothers and fathers made about children’s care arrangements. I conclude with a discussion that highlights the significance of integrating cultural relationality into research on family life.

Keywords

cultural relationality good fathering good mothering individualisation post-separation families

Introduction

There have been widespread debates within the sociological literature around the degree to which identity and agency are experienced as individualised or relational constructs (Duncan, 2011; Mason, 2004). However, much of the debates that have occurred in the field of family sociology have centred Western notions of individualisation and relationality. The visions depicted are often ‘culturally monochrome’ (Smart and Shipman, 2004, p. 494) relying on individualised and nuclearised understandings and approaches to being a family that more closely approximate the lives of white Western middle-class nuclear families. Western ideas and experiences of family continue to dominate and shape the field of family sociology. In this article, I contribute to individualisation and relationality debates by examining the interplay between individualisation and relationality in terms of how separated Pacific mothers and fathers living in New Zealand enact agency, in terms of their actions as well as the different ideas that shape how they make decisions. In pursuing this enquiry, I also examine the extent to which agency is shaped by moral ideas as well as desires to act as good Pacific mothers, fathers, and family members. To achieve this, I examine the way in which Pacific mothers and fathers grapple with tenets of individualisation and relationality in terms of how and with whom they organise, negotiate, and enact care arrangements for their children after separation. My research demonstrates how Pacific gendered family norms and values operated in ways that differentially shaped the kinds of decisions that mothers and fathers made about children’s care arrangements. I conclude with a discussion that highlights the significance of integrating cultural relationality in research into family life, particularly research emerging out of New Zealand where this study is based and other multicultural societies like the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. I begin the investigation by outlining the theoretical parameters of individualisation and relationality.

Individualisation and relationality

As a concept, individualisation emerges in a context of growing individualism in the West. It contends that individuals are increasingly living their lives as self-reflexive projects less directed by tradition or institutionalised socio-cultural norms, values, and expectations and more by individual preferences and proponents for self-fulfilment (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995, 2002; Chambers and Gracia, 2021; Gidden, 1992). Ideas associated with individualisation have been incorporated into examinations of intimate relationships to highlight the individualistic way with which individuals are able to navigate modern social life (Bauman, 2003; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Gidden, 1992; Kobayashi et al., 2017). Social roles such as wife, mother, daughter, husband, father, or son are argued to have less social value because they can be defined and performed more freely and creatively than in the past.

Discussing individualisation, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002: 22–23), for example, state that:

we live in an age in which the social order of the national state, class, ethnicity and the traditional family is in decline. The ethic of individual self-fulfilment and achievement is the most powerful current in modern society. The choosing, deciding, shaping human being who aspires to be the author of his or her own life, the creator of an individual identity, is the central character of our time.

This was similarly articulated by Beck (1994) in an earlier piece of sole-authored work, where he argued that in contemporary social life, ‘the standard biography becomes a chosen biography or “do-it-yourself biography”’ (p. 15). Individuals are thus argued to be more autonomous and removed from the influence of family or community ties as well as collective identities, with greater agency to choose and determine how they want to act out their identities (Beck, 1994; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Gidden, 1992; Kobayashi et al., 2017). The social changes that have taken place in the realm of intimacy and family, demonstrated by, for example, the growing prominence of separation, divorce, and extra-marital births, are taken as evidence of individualisation.

However, a number of sociologists have critiqued the notion of individualisation for misrepresenting agency and identity as primarily conscious and reflexive processes and practices (Carter and Duncan, 2018; Duncan, 2011; Gabb, 2011; Mason, 2004; May, 2011; Smart, 2007, 2011; Yopo Díaz, 2018). The central argument is that although individuals might be less bound by social institutions and structures than they were in the past, they do not live their lives free from external influence or constraint. Duncan (2011), for example, argues that often times, the choices that people make are related to circumstance and bound by institutions and structures that offer habitual, and at times, routinised, actions and decision-making processes that condition how experiential threads are woven together across the life course. Institutions are said to offer norms of practice that enable individuals to conserve social energy and, in the process, gain social legitimation.

