Single Parents: Representations and Resistance in an International Context (Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life) 3030713105, 9783030713102

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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN STUDIES IN FAMILY AND INTIMATE LIFE

Single Parents Representations and Resistance in an International Context Edited by Berit Åström · Disa Bergnehr

Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life

Series Editors Lynn Jamieson, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Jacqui Gabb, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK Sara Eldén, Sociologisk Forskning, Lund University, Lund, Sweden Chiara Bertone, University of Eastern Piedmont, Alessandria, Italy ˇ Vida Cesnuityte, ˙ Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania

‘The Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life series is impressive and contemporary in its themes and approaches’ – Professor Deborah Chambers, Newcastle University, UK, and author of New Social Ties. The remit of the Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life series is to publish major texts, monographs and edited collections focusing broadly on the sociological exploration of intimate relationships and family life. The series covers a wide range of topics, spanning micro, meso and macro analyses, to investigate the ways that people live, love and care in diverse contexts. The series includes works by early career scholars and leading internationally acknowledged figures in the field. The editors intend to continue publishing influential and prize-winning research. This series was originally edited by David H.J. Morgan and Graham Allan.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14676

Berit Åström · Disa Bergnehr Editors

Single Parents Representations and Resistance in an International Context

Editors Berit Åström Department of Language Studies Umeå University Umeå, Sweden

Disa Bergnehr Department of Education Linnaeus University Växjö, Sweden

Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life ISBN 978-3-030-71310-2 ISBN 978-3-030-71311-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2022 Chapter 11 is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see license information in the chapter. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1

Introduction Disa Bergnehr and Berit Åström

Part I 2

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4

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Single Mothers

Representation of Single Mothers in Petra Soukupová’s Contemporary Czech Prose: Guilty Mothers and Uninvolved Fathers Marcin Filipowicz

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Young Single Motherhood in Contemporary German and Irish Films: Lucy, Jelly Baby and Heartbreak Kira Collins

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Unwed and Unwanted: Sofia and the Taboo of Single Motherhood in Morocco Julie Rodgers

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Advice Books for Single Mothers Raising Sons: Biology, Culture and Guilt Berit Åström

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Part II Single Fathers 6

Single Dads in the Entertainment Arena: Hegemonic Hierarchies and Happy Endings Rebecca Feasey

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Single Fathers with Daughters in American Film Carol M. Dole

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DILF or Ditched? Representations of the ‘Single Father’ in Swedish Internet-Based Forum Discussions Ulrika Widding

Part III 9

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Solo Mothers Through Assisted Reproductive Technologies

On the Margins: The Experiences of Single Women Who Conceive at Australian Fertility Clinics Fiona Kelly Faire un bébé toute seule [A Child on One’s Own]: Challenging France’s Patriarchal Reproductive Laws in Single Mothers’ Blogs and Discussion Forums Nathalie Ségeral Reluctantly Solo? Representations of Single Mothers via Donor Procedure, Insemination and IVF in Swedish Newspapers Helena Wahlström Henriksson and Disa Bergnehr Plan B: Single Women, Romantic Love and the Making of Babies in The Back-Up Plan and The Switch Jenny Bonnevier

Correction to: Reluctantly Solo? Representations of Single Mothers via Donor Procedure, Insemination and IVF in Swedish Newspapers Helena Wahlström Henriksson and Disa Bergnehr Index

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Notes on Contributors

Berit Åström is an Associate Professor of English Literature at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research in recent years has focused on the representation of mothers, motherhood and mothering in literature, film and television. Amongst her recent publications is the anthology The Absent Mother in the Cultural Imagination, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Disa Bergnehr is Professor of Education at Linnaeus University, and Senior Lecturer in Social Work, at Jönköping University. Her main research interests are (nuclear, single, refugee) family life, home-school relations, schooling in disadvantaged areas, children’s socialisation, children’s and parents’ wellbeing and agency. Recent publications (2020) are ‘Adapted fathering for new times: Refugee men’s narratives on caring for home and children’, Journal of Family Studies, ‘Friends through school and family: Refugee girls’ talk about friendship formation’, Childhood, (with Olov Aronson and Sofia Enell), and ‘Hardworking women: Representations of lone mothers in the Swedish daily press’, Feminist Media Studies, (with Helena Wahlström Henriksson). Jenny Bonnevier is a Senior Lecturer in English at Örebro University, Sweden. Her main research focus is currently representations of reproductive technologies in contemporary American culture, feminist theory and the relation between reproduction and futurity. Kira Collins holds a Ph.D. in Media and German Studies from Maynooth University, an M.A. and B.A. in Film Studies/Media vii

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Dramaturgy from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. Her research focuses on the representation of non-traditional motherhood in contemporary Irish and German film. Carol M. Dole is Professor of English literature and member of the film studies faculty at Ursinus College, a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, USA. Her scholarship often focuses on representations of gender in film. Rebecca Feasey is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Media at Bath Spa University. She has published a range of work on representations of gender including Masculinity and Popular Television (2008), From Happy Homemaker to Desperate Housewives (2012), Maternal Readings of Popular Television (2016) and Infertility and Non-Traditional Family Building in the Media (2019). Marcin Filipowicz is an Associate Professor at the Department of Czech Language and Literature, University of Hradec Králové (The Czech Republik) and at the Institute of the Western and Southern Slavic Studies, University of Warsaw (Poland). His current research focuses on representation of family within contemporary Czech prose. Fiona Kelly is Dean of the La Trobe University Law School. She holds a B.A. and LL.B.(Hons.) from the University of Melbourne and a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. Her research interests are in Family and Health Law, with a particular focus on the legal regulation of assisted reproduction. Dr. Julie Rodgers is a Lecturer in French at Maynooth University and a member of the Motherhood Research Centre based at Maynooth University. Her research focuses on Quebec Literature and Culture and Contemporary Women’s Writing and Film in French. At present, she is working on the production and reception of maternal counter-narratives, studying a wide range of mothering experiences that do not correspond to the normative, patriarchal script of motherhood. Nathalie Ségeral is a Lecturer in French studies at The University of Sydney. Recent publications include “Mothers, Interrupted: Reframing Motherhood in the Wake of Trauma in Contemporary French Women’s Writings” (The Truth about (M)Otherhood: Choosing to be childfree, H.

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Cummins, J. Rodgers and J. Wouk [eds.], Demeter Press) and a forthcoming volume, Trauma and Motherhood in Contemporary Literature and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan), co-edited with L. Lazzari. Helena Wahlström Henriksson is Professor of Gender studies at Uppsala University. Main research areas are feminist cultural studies, masculinity studies, and critical kinship studies. Her work focuses on cultural understandings of parenthood and embodied parent–child relations. A new project (with Disa Bergnehr) investigates representations of single parents in Swedish media. Dr. Ulrika Widding is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education, Umeå University. Her work is mainly about norms and ideals associated to parenthood and parenting support, and how social categories such as gender, social class and sexuality intersects in the doings of parenting and family life.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Disa Bergnehr and Berit Åström

Introduction Single-parent households with minor children have steadily increased since the 1970s in the Western world, but there is variation between countries, with high numbers in, for instance, the US, the UK and Russia, and low numbers in Poland, Romania and southern Europe (Bernardi et al. 2018). The single parent, whether single by choice or by external circumstances, who cares for and nurtures dependent children ‘alone’, is a potentially divisive character that challenges the nuclear family ideal. Today’s single parents are a diverse group (May 2010), but it consists of mainly separated or divorced parents in their thirties that share, at least in part, the caregiving and financial costs with the other parent, and often remarry or cohabit after some years of living alone (Bernardi et al. 2018).

D. Bergnehr (B) Department of Pedagogy and Learning, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] B. Åström Department of Language Studies, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_1

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A parent is a parent also to ‘children’ above 18 years of age, but it is common in research to refer to a parent as someone with minor children and it is this kind of single parenthood that is explored and discussed in the present volume. It is still far more common for women than men to be primary parents and to reside by themselves with their children. Singleparent households, particularly those led by a mother, are at greater risk of poverty and health issues than those with two parents, but there is also a variation here depending on welfare security systems, with low poverty rates in Scandinavia, and high rates in Anglo-Saxon nations (Bernardi et al. 2018). In English, the standard terms applied when referring to a parent who parents alone, that is, without residing with the co-parent, are single parent/hood and lone parent/hood. ‘Solo’ parent also occurs, but in research it is commonly used when referring to ‘single parents by choice’, that is, a single woman or man who decided to enter parenthood alone. All of these terms, single/lone/solo, risk depicting single parents as more alone in their parenting than they really are. Many, or even most, single parents co-parent in one way or the other with the other parent, and/or a new partner and/or gain support from relatives and friends as well as from caregivers and educators in public or private day-care and schools. Consequently, the single/lone/solo parent is seldom alone in the caregiving and nurturing of the child (Alsarve et al. 2017; Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020; Bernardi et al. 2018; Coles 2015; Doucet 2016). But ‘single’ connotes ‘lonely’ to a lesser degree than ‘lone’ and thus we suggest here that of the two, the term ‘single parent’ is preferable, that is, if one does not wish to indicate that the parent is actually (represented) as (comparatively) alone. However, living single as the only family provider and primary caregiver still means that one parent, rather than two or more, takes on the main costs of parenthood in terms of time, energy and finances. Combining paid and unpaid work with care for children is harder for a single parent and may cause stress and health issues (Bernardi et al. 2018; Gähler 1998; Westin 2007). Worth noting is that single parents enter this status for a variety of reasons: she or he can be divorced, separated, widowed, never partnered with the other parent, or become a single parent by choice. Each reason may affect parenting and the everyday life of both parent and child in different ways. In addition, the parent’s age, education, social network, dis/ability, and financial means will influence her/his parenting, and these external factors often change

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over time (Kuczynski and De Mol 2015; Doucet 2015). Also, the cultural and socio-political context plays a great part in forming (single) motherhood and (single) fatherhood and individual experiences of being a parent (Barlow and Chapin 2010; Bergnehr 2020; Shwalb et al. 2013; Robila 2014). In research, the concepts ‘single/lone father’ and ‘single/lone mother’ are far from unequivocal; they are defined, applied and measured in varying ways, which affect the analysis and the results of the particular study (Coles 2015; Doucet 2016). For instance, a single father can be the only adult in the household with sole legal and residential custody over one or more children (of different ages and genders), or he can have repartnered and cohabit with sole or joint residential and/or legal custody over his children. He may be a non-residential father who has little to no contact with his child/ren, or he may have a great deal of contact and joint legal custody although the children seldom or never reside with him, and so forth. A single mother may cohabit full or part-time with a new partner who provides both social and financial support, or she may lack a partner and a supportive social network residing alone with her children, but in both cases be defined, by others and/or herself as a single parent. Thus, we have to be aware that the terms single father and single mother can mean different things, in research and practice, and involve different kinds of family lives. Previous research on single parenthood explores health, poverty and child development outcomes as well as social policies, the political and public discourse, and individual experiences. The field is extensive, and we do not claim here to give the reader a comprehensive picture of what has been done but rather a few examples. Research on single parents, which often compares separated/divorced fathers and mothers, shows that separated/divorced fathers are financially better off, have more social support, and have fewer health issues than separated/divorced mothers (Coles 2015; Gähler 1998; Westin 2007), which is the case also when the welfare systems differ, for instance when comparing the US and Sweden. Although such facts point at great gendered inequalities among single parents, they are not surprising since men generally earn more than women, while the mother is most often the primary parent (also) after separation/divorce who takes the main costs in terms of finances, time, and energy of providing and caring for her offspring. However, it has been shown that the amount and kinds of support provided by the state indeed impact on single mothers’ health and prospect of self-provision and thus

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vary accordingly between different countries; single mothers appear to fare better in nations with extensive universal parent support systems and worse where little such support is provided (Burström et al. 2010). A great number of studies on single mothers are conducted in the US and the UK, which are nations with high numbers of single parents, teenage mothers and poor single mother households. Single fathers have also been explored, generally with quantitative methods that focus on health issues, child development and fathers’ parenting styles in comparison to mothers (Coles 2015), but also, recently, with qualitative methods that aim to understand, for instance, young single fathers’ challenges and relationships to their children, with results that stand against the stereotype of these fathers being deadbeat dads, that is, unreliable, irresponsible and feckless (Neale and Davis 2015; Neale 2016). However, in the US and UK, it is dominantly the poor, young, uneducated welfare dependent (single) mother that has been debated and defined as a social problem, which has generated an interest into investigating social policies and the political rhetoric in regard to this group (e.g. Briggs 2018; Carabine 2007; Duncan and Edwards 1999; Hancock 2004; Pulkingham et al. 2010). The single mother has been stigmatised and defamed, but studies also show signs of resistance to such images (Allen et al. 2014; FitzGerald 2013; Howard 2016), and alternative ways to present the single mother, particularly if she is well off, older and provides for herself (Hertz 2006; Zadeh and Foster 2016). It is thus of relevance to continue exploring how the single parent, depending on different factors such as gender, socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity/origin, come across in these national contexts, and how the representation may vary depending on the material that is analysed. It is of equal importance to study how single parenthood plays out in societies other than the UK and US, to widen the picture and with contrasting perspectives problematise dominant figurations. For instance, Swedish research shows quite different images of the single mother than those often found in work from the US and UK: in Swedish daily news the single mother is portrayed as a hard-working hero (Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020), and interviews with Swedish single mothers show little signs of these women having to position themselves in relation to any unfavourable stereotype (Alsarve et al. 2017). This volume contains chapters that analyse material from the US and UK as well as from Australia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Morocco and Sweden, and as such, the volume provides an

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international perspective on single parenthood. The authors analyse how single mothers and fathers, and their parenting, are represented in novels, self-help literature, daily newspapers, film and television, social media, as well as through their own narratives in interviews and on social media. The single parent in these kinds of material is to our knowledge less explored than in research conducted on social policy or quantitative investigations of health issues and financial resources. Moreover, this volume offers trans-disciplinary knowledge by presenting chapters with methods and materials from the social sciences side by side with chapters that were conducted by scholars in the humanities. Such an approach has the potential to provide a broader picture of how the single parent can come across, and to point at similarity and variance in work conducted with different materials and methodologies. In addition, the volume explores how gender, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and age are effectuated in the different materials from the different national contexts, and as such contributes to illuminate the complexities of single parenthood, in how it is represented as well as how it is practiced and experienced. There is not one single parent, and researchers as well as decision-makers and professionals must be cautious not to homogenise the group (May 2010). The aim of this volume is to cast a wide net, both in terms of material and methodologies. While some scholars come from the social sciences and some from the humanities, all carry out qualitative studies. However, as stated in the subtitle, representation is the focus of the analyses, in one way or another. In this, the chapters follow the example of previous scholarly analysis of, particularly motherhood (e.g. Bassin et al. 1996; Fischer 1996; Heffernan and Wilgus 2020; Kaplan 1992: Rye et al. 2017; Woodward 2003), but also fatherhood and samesex parenting (Armengol-Carrera 2009; Cavalcante 2014; Gregory and Milner 2011; Johnson 2017; Precup 2020; Landau 2009; Lupton and Barclay 1997; Turchi and Bernabo 2020). The chapters consider both self-representation and representation from the outside, resistance as well as regulatory practices. In doing so, they reflect the varied meanings of the concept of representation itself. One of those meanings is to have someone speak for one in, for example, legal or political contexts. Or, to be made visible in public discourse. This is a position taken, for instance by Jamie Landau in a study of the representation of gay families in US print news stories and photographs (2009). In addition to discussing how gay families are represented/portrayed, Landau also points to the importance of gay families being represented at all, being made visible. This

