Gay men and fatherhood in South Africa: a discursive study
- Morison, Tracy, Lynch, Ingrid, Reddy, Vasu
- Authors: Morison, Tracy , Lynch, Ingrid , Reddy, Vasu
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143782 , vital:38282 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: There is little South African research on gender and sexual minorities’ reproductive decision-making and, to date, no published work explicitly focused on gay men. Motivated by the virtual absence of gay men in research, as well as their marginalisation more generally, we undertook a qualitative investigation of gay men’s thoughts, feelings and perspectives of fatherhood, fatherhood decisions, and experiences of pathways to parenthood. Framed by a reproductive justice perspective, the aim of the study was not only to generate new knowledge, but also to inform policy, services, and advocacy. In this paper we present some of the findings from our discursive analysis of participants’ accounts of their own experiences of the pathway to parenthood or remaining ‘childfree’. We locate our analysis within the broader South African context and show how the entanglement of various social identity markers - particularly gender, race, and class - come to bear on participants’ experiences.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Morison, Tracy , Lynch, Ingrid , Reddy, Vasu
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143782 , vital:38282 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: There is little South African research on gender and sexual minorities’ reproductive decision-making and, to date, no published work explicitly focused on gay men. Motivated by the virtual absence of gay men in research, as well as their marginalisation more generally, we undertook a qualitative investigation of gay men’s thoughts, feelings and perspectives of fatherhood, fatherhood decisions, and experiences of pathways to parenthood. Framed by a reproductive justice perspective, the aim of the study was not only to generate new knowledge, but also to inform policy, services, and advocacy. In this paper we present some of the findings from our discursive analysis of participants’ accounts of their own experiences of the pathway to parenthood or remaining ‘childfree’. We locate our analysis within the broader South African context and show how the entanglement of various social identity markers - particularly gender, race, and class - come to bear on participants’ experiences.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Knowledge production about voluntary childlessness as a family form: a systematic review of trends
- Authors: Lynch, Ingrid
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143604 , vital:38266 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: There has been a steady increase in research concerned with non-traditional reproductive decision-making, including research investigating voluntarily childlessness. Existing reviews of this body of scholarship focus on dominant themes over time including: the demographic incidence of voluntary childlessness, different pathways to voluntary childlessness, motivations for being childfree, physical and mental health consequences of being childfree and stigmatisation of childfree individuals and responses to stigma. We extend previous systematic literature reviews to attend to sociohistorical and geopolitical aspects of knowledge production about voluntary childlessness. Our dataset comprised 195 peer-reviewed articles that were coded and analysed to explore inter alia the main topic under investigation, country context, sample characteristics and methodology. We discuss the findings in relation to the socio-historical contexts of knowledge production, highlighting implications for current understandings of families, reproductive decision-making and reproductive justice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Lynch, Ingrid
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143604 , vital:38266 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: There has been a steady increase in research concerned with non-traditional reproductive decision-making, including research investigating voluntarily childlessness. Existing reviews of this body of scholarship focus on dominant themes over time including: the demographic incidence of voluntary childlessness, different pathways to voluntary childlessness, motivations for being childfree, physical and mental health consequences of being childfree and stigmatisation of childfree individuals and responses to stigma. We extend previous systematic literature reviews to attend to sociohistorical and geopolitical aspects of knowledge production about voluntary childlessness. Our dataset comprised 195 peer-reviewed articles that were coded and analysed to explore inter alia the main topic under investigation, country context, sample characteristics and methodology. We discuss the findings in relation to the socio-historical contexts of knowledge production, highlighting implications for current understandings of families, reproductive decision-making and reproductive justice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Stigma resistance in online child free communities : the limitations of choice rhetoric
- Morison, Tracy, Macleod, Catriona I, Lynch, Ingrid, Mijas, Magda, Shivakumar, Seemanthini T
- Authors: Morison, Tracy , Macleod, Catriona I , Lynch, Ingrid , Mijas, Magda , Shivakumar, Seemanthini T
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6311 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019799 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0361684315603657
- Description: 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.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Morison, Tracy , Macleod, Catriona I , Lynch, Ingrid , Mijas, Magda , Shivakumar, Seemanthini T
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6311 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019799 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0361684315603657
- Description: 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.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
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