Agency and identity are negotiated relationally not only at the macro structural level but also at the micro-level of interpersonal ties. In particular, agency and identity have been found to be relationally informed by connections with others and the continuing significance of (family) relationships (Finch and Mason, 2000; Mitchell and Green, 2002; Ribbens et al., 2003; Smart and Neale, 1999). As Mason (2004) argues, the kinds of choices that people make are ‘relational, connected, and embedded’ in overlapping webs of relationships (p. 166). To illustrate, Mason’s (2004) qualitative study on residential histories with 57 people living in the North of England showed that individual life stories were often told through participants’ relationships with others, particularly, but not exclusively, family. She identified four types of relational practices. First, relational inclusion and co-presence involved individuals making decisions about where to live based on staying geographically close to family. Second, relational participation involved including others in their decision-making. Third, relational constraint and conflict referred to how participants’ relationships with others constrained decision-making. Mason shares stories about how separation or divorce restricted participants’ agency, with participants having to weigh up competing factors when making decisions about, for example, whether to move or stay in the family home or live in close geographical proximity of children, family, or work. Finally, relational individualism involved exercising agency about where to live in individualistic ways that also served the interests of others. Mason found this mode of relational practice to be highly gendered, occupying a minority of men’s accounts and none of the women’s. This kind of relationality often involved fathers making decisions on behalf of the family. Mason concludes by arguing that, contrary to theories of individualisation, individual life projects are often produced and experienced relationally in relation to others.

Pacific understandings of relationality

In Pacific cultures, agency and identity are interwoven and cannot be easily disentangled (Henderson, 2016; Mo’a, 2015; Vaai and Nabobo-Baba, 2017). Drawing on fieldwork in Samoa, Mageo (1998) emphasises that unlike white Western cultures that are largely organised around the individual, Samoan culture is socio-centrically ordered around the collective. The prevailing moral discourse that guides agency focuses around how to dutifully fulfil and enact individual roles in ways that benefit the broader kin community. As such, Mageo demonstrates how ideas associated with individualisation and individualism, although prevalent and pervasive within white Western contexts, are at odds with Pacific understandings of agency and identity. According to Tamasese et al. (2005), the self gains, and is given, meaning in reference to others. Individual family members cannot be separated from the relational space between themselves and their parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and other extended family and community members. The relational space between the self and others is considered an essential and integral aspect of encompassing your culture, a culture that structurally privileges expressions of relationality and collectivity over individuality (Henderson, 2016; Pasikale and George, 1995). Given the relationality of Pacific cultures, how individuals enact agency has a number of implications for how moral identities are produced and managed. Thus, relational ways of being and doing entail something more than simply relating to others; it operates as a means through which individuals and families embody their culture and thereby re/affirm their individual and collective cultural identities (Tamasese et al., 2010).

In further contextualising the centrality of relationality, Pacific cultures draw on collectivist understandings of family, emphasising family as the most important feature of social life, and hold communally based understandings about moral obligations to children and family (Fleming, 1997; Grattan, 2004; Stewart-Withers et al., 2010). There are strong morally informed cultural expectations that family members will collaboratively work together to provide one another with reciprocal care and support (Duncan, 2008; Grattan, 2004; Stewart-Withers et al., 2010). Although parents are considered to be primarily responsible for children, it is common in Pacific families to share the care work associated with raising children with other, typically female, family members. In the context of parental separation, obligations and responsibilities for care of children are treated as a concern of the extended family (Robertson et al., 2008; Stewart et al., 2010; Sua’ali’i-Sauni et al., 2009; Waldegrave et al., 2003).

The following section outlines a brief discussion of the study before moving on to discuss how Pacific mothers and fathers – as individual agents, parents, and family members – navigate and negotiate the individualisation and relationality nexus in terms of how they make care arrangements for children.

The study

The study employed a qualitative research method that involved semi-structured, in-depth, one-on-one talanoa (akin to interviews) between 2017 and 2018 with 15 separated heterosexual Pacific parents – ten mothers and five fathers – living in Auckland, New Zealand. Talanoa stems from Pacific oral traditions of producing, sharing, and transferring knowledge through conversations and talk (Keil, 2021; Vaioleti, 2014).

Participants were recruited through poster advertisements and/or email/Facebook invitations distributed by community organisations. The call invited Pacific parents who had been separated from their children’s other parent for at least 1 year, cared for their children at least one night/week, and privately established care arrangements without litigating. Participants were invited to talk about their experiences of family life following separation, particularly in relation to how care arrangements were made as well as everyday practices associated with caring for children across spatial and temporal divisions (see Keil and Elizabeth, 2021, 2022, 2023). Participation was voluntary and based on informed consent. To safeguard participants’ right to privacy and confidentiality, all identifiable information has been altered or removed. Recognising that post-separation family relations can be fraught with tension and conflict (McIntosh and Chisholm, 2008; Robertson et al., 2008), and to safeguard the welfare and privacy of participants, none of the mothers and fathers in this study were formerly partnered. Participants were also provided with contact information of support services. In terms of safeguarding the social and cultural sensitivities, the research was guided by Pacific methodologies shaped by Pacific values, protocols, and practices. I am also a Samoan mother and early career researcher in the Social Sciences, and more personally, I was raised in a post-separation family.