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is also a point made by Rebecca Feasey in this volume, who argues for greater visibility for single fathers, in popular culture as well as in different types of social support. There is more than simply visibility, however. To borrow from cultural theorist Stuart Hall (Hall et al. 2013), representation can be divided into three different categories: reflective, intentional and constructionist (2013, 24–25). Hall uses these concepts to discuss how language constructs meanings, but here we would like to apply them to the various types of material investigated in this volume and the way single parents are portrayed: books (fiction and non-fiction), film and television, newspaper articles, blogs, discussion forums and interviews. Reflective representation is the assumption that the representation ‘simply reflect[s] …the truth that is already there’ (Hall et al. 2013, 24). To a certain extent, some of the material analysed take that as a starting point, as in Helena Wahlström Henriksson’s and Disa Bergnehr’s survey of the representation of solo mothers via ART in Swedish newspapers, as a way of gauging societal attitudes. However, as Henriksson and Bergnehr show, representations are never ‘simply’ reflections. Instead, they are always, in one way or another, intentional. That is, they express the producer’s intended meaning (Hall et al. 2013, 25). Through the choice of words, selection of who is allowed to be heard or not, or, in the case of film and television, through camera angles, sound and editing, the reader/viewer is presented with a meaning, an interpretation of what a single father or mother is. Yet, as Hall et al. intimates (2013, 25), this interpretation does not express only the producer’s intention. The question is if representations go beyond reflection and intention and also construct meaning (Hall et al. 2013, 25). This is the claim of many scholars, such as Helena Wahlström Henriksson (2020) who posits that ‘cultural representations’ of fathers create a ‘web of signification’ that shapes how we understand fatherhood (2020, 320, 324). Similarly, Valerie Heffernan and Gay Wilgus point to how the circulation of maternal ‘images, representations and constructions…ha[s] shaped, and continue to shape societal conceptualisations of motherhood and mothering’ (2018, 2). That representations influence society and culture is suggested in the model of the Circuit of Culture (du Gay et al. 2013, xxxi). This model shows the continuous flow back and forth between representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation. Each node in the circuit influences, and is influenced by the others. These forces and influences are explored in this volume, in the way representations of

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single parents are produced and consumed, how they may affect the single parent’s identity construction or society’s view of the identity of the single parent, as well as how such identities are regulated. The normative and regulative aspects are explored, for example, by Marcin Filipowicz, Berit Åström and Jenny Bonnevier, as they are articulated in Czech novels, US advice books and US romantic comedies. Other scholars investigate how representation can become a site of resistance. Kira Collins, Julie Rodgers and Carol Dole do that in their respective studies of German, Irish, Moroccan and independent US films; Ulrika Widding and Nathalie Ségeral demonstrate the ebb and flow of normativity and resistance in their studies of Swedish and French online discussion forums, and Fiona Kelly’s interviews with Australian solo mothers show how self-representation can become a site of resistance, of controlling one’s own narrative. Building on work carried out on both single mothers (such as Silva 1996; Kiernan et al. 1998; Motapanyane 2016) and on single fathers (e.g. Podnieks 2016; Tropp and Kelly 2016) this volume juxtaposes the way these two roles are represented and constructed. Placing investigations into single mothers and single fathers side by side not only makes it possible to compare and contrast the way society constructs single motherhood and fatherhood, but, as is shown in several of the chapters, the non-custodial parent, whether absent or present, still figures in the lives of the child and the custodial parent. It is thus pertinent to scrutinise how the mother is discussed and positioned in relation to the father, and vice versa. The chapters have been grouped together in three sections: one on single motherhood, one on single fatherhood and one on solo mothers and assisted reproductive technologies. Within these sections, the range of materials, nationalities and methodologies is widespread, placing, for example, Czech novels into conversation with Moroccan films, and interviews with film and media analysis. In this way, it is possible to see the differences and commonalities between the various texts, the resistance as well as the conformation that is taking place. The first section presents four chapters focusing on single motherhood through divorce, separation or never partnered which is by far the most common single-parent status. The work here contributes with analyses of contemporary literature and films from the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Morocco and the US. The section on single mothers is followed by a section on single fathers, which contributes with studies that explore

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how single fathers who have joint or full residential custody of their children are represented and come across in contemporary Anglo-American popular culture and Swedish social media. The last section of the volume deals again with single mothers, but a small minority of the group that we here, in accordance with much previous research, refer to as ‘solo mothers’ (Graham 2018), that is, single women who have entered parenthood without a partner through intercourse, adoption or the utilisation of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). This section focuses on the latter: the ‘ARTs mothers’. The four chapters explore single motherhood via ARTs in Australia, France, Sweden and the US.

Single Mothers The first section in the volume contains four chapters that explore single mothers in different media and different national contexts: Czech novels, Irish, German and Moroccan films and American advice books. Despite the distribution across boundaries of geography and genre, they display many commonalities in the way single mothers are conceptualised, discussed and represented. One of these commonalities is negative societal attitudes towards single mothers, particularly young ones. Historically, unmarried motherhood has been constructed as ‘a moral problem, as pathological, as mental deficiency, as a psychological or social problem’ (Carabine 2001, 304). Single mothers have been placed in a hierarchy: widows at the top and unmarried mothers at the bottom (Brush 1997; Carabine 2001). This may have changed, to a certain extent— Barbara Katz Rothman claims that in the US ‘[s]ingle motherhood has changed, from an aberration or a tragedy to a way of life, a perfectly ordinary way to raise children’ (Rothman 2009, 324)—but other studies contradict this picture, showing that young, uneducated, poor, especially black mothers risk being ostracised (e.g. Adair 2000; Briggs 2018; Hancock 2004), and that the single mother group commonly is homogenised and represented in denigrating terms (May 2010). Recent work from both the US and the UK, where much research on single mothers is conducted, demonstrates that single mothers, also those poor, young and welfare dependent, are represented on reality television and film as complex beings with merits as well as faults (Allen et al. 2014; FitzGerald 2013; Howard 2016), and that the single mother in literature not only has the potential to challenge the nuclear family norm but can be

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construed as an attractive alternative (Fink 2011). Work from other countries than the US and UK suggests that the representations of the single mother are very much context-dependent. In Sweden, for instance, the single mother in newspapers is not stigmatised or defamed but depicted as a hard-working hero, although poor and in need of societal support (Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020). The first chapter in the section on single mothers is ‘Representation of Single Mothers in Petra Soukupová’s Contemporary Czech Prose: Guilty Mothers and Uninvolved Fathers’ by Marcin Filipowicz. Focusing on two novels and one short story collection by the very popular Czech novelist Petra Soukupová, Filipowicz analyses them in the context of a society where single parent households are on the rise, but where the heterosexual nuclear family is still the ideal. Filipowicz notes that it is the conflict ‘between the way things are and the way they should be’ that drives Soukupová’s texts, creating narrative tension. In all of them, the idea of the nuclear family is presented as ‘an oppressive lie’, yet the novels and the short stories end up representing single mothers as failures, unable to care for their children, unable to provide for even their most basic needs. It instead falls on other mother figures to step in and save the children. Although there are absent or failing father figures in the texts, it is the mothers who are held up as failures. Filipowicz thus contends that Soukupová’s fiction ‘contributes to the preservation of social stereotypes’, perpetuating the stigmatisation of the single mother. The second chapter, by Kira Collins, explores cinematic representations of the single mother, ‘Young Single Motherhood in Contemporary German and Irish Films: Lucy, Jelly Baby and Heartbreak’. In Western cinema, mothers in general have tended to be represented as either ciphers or problems (Arnold 2013; Feasey 2012; Fischer 1996) or absent (Åström 2015a, 2017; Feasey 2012; Ristovski-Slijepcevic 2013). Single mothers in films have consistently been presented negatively (Kaplan 1992; Bassin et al. 1996), with few examples of more favourable representations (FitzGerald 2013). In recent years, there have been several American films depicting single young mothers and unwanted/unexpected pregnancies, such as Knocked Up, Waitress and Juno (all released in 2007). These films have been interpreted as, for example, comments on the abortion debate or postfeminist reiterations of conservative ideas of motherhood (Hoerl and Kelly 2010; Latimer 2009; Tarancón 2012; Clarke 2014).

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Widening the scope beyond the US, Kira Collins turns to European films. Using Kaplan’s seminal 1992 study as a starting point, Collins analyses the representation of young single mothers in Irish and German films, and how they handle questions of bodily autonomy, social isolation, scarce financial means and what it means to be a ‘good’ mother. Collins’ analyses suggest that although the women in the films are depicted as struggling hard in their situation as young single mothers with scarce means, they are positioned as failing in their motherhood since they are not able to live up to the middle-class ideal. Single (young) motherhood is depicted negatively, as something to be avoided. In this way, the nuclear family ideal, that is, coupled/married motherhood, is confirmed rather than questioned, and the films do not contribute towards challenging dominant cultural norms. Some of the films illustrate how the women struggle to maintain their social contacts with peers and to maintain or retain friends that they can share their maternal experiences with. In this way, the films address the question of single mothers’ social networks, and, although implicitly, stress the importance of regarding single parents as social beings whose parenting and family life is affected by their opportunity to gain social, emotional and/or financial support from friends, family, and peers. The fathers in the films that Collins analyses are, on the other hand, absent and do not come across as co-parents with whom the women could share the challenges of parenthood. By juxtaposing two national contexts, Collins shows that despite the countries’ cultural differences (demography, religion, history, legal system) the German and Irish films depict single motherhood as hard, difficult and lonely, and best avoided. The third chapter, ‘Unwed and Unwanted: Sofia and the Taboo of Single Motherhood in Morocco’ by Julie Rodgers, has similarities with Collins’ chapter. The chapter analyses the representation of a young single mother in the French-Arabic film Sofia by Meryem Benm’Barek, released in 2018. The film’s protagonist is a young Moroccan girl, Sofia who finds herself pregnant out of wedlock, following the rape by an acquaintance of her father’s. Since this is both a moral and legal transgression in Morocco, Sofia finds herself in a very difficult position. Neither she nor the child will have any social or legal standing, unless and until Sofia is married. Rodgers analyses how the film depicts the lengths to which the young woman must go in order to create a future for herself and her child. A husband and a ‘father’, obtained through marriage, is a prerequisite for the safety of Sofia and her child. In this respect, the man (father, husband)

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is absolutely necessary. Rodgers points to the film’s ambivalence, showing ‘moments of transgression but also submission to the cultural norms’, thus opening up for a conversation that is urgently needed in Morocco and elsewhere. Where Filipowicz notes in his chapter on Soukupová’s fiction that her novels return to a cultural status quo, and the Irish and German films analysed by Kira Collins tend to depict the young mother mostly as deprived and failing in her motherhood, Benm’Barek’s film offers a way of thinking about and representing resistance to dominant discourses. The fourth chapter in the section, Berit Åström’s ‘Advice Books for Single Mothers Raising Sons: Biology, Culture and Guilt,’ analyses the regulatory practices in American self-help literature aimed at single mothers, specifically mothers of boys. The authors’ stated aim is to help, but the books are generally grounded in ‘borderwork’ (Doucet 2018; Thorne 1993), that is, establishing and policing borders between the genders. Thus, the authors tend to draw on conservative, heteronormative conceptualisations of family and masculinity, in order to establish that single mothers cannot raise sons to be men. Although the books are aimed at mother-readers, fathers loom large in the books: their centrality in families and their importance for the healthy mental and physical development of boys is repeatedly stressed. The books thus evidence a great tension— on the one hand, the mother-readers are told that they are important and that they are able to raise their sons, but on the other hand, it is argued that the sons will develop into weak, insecure young men, prone to violence, criminality, drug abuse and suicide. In this way, the books perpetuate the tendency to ‘mother blame’ that has been so prevalent in US society, while concurrently raising the importance of the father (e.g. Rose 2018).

Single Fathers Three chapters in this volume explore representations of single fathers that are sole or joint caregivers for one or more children. Two of the chapters investigate how the single father figures in globally widespread American and UK television and film. The third chapter studies how single fathers are described and positioned, by the fathers themselves and others, in a Swedish online discussion forum. In the material that these chapters are based on, the single father is mostly a father who parents his

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child/children without a cohabiting partner, in some cases alone and in others jointly with a co-parent—the mother—who resides elsewhere. Research and debate on men’s fathering go back almost a century (Seward 2014). It can be suggested that this interest in men as fathers mirrors the centrality that the ‘father figure’ has in many cultures around the globe, and that ‘this becomes especially interesting when juxtaposed with the complex, diverse, and not necessarily central ways that fathers figure in the actual everyday lives of children (and mothers)’ (Wahlström Henriksson 2020, 320). Fathers’ involvement in childrearing and domestic duties has been greatly debated and investigated. However, as Doucet (2015) has stressed: it is hard to measure reproductive work, not least because it is not static but rather complex, situated, fluid and shared differently, in varying ways. It has become even more difficult to study the involvement and (shared) caregiving of single parents, in times of increasingly joint legal and residential custody after separation; how children are cared and nurtured for, and by whom, is not easily pinpointed (Bernardi et al. 2018). The representation of fathers in general in film and television has undergone a rather dramatic change during the twentieth century. Fathers have gone from being presented as distant, authoritarian, or wellmeaning, but ineffectual in the post-war period (Bruzzi 2005) to caring and involved family men in the 1980s and 90s (Feasey 2008; Vavrus 2002) to postfeminist fathers in the first decade of the twentieth century who outcompete mothers in their capability as carers (Hamad 2014; Åström 2015b, 2017; Wahlström 2010). In particular, single fathers have emerged as a new kind of hero. As Hamad (2014) shows, from the early 2000s onwards, Hollywood productions present the widower with a child as a particularly attractive, romantic character. In the first chapter in the section on single fathers, ‘Single Dads in the Entertainment Arena: Hegemonic Hierarchies and Happy Endings,’ Rebecca Feasey charts this shift from the father as a ‘shadowy figure of authority’ on the periphery of the family unit to the single father as the custodial parent and sole caregiver, giving an overview of representations in various forms of media and online support groups, as well as film and television. Asking ‘where have all the single fathers gone’, Feasey notes that although there are single fathers in film and television, particularly in romantic comedies, there is a lack of ‘paternal representation’ in the ‘media landscape’, citing as examples a lack of parenting