Talanoa took place at a date, time, and location convenient for participants and lasted between 1 and 2 hours (90 minutes on average). All participants were aged between 22 and 46 years. Of the participants, six had one child, seven had two children, and two had three children. The ages of the children ranged from one to 14. In terms of relationship status, 13 were single, one mother had remarried, and one father was in a cohabiting relationship. Prior to separating, one mother had been married, and the remaining 14 participants had been in a cohabiting relationship. In terms of years separated, three had been separated for 1 year, six for 2 years, three for 3 years, two for 4 years, and one for 9 years. The ethnicity/ies of participants’ former partner varied: Ten identified their former partners as being of a Pacific ethnicity, two as Pacific/European and three as being of European descent.

All participants reported having flexible care arrangements that often changed from week-to-week or month-to-month. Immediately following separation in all cases, children lived primarily with their mothers. Of the mothers, two reported having their children four nights/week, five for five nights/week, and one for six nights/week; the remaining two had a 50:50 shared care arrangement. Of the fathers, two reported having their children two nights/week, and the remaining three had 50:50 share care.

Drawing on the guidelines set out by Braun and Clarke (2006), I conducted a thematic analysis of the data using a three-step coding process. The first phase involved reading each transcript to gain a general sense of the talk and points of interest. The second phase involved coding the data into discrete thematic categories: understandings of family, care time, paid work, mothering, fathering, family practices, family displays, identity, routines and rituals, and relational thinking/doing. The third phase involved systematically re-examining and coding thematic content in the ‘care time’ category, looking for more focused ideas within the broader theme.

Considering the relationality of Pacific cultures and demographics of participants, the significance of individualisation to my research is that all the participants in this study had been separated from their children’s other parent, and prior to separation, all but one had been in a cohabiting relationship and had their children outside of wedlock. In Pacific cultures, divorce, separation, and extra-marital births are not culturally condoned (Stewart-Withers et al., 2010; Sua’ali’i-Sauni et al., 2009). Thus, participants in this study are positioned as evidence of a tendency that manifests itself in the shift away from institutions and structures, as well as pre-established life paths of marriage and childbearing being socially sanctioned, towards a more do-it-yourself biography. In addition, participants were raised in New Zealand and therefore enculturated into the norms of individualism.

The forthcoming sections are derived from patterned responses from participants regarding how they enacted agency and identity in relation to how they made care arrangements for their children following separation. Given the small study sample, the findings are reflective of the particularities of the study and its sample.

Relationally layered stories

The Pacific mothers and fathers in this study told relationally layered stories about how they made care arrangements for their children that centred their connections with wider kin networks (see also the work of Keil and Elizabeth, 2022, 2023). For instance, one mother talking about the different considerations that she had when contemplating her daughter’s post-separation care arrangement said:

I wanted to raise [her] on my own, it would’ve been so much easier cause [sharing care has] been really hard. . . . I know I could’ve done it alone. . . . I have a really supportive family. . . . But I didn’t want to do that to [my former partner]. . . . And besides [my former partner’s] mother is the very involved ‘do-everything’ type of mother so I knew that [my daughter] would be taken care of and that it would be good for [my daughter]. . . . [My former partner’s] family is very Samoan. . . . Even though it’s hard . . . having to give up a lot of my weekends [with her], it’s good for her to have that time with him and all his family. (Ivona, one child, five nights/week, separated nine years)

Across the study, when mothers and fathers talked about how they made care arrangements for their children, they told detailed relationally layered stories that wove together layers of contemplations. These included, for example, as the aforementioned quote illustrates, their children, family, former partners, former partner’s family, cultural identity, and individual preferences and circumstances. While contemplating her daughter’s care arrangement, Ivona did not prioritise her individual circumstances or preferences. Instead, her motivation to share care and ‘give up’ weekend time was relationally informed by what she thought would be best for her daughter in terms of cultivating her cultural identity as well as considerations of her former partner and his family. Relating to others is so embedded in her sense of self that even when she talks about being able to raise her daughter ‘alone’, it was not a literal and individualised construction of alone to imply that she could care for her child without the support of a partner. Rather, it was relationally grounded by the fact that she would have the care and support of her broader kin network. As discussed in other works, grandmothers and other female family members played a central role in caring for children following separation (Keil and Elizabeth, 2022).

To use another example, talking about how he and his former partner first established a care arrangement, one father said:

We didn’t really have ‘an arrangement’ at first . . . we mostly worked it around our work schedules and who could do pick-ups and drop-offs from school. . . . To get to the point of having equal time . . . took us awhile. . . . It was hard on my Mum and Dad too seeing me and then not seeing the kids with me. . . . I could see [their] disappointment. I thought to myself, ‘This isn’t right’. My parents are getting on [in age] and they need to be with their grandkids. . . . I want the kids with us on Sunday for family lunch with all their cousins, going to church on Sunday . . . . You know, all the ‘typical’ family stuff that happens in an Island family. (Wayne, two children, 50:50 shared care, separated two years)

While another father said:

It was hard at first to [make a care arrangement] . . . and so I didn’t get to see [my son] that much. . . . What made it worse was that my son [from a previous relationship] would come over and . . . he’d always ask, ‘Where’s [my brother]? Is he coming?’ . . . What do I say? . . . I just told her that she can’t keep my son away from me . . . it’s not fair, especially for my [older son] and my [extended] family too. . . . Now [my son is] with [me and my extended family] pretty much every weekend. . . . It’s good because my sisters [and parents] spoil them . . . you know they’re the only grandkids. (Toma, Samoan, two children, two nights/week, separated one year)

As the quotes shared above demonstrate, there was a ‘relational layer’ (Mason, 2004: 166) to their stories that involved and revolved around their (and their children’s) relationship with their former partners and extended family and the perceived needs of these family members. Across the study, the Pacific mothers and fathers endeavoured to make care arrangements that nurtured and preserved children’s cultural identities as well as their relationships with wider kin.

There was a gendered element that I will briefly touch on here but discuss in greater detail in forthcoming sections (and has been detailed in other co-authored works: Keil and Elizabeth, 2021, 2023). Fathers told relational stories about the significance of claiming time for themselves, their other children, and extended family. As such, relationality operated as a means through which fathers were able to exercise their agency in ways that prioritised their needs, wants, and preferences (of having, for example, weekend time or 50:50 care time) without being seen to act in individualistic ways through their emphasis on the needs of other family members. The experiences of the Pacific fathers in this study in some ways resonate with Mason’s (2004) notion of ‘relational individualism’. However, there were points of departure. The men in Mason’s study talked about their individualistic exercises of agency as being motivated by selfish tendencies that also benefitted others. These fathers also recognised how their individualistic and selfish decision-making might not be ‘entirely culturally or morally acceptable’ (p. 175). Unlike the men in Mason’s study, the fathers in my study were not reflexive about their individualistic and selfish tendencies and decision-making. Although the fathers in my study pursued care arrangements that prioritised their individual needs, they did not articulate their claims as being pursued for individualistic or selfish reasons. Instead, their claims were framed as being morally and culturally justified because they were framed as being made in the interest of others, in particular, their children and family. As such, I argue that the fathers in my study enacted agency through what I frame as ‘individualistic relationality’. Individualistic relationality relates a limited and constrained relationality that is self-oriented and entails exercising agency in family-specific ways that serve individual needs, a concept that I will continue to develop throughout this article.

Mothers, on the other hand, told relational stories about the importance of giving up time with their child(ren) for their former partners and their former partners’ extended family and sacrificing time to service the relationship between children, fathers, and extended family. In contrast to fathers who exercised individualistic relationality, mothers enacted what I frame as ‘collectivist relationality’. Collectivist relationality involves a comprehensive and obligated relationality that is other-oriented. To put it less abstractly, mothers enacted agency in culturally informed collectivist and self-sacrificing ways by prioritising the needs of others over their own and making decisions based on what they perceived to be in the best interest of children and broader post-separation family.