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manuals for single fathers, as well as documentaries on single parent adoptions excluding single fathers. She calls for ‘more emotionally authentic depictions’ of the lives of single fathers that move beyond romance narratives, where single fatherhood is used to negotiate challenges to hegemonic masculinity, the ‘drive to tame and contain lone fatherhood’. She contends that the focus on single fathers as attractive widowers rather than divorcés or single by choice, and the insistence that a return to the nuclear family is required, is detrimental to the wellbeing of real-life single fathers, who rather need the support of more realistic representations. Some filmmakers do try to find other ways of telling stories about single fathers, as is evidenced in the second chapter in this section, Carol Dole’s ‘Single Fathers with Daughters in American Film.’ It has been noted that single fathers on film, live action as well as animated, tend to have only sons (Hamad 2014; Birthisel 2014). Yet, in the films Dole analyses, the single fathers are the sole caregivers of daughters. In her study, Dole contrasts mainstream films with lower budget films released in the period 2012–2018, building on Hannah Hamad’s (2014) seminal study of postfeminist fatherhood in US films of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Dole investigates not only the role of the father in these films, but also that of the absent mother. Her conclusion is that some of the tropes Hamad has found—single fathers presented as exceptional, heroic, romantic characters, who are better parents than their dead wives—are reiterated in the films she has analysed. However, some of the lower budget, independent films, which are able to take greater risks, avoid those tropes, and in some cases ‘sidestep almost all gendered assumptions about parental roles’. Speculating that this may herald ‘a cultural shift away from the dominant father and towards a more egalitarian power distribution’, Dole suggests that we are witnessing a move towards a greater variety of scripts for both fathers and mothers. The third chapter, ‘DILF or Ditched? Representations of the “Single Father” in Swedish Internet-Based Forum Discussions’ by Ulrika Widding, explores how the single father is positioned by himself and others in a Swedish open online forum focussing on family life and parenthood. Although the forum contains discussions on single fathers’ parenting, most replies and attention concerning them are found in threads that discuss whether single fathers are, or can be, suitable romantic partners. The common-knowledge assumption that surfaces as the basis of the discussions is that a single father is an involved father who co-parents with his ex-partner. This is very much in line with Swedish

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family policies that since the 1970s have aimed to encourage fathers to share childcare and household duties equally with their partner. That said, mothers still take on a larger share of the work, and although joint residential custody after divorce or separation has increased, the single mother household continues to be far more common than the single-father led family (Wells and Bergnehr 2014). As Widding’s analysis of the discussion forum shows, the single father who might wish to place his own needs above those of his child is positioned as deviating from the norm, as failing to perform the ideal, that is, a child-centred parenthood (Bäck-Wiklund and Bergsten 1997). But here, interestingly, a dilemma appears in the discussion threads: on the one hand, the single father’s commitment to the child, with presumed regular contacts with the child’s mother, may hinder his commitment to a new romantic relationship, and as such he is depicted as an unsuitable partner. On the other hand, he may be attractive since committed fathering is brought up as proof of him being a responsible, hard-working, and mature man. This appears to be the case particularly for men who are financially well-off, and thus, positioned as reliable breadwinners. The ideal man is thus a devoted father as well as a trusted provider for the family (Wahlström Henriksson 2020).

Solo Mothers Through Assisted Reproductive Technologies Four chapters in this volume explore representations and experiences of single women who (try to) become mothers through assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). Women who intentionally enter single motherhood through intercourse, adoption or the utilisation of ARTs have been referred to as ‘single mothers by choice’ (SMC) (Bock 2000), and ‘solo mothers’ (Graham 2018). That single women enter parenthood as solo mothers is not a new phenomenon, but the development of ARTs and the new legislations that have followed in many nations have increased their opportunities. Although ARTs have been available for several decades, they remain at times controversial and expensive, and raise recurrent discussions on who should have the right to ART-treatment (heterosexuals, homosexuals, couples, singles, men, women, etc.), which treatments should be legal (donor egg, donor sperm, embryo donation, surrogacy), and who should cover the costs (the individual or the government/tax payers). It has been argued that studies on ARTs illuminate the fact that

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‘some reproductive futures are valued and encouraged, while others are discouraged and curtailed’ (Faircloth and Gürtin 2017, 3.3). Much previous work has studied how reproduction is influenced by and experienced through the social, political and cultural context (e.g. Almeling 2015; Brannen et al. 2002; Greenhalgh 1995; Martin 1987). The chapters in the present volume that focus on single motherhood via ARTs primarily explore the ‘pre-conception parent’ period (Faircloth and Gürtin 2018, 990). By studying the processes that precede the decision to (try to) enter parenthood, we can widen our understandings of notions about parenthood, family life and self (Bergnehr 2008), and gain knowledge of how the socio-political context hinders and/or facilitates the transition to parenthood in different ways for different individuals (depending on age, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, dis/ability, etc.) (Faircloth and Gürtin 2017, 2018). Procreation is stratified and unequal: people become (or cannot become) parents under different circumstances and in different ways, with different consequences. While the poor, often young, welfare dependent and ethnic minority single mother has been debated, visible and disparaged in many national contexts, the self-providing, well-off, middle-class single mother has received less public attention (Carabine 2001). Lately, with the increased number of solo mothers through ARTs, this pattern appears to change, and the financially secure, middle-class mother has gained more attention. In Sweden and the UK, for instance, solo mothers are represented in news media in often lengthy, in-depth pieces that include personal narratives (Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020; Zadeh and Foster 2016). This does not mean that middle-class women do not risk facing prejudice and critique if they decide to parent alone, but affluence and age tend to stifle the criticism (Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020; Bock 2000). Although single mothers by choice are depicted as deviating from the nuclear family norm, they come across as capable, self-providing, respectable mothers. Previous research has shown that they distance themselves from the stereotypical, poor, uneducated and young (single) mother, and position themselves as older and more mature, financially independent, informed and capable of fulfilling the needs of the child without a co-parent (Bock 2000; Graham 2018); they are often referred to as ‘solo mothers’ and ‘single mothers by choice’ (Graham 2018). The chapters on solo mothers via ARTs draw on data from Australia, France, Sweden and the US—countries that are politically and culturally

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similar, but also different in regard to welfare systems and family policies (Esping Andersen 1990), where Sweden and France to a greater extent encourage mothers as well as fathers to participate in paid labour, and provide more comprehensive, universal support to families, such as subsidised public childcare and early childhood education. The material is varied and consists of interviews, blogs and discussion forums, daily newspapers, and blockbuster films. The section starts with Fiona Kelly’s chapter ‘On the Margins: The Experiences of Single Women who Conceive at Australian Fertility Clinics’. Kelly explores solo mothers’ pre-parent experiences in their contacts with healthcare professionals at fertility clinics in Australia, through analyses of the women’s narratives as they appear in semi-structured interviews. The study illuminates positive as well as negative experiences, and discusses whether fertility clinics in Australia have adapted their practice to the needs and situations of this new group of parents, the solo mothers who after many years of heated public debate have been granted access to the fertility clinics. All of the interviewed women had conceived a child at the clinic, and most stressed positive experiences and gratefulness for the help. But additionally, there were many examples of having felt marginalised and of being positioned as ‘other’ by a discourse of coupledom that surfaced in conversation and paperwork, which made assumptions that there was a partner and coparent. The single women repeatedly felt that they were deviating from the expected family, that is, partnered parenthood. Thus, their choice to enter parenthood was, albeit often implicitly, questioned. However, despite negative experiences, many of the women emphasised their gratefulness to the fertility clinics. Kelly suggests that the reason for this could be that they expected to be marginalised and defined as ‘other’; they had internalised the public and political discourse that criticises single and solo mothers. In the following chapter, ‘Faire un bébé toute seule [A child on one’s own]: Challenging France’s Patriarchal Reproductive Laws in Single Mothers’ Blogs and Discussion Forums’, Nathalie Ségeral illustrates single women’s and solo mothers’ experiences of trying to have a child, and their resistance to French laws and regulations that impede their entry into solo motherhood. In France, after much debate, it became legal in 2020 for single women and lesbians to access ARTs through the public health care system. In practice, however, most of these women are denied treatment since documented infertility has been the requirement to get

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the costs covered by the state. Over the years, single women (with financial means) have travelled abroad to receive treatment in countries where it has been legal. New laws that will enable all women access are soon to be in effect, but the opposition to ARTs for all has been strong. Ségeral contrasts the rhetoric of those who argue against ARTs for all with single and solo women’s writings about their thoughts, feelings and experiences. These writings manifest the women’s resistance to patriarchal values and laws; they take a stand against the shaming of single and solo mothers, as well as the notion that a father is essential to a child’s wellbeing and development, which are central in the opponents’ rhetoric. As such, the blogs and forums produce counter narratives of single motherhood and the family (Bock 2000). Ségeral suggests that solo mothers contribute to a new feminism, where the social media platforms enable women of different colour and class to meet, share experiences and together formulate arguments against traditional, patriarchal ideals. However, challenging dominant norms is not easily accomplished and may result in rejections not only from opponents in the public debate but from professionals, friends and relatives. The women’s stories in the blogs and discussion forums contain many examples of their attempts to enter parenthood, such as legal impediments, unsuccessful treatments, and being ostracised as someone who deprives one’s (future) child the right to a father. Moving from France to Sweden, and from social media to daily newspapers, the next chapter, ‘Reluctantly Solo? Representations of Single Mothers via Donor Procedure, Insemination and IVF in Swedish Newspapers’, by Helena Wahlström Henriksson and Disa Bergnehr, explores how single women who (wish to) use ARTs, and solo mothers who have entered parenthood through the use of ARTs, figure in the contemporary daily press. In 2016, single women in Sweden were granted access to ARTs through the public health care system, and lengthy articles as well as brief notes on the matter were published during this year and in the preceding and following years. Recurrent themes that surfaced in the articles were: running out of reproductive time (and thus making the decision to ‘go solo’), difficulties gaining access to treatment (due to long queues and lack of donor sperm), and life as a solo mother without a co-parent. A great deal of focus in the articles was on the pre-conception and pre-parent period, but texts dealing with the experiences of being a solo mother also occurred. The absence of a father for the child was repeatedly brought up in editorials and debates as well as

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in pieces where solo mothers were interviewed. The results of the study support previous work (e.g. Bock 2000; Graham 2018) in that a certain ambivalence surfaces, particularly in pieces where the solo mothers’ own voices are heard. The importance of the nuclear family and the romantic partner relationship are affirmed, and solo motherhood is referred to as the second-best alternative, or even the last option, for entering parenthood. But the decision is justified by making the mother ‘respectable’ (Skeggs 1997), that is, mature and ready for middle-class, intensive, single motherhood with stable financial means and an extensive social network (cf. Bergnehr 2008). In such ways, the mother comes across as capable of ‘good mothering’ despite the absence of a co-parent and a father to the child. The repeated mentioning of fathers signifies the dominant norm that the father is an indispensable component in the family and for the child’s health and growth. Yet, the depictions of solo motherhood in the daily newspapers in part also question the political emphasis on paternity, coupled parenthood, and fathers’ rights. A mother is made when a woman enters parenthood, and around the globe womanhood is very much connected to being or becoming a mother (Phoenix et al. 1991; Weedon 1987). In the last chapter in the section of solo mothers through ARTs, ‘Plan B: Single Women, Romantic Love and the Making of Babies in The Back-Up Plan and The Switch’, Jenny Bonnevier discusses single women’s trajectories to motherhood as they are depicted in two American films. The analysis shows how the making of babies is closely connected to the making of mothers (cf. Faircloth and Gürtin 2017) and completing women. Bonnevier concludes that the single women’s baby-making, by using insemination and donor sperm, also becomes the making of a nuclear family and a present, involved (step)father. Thus, the back-up plan, plan B, to become a solo mother, was also the making of a romantic relationship and a traditional family, the desired plan A, but only after the child was conceived or born. In this way, the romantic comedy genre delivers an expected story with a ‘happy ending’. By doing so, the films contribute to affirming conventional ideals of what constitutes a family (i.e. mother, father, child), although the family formation process diverts from the standard narrative. The leading female characters, as well as the men who become husbands and fathers, are depicted as accountable parents (Faircloth and Gürtin 2018), that is, committed, well-off, responsible and involved. The single mother’s status is but a parenthesis and soon replaced by the ‘stability’ promised by coupled parenthood, a man/father and marriage.

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Concluding Discussion The present volume makes clear that single parenthood is far from unambiguous, in practice as well as representation. It is divided along the lines of gender and socioeconomic status where age, sexuality, societal context and the reason for the singleness come into play. Age is most often connected to socioeconomic status, capability and maturity, where young age connotes scarce means and little social support while older age connotes education, financial stability and personal maturity. Race/ethnicity/origin is revealed to be of less significance in the material analysed here, or rather, it is most often individuals from the majority population in terms of race/ethnicity/origin who are represented. This is in contrast to previous US research that has pointed to the fact that AfroAmerican poor single mothers are repeatedly stigmatised and defamed in public and political discourse (Adair 2000; Briggs 2018; Hancock 2004). The results of this volume suggest that race/ethnicity/origin is not used to point out minority groups when single parents (i.e. mothers) are represented in European contexts; rather it appears somewhat downplayed. A Swedish study on representations of single mothers in the daily press support these results: the single mother’s origin was very seldom pointed out or alluded to, despite the fact that single mothers of foreign origin are at much greater risks of poverty and welfare dependence compared with native Swedes (Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020). The question is why minorities with regards to race/ethnicity/origin are so invisible in the single-parent representations in this volume, also in nations where low socioeconomic status and foreign origin converge, as is the case in many European nations. Indeed, ‘neutral’ representations may hold back racist stigmatisation and stereotypes, but it can also contribute to the silencing and making invisible minority groups with certain needs for certain societal support, rather than to a call for political attention and social reforms. The chapters that explore single motherhood involve women that are separated/never partnered/divorced. These women are frequently depicted as struggling to make ends meet and care and nurture the children, and as failing as mothers due to their social and financial circumstances and/or to the fact that the father is absent and thus cannot provide the essential fathering that a child requires. Commonly, but not always, the single mothers are young, uneducated and lonely in their endeavour. Although there is indeed a father (somewhere), he is most

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often absent and uninvolved in the caring for and rearing of the child, and sometimes not even mentioned, nor is any new (potential) romantic partner alluded to—the single mother is ‘de-sexualised’. Interesting to note is that the father as a co-parent is stressed as essential in some materials, reflecting that fathers in Western cultures are valorised and presented as being of the greatest importance for the child (Rose 2018), but he is hardly mentioned in others. This begs the question of why the single mother so often, in research as well as in the public discourse, is represented as utterly alone, and why the father as a potential, although not necessarily essential, co-parent is not habitually brought up (praised or questioned), absent or not. Despite the bleak picture of single mothers, which confirms previous research demonstrating that these women, as parents, are generally defamed and blamed, particularly if they are poor and welfare dependent (e.g. Adair 2000; Briggs 2018), there are also elements of resistance and agency that support work indicating somewhat more complex representations of the single mother (e.g. Allen et al. 2014; Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020; FitzGerald 2013; Howard 2016). This encourages future research to look not only for dominant negative descriptions but also for features that challenge such descriptions. Previous research points to a single mother hierarchy where some ‘are more acceptable than others’ (Carabine 2001, 309). In all the chapters on single mothers by choice—solo motherhood via ARTs—the women come across as self-providing and educated, with organised lives and social networks. They are ready and mature, have social support and financial means, and their situation epitomises the middle-class ideal of what life should look like when entering parenthood (Bergnehr 2008) with the exception of the missing partner. The missing, ‘non-existing’ father is repeatedly brought up in the materials that the chapters analyse. His nonpresence hovers over the women and their decision to have a child on their own. Solo motherhood is justified with references to these women’s advanced age, risk of infertility, lack of a co-parent (i.e. a father); they had to try for a child alone. This may be part of presenting these mothers as respectable, as women who comply with dominant societal, middle-class notions about what is best for the child. But at the same time, the affirmation of coupled (heterosexual) parenthood that it involves reproduces not only a single mother hierarchy where some mothers are respectable while others are not, but a parent hierarchy where coupled parenthood—the (heterosexual) nuclear family—continues to be placed at the top.