Culturally informed relationality

The relationally layered stories that Pacific mothers and fathers shared about their children’s care arrangements were discussed as part of a broader relational family project underscored by Pacific cultural norms, values, and practices. For example, as Salote said:

When we first split [up], I really didn’t know what plans we would make for [our children]. . . . Some weeks [the children] will spend a lot of time with [their father and his family]. . . . I always expected that our families would be involved, not just involved, but really involved because they cared . . . [and] because we’re Samoan. It is normal for [white Western] families that the other side of the family might step back or both families on both sides would step back, but we’re Samoan and so I am not surprised at all that [our families] haven’t stepped back. If anything, [our families] are more involved now than they were when we were together. (two children, five nights/week, separated two years)

Similarly, another said:

[My former partner’s family are] extremely close to [my daughter]. . . . We’re lucky in the sense . . .most Samoan families are like that. . . . They’ve just completely raised her and look after her all the time. . . .That’s just what you do if you have a child in Samoa[n cultures], everyone looks after her. (Ivona, one child, five nights/week, separated nine years)

As illustrated, caring for children in collectivised ways by parents and broader kin networks was articulated as expressions and enactments of their Pacific culture and heritage. Expectations that extended families would be less involved or ‘step back’ from everyday care of children were associated with Western and more individualised modes of caring for children, both prior to and after separation. Talking about the significance of children spending time with the extended family, these parents, who identified their former partners as being of European descent, said:

It’s hard for [my former partner] to understand. . . . She just didn’t understand that it’s not only about me [having time with our children], it’s about my family too. . . . You know Samoan families, there’s always something going on and I want my kids to be part of that. I don’t want every week to [ask permission] if they can come over. (Dion, two children, 50/50 shared care, separated four years)

Recently I asked [my former partner] . . . whether I could take [our daughter] to Samoa for ten days. And he said, ‘Only if you allow me to have her for the same amount of time . . . you can’t take her to Samoa unless you agree to that’. . . . I went back to him and said, ‘You know this isn’t a holiday, this is about her connecting with her culture, this is about her knowing her village so she doesn’t feel like a visitor in her own village, it’s her other home, this is about her spirituality. . . . I tried to explain this, and he came back and said, ‘Oh she’s three and a half years old, a ten day holiday with her sisters [or] a ten day holiday in Samoa, same thing’. . . . I went back again trying to say . . . [it’s] about nurturing [her] culture . . . but it was a waste of time. (Katrina, one child, four nights/week, separated one year)

The kinds of post-separation care arrangements that the mothers and fathers in this study made, and wanted to make, were shaped by Pacific cultural values and practices. The mothers’ and fathers’ embeddedness in their culture and family meant that when they were negotiating post-separation care, they considered extended family in their contemplations and conversations with former partners. As discussed in other works (Keil and Elizabeth, 2023), the mothers and fathers recognised that they had no legal obligation to include and consider their extended families in their decision-making. Despite this, across the study, Pacific mothers and fathers felt strong culturally informed moral obligations to do so.

This cultural and moral obligation was not only to their extended families but also to children in terms of instilling and nurturing their cultural identities. Because the mothers and fathers lived and were raising their children in New Zealand, they felt this moral obligation more intensely, something that might have been taken for granted if they were living in the Islands. Thus, ensuring that extended family were considered and included in children’s everyday lives operated as one way they could impart Pacific-based family values and norms of practice on to their children. For example, another mother talking about the importance of fostering her child’s cultural identity said:

I was raised in [New Zealand], and my Mum was of that generation, first generation Samoan . . . they didn’t speak to [their children] in Samoan, they spoke to us in English. So, we never learnt how to speak Samoan properly. . . . And most of our family stayed in Samoa. . . . Thankfully I grew up in an Island community, you know at church and at school. . . . I want [my daughter] to be secure in her identity as Samoan. I want her to speak her mother tongue and I want her to feel Samoan through and through . . . [so that] when we go to Samoa, she is just an Island girl. . . . That’s what’s nice about [my former partners] family is that [my daughter] gets that on both sides [of the family]. (Sina, one child, 5 nights/week, separated three years)

While another mother said about her children spending time with extended family on both sides of the family:

It is so important, it’s linked to their identity and feeling sure of their identity. . . . It secures my children in their family and their place in their family. It also roots them in their culture, which is so important to me because we live in New Zealand and this is why I am so invested in making sure that [my children] spend time with both sides of the family and also their half-sisters. (Salote, two children, five-six nights/week, separated two years)

Similar to some of the experiences of participants in the study by Smart and Shipman (2004), whose agency was shaped by cultural understandings of obligations to family, the kinds of care arrangements that the Pacific mothers and fathers in this study made were largely shaped by Pacific familial norms, expectations and practices, and cultivating children’s cultural identity. Building on these discussions, in the following section, I discuss how culturally informed ways of relating to others, as well as the differences in fathers’ individualistic relationality and mothers’ collectivist relationality, worked in varied ways to constrain mothers’ agency, while having an empowering effect for fathers.

Constrained relationality

There were gendered differences to mothers’ and fathers’ relational behaviours and agency. In particular, the mothers’ talk demonstrated how their gendered position as Pacific mothers constrained the kinds of choices they made in relation to children’s care arrangements. This was especially poignant when the mothers talked about the struggle of trying to balance the competing needs of different family members. For example, one mother reflecting on what it was like for her when the care arrangements first began said:

I remember just crying when I dropped her off because she hadn’t slept anywhere before. . . . I had to really tell myself that it’s best for her . . . and my Mum told me, it’s best for all of us, because . . . even though [I’m not with her father anymore], we’re all in each other’s life forever. . . . We see them at church and [in the community]. . . . It wasn’t just about [me] or what I thought was best, it was about everyone. . . . Gosh, that was a really hard time. (Danielle, one child, five nights/week, separated three years)

As the aforementioned excerpt illustrates, when mothers wanted to act individualistically, they were relationally constrained by their former partners and their own family to make decisions they might not have otherwise made. In particular, Danielle exercised a constrained sense of agency that was in accordance with Pacific relationality and involved sacrificing her own individual needs and wants for what was perceived to be for the greater collective good of the post-separation family. Hence, her collectivist relationality worked in ways that fostered relationships, while having a constraining effect on how she was able to claim care time. As previously demonstrated, fathers mobilised relationality, and in particular, individualistic relationality, to successfully claim time with children that suited their individual needs. However, when mothers tried to relate to others in a more limited and restricted way, as fathers did, their pursuit of time was not as successful because they were expected and often required to be self-sacrificing and cognisant of how care arrangements would affect the entire post-separation family. In doing so, they reaffirm their identities as good and moral daughters and mothers that dutifully listen to the advice of their parents and who co-operate with their former partners. Relationality thus produced highly gendered effects because of differing gendered accountabilities.

Relational constraint was also experienced by mothers in more subtle ways, as the following quote from Leah illustrates:

Seriously, if I didn’t care about [my former partner’s] mother and family, like his brothers have been really great to me and they are really great uncles to [my children]. . . . We don’t get to see them that much, but when they are together, like with their cousins and stuff, you just feel the love [between them]. . . . If I didn’t care about them, I’d say, ‘Stuff you [to my former partner]’ cause he’s been a real pain through the whole process. (two children, four nights/week, separated two years)

These quotes highlight the complexity of enacting relationality. Relationality for the mothers and fathers in this study operated in multifaceted ways that, on the one hand, facilitated and fostered complex familial connections and interconnections with their children, former partners, and extended family (on both sides), while, on the other hand, it constrained mother’s individual actions and decision-making processes and practices. Relational practices also made it difficult, especially for mothers, to establish and maintain a level of disconnectedness. Relationality, therefore, should not be taken to imply intentional and sought-after connectedness or interconnectedness, it also operates in ways that hamper attempts to establish a level and sense of disconnectedness from former partners and their families. The dilemma that arises as a result of this constrained relationality speaks to the embeddedness, or more aptly put, the constrained embeddedness produced by the post-separation parenting context.

‘Good’ Pacific post-separation mothering and fathering

Given Pacific cultures have a collectivist and relational approach to having a family life, the way that individuals enact agency has a number of implications for how individual and collective moral identities are produced and managed. How one conceives and enacts agency is closely related to morality, and hence questions of identity. The way that individual agency is enacted is thus, at times, a result of individuals and families alike feeling constrained by their desire to be ‘good’ and ‘moral’ family members and families. For example, one mother talking about her relational motive for giving up time with her children and the efforts undertaken to appease her former partner after 4 years of separation said:

Toevalu:

There’s been so many times I’ve just wanted to wipe my hands of ever having anything to do with my ex, his Mum and his whole family. . . . My poor Mum always has to be the peacemaker in our family, telling me to [be strong] for my kids, to do what’s right for the kids and the whole [post-separation] family. . . . So, it’s me having to be flexible with my days to make it work for everyone.

Moeata:

Does the working for everyone also include you?