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It has been argued previously (Bock 2000; Graham 2018), and the chapters on single mothers through ARTs in the present volume confirm, that solo motherhood produces alternative representations of the single mother—a counter narrative of a respectable, responsible mother in contrast to the stereotypical image of the welfare dependent, uneducated and young single mother. But is this a good thing, and in that case for whom? We can see a trend where these middle-class solo mothers gain visibility in the public and political debate as well as in research. But what happens with the disadvantaged single mothers? Will the counter narrative be used mainly to position the middle-class mothers against what they are not? The poor single mother would not necessarily benefit from less public attention, but from being represented differently. Will the counter narrative of middle-class solo mothers contribute to a more general discussion concerning the single mother group, pointing out that some mothers and their children are in more need of certain kinds of societal support than others, and thus encourage, and change, the public and political debate and trigger reformed social policies? Furthermore, several countries have in recent years granted single women access to ARTs through the public health care system. Thus, solo mothers will perhaps become a more heterogeneous group in socioeconomic status and origin in the future, if, that is, the poor, young single woman will be defined as accountable and ‘worthy’ of ARTs treatment. Reproduction is stratified, and studies on ARTs point this out (Faircloth and Gürtin 2017; Gürtin and Faircloth 2018). The single father who resides full-time or part-time with his children has gained increased attention in research but is still an uncommon phenomenon in reality compared to the single mother (Coles 2015). Overall, the father in the Western world has become more involved in childcare and domestic duties the past decades, but the extent tends to vary depending on the political, societal context (Hobson 2002), and although the ideal of the committed, engaged father in part reflects practice, the breadwinner norm appears to dominate (Wahlström Henriksson 2020). Thus, (single) fathers’ presence or absence in the lives of their children, and their caring capabilities and practices, continue to be debated and scrutinised (Doucet 2016; see also Hanlon 2012). The single fathers revealed in the materials analysed in the present volume mainly come across as white, middle-class, older fathers who are separated/divorced or widowers. These representations do not challenge any stereotypes of single fatherhood since there seems to be none to challenge. The single

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fathers may be somewhat at a loss in their parenting, but they are not stigmatised, nor are they portrayed as failing parents due to their lack of a co-partner, i.e. a mother to the child. In great contrast to how the single mothers are generally represented, the idea of a retained coupledom, and the father as (potentially) involved in a romantic (heterosexual) relationship, is prominent. The ways single fathers are represented thus affirm the romantic vision that the ‘real’, ‘desired’ family consists of (breadwinner) father, (step-)mother, child. His status as single is temporary, and he is not, to the same extent as the single mother, depicted as being alone. The single man/father comes across as a sexual being. The single mothers, on the other hand, are more or less de-sexualised, inclined to focus on their mothering, but with great risks of failing nevertheless, or due to the lack of a male partner. Parenthood is gendered, and what is expected of a mother/woman is different from that of a father/man (Weedon 1987). This becomes evident from the results of the present volume that shows how gender is in play, forming experiences and representations differently. When the representations of gendered parenthood are juxtaposed, the single mother surfaces as the one who resists and negotiates the structures that form her life—she is an active agent—but she treads a narrow path; when she challenges norms she risks losing legitimacy and being ostracised. The single father, on the other hand, is not depicted as someone who questions, or desires to question, dominant norms of family life and fatherhood, other than to be less dominant and more involved in his social relations. Rather, he is presented as someone who affirms these ‘new’ norms of what fatherhood and masculinity entail, while also being a breadwinner and a ‘traditional’ man.

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Brannen, Julia, Susan Lewis, Ann Nilsen, and Janet Smithson. 2002. Young Europeans, Work and Family: Futures in Transition. London: Routledge. Briggs, Laura. 2018. How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Brush, Lisa D. 1997. ‘Worthy Widows, Welfare Cheats: Proper Womanhood in Expert Needs Talk About Single Mothers in the United States, 1900 to 1988.’ Gender and Society 11 (6): 720–746. Bruzzi, Stella. 2005. Bringing Up Daddy: Fatherhood and Masculinity in PostWar Hollywood. London: BFI Publishing. Burström, Bo, Margaret Whitehead, Stephen Clayton, Sara Fritzell, Francesca Vannoni, and Giuseppe Costa. 2010. ‘Health Inequalities Between Lone and Couple Mothers and Policy under Different Welfare Regimes – The Example of Italy, Sweden and Britain.’ Social Science & Medicine 70: 912–920. Carabine, Jean. 2001. ‘Constituting Sexuality Through Social Policy: The Case of Lone Motherhood 1834 and Today.’ Social & Legal Studies 10: 291–314. Carabine, Jean. 2007. ‘New Labour’s Teenage Pregnancy Policy: Constituting Knowing Responsible Citizens?’ Cultural Studies 21: 952–973. Cavalcante, Andre. 2014. ‘Anxious Displacements: The Representation of Gay Parenting on Modern Family and The New Normal and the Management of Cultural Anxiety.’ Television & New Media 16 (5): 454–471. Clarke, Kyra. 2014. ‘Becoming Pregnant: Disrupting Expectations of Girlhood in Juno (2007).’ Feminist Media Studies 15 (2): 257–270. Coles, Roberta L. 2015. ‘Single-Father Families: A Review of the Literature.’ Journal of Family Theory and Review 7: 144–166. Doucet, Andrea. 2015. ‘Parental Responsibilities: Dilemmas of Measurement and Gender Equality.’ Journal of Marriage and Family 77: 224–242. Doucet, Andrea. 2016. ‘Single Fathers.’ In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies, edited by C. L. Shehan, 1–4. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Doucet, Andrea. 2018. Do Men Mother? 2nd ed. London: University of Toronto Press. du Gay, Paul, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Anders Koed Madsen, Hugh Mackay, and Keith Negus. 2013. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, 2nd ed. London: Sage. Duncan, Simon, and Rosalind Edwards. 1999. Lone Mothers, Paid Work and Gendered Moral Rationalities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 1990. Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Faircloth, Charlotte, and Zeynep B. Gürtin. 2017. ‘Introduction - Making Parents: Reproductive Technologies and Parenting Culture Across Borders.’ Sociological Research Online 22 (2): 6.

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Faircloth, Charlotte, and Zeynep B Gürtin. 2018. ‘Fertile Connections: Thinking Across Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Parenting Culture Studies.’ Sociology 52 (5): 983–1000. Feasey, Rebecca. 2008. Masculinity and Popular Television. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Feasey, Rebecca. 2012. From Happy Homemaker to Desperate Housewives: Motherhood and Television. London: Anthem Press. Fink, Janet. 2011. ‘For Better or for Worse? The Dilemmas of Unmarried Motherhood in Mid-twentieth-century Popular British Film and Fiction.’ Women’s History Review 20: 145–160. Fischer, Lucy. 1996. Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre. Princeton: Princeton University Press. FitzGerald, Louise. 2013. ‘What Does Your Mother Know? Mamma Mia!’s Mediation of Lone Motherhood.’ In Exploring a Cultural Phenomenon. Mamma Mia! The Movie, edited by Louise FitzGerald and Melanie Williams, 205–222. London and New York: I.B Tauris. Gähler, Michael. 1998. Life After Divorce: Economic, Social and Psychological Well-being among Swedish Adults and Children Following Family Dissolution. Stockholm: Stockholm University. Graham, Susanna. 2018. ‘Being a “Good” Parent: Single Women Reflecting Upon ‘Selfishness’ and ‘Risk’ When Pursuing Motherhood Through Sperm Donation.’ Anthropology and Medicine 25 (3): 249–264. Greenhalgh, Susan. 1995. Situating Fertility: Anthropology and Demographic Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gregory, Abigail, and Susan Milner. 2011. ‘What Is “New” About Fatherhood? The Social Construction of Fatherhood in France and the UK.’ Men and Masculinities 14 (5): 588–606. Gürtin, Zeynep B., and Charlotte Faircloth. 2018. ‘Conceiving Contemporary Parenthood: Imagining, Achieving and Accounting for Parenthood in New Family Forms.’ Anthropology and Medicine 25 (3): 243–248. Hall, Stuart, Jessica Evans, and Sean Nixon. 2013. Representation, 2nd ed. London: Sage. Hamad, Hannah. 2014. Postfeminism and Paternity in Contemporary U.S. Film: Framing Fatherhood. New York: Routledge. Hancock, Ange-Marie. 2004. The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen. New York: NYU Press. Hanlon, Nick. 2012. Masculinities, Care and Equality: Identity and Nurture in Men’s Lives. Palgrave Macmillan. Heffernan, Valerie, and Gay Wilgus. 2018. ‘Introduction: Imagining Motherhood in the Twenty-First Century – Images, Representations, Constructions.’ Women: A Cultural Review 29 (1): 1–18.

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Heffernan, Valerie, and Gay Wilgus. 2020. Imagining Motherhood in the TwentyFirst Century. Abingdon: Routledge. Hertz, Rosanna. 2006. Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood Without Marriage and Creating the New American Family. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobson, Barbara. 2002. Making Men into Fathers: Men, Masculinities and the Social Politics of Fatherhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoerl, Kristen, and Casey Ryan Kelly. 2010. ‘The Post-Nuclear Family and the Depoliticization of Unplanned Pregnancy in Knocked Up, Juno, and Waitress.’ Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 7 (4): 360–380. Howard, Natasha. 2016. ‘16 and Pregnant and Black: Challenging and Debunking Stereotypes’. In Mediated Moms: Contemporary Challenges to the Motherhood Myth, edited by Heather L. Hundley and Sara E. Hayden, 103–122. New York: Peter Lang. Johnson, Katherine M. 2017. ‘Single, Straight, Wants Kids: Media Framing of Single, Heterosexual Fatherhood via Assisted Reproduction.’ Journal of Gender Studies 26 (4): 387–401. Kaplan, E. Ann. 1992. Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama. London: Routledge. Kiernan, Kathleen, Hilary Land, and Jane Lewis. 1998. Lone Motherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain: From Footnote to Front Page: Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kuczynski, Leon, and Jan De Mol. 2015. ‘Dialectical Models of Socialization.’ In Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, edited by Willis F. Overtaon and Peter C. M. Molenaar, 7th ed., 326–368. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Landau, Jamie. 2009. ‘Straightening Out (the Politics of) Same-Sex Parenting: Representing Gay Families in US Print News Stories and Photographs.’ Critical Studies in Media Communication 26 (1): 80–100. Latimer, Heather. 2009. ‘Popular Culture and Reproductive Politics: Juno, Knocked Up and the Enduring Legacy of The Handmaid’s Tale.’ Feminist Theory 10 (2): 211–226. Lupton, Deborah, and Lesley Barclay. 1997. Constructing Fatherhood: Discourses and Experiences. London: Sage. Martin, Emily. 1987. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. May, Vanessa. 2010. ‘Lone Motherhood as a Category of Practice.’ The Sociological Review 58: 429–443. Motapanyane, Maki. 2016. Motherhood and Single-Lone Parenting: A TwentyFirst Century Perspective. Bradford: Demeter Press. Neale, Bren. 2016. ‘Introduction: Young Fatherhood: Lived Experiences and Policy Challenges.’ Social Policy and Society 15 (1): 75–83.

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Neale, Bren, and Laura Davies. 2015. ‘Seeing Young Fathers in a Different Way.’ Families, Relationships and Societies 4 (2): 309–313. Phoenix, Ann, Anne Woollett, and Eva Lloyd. 1991. Motherhood: Meanings, Practices and Ideologies. London: Sage. Podnieks, Elizabeth. 2016. Pops in Pop Culture: Fatherhood, Masculinity and the New Man. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Precup, Michaela. 2020. The Graphic Lives of Fathers: Memory, Representation, and Fatherhood in North American Autobiographical Comics. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Pulkingham, Jane, Sylvia Fuller, and Paul Kershaw. 2010. ‘Lone Motherhood, Welfare Reform and Active Citizen Subjectivity.’ Critical Social Policy 30: 267–290. Ristovski-Slijepcevic, Svetlana. 2013. ‘The Dying Mother: Film Portrayals of Mothering with Incurable Cancer.’ Feminist Media Studies 13 (4): 629–642. Robila, Mihaela. 2014. Handbook of Family Policies Across the Globe. New York: Springer. Rose, Jacqueline. 2018. Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Rothman, Barbara Kats. 2009. ‘Mothering Alone: Rethinking Single Motherhood in America.’ Women’s Studies Quarterly 37: 323–328. Rye, Gill, Victoria Browne, Adalgisa Giorgio, Emily Jeremiahc, and Abigail Lee Six. 2017. Motherhood in Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe. Abingdon: Routledge. Seward, Rudy R. 2014. ‘Divorced Fathers and Their Families: Legal, Economic, and Emotional Dilemmas.’ Journal of Family Theory and Review 6: 431–436. Shwalb, David W., Barbara J. Shwalb, and Michael E. Lamb. 2013. Fathers in Cultural Context. New York, NY: Routledge Academic. Silva, Elizabeth Bortolaia. 1996. Good Enough Mothering? Feminist Perspectives on Lone Motherhood. London: Routledge. Skeggs, Beverly. 1997. Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable. London: Sage. Tarancón, Juan Antonio. 2012. ‘Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007): A Practical Case Study of Teens, Film and Cultural Studies.’ Cultural Studies 26 (4): 442–468. Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Tropp, Laura, and Janice Kelly. 2016. Deconstructing Dads: Changing Images of Fathers in Popular Culture. Lanham: Lexington Books. Turchi, Jennifer, and Laurena Bernabo. 2020. ‘“Mr Mom” No More: SingleFather Representations on Television in Primetime Drama and Comedies.’ Critical Studies in Media Communication 37 (5): 437–450.

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Vavrus, Mary Douglas. 2002. ‘Domesticating Patriarchy: Hegemonic Masculinity and Television’s “Mr. Mom”.’ Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (3): 352–275. Wahlström, Helena. 2010. New Fathers? Contemporary American Stories of Masculinity, Domesticity, and Kinship. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Wahlström Henriksson, Helena. 2020. ‘Exploring Fatherhood in Critical Gender Research.’ In Routledge International Handbook of Masculinity Studies, edited by Lucas Gottzén, Ulf Mellström, and Tamara Shefer, 320–330. Abingdon: Routledge. Weedon, Chris. 1987. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wells, Michael, and Disa Bergnehr. 2014. ‘Family and Family Policies in Sweden.’ In Handbook of Family Policies Across the Globe, edited by Mihaela Robila, 91–107. New York: Springer. Westin, Marcus. 2007. Health and Healthcare Utilization among Swedish Single Parent Families. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Woodward, Kath. 2003. ‘Representations of Motherhood.’ In Gender, Identity & Reproduction, edited by S. Earle and G. Letherby, 18–32. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Zadeh, Sophie, and Juliet Foster. 2016. ‘From “Virgin Births” to “Octomom”: Representations of Single Motherhood via Sperm Donation in the UK News.’ Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 26: 551–566.

PART I

Single Mothers

CHAPTER 2

Representation of Single Mothers in Petra Soukupová’s Contemporary Czech Prose: Guilty Mothers and Uninvolved Fathers Marcin Filipowicz

Introduction The work of psychological scholars is marked of late by a more intense interest in the subjective well-being of single mothers (Nixon et al. 2015, 1043–1061; Stavrova and Fetchenhauer 2015, 134–149; PollmannSchult 2018, 2061–2084). Multiple studies have highlighted the importance of a country’s normative climate, which is created to a wide extent by cultural artefacts, including literary fiction. Therefore, I would like to focus in this study on how single mothers are represented in works by the very popular Czech writer Petra Soukupová. She has written several bestsellers—the short-story collection Zmizet (2009; To Disappear) and two novels, Pod snˇehem (2015; Under the Snow) and Nejlepší pro všechny (2017; Best for Everyone)1 —which deal with stories about the family

M. Filipowicz (B) University of Hradec Králové, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_2

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in contemporary Czech society. Soukupová has been awarded prestigious literary prizes and her books have been translated into several European languages. I would like to consider to what extent representations of single mothers in her works act as either a conservative factor highlighting the negatives of single motherhood or a voice for its endorsement.

The Position of Single Parents Throughout most Western countries, the number of single-parent families has increased over the last few decades. Many late-modern scholars point out the fundamental change in the family structure that developed during the twentieth century, which they link to the spread of liberal values and individualization. The entire Western world has been witnessing a gradual delay of marriage and an increase in cohabitation and divorce rates. This means that the existing hegemonic model of a heterosexual couple raising children, referred to as the nuclear family, has to make room in the social space for new emerging family forms (Castells 2010, 280; DePaulo 2015, 250). Such emerging forms naturally also include single-parent families, which are increasingly common in many European and North American countries. The latest research conducted in selected European countries reveals over 15% of children growing up in single-parent households (Pollmann-Schult 2018, 2062). Over 90% of the parents in these cases are single mothers (Bastaits et al. 2015, 558), who form the subject matter of the present analysis. This social group has experienced a structural transformation during the last decades, as the group of adolescent girls with accidental pregnancy has decreased. The majority of single mothers now are economically active and independent women, who, often consciously, have made the decision to become a single mother (Hertz 2006, xv). The Czech Republic is no exception to this trend, as the proportion of single-parent households rose to 13% in 2014. The transformation from socialist to postmodern society, rapidly taking place in the Czech Republic since the early 1990s, introduced a strong Westernization of values and lifestyle. The major trends in recent decades have seen an increase in the younger generation’s cohabitation, a sharp decline in marriage and fertility levels in general, and an increase in the number of children born outside of marriage. Single-parent families in the Czech Republic are also largely formed by single mothers. It should be noted that the previously common and highly evident social stigmatizing that once surrounded single motherhood has substantially decreased over the

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last 30 years. Another factor that has changed is the age range of single mothers, which today is similar to Hertz’s (2006) findings (Hašková et al. 2014, 18; Kozlová and Tomanová 2005, 31). Generally, one can assume that Czech society seems to be relatively tolerant towards non-traditional family forms. However, although, negative attitudes towards single mothers have decreased, Czech society is still affected by conservative discourse practices, which depict single motherhood in a bad light. For example, the sociological monograph by Oldˇrich Matoušek Rodina jako instituce a vztahová sitˇ (2003; A Family as an Institution and a Network) presented single mothers on the basis of research done at only one marriage counselling clinic as women who desire to live in a relationship with a man, their pregnancies are more problematic, they have more problems with giving birth, their children are sick more often and have worse grades at school. Moreover, the relationship between a child and a single mother is too strong and additionally affected by the mothers’ negative attitude towards men, therefore one can predict that the child will have relationship and family problems in the future (128). However, the sociological research that took place almost twenty years ago (unfortunately updated research is not available) showed that a positive attitude towards single mothers was prevalent within younger generations, while negative appraisals were typical among the elderly (Hamplová 2007, 38). Therefore, one can assume with a high degree of certainty that the attitude towards single mothers has improved greatly over the last two decades. This international trend has caused major concern among researchers, given the potentially negative consequences of single parenthood. As in the Czech Republic, numerous studies have confirmed that single parents are less happy and have lower levels of life satisfaction as compared with parents raising children as a couple (Barber 2000, 2004, 648; Coley and Chase-Lansdale 1998, 152–166). However, this research is based mostly on examples from the United States, where there is less government support for parents. Recent psychological research has been marked by a more intense interest in the subjective well-being of single parents and their children, in particular in a cross-cultural context. Such research suggests that the psychological costs of single parenting may be much lower in countries where the dominance of the nuclear-family paradigm has been revised and where single-parent families enjoy the same social acceptance as two-parent families (Stavrova and Fetchenhauer 2015, 134–135; Pollmann-Schult 2018, 2062).

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A key role is played by the normative climate created in the given cultural environment, which can be partly responsible for some problems experienced by single-parent families. Many unnecessary problems may be triggered by a moralistic discourse. Whenever another contemporary family alternative emerges that undermines the dominance of the nuclear family—be it divorce, single mothers, or LGBT families authorized to adopt children—conservatives escalate the sense of threat to the public space (DePaulo 2015, 152; Lavelle 2015, 1; Schmidt 2015, 23). Such discourse typically draws on sentimental and idealized ideas of the traditional family, which mostly do not match everyday reality. It is therefore important to highlight the distinction between descriptive norms, which reflect the hard facts—in other words, what people usually do—and injunctive norms, which describe social expectations regarding a particular lifestyle or behaviour—that is, what people should do (Stavrova and Fetchenhauer 2015, 137). Judging by these norms, single mothers’ psychological well-being can be influenced from both sides by the social generality of a life that deviates from the nuclear-family model and by the collective belief in the equality of different family structures. Noncompliance with established social norms and expectations is usually associated with a lack of acceptance, which in turn affects the mental well-being of the transgressor, making her feel stressed and insecure. The same situation is observed in cases where social practice diverges from injunctive norms: even if not entirely condemned by society, single mothers may feel guilty for having failed to provide a complete family for their children and, consequently, a happy life. The transcultural comparative study by Olga Stavrova and Detlef Fetchenhauer found that life satisfaction of single parents is highest in Denmark, where the discrepancy between descriptive and injunctive norms is negligible, which puts less pressure on single parents. Almost half (47.37%) of the Danish population do not believe that children need both parents to live a happy life, and also nearly half (46.16%) of children do not grow up with two parents. The trend in the Czech Republic is different. Although only 63.65% of children grow up in two-parent families, social belief in the necessity of a complete family for successful development of a child remains relatively high at 84.59% (2015, 139). The discrepancy between reality and the ideal is apparent; the normative climate for single mothers is thus much more rigorous.

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Normative Climate and Literature Many scholars point to the fact that a country’s normative climate depends largely on the local popular culture, including popular literary fiction (Wegar 2000, 363; DePaulo 2015, 30; Lavelle 2015, 79). The traditional form of injunctive norms may persist in the long term, despite the changes in descriptive norms, due to the ubiquitous mass-culture belief in the superiority of the heteronormative nuclear-family model, which is believed to guarantee individual happiness. The key concept in this context is literary representation, which captures the dialogic nature of the relationship between literature and a nontextual world. I understand representation to be not a passive replication of nontextual reality in texts but a performative act, which creates appearances in literary texts that subsequently enter into dialogue with the reality and become part of the normative climate. Literary representation, in the case of single mothers, can act as both a conservative factor and an impulse for social change (Iser 1993, 1– 21, 281–304). In order to analyse the representation of single mothers in contemporary Czech fiction it may be beneficial to outline the relationship between literature and nontextual reality. To describe this relationship, I will use and redefine René Girard’s triangle metaphor. In triangular desire, the points of the triangle would be as follows: literature, reality and standard (Girard 1976, 10–32), which can be considered injunctive norms. Such a relationship leads to the following questions: is it a nontextual standard that affects literature and the images it creates? Or does literature perhaps develop a standard that affects reality? Or it could be a feedback relationship. Therefore, a remaining question concerns the potential impact of literary fiction on the collective structures of thought, which form the normative climate. Naturally, no empirical evidence is available in this case, since literature is characterized, as Roger Sell argues, by the lack of an obvious feedback channel from readers to writers (2012, 203). We can only assume theoretically that literature acts as a mediator between readers and the real world. It adopts certain elements from the real world and uses them to create its own world, which exceeds the limits of the everyday experience of individual readers (Iser 1993, 18). This is how literature fulfils one of its fundamental roles, namely, interpreting the real world. Literary fiction serves not to provide readers with real knowledge but to convey what Terry Eagleton refers to as the ‘moral truth’; moral

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truth should help us to answer the question of how we can interpret the world and ourselves (2003, 91). The Case of Petra Soukupová’s Literary Fiction As mentioned in the introduction, I intend to consider to what extent representations of single mothers in the works of Petra Soukupová, one of the most popular contemporary Czech writers, act as either a conservative factor highlighting the negatives of single motherhood, or a voice for its endorsement. As previously stated, my analysis will be based on three of her books—the short-story collection To Disappear and two novels, Under the Snow and Best for Everyone. Host, a leading Czech publisher and publisher of Soukupová’s books, reports that the author has sold 120,000 copies, which makes her the third best-selling Czech author of contemporary fiction. If the Czech translations of foreign books are also included, Soukupová ranks tenth in national book sales.2 The power of literature in the era of ubiquitous audiovisual production can naturally be questioned, and therefore it should be pointed out that, according to the Prague National Library annual surveys, reading rates in the Czech Republic remain high (Národní knihovna Praha, n.d.). In addition, Soukupová has also worked as a screenwriter for the Czech television soap opera Ulice, broadcast by Nova TV since 2005, whose live and internet viewership sits at 1.2 million adult viewers out of the ten million Czech population. Therefore, I contend that the impact of the author’s literary works on the collective thoughts of Czech society may be strong, even if it cannot be documented. The stories that Soukupová writes centre on the same issue, namely, the confrontation between the contemporary models of Czech family life and the idealized image of family. Highlighting the multiple discrepancies between the way things are and the way they should be, the author portrays this confrontation as a source of tension, which triggers family dramas. The author describes various types of nonnormative family constellations and conflicts in which single mothers play a significant role. According to literary critics, the reading appeal of these texts lies primarily in the emotionally developed storyline, often accompanied by temporal and spatial condensation, linguistic simplicity, dynamic changes in the narrative perspective, capturing the views of different family members ˇ (Janoušek 2009, 3; Fialová 2014, 535–542; Copjaková 2015, 54).

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Guilty Single Mothers All three books analysed deconstruct the omnipresent normative paradigm of the nuclear family. The characters are not living this way of life, and the author portrays the idea of the nuclear family as an oppressive lie, which is often the cause of numerous frustrations. Her novel Best for Everyone, which tells the story of a big-city single mother who sends her son away for a year to be raised by her widowed mother, opens with a powerful scene of symbolic rejection of the normative nuclear code. While doing homework, the boy struggles with a Czech language exercise that asks him to indicate the professions of all his family members. The workbook requires students to list the father, a fact that elicits an aggressive response from the mother: ‘What kind of crap is that? … Do they really think it still goes without saying, “Mommy and Daddy”? … Why are they printing it, as if this were the last century?’ (Soukupová 2017, 6). This particular scene expresses an explicit rejection of an imaginary order; the other texts under analysis also deal with its gradual deconstruction. As soon as a nuclear family emerges in the story, the characters make schematic comments deprecating the ‘family happiness’ (Soukupová 2009, 218; 2017, 41, 74). I suggest that this phenomenon can be interpreted as an attempt to deconstruct injunctive norms relating to family life. The question is whether the analysed texts offer positive behavioural patterns on the basis of which single mothers could build their family identity. The works under analysis are marked by a strong presence of the cultural model of socially accepted motherhood, termed as intensive mothering by Sharon Hays in the 1990s. This ideology, based on scientific findings (discourse of educational handbooks), advises mothers to devote immense amounts of energy and money to raising their children (1998, x). One should bear in mind that this model is based on the analysis of middle-class, American mothers. However, since the beginning of the 1990s it infiltrated postcomunist Czech society and eventually got into the mainstream (Hašková 2014, 17–18; Kuchaˇrová 2019, 162–173). The imperative of intensive mothering is somewhat weakened by the filter of distrustful commonsensical thinking in Czech cultural conditions, characterized by a strong and deeply embedded aversion to any ideological constructs, which is the heritage of communism (Kosatík 1999, 29). The

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‘ideal’ mother is thus torn between the requirements of the aforementioned ideology and the equally strong requirement to distance herself from the imperative of intensive mothering. One such ideal mother is Blanka in Under the Snow, a novel about three adult sisters travelling to their parents’ home for a birthday party, which turns sour. Each of the sisters represents a different social type: the single Kristýna, the single mother Olina and Blanka, who represents the nuclear family. Throughout the novel, Blanka is presented as a ‘model mother’, who says about herself: ‘She didn’t have children to later look for ways to get rid of them so that she could have some peace and quiet’ (Soukupová 2015, 104). Nor is she ‘a crazy hippie mother who … will home school them, with special emphasis on ecology… . No, she’s a normal mom’ (Soukupová 2015, 104). A noticeable pattern emerges in this context. Despite deconstructing the illusion of the superiority of the nuclear family, Soukupová’s literary texts create images of single mothers who often fail to fulfil even basic duties, let alone meet the demanding requirements of the model. The texts under consideration thus portray two types of single mothers. First are mothers from a low socio-economic group, who neglect their children, such as Jiˇrina in the short story ‘Na krátko’ (A Short Haircut) in To Disappear. Second are middle-class mothers who are primarily career oriented, such as the attorney Olina in Under the Snow and actress Hanka in Best for Everyone. The essence of the first type is not very complicated and could be summarized in several attributes featured in the following excerpt from ‘A Short Haircut’: When Mom comes home from work in the evening, Pavlína is about to complain about Vojta …. Mom is frowning and closes the fridge door with a bang, a wee bit louder than necessary, while unpacking the groceries. She lights a cigarette and piles dinner on her plate. A piece of meat and some potatoes, the cigarrette laid aside on the edge of the sink. Pulling out a knife and fork and having dinner in the living room, watching the late afternoon soap opera …. Things at work are not all rosy; she comes back home and wants to relax. (Soukupová 2009, 107–108)

The mother is tired, irritable, unwilling to deal with any problems with her children, and her smoking and numb television watching are supposed to drive them away. The overall picture is complemented by random