Toevalu:

I guess, it works for me because it works for [my children], they’re happy, they get to spend time with their Dad and all the family. . . . It’s not the arrangement I’d like . . . . But yeah, it does work. . . . As long as the kids are happy and we’re all getting a long, I am happy. (three children, five nights/week, separated four years)

Toevalu was the only participant who was married at the time of the talanoa, and although her compromising behaviours at times added tensions to her marriage, she was encouraged and often pressured by her family, particularly her mother, to continue to work to maintain inter-familial peace (see also the work of Keil and Elizabeth, 2022, 2023). The emphasis in this excerpt of working to maintain family peace was achieved by having a flexible care arrangement and giving up time and can be understood as a way that this mother performed good post-separation mothering. The good post-separation mother is described by Elizabeth et al. (2010) as a mother who maintains a good relationship with her former partner for her children’s sake, even facilitating and fostering the father-child relationship. However, as also detailed in other co-authored works (Keil and Elizabeth, 2023), for the Pacific mothers in this study, it was also about fostering the relationship between children and the extended family on both sides. Another mother, talking about how she cultivated the relationship with her children and extended family on both sides from the outset of separation, said:

Special occasions like Christmas or birthdays are always spent with both sides [of the family]. . . . If their Dad’s side can’t make it for Christmas, I’ll change the day to suit them and just try to make sure it suits us all. . . . So we would celebrate Christmas on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve or even on Boxing Day just so that we can all be together, and that my kids can be with their cousins on those special holidays, especially because my kids are similar ages to all the kids on [their father’s] side. . . . I want to build that relationship with their other side [of the family]. . . . With my family it is easy because they’re always around. (Salote, Samoan, two children, five-six nights/week, separated two years)

These examples highlight the way that the mothers in this study enact good post-separation mothering in culturally informed ways by facilitating and nurturing not only the father-child relationship but also the relationship between children and the extended family on both sides so that children continue to experience ‘family togetherness’ (Keil and Elizabeth, 2021; Ribbens-McCarthy, 2012) even following parental separation. In doing so, mothers are able to construct themselves as good Pacific mothers and family members.

Unlike mothers, fathers related primarily to their former partners and their own extended family and did not talk about fostering or facilitating the relationship between their children and their former partners or their former partner’s extended family. Former partners’ families rarely featured in fathers’ accounts, and when they were directly prompted to talk about their former partner’s family, the discussions were quite limited. Unlike mothers’ efforts to foster the inter-parental and inter-familial relationship by giving up time with children and/or sacrificing their own wants, needs, and preferences for the perceived greater collective good of the family, none of the fathers talked about the efforts that they made to work their care arrangements around their former partners and families. Instead, all the fathers approached the question of care in highly individualised and individualistic ways that prioritised their own needs and the needs of their own family. Fathers thus discussed relational motives for claiming time with children. As such, relationality operated in ways that enabled fathers to enact their agency in highly individualised ways, with fathers’ relational stories being centred around claiming time for themselves, and their sense of relationality extended to their children and their own extended families.

Discussion

Given the centrality of family in Pacific cultures, it is not surprising that the Pacific mothers and fathers told rich, layered, and complex relational stories. The constant reference to their, or their children’s, relationships with others shows how their sense of self and agency are not individualised but deeply embedded in connectivity with others. For the mothers and fathers in this study, agency and identity were imbued with Pacific collectivist and relational understandings of family. However, gender and ethnicity interacted in such a way to produce gendered cultural accountabilities. This meant that following separation, the mothers and fathers enacted their agency and identities as Pacific mothers and fathers, and family members more generally, in gender differentiated ways.

Despite Pacific families and cultures being collectively and relationally oriented, there were gendered differences underscoring how these relational and collectivist Pacific cultural norms were interpreted and enacted, as well as the extent to how, when, and to whom they were relational. However, rather than necessarily dismissing theories of individualisation entirely, I found tenets of individualisation were incorporated, in culturally informed ways, in fathers’ relational behaviours. As such, like others have done (Mason, 2004; Smart and Shipman, 2004), I offer a nuanced account of individualisation and relationality. To capture the culturally informed gendered way that relationality was differently mobilised by the Pacific mothers and fathers in this study, I found that mothers operated with a sense of agency and identity that was shaped by ‘collectivist relationality,’ and for fathers, ‘individualistic relationality’. Collectivist relationality involved exercising a comprehensive and obligated relationality that was other-oriented. This comprehensive, obligated, other-oriented relationality involved exercising agency in collectivist, child-centred, and self-sacrificing ways by prioritising the needs of others, specifically their children, former partners, and extended family (on both sides), over their own.