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and unexpected waves of superficial upbringing, which only consist of control questions, threats and warnings aimed at the children, without any interest on the mother’s part in their answers and reactions: ‘’I’ll make you study! I’ve had enough. How was school? Alright. Have you done your homework? Please do it. Sure. Do you brush your teeth? In the evenings as well?’ … Mom storms into the room. ‘I’d tidy the room up if I were you.’ And she’s gone again’ (Soukupová 2009, 156, 200). The reader can clearly see that the life-weary single mother is unable to provide her children with a good upbringing and a happy childhood. The other type is the big-city mothers who are aware of maternal imperatives. It is noteworthy, however, that these are not the mothers who are single by choice, as discussed by Hertz in her book (2006). Soukupová avoids such a narrative approach and operates within the model according to which a mother becomes single because she and her children have been left by an irresponsible man. Therefore, in these scenarios, single motherhood is not a free and thoughtful choice, even in the case of highly emancipated female professionals. The aforementioned Olina and Hanka strive to combine their motherhood with demanding work in order to gain control over their own subjectivity: ‘Going back to work is the best thing in the world—the certainty that you are able to provide for them, the feeling that you haven’t gone mad, that you can still do your job … not only the exhausting everyday life and how the baby plays with a rattle and how it gets angry’ (Soukupová 2015, 171–172). Such efforts are, nevertheless, not appreciated in the fictional worlds built by Soukupová. For example, Olina in Under the Snow is criticized by her sisters for taking life too seriously: ‘A single-mother lawyer, she’s got to be on top of things…. But Olinka has to work; it’s all about results, plus she’s too lazy to come up with games for Oliver’ (55, 104). In Best for Everyone, the acting profession of protagonist Hanka is considered by the rest of the family to be of low value and, moreover, difficult to combine with motherhood: ‘You’ve been leaving him all alone all his life so that you could act in that little theatre of yours? … All you care about is for you to be able to leave him here again and go doodling around on a show’ (Soukupová 2017, 171, 336). Whatever professional work a single mother does, the other characters always find a reason to criticize, which does not necessarily mean readers are supposed to identify themselves with these critical voices. The ‘perfect’ mother Blanka asserts that her sister Olina is heavily masculinized (‘She’s like a man in many respects’ [Soukupová 2015, 83]), and Blanka belittles her independence

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and therefore strengthens the social stereotype of rejection of both female active action and emancipation. The single mothers created by Soukupová fail as parents: ‘Viki, you’re just too much for me to handle,’ says Hanka openly to her son in Best for Everyone (Soukupová 2017, 13). Olina in Under the Snow feels exhausted and frustrated by childcare from sunrise to sunset: ‘But she’s so freaking tired, too tired to go on. She’s in charge of everything, always the only one handling Oliver, no help coming’ (Soukupová 2015, 334). The image of a child reared by a single mother forms a narrative manoeuvre that confirms the lack of their maternal competences. Statistically, it can be expected that these children may be different, due to the degree of problems related to their upbringing. However, the same type of child—a boy who often shows negative emotions, including physical aggression towards those around him—is consistently present throughout the texts under study. This stereotypical picture is further reinforced by the strongly conventionalized verbal layer. All four boys raised by single mothers in the books in question are referred to in an unflattering light by other characters: ‘a spoiled monkey’ (Soukupová 2015, 61; 2017, 100), ‘annoying brat’ (Soukupová 2015, 104), ‘rogue’ (Soukupová 2015, 38; 2017, 13, 84, 335), ‘whelp’ (Soukupová 2009, 310) and so on. This diction undoubtedly reinforces the negative image of single mothers who neglect or fail to raise their children properly, which is, moreover, understood in a very traditional way as strict discipline. The most noticeable failure of the single mothers is, however, the children’s poor diet. The pattern of single mothers’ children eating junk food persists throughout all of the texts. The diet consists mainly of sausages, fried food, sodas, sweets, pizza deliveries, ready-made meals instead of home-cooked food, and so on (Soukupová 2009, 142, 168; 2015, 15, 52; 2017, 18, 86). Serving as a counterpoint are mothers from nuclear families, specifically Blanka in Under the Snow, who are often focused on with blending organic vegetables and fruits into healthy soups and smoothies (Soukupová 2015, 168, 173–174). It is necessary to bear in mind that the stereotype of the mother-feeder is extremely strong in Central European cultures, as cooking and feeding were often the only areas where female power manifested within patriarchal culture (Walczewska 2000, 165). This is why a single mother who feeds her children unhealthily fails twice: as a mother and as a woman. The rate of maternal failure provokes very strong autovictimizing attitudes in Soukupová’s single mothers. The characters are aware that the

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way they raise their children is not flawless, and that is why they denote themselves as ‘a bad mother’ (Soukupová 2009, 155, 218; 2015, 16, 171, 339; 2017, 51, 339). The sense of guilt is only felt by single mothers in the analysed works. Other mothers, let alone fathers, do not think about their failure at all, once again playing the role of the counterpoint that reinforces stereotypical ideas of single motherhood. In addition, the guilt felt by single mothers is confirmed by the outside world, which always generates a character ‘willing’ to pass judgements. This character is usually the mother of the single mother, who not only does a perfect job of washing, cooking, cleaning and doing homework with the neglected child but also, above all, shows her daughter ostentatiously that she is not a good mother: ‘Why doesn’t she understand this is not the way to do things, not the way to live…. Viki would’ve been different. It’s not his fault he is who he is—it’s Hanka’s fault’ (Soukupová 2017, 26, 82); or: ‘And Mom lets you run around wearing clothes like this…. Look at yourself, the tee is so darn filthy. Who do you take after, being like this? Never mind me asking—just like your mom…. The boy laughs at you behind your back. How far has it got you, the way you raise them, letting them to do as they like?’ (Soukupová 2009, 124, 157). Perfect sister Blanka is another character who reinforces the sense of guilt: ‘She’s got to ride with Blanka, and it won’t be for free—plenty of looks saying, “My kids’re well behaved, yours ain’t”’ (Soukupová 2015, 52). To sum it up, the image of single mothers in Soukupová’s prose is undiversified, consisting mostly of stereotypical notions. Over and over again, the same type of single mother is depicted, who, regardless of her economic status, is tired, frustrated, unable to handle her difficult children, and suffers from the guilt of being a single mother. Self or Mother Soukupová’s books do not pay much attention to single motherhood from a psychological point of view. With only one exception, the author does not focus on the feelings, thought processes and motivations of her protagonists. The position of single mothers is only discussed in Best for Everyone, which raises the crucial question of whether a single mother is entitled to her own life or is forever limited by her parental role. As mentioned above, the main character Hanka leaves her troubled son with his grandmother until she finishes shooting a prestigious and

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highly artistic series. Feeling remorse, she tries to rationalize the situation and asks herself an important question: ‘Maybe I am a bad mom. The worst mother in the world, but I am also a human being who wants things and has the right to do so—or maybe I don’t, but I still want it and need it if I am to go on living with myself’ (Soukupová 2017, 96). An axiologic conflict between Hanka and her mother is now bound to take place: ‘It is my job. This is my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. – And Viki is your son—he has to come first,’ says her mother (177). What matters is the overall response of the novel to this clash of basic values. On the one hand, the entire novel has been building a negative image of Hanka as an egoistic, hysterical and emotionally unstable actress who wants to get rid of her child. The story places the whole burden of responsibility for the child on her, ignoring the responsibility of Viktor’s father, who left Hanka. He is not interested in the child and does not seem to be paying any alimony. The father’s actions (or lack of actions) showcase gender imbalance, which leads to the fact that the fathers lack of interest is perceived as normal and common, while the mother’s lack of interest is strictly stigmatized. On the other hand, Hanka is not a one-dimensionally bad character. Although she is weak, vain, irritating, unstable and egotistical, she can also be empathetic and considerate of her loved ones. The handover of her son and prioritization of the art project are accompanied by an emotional tangle that varies between hysterical internalization of feelings of guilt (‘I am a bad mother’ [Soukupová 2017, 349]) and blaming others (‘Why can’t you be a normal mom who’d love me? And why can’t you be a normal child?’ [278–279]). The relationship between the mother and her son eventually improves, as Hanka assumes the care for her sick mother and moves her to live with them in Prague. Despite sending her son away for a period of almost a year and many other parental shortcomings, it is impossible to pass a decidedly negative judgement on Hanka as a single mother neglecting her child’s upbringing for egoistic reasons and perhaps the narrative indicates that even a single mother has the right to individual self-fulfilment. Self-fulfilment, however, comes at a high cost, as the price is social stigmatization and lack of society’s understanding.

Uninvolved and Absent Fathers Another phenomenon can be observed in the works concerned: the fathers of the children raised by single mothers. It is noteworthy that all of the prose analysed consistently introduces the model of extremely

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selfish men, who care only about their own comfort instead of focusing on family and children. The men are irresponsible, unempathetic, emotionally stunted and, last but not least, they escape to their work or hobbies. Soukupová’s books are again marked by a certain stereotypical representation, in which there is no room for even one father who is actually involved in the upbringing of his child. This applies to characters who are both known fathers of children raised by single mothers and fathers living in nuclear families. For example, Viktor’s father in Best for Everyone is an irresponsible actor, whom the son describes at the beginning of the story as follows: ‘I have a dad…. He’s got a new wife and kids, and I’m fine with that. He’s not my family’ (Soukupová 2017, 8). The father enters the story only once, in a text message he sends after the boy has stayed with his grandmother for a year: ‘So, my dad sends me some cash and texts me if I feel like meeting up in the summer. I text back saying, “Whatever.” He doesn’t text back’ (356). Vojta’s father in the story ‘A Short Haircut ’ behaves in a similar way. After his wife and teenaged son leave him, he suddenly remembers he has another, younger, illegitimate child, Vojta. Coincidentally, Vojta is experiencing a strong identity crisis, wants to leave his mother, and is frantically trying to find his father. Their needs coincide. The idealized father soon turns out to be a huge disappointment: ‘A weird guy is waiting in front of their house … reeking of booze and smoke’ (Soukupová 2009, 153). The moment he meets his father for the very first time portends failure. The father takes Vojta to watch a soccer match, but the boy is not interested at all: ‘We sit in the stands, the seats around are empty, I am cold. It is boring, but I am also jittery…. He watches the whole time, even shouting at the players, which makes me cringe a little, and he does not pay me any attention’ (178). It is evident that his interest in his son only serves to satisfy his own egoistic needs. The father turns out to be a completely irresponsible man, who prefers the pub and does not care about his son. Soukupová’s fathers in nuclear families are represented in a similar vein. Discussing her husband, Blanka says in Under the Snow: ‘Libor does not want to deal with anything—the same with other things in his home or life. Why should he?’ (Soukupová 2015, 38). Blanka’s father was also like this; the reader witnesses an intergenerational transmission of certain patterns of male behaviour, characterized by a lack of interest in their children’s upbringing, as an element that establishes ‘true’ masculinity.

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All of these fundamental shortcomings of Soukupová’s fictional fathers, however, do not prevent the author’s texts from instilling a commonsensical belief in the necessity of the ‘male model’ for successful child rearing. This belief is built in several steps. The first is pity over the position of a child raised by a single mother, which is expressed both by single mothers themselves and other members of wider families: ‘The poor kid has no father…. It’s not easy for him, having no dad. It’s tough on him’; ‘Especially since he doesn’t have a father’ (Soukupová 2015, 196, 228; 2017, 55). This sense of pity strengthens the stereotypical belief that all problems with a particular child are due to single-mother parenting— a convenient and simple explanation, which limits the subjectivity and personal qualities of the characters. Second, the characters often voice their conviction of the need for a father and the related male authority. A present father would, like a silver bullet, solve all the problems faced by a single-mother family: ‘That Oliver would be happier if he had a dad, and maybe the authority of a man would help tame him’; ‘Maybe if Dad were around’ (Soukupová 2009, 141; 2015, 120). The third culminating step is naive, wishful thinking that everything would be much easier if the mother had a partner: ‘She’s married—that makes raising a kid a piece of cake’; ‘Things would be fine if she were with a man, who would help her with Viki’ (Soukupová 2015, 52; 2017, 51). This discourse, as a strategy, differs vastly from the above-mentioned representation of men as beings unfit for family life. Why would these literary texts include such stereotypical statements, which, moreover, conflict with the fictional world created? One can assume, it is a form of representation, as this type of thinking and automated statements are often found in the real world. Although this is undoubtedly true, the literary text, thus can act as a conservative factor, which consolidates mental stereotypes. Throughout these three books, there is barely a hint of warning against overestimating these imaginary masculine models, although the men are not very functional. This is all the more surprising and contradictory since the final message of Best for Everyone implies that a father—let alone a dysfunctional one—is not needed for a child’s successful upbringing. The wild Viktor undergoes a transformation while living with his grandmother for a year, largely because his grandmother has developed cancer, a fact that they both hide from Hanka for a long time. The boy learns to become responsible and even begins taking care of his grandmother. It is therefore surprising that

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the works under consideration fail to say explicitly that single motherhood could be inspiring, instead of being viewed as a major disadvantage only. It is hard to deny the fact that child rearing is easier if there is a pair of responsible and cooperating parents. However, the problem with Soukupová’s work is the unduly intrusive and guilt-inducing promotion of the common and stereotypical idea that a father is a necessity, which is not balanced by a sufficient number of characters’ statements showing different points of view. In the context of the contradictory creation of Soukupová’s depicted world, it would be better if no fathers ever passed on dysfunctional patterns of male behaviour. Such a depiction presents a sentimental and idealized image of the indispensable significance of the male model, which may be in fundamental conflict with practice.

Conclusion Czech literature witnessed a fundamental thematic turn in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Writers began to focus on the private sphere, as the interest in the great public history connected to political and social transformation slowly began to wane (Fialová 2014, 347–350). Soukupová’s literary production is an example that illustrates this trend. At first glance, the author’s texts might seem to provide readers with a novel interpretation of the dynamic changes in family life. It may appear that, by deconstructing the illusion of the ubiquity of the heterosexual nuclear family, the texts could challenge, clarify and normalize the new constellations and forms of family structure, which are increasingly prevalent across Czech society. A careful reading, however, reveals that they contain a conservative factor, which is based on commonsensical stereotypes and thought patterns. Soukupová’s literary works can be also read as an attempt to show how hard it is to be a single mother and to help to understand the phenomenon of single mothers. However, the problem is that the texts under analysis do not contain sufficient measures of empathy, not even affirmation, towards this model of life. The picture of single mothers, who are entirely responsible for all the problems that they have to face, persists throughout all of the texts in question. This is particularly remarkable if we take as a counterpoint the responsibility of uninvolved fathers, whose lack of engagement is depicted as a given issue. Soukupová’s narratives, despite indicating the illusion of the idyllic nature of the nuclear family, do not cross the imaginary boundary of thinking that glorifies this form of family structure. As a result, her texts

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offer a one-sided portrayal of single motherhood, which does not seem to match the diversity of real life; they tell only of single mothers who are often unable to fulfil even basic duties, let alone meet the demanding requirements of intensive mothering. The literary trope of poorly nourished children raised by single mothers is a prime example; it suggests that a tired single mother, very frustrated by life, is unable to secure a happy childhood for her children. Thus, in all the texts under study, the appearance of the motif of endorsement for a family network is present; nevertheless, the price in the form of judging and sense of guilt that single mothers have to pay is pretty high. In addition, the protagonists’ efforts at combining single motherhood with professional activities are strongly criticized by other characters and are never shown as a positive identity model, only as a factor operating to the detriment of the child. As a result, all of the author’s single mothers suffer from a very strong sense of guilt, which gives an impression of inevitability concerning their autovictimizing attitude—as if the sense of guilt were inherent to single motherhood. In addition, women who become single mothers in the author’s texts are, to some extent, deprived of their subjectivity. First, their situation is always caused by a man, whereas they themselves are never the agents of their own actions. In other words, single motherhood is not a free choice made by women in these fictional worlds. Second, the books concerned instil a commonsensical belief in the necessity of the ‘male model’ for successful child rearing, thus strengthening the stereotypical belief that all problems with the particular child are due to single-mother parenting. The image that emerges from the analysis above is not of a particularly affirmative normative climate for single mothers. I believe that the stereotypical nature of the images of single mothers in Soukupová’s work contributes to the preservation of social stereotypes and does not help to transform injunctive norms. The reality of real life, which serves as the model for literary representation, is in this case much more varied and complicated.