Thus, collectivist relationality also entailed mothers self-reflexively operating with a constrained sense of agency that hindered their ability to act in individualistic ways. Mothers were multiply constrained by Pacific collectivist values associated with subverting individual wants and needs for the wider collective good, as well as by Pacific/gendered discursive constructions of good post-separation mothering. These constructions of good post-separation mothering entailed mothers facilitating the relationship between children and their fathers as well as between children and extended family. Mothers were also constrained by fathers and extended family, who often required them to be accountable for the welfare of children and collective post-separation family. Although relating to others in collectivist and relational ways hampered mothers’ agency, it secured their moral and cultural identities as good post-separation Pacific mothers and family members.

Conversely, fathers’ agency and identity were marked by individualistic relationality, a limited and constrained relationality that was self-oriented, which entailed relating to others in a family-specific, child-related but ultimately self-interested way. In particular, fathers’ talk demonstrated that they exercised agency in relation to their children and extended family, and how doing so enabled them to prioritise their own needs, preferences, and circumstances; for example, by pursuing care time that suited their preferences, but situating their claims within the needs of other family members. Fathers’ collectivist and relational behaviours were thus more limited than those of mothers and only extended to their children and extended family. In contrast to mothers’ experiences, fathers were not expected or required to facilitate and foster the relational space between children, mothers, and extended family on both sides, nor were they given the responsibility or made to feel accountable for the welfare of the collective post-separation family.

Rather, Pacific collectivist and communally based modes of caring for children, as well as norms associated with involved fatherhood, enabled fathers to operate with a more individualised, individualistic, and limited relationality than mothers. The norms of involved fatherhood in both Pacific and white Western contexts in many ways exempted fathers from enacting agency and identity on the basis of collectivist relationality. Significantly, gendered cultural norms empowered fathers to enact agency in a self-centred way without being perceived to act individualistically because these fathers were involved in their children’s lives and embedded within their own family networks. Thus, Pacific family norms as well as gendered norms of involved fatherhood enabled, emboldened, and rewarded fathers’ enactments of individualistic relationality, without diminishing their capacity to claim or secure their moral and cultural identities as good post-separation Pacific fathers and family men.

The individualistic and self-interested nature of fathers’ agency perhaps suggests the influence of individualisation; however, this interpretation is undermined by the fact that fathers related to others, specifically their children and extended family, even if it was more delimited than mothers. The fathers were not self-reflexively living their lives as do-it-yourself projects. Instead, their individual life projects were cultivated through, and embedded in, their relationships with others in their own family, as well as in reference to institutionalised and culturally produced norms. Thus, fathers were able to enact agency in a more individualised and individualistic way than mothers because Pacific family norms, as well as gendered cultural norms of involved fatherhood, worked in gendered ways that facilitated them to do so.

Given the small study sample, the arguments made throughout this chapter are limited and reflective of the particularities of the study and its sample. The analysis contained within this research focused on cultural and gendered aspects and did not delve into factors related to education or social class. Not only do the conclusions require more extensive investigation, but many questions remain, for example, in relation to experiences of those who had established care arrangements by litigating or experienced family violence. The research was also undertaken prior to the global COVID-19 pandemic, and it is thus not known how this might have impacted how care arrangements were made in light of health and safety concerns, as well as other contextual factors related to the social, cultural, emotional, and physical well-being of children, parents, and families more generally.

Despite these limitations, this research makes valuable theoretical and empirical contributions to the sociological scholarship on post-separation parenting, parenthood, and familial life, as well as to theorisations of agency and identity. The analysis highlights the value of research that examines agency and identity, as well as experiences of post-separation familial life, at the intersections of gender and ethnicity. It demonstrates how gender and ethnicity interact to differentially position how individual social agents enact, and are able to enact, agency and identity following separation. My analysis nuances understandings of relationality and facilitates a broader examination of the complexities associated with negotiating and enacting agency and identity following parental separation.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Moeata Keil is a Lecturer in Sociology, School of Social Sciences at the University of Auckland. Her research calls attention to the importance of theorising from the margins. Her current research explores how gender and ethnicity interact to shape experiences of family life, particularly post-separation family life. It looks at how Pacific mothers, fathers, and extended family members navigate family life following separation, including family court systems and child support obligations. Her research calls attention to the importance of understanding family within broader networks of relationships than the couple and parent-child dyad and calls for the state, law, and policy to better recognise culturally informed family norms and practices.

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