Notes 1. These works have not been translated into English, but I will refer to them by their English-translated titles for the remainder of this study. All English translations are my own. 2. Based on the information received on 28 June 2019 from Anna Kremláˇcková, Host Online Marketing and Public Relations.

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Janoušek, Pavel. 2009. ‘Petrá Soukupová. Zmizet.’ [Petrá Soukupová. To Disappear] Tvar (13): 3. Kosatík, Pavel. 1999. ‘Nemiluji-ismy’ [I Do Not Care for ‘Isms’]. In Feminismus devadesátých let cˇeskýma oˇcima [Feminism of the 1990s Through the Czech Lens], edited by Marie Chˇribková, Josef Chuchma, and Eva Klimentová. Prague: Marie Chˇribková. Kozlová, Lucie, and Nikola Tomanová. 2005. ‘Dobrovolné mateˇrství bez partnera.’ [Voluntary Motherhood without a Partner] Gender / rovné pˇríležitosti / výzkum 6 (1): 31–35. Kuchaˇrová, Vˇera, ed., Jana Barvíková, Sylva Höhne, Kristýna Janurová, Olga Nešporová, Jana Paloncyová, Kamila Svobodová, and Lucie Vidovic˙ ová. 2019. ˇ Ceská rodina na poˇcátku 21. století: životní podmínky, vztahy a potˇreby [Czech Family at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Life Conditions, Relationships, and Needs]. Prague: SLON. Lavelle, Ashley. 2015. Radical Challenges to the Family: From the Sixties to the Same Sex Marriage. Abington: Ashgate. Matoušek, Oldˇrich. 2003. Rodina jako instituce a vztahová sitˇ [A Family as an Institution and a Network]. Prague: SLON. ˇ ˇ (2018)’ [Readers and Národní knihovna Praha. n.d. ‘Ctenᡠri a cˇ tení v CR Reading in the Czech Republic (2018)]. Jiˇrí Trávníˇcek. Accessed 19 July 2019. https://ipk.nkp.cz/docs/teni2018Trvnek.pdf. Nixon, Elizabeth, Sheila Greene, and Diane Hogan. 2015. ‘“It’s What’s Normal for Me”: Children’s Experiences of Growing Up in a Continuously SingleParent Household.’ Journal of Family Issues 36 (8): 1043–1061. Pollmann-Schult, Matthias. 2018. ‘Single Motherhood and Life Satisfaction in Comparative Perspective: Do Institutional and Cultural Contexts Explain the Life Satisfaction Penalty for Single Mothers?’ Journal of Family Issues 39 (7): 2061–2084. Schmidt, Filip. 2015. Para, mieszkanie, małz˙ enstwo: ´ Dynamika zwiazków ˛ intymnych na tle przemian historycznych i współczesnych dyskusji o procesach indywidualizacji [Couple, Accommodation, Marriage: Dynamics of Intimate Relationships in the Context of Historical Changes and Contemporary Discussion on Processes of Individualisation]. Warsaw: FNP. Sell, Roger. 2012. ‘Cultural Memory and the Communicational Criticism of Literature.’ Journal for Communication Studies 5 (10): 201–225. Soukupová, Petra. 2009. Zmizet [To Disappear]. Brno: Host. Soukupová, Petra. 2015. Pod snˇehem [Under the Snow]. Brno: Host. Soukupová, Petra. 2017. Nejlepší pro všechny [Best for Everyone]. Brno: Host. Stavrova, Olga, and Detlef Fetchenhauer. 2015. ‘Single Parents, Unhappy Parents? Parenthood, Partnership, and the Cultural Normative Context.’ Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 46 (1): 134–149.

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CHAPTER 3

Young Single Motherhood in Contemporary German and Irish Films: Lucy, Jelly Baby and Heartbreak Kira Collins

Introduction This chapter will analyse the stigma of young single mothers that is represented in the German feature film Lucy (Winckler 2006) and in the Irish short films Heartbreak (Tynan 2017) and Jelly Baby (Fagan 2017). The representation of the young mother as being situated within a state of crisis, as well as expectations of failure, will be studied as a contribution to E. Ann Kaplan’s maternal categorisations (1992). While film research often analyses maternal characters in relation to their male counterparts, Kaplan offers a rare focus on the maternal characters in the film. She defines six maternal discourses in 1980s mainstream American media: the self-fulfilled mother, the abusive mother, the woman-whorefuses-to-mother, the absent mother, the working mother and the lesbian

K. Collins (B) Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_3

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mother. Even though Kaplan’s influential categorisation offers a valuable account of maternal representations, my analysis of contemporary German and Irish cinema suggests that it is time to expand on her research by including the representation of young motherhood. By doing so, I will bring a European and partly non-English speaking focus on non-traditional motherhood to a field in which most research is on American mainstream film. The textual analysis will show that while the contemporary German and Irish films intend to represent current struggles for young mothers, they ultimately often fall back into a traditional understanding of ‘good’ motherhood. This constitutes a continuation of filmic representations in the 1980s and 1990s, as Kaplan’s findings show, that ultimately require the mother to leave full-time employment (see Lucy/Jelly Baby and Baby Boom [Shyer 1987]) or that represent the mother as being subordinate to the male protagonist (see Heartbreak and Look Who’s Talking [Heckerling 1989]). While Western culture constructs the ‘good’ mother as being middle-class, white, married and as offering full-time care to her child, the young single mother, in particular when from a working-class background, is largely unable to reach this ideal. The material analysed in this chapter comprises one German feature film and two Irish short films and the textual analysis will highlight European commonalities and national differences. This hermeneutic analysis of the representation of young motherhood considers the individual social and historical context in which the films are respectively embedded. I do not aim to describe the essence of a maternal experience but see German and Irish films as texts that emerge from a specific cultural background and respond to societal norms and prejudices regarding motherhood. Even though the German and Irish films offer an intriguing consistency in their representation of young motherhood, they also offer divergences. In the case studies, I analyse filmic techniques that shape the way in which contemporary Irish and German films represent young motherhood. While I sometimes underline my representational observations with the intentions a director expressed in published interviews, I do not fully investigate the intentions behind the film-making process. Nor do I research the audience’s response to the films. These two perspectives lie beyond the scope of this chapter but present an interesting subject for future examination. In this chapter, I outline how contemporary German and Irish films represent white young mothers from a workingclass background. I do not claim that these representations are necessarily representative of the experiences of actual young single mothers.

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This chapter will contribute to the limited literature on motherhood in film (Kaplan 1992; Fischer 1996; Walters 1992) and will bring a German and Irish focus to the filmic representation of young single motherhood. The textual analysis draws on a feminist understanding of constructions of motherhood, including Adrienne Rich’s description of motherhood as being split between motherhood as institution and motherhood as an experience. In her book Of Woman Born (Rich 1976), she argues that while mothering can be rewarding, motherhood as an institution is problematic. Rich underlines the patriarchal construction of motherhood as institution, which reduces women to their maternal capacities. The social pressure of idealisation and impossible expectations results in their fear of failure. This chapter demonstrates that the young mothers from workingclass backgrounds in German and Irish films are still judged against a white, middle-class idealisation of womanhood. I will analyse how stigma faced by young single mothers leads to social isolation and autonomy restrictions, as well as the expectation that young women will fail as mothers in contemporary German and Irish films. I argue that in Lucy and in Jelly Baby, the young mothers are socially isolated from their peers and struggle to share their maternal experience with others. In Heartbreak, the young single mother experiences the restriction on her bodily autonomy, as she is not able to have an abortion in Ireland. Moreover, the working-class young mothers in both German and Irish films are expected to fail as ‘good’ mothers. The films define their maternal experience as a private or public crisis and the representation draws on the idea of the young single mother as being unable to be a ‘good’ mother. I argue that while the films manage to represent young motherhood and some of the struggles these women encounter, the films ultimately do not challenge dominant discourses as they fall back into a traditional understanding of ‘good’ mothering. The films do not represent young single motherhood as a desirable outcome and mainly depict challenges for the young women.

Comparing Contemporary German and Irish Films Germany and Ireland share an idealisation of the mother. In both countries motherhood has long been understood as a sacred duty to God and as a duty to the state. In recent decades, both Ireland and Germany have become more secularised and developed to be a population that celebrates individualism. In particular, they share the European Union’s

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practice of social democracy, which partially unites their differing national and religious backgrounds. The comparison of contemporary German and Irish films offers a rich example of two contrasting (film) cultures within Europe, while at the same time permitting this chapter to pinpoint commonalities in their representation of young motherhood. However, Germany and Ireland also differ in many aspects, which, in turn, affects the varying influences on both film cultures. Religion, as well as the population, size and geopolitical aspects of both countries are of importance. In contrast to Catholic Ireland with its population of about 4.8 million, predominantly Protestant Germany’s population is much larger with around 83 million people. Also, the geographical size of Ireland and Germany differs greatly, with Germany being approximately five times the size of Ireland. This contrast in size and population influences film culture. Therefore, in Germany even smaller groups, for example, niche audiences who are interested in independent films, are generally still of a larger size than in Ireland. Because of this, independent film movements that, for example, represent non-traditional maternal characters can be more easily sustained in Germany. Furthermore, the countries’ geopolitical positioning and language are important factors for Irish and German film cultures, which developed independently from each other to a great extent. While Germany is positioned in the middle of Europe, Ireland is at its periphery. This peripheral position, the fact that most Irish people are English native speakers and a colonial history that forced many Irish to emigrate, have produced a unique relationship with America and thus with one of the biggest film industries in the world. While Hollywood is indeed a strong influence on all Western film industries and audiences, Irish film inherits a deeply rooted connection to American film, due to large numbers of emigrants and a nostalgic reimagining of the Irish diaspora. German film, in contrast, is more strongly influenced by a European film context such as the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism, even though American influences have gained great importance in recent years. The Catholic, Anglophone, more transnational Irish film culture, therefore, presents a useful contrast to the larger, European influenced, Protestant German film culture. This contrast permits an exploration of the variety of maternal representations in European film, while, identifying commonalities that might be applicable to a wider representation of motherhood in Europe.

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Film Selection and Introduction To establish my film corpus, I watched films from 2000 onwards that include a young maternal character. The films I initially selected either have a young mother or a young pregnant woman as protagonist, as this offers a more complex representation than a supporting character does. The films I selected all represent contemporary motherhood, in contrast to films that are set in the past, and were made for the cinema instead of television. Due to the fact that mothers are often supporting characters, a film with a young mother as central character is difficult to find in either of the cinemas studied. In total, four German and three Irish films fit within my selection criteria. For this chapter, I selected the three films that were most representative of young motherhood in both contemporary German and Irish fiction films, and exclude the representation of pregnant young women, as seen in the contemporary German film Am Himmel der Tag [Breaking Horizons] (Beck 2012), or in the Irish film Twice Shy (Ryan 2016), as well as the representation of young motherhood in documentary film, as seen in the German documentaries Vierzehn [Fourteen] (Grünberg 2013) and Achtzehn [Eighteen] (Grünberg 2014). In the German film Lucy, Maggy is an eighteen-year-old mother from a working-class background. At the beginning of the film, she lives together with her baby daughter, Lucy, in her mother’s apartment. After meeting Gordon, she moves in with him, building a quasi-nuclear family unit. While living with Gordon, Maggy is the main caregiver for Lucy. By the end of the film, when Gordon realises that it is too much work to live with a baby, the couple splits up and Maggy moves out. In the Irish short film, Jelly Baby, Stacey is in her mid-twenties and the mother of a nine-year-old girl, Lauren. The pair live alone in an apartment in Tallaght, a socio-economically disadvantaged area in Dublin. Stacey has only little contact with her former friends, as she spends most time caring for her daughter. After bringing Lauren to school in the morning, she walks around town in order to pass the time. The young single mother has no interests outside of motherhood, and when she tries to join a friend’s party, she experiences derision and exclusion. The Irish spoken-word short film, Heartbreak, follows the journey of its protagonist, called YoungOne, from age 15 to around 25. The young woman lives in a troubled household that is ridden by poverty and neglect in a working-class environment in Dublin. After meeting a boy with whom she experiences sex for the first time, she becomes pregnant. Left

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by her boyfriend and without the financial ability to travel to England for an abortion, she becomes a lone mother. From there on, the experience of young single motherhood transforms YoungOne’s attitude towards life as she tries hard to get a job and education, standing up against the unjust and misogynistic treatment of women in Ireland. The Irish screenwriter Emmet Kirwan wrote the script for Heartbreak, which was directed by Dave Tynan in 2017. Dave Tynan’s background in making music videos shows clearly in Heartbreak as the short film slightly differs from a traditional representation of a storyline in which the protagonist is the focus of the film. The focus mainly lies on Emmet Kirwan who speaks the poem as a voice-over of the short film. At times, Kirwan appears onscreen delivering the lines to the camera, while at other times, the short film visually represents YoungOne’s story as Kirwan’s delivery continues as voice-over.

Young Motherhood: Social Isolation and Autonomy Restrictions Social Isolation: Lucy and Jelly Baby In both the German fiction film Lucy and the Irish short film Jelly Baby, the young mothers struggle with being socially isolated from their peers and often having to deal with their maternal experiences on their own. While Maggy still has infrequent contact with her friends in Lucy, the film indicates that she does not share a close bond with them. Her friends are at a different stage of their lives, enjoying going out at night without restriction and/or pursuing apprenticeships,1 so, unlike Maggy, they do not have to be concerned about parental responsibilities or deal with the restrictions this might bring. The camera highlights Maggy’s detachment from her peers, even when she appears to be surrounded by them. During her birthday party, Maggy isolates herself more and more from her guests until she decides to leave the room to sleep in Lucy’s bed. In the scene, the camera often places Maggy as the focal point, ignoring the other guests. This film technique underlines Maggy’s feeling of isolation as the only mother in the room. The scene shows that even though Maggy does indeed have friends, she is not entirely connected to them. The urban setting in Lucy visually underlines Maggy’s isolation. By placing her behind the walls of apartments with narrow rooms, in which a precise and almost static mise-en-scène signifies her domestic confinement and highlights the demands that come with being responsible for a

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baby, the urban setting visually enhances the young mother’s separation from the outside world. When Maggy comforts her daughter Lucy in one scene, the mise-en-scène frames Maggy through a doorway into her daughter’s room. The walls on either side enclose the mother–daughter pair and leave little room to move within the frame of the camera. The fact that Maggy is from a low-income household and unable to work while having a toddler further underlines her inability to escape her confined living situation. As the apartments of Maggy’s mother and of Gordon become spaces of confinement, so too does the public sphere restrict the mother’s possibilities. When Maggy goes outside of her apartment, the camera repeatedly places her behind glass walls, and obstacles such as road barriers are positioned between her and the camera. Both the public and private spheres represent challenges for the young mother. The domestic sphere confines Maggy’s focus to maternal tasks, and the public sphere offers no alternative. Instead it points to the impossibility of finding something outside of motherhood. The film highlights this restricted sense of space in the domestic sphere through its static composition and further excludes the public urban sphere as a positive alternative that could have promised possibilities outside of motherhood for Maggy. Maggy’s positioning within liminal spaces communicates the young mother’s need to find her place in life to escape her social isolation. These liminal spaces visually position Maggy in-between private and public settings within the mise-en-scéne of the film. Near the end of Lucy, when Maggy moves out of Gordon’s apartment and does not know yet where to stay, she stops at a café to have breakfast. During this scene, the camera stays outside the café, observing Maggy drinking a coffee inside. While she watches the outside world passing by, the audience can see her view slightly mirrored in the window of the café. Maggy is visually separated from the public sphere but not yet fully in a private sphere either. She does not know whether to move back in with her mother or to find her own place. This mise-en-scène of a liminal space also represents Maggy’s transitional time as a young mother who is trying to find her place in life. In Lucy, therefore, liminality relates to young motherhood in regards to both space and time. The young mother occupies a position in-between adolescence and adulthood, exploring the boundaries that come with both young age and motherhood, represented via a transitional space in-between the private and the public sphere.

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The young mother in Jelly Baby is equally isolated and struggles to have a life outside of motherhood. Stacey is generally not able to spend time with her former friends, as she has to take care of her child, Lauren, full-time as a single parent. The only time Stacey is represented together with her former friends is at a party. Here, the young mother mostly interacts with her daughter, as the other guests judge her for bringing Lauren. In fact, they do not accept any of Stacey’s actions. They judge her for initially refusing to join the party and then for showing up. This continuous judgement by her friends in combination with her maternal responsibilities as a young single mother leads to Stacey’s isolation and forces her into a domestic role which mainly consists of spending time with Lauren. In Jelly Baby, the domestic sphere brings the young mother both isolation from peers and closeness with her daughter. In the apartment, Lauren and Stacey are visually and emotionally close to each other, dancing and cuddling on the couch. In contrast to Lucy, the domestic sphere represents a judgement free space, even though it isolates Stacey at the same time. The only disruption to her isolation from her peers within the domestic sphere is a one-night stand. This, in turn, disrupts the closeness between mother and daughter. The brief introduction of a man into the household constitutes a threat to Lauren’s happiness, as she feels jealous having to share the attention of her mother with a man on her own birthday. Seeing her mother waking up with the man, Lauren angrily throws her birthday cake on the ground and runs away crying. The closeknit unit of mother and daughter can only persist as long as other people are excluded from the domestic sphere. This reinforces Stacey’s social isolation as a young mother, while the relationship with her daughter becomes her sole focal point. Even though Stacey’s focus on her child caters to a traditional understanding of ‘good’ motherhood, the film undermines this positive aspect by representing Stacey as a slightly negative influence on Lauren. When mother and daughter are in a shop, Lauren follows her mother’s ‘cheeky’ behaviour towards the shop owner, taking too much free candy. In the shop, Stacey points out a poem that reminds her of her relationship to Lauren, stating: ‘I smile because you’re my daughter, I laugh because there is nothing you can do about it’. This phrase further questions the possibility of Stacey to be a ‘good’ mother, indicating that she is not able to fulfil the maternal role adequately, even though she shares a desirably close bond with her daughter.

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Stacey’s focus on the domestic sphere, maternal role and her consequent detachment from her peers are further highlighted via the visual similarity of the mother–daughter pair. The fact that Stacey and Lauren mostly dress in the same-coloured clothes creates a strong sense of them being one unit. It is difficult for Stacey to escape this unity. In Jelly Baby the mother–daughter dynamic represents both struggle and harmony. While the visual connection between mother and daughter highlights their unity, this unity also sets them apart from the other characters in the film. Restrictions on Autonomy by the Irish State: Heartbreak The short film Heartbreak criticises the Irish state’s restriction of female autonomy. Released one year before the referendum in 2018 that finally permitted a change to the constitution to allow abortion in Ireland, Heartbreak offers an appeal to change the treatment of Irish women. In Ireland, young pregnant women face the circumstance that abortion is not legalised in their country. In contrast to German women, Irish women are forced to travel to England in order to have an abortion. Heartbreak enters the nation’s debate on abortion by representing the fact that the working-class mother cannot afford such a journey. YoungOne’s private struggle with motherhood translates into the public concern of the nation in Heartbreak. As Ciara Bradley writes in an analysis of teenage parenting in Ireland: despite significant positive social changes in Ireland during the past fifty years, inequalities such as social class, educational opportunities and outcomes, […] persist which intersect in ways that create the conditions for teen pregnancy to remain an issue in particular social locations more than others. (Bradley 2018, 147)

This point is also stated by YoungOne’s mother in Heartbreak: ‘That’s [abortion] only for those that can’. The short film underlines that while Irish citizens with financial security are able to avail themselves of abortion as long as they are willing to make the journey, it is a struggle for those citizens who are not financially able to afford travelling to England. Heartbreak closely links young motherhood to the nation’s debate on abortion and the class division that restricts certain young mothers more than others.

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For YoungOne, pregnancy constitutes a loss of control over her own body. Heartbreak shows that the young pregnant body is restricted by the Irish state. YoungOne does not have the ability to gain power over her own situation as she is denied a decision over having her baby or not. The state as well as her financial restrictions define the outcome of her pregnancy which creates an initial powerlessness for the working-class young mother. In contrast to Kaplan’s description of women in American mainstream film in which ‘[w]omen have won the right to choose or not to choose motherhood’ (Kaplan 1992, 215), in contemporary Irish film they still struggle to gain agency over their own bodies, which mirrors the actual state of the law in the two countries. Kirwan’s voice-over in Heartbreak expresses anger with the Irish government for restricting women’s autonomy and with male citizens for their misogynistic treatment of women. While Kirwan delivers this anger via his voice-over in the short film, the depiction of YoungOne’s journey as well as the portrayal of Kirwan speaking the poem both represent this anger on a visual level. During Kirwan’s delivery of the narrative, the camera faces him and stays at a slightly lower angle. To address the camera directly with his speech, Kirwan must tilt his head to look down into the camera which gives him an elevated standpoint. Through this visual the narrator gains the moral high ground and is not on a level with the audience. This technique puts him in the position of a preacher who lectures his audience on how to behave in order to change the present hardship of young single mothers from working-class families and for women in general. With this, Heartbreak mainly addresses a male audience and the people responsible for social change in Ireland, such as politicians. By doing so, the short film fails to address a female audience. The narration of the film communicates the need for society to change in order to reduce the restrictions and challenges (young) pregnant women face in a hostile manner that underlines Kirwan’s frustration. Furthermore, some of the director’s filmic decisions restrict her agency. Kirwan as narrator of the spoken-word short film, speaks for YoungOne until the final scene in which she is finally heard. As the following dialogue shows, the young mother does not fully speak for herself though and her voice is always accompanied by the male narrator: Kirwan: She says ‘stop! Here, Kirwan & YoungOne: c’mere c’mere c’mere.’ Kirwan: I am not defined by the fact that I am some

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Kirwan & YoungOne: man’s daughter, sister, cousin, mother. I am a woman Kirwan: and I have agency just because Kirwan & YoungOne: I’m breathing air mother fucker! And I’m standing here mother fucker. Kirwan: And you and this state are the ones who are trying to fuck me.

The editing overwrites YoungOne’s agency by having the male narrator speak her words simultaneously. While Kirwan might intend to give her agency as well as show support for women by men through this technique, it raises the question whether the layered voices are necessary or whether this suppresses the possibility of having agency for the young mother. This ‘ability to have a voice in society and influence policy’ is characterised as one of the most important factors when it comes to the creation of women’s agency, according to Fleming et al. (2013, 11). Having Kirwan speak over YoungOne, ultimately retains the patriarchal power structure of a misogynistic society the film criticises and prevents the young single mother from having her own voice. Mirroring McLeod’s observation that patriarchy ‘asserts certain representational systems which create an order of the world presented to individuals as “normal” or “true”’ (McLeod 2000, 173f.), Heartbreak also normalises a limited agency for women.

The Expectation of Failure Scrutiny by Public Institutions: Jelly Baby Young mothers are expected to be ‘bad’ mothers. While in both Germany and Ireland motherhood is often perceived as a crisis when it happens to young women, the extensive Irish history of institutionalised discrimination and stigmatisation towards young mothers is unique to the Irish context. For example, the former occasional practice of signing young pregnant women into so-called Magdalene Asylums shows the influence of the Catholic Church in private matters as well as the stigma of deviancy attached to young motherhood in the Irish past. This practice intended to conceal young unmarried motherhood from the public eye and to avoid prejudice towards the young woman’s family (Bradley 2018, 151ff.). In contrast, in Germany it was neither practice to hide young

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pregnant women from society, nor were they sent to religious institutions. From the 2000s onwards, young, unmarried motherhood started to be more acceptable than before in Ireland, as the country started to become more accepting of practices such as lone parenting and cohabitation (Richardson 2004, 247). However, institutional stigmatisation lingers, as represented by the relationship between Stacey and Lauren’s school teacher in Jelly Baby. Stacey, as a young mother, is under constant scrutiny by Lauren’s teacher who repeatedly questions her maternal abilities. When Stacey fails to bring her daughter to school on time, she is scolded by the school teacher who demands her ‘to sort [herself] out’, calling her behaviour ridiculous. Stacey, in the meantime, sincerely worries about the fact that her daughter might be late to class as a close-up of her worrying face reveals. The teacher’s aggressive posture while shouting at Stacey, as well as her angry tone represents an inappropriate contact between the teacher and the mother that leaves the audience with the question whether the teacher would have talked to an older mother in the same manner. In the scene, the dark background of a dirty brick wall further heightens the teacher’s aggressive stance towards the young mother who is, in contrast, brightly lit. In Jelly Baby the fact that Stacey is a young mother increases her powerless position in front of institution representatives, such as the teacher who believes that she is in the position to reprimand Stacey due to her alleged immaturity. The stigmatisation of the young mother by institutional officials further shows when Lauren comes to school with a black eye, following an accident at a party. The teacher is immediately suspicious of Stacey. The following dialogue shows that the teacher suspects troubles at home as the cause of the black eye, doubting the young mother’s abilities to look after her child. Teacher: What’s going on? Stacey: What do you mean? Teacher: What’s the story with Lauren’s eye? Stacey: That, the eye was just, it was an accident. Teacher: How did it happen? Stacey: Ehm, I was getting something out of the wardrobe and when I came down she was standing there, and I just, she was standing behind me like. Obviously, it was an accident. Teacher: So, no need to be worried about her? Stacey: No.

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Teacher: Ok. Ok, I’ll see you tomorrow then, right? Stacey: Ok. Can I go? Teacher: Yes.

While the teacher is obligated to question the situation if she suspects physical abuse, the dialogue in conjunction with the teacher’s highly accusing tone underlines the heightened pressure for young mothers from a working-class background to be accepted by those with institutional power. By asking whether she can leave the conversation, the dialogue establishes a power imbalance between Stacey and Lauren’s teacher. The narrative positions Stacey as powerless against the teacher’s suspicions. Here, the Irish institution of the school questions the young mother’s ability to be a ‘good’ mother. The film shows a lack of confidence in young single mothers from working-class backgrounds by public institutions, stigmatising their abilities to care for their children adequately and to be able to make their own decisions. At the same time, the workingclass young mother, Stacey, accepts the teacher’s authority and does not show any resistance against her assumptions. Anticipated Audience Expectations: Lucy While Jelly Baby gives the audience space to learn about these specific maternal struggles, the narrative of Lucy anticipates the audience to judge the young mother. This, on one hand, allows the audience to potentially recognise their own unconscious bias against young motherhood, yet, on the other hand, reinforces a negative perception of young mothers. By playing with the anticipated prejudices of the audience, namely the anticipation that young mothers lack the responsibility to be able to care for their children, the film addresses society’s negative perception of young motherhood. Since young motherhood is mostly not portrayed as an active choice but rather as something that happens to young women, they represent an anti-model to the ‘good’ mother (Perrier 2012, 186ff.). In particular, young mothers are often pressured into having an abortion in Germany as they are not perceived as being able to mother adequately by family, friends and often by health officials (Grünberg 2013). Therefore, the audience of Lucy is expected to assume that Maggy, as the young mother, must fail. This assumption of the young mother from a workingclass background as potentially ‘bad’ mother creates the tension of the film.

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However, while the audience is anticipated to expect Maggy’s failure as a young mother, the film refuses to present this negative ending, as does Jelly Baby. Even though none of the characters progress—at the end of the film, they are at the same point at which they started—also nothing happens to Lucy and the idea of the German Rabenmutter (a bad mother) is not fulfilled. On the contrary, Maggy mostly takes good care of her child and is mainly represented as a responsible young woman. While Kaplan describes that in American mainstream film the maternal characters have to find their way back to traditional values at the end of the film (Kaplan 1992, 198), Lucy refuses this narrative arch. The film positions Maggy back at her original starting point, trying to find a place to live with her daughter, outside of the nuclear family ideal that she imagines. By doing so, she does not adopt the values that could have potentially framed her as a ‘good’ mother in the traditional understanding observed by Kaplan. The narrative of Lucy subverts anticipated audience expectations and in doing so offers space for the representation of a young single mother who tries to find her place in life outside of a traditional understanding of ‘good’ motherhood. Film reviews of Lucy share and reinforce the negative perception of young motherhood that the film anticipates, and fail to mention that nothing bad happens to Lucy by the end of the film or Maggy’s many attempts to progress. Maggy and Gordon’s attempt to build a family life is repeatedly described as playing grown up and is not taken seriously by critics (cf. Eismann 2006). Andreas Thomas further introduces a problematic infantilising rhetoric by stating: Wie spielt man coole Freundin, wie kann man noch Tochter bleiben und schon Mutter sein, und wie spielt man kleine, glückliche Familie? (Thomas 2006) [How do you play a cool girlfriend, how can you stay a daughter and already be a mother, and how do you play happy little family?]2

This rhetoric of playing girlfriend or family shows that young women are not perceived to be fit to mother. This rhetoric ultimately marginalises and others young motherhood. Alexandra Seitz underlines this in the Berliner Zeitung by writing in regards to Maggy: ‘Man mag es drehen und wenden, wie man will - mit 18 ein Kind zu bekommen, das ist ein bisschen früh’ (Seitz 2006) [Whichever way you look at it—to have a

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child at 18 is a bit young]. Headlines, such as Eddie Cockrell’s in Variety that states: ‘A distressingly young single mother makes some achingly bad decisions in the keenly-observed social drama “Lucy”’, only reinforce the negative perceptions of young motherhood. It remains unclear to which ‘achingly bad decisions’ Cockrell refers. The critics of Lucy perceive young motherhood as negative and blame the young mother for being too young to care for a child, reinforcing negative societal perceptions of young motherhood. I argue here that both contemporary German and Irish films challenge the expectation that young mothers from a working-class background will fail as mothers. In the films, the stigma connected to young motherhood leads to feelings of guilt, shame and the young mother’s powerlessness towards institution officials. Furthermore, in Lucy, it drives the narrative of the film. While Lucy refuses to fully cater to the negative perceptions of young motherhood by not representing Maggy harming her child, the film’s expectation of the audience presupposes a negative view of young motherhood. Even though Maggy does not fail as a mother, she is never able to become a ‘good’ mother. Instead she returns to the starting point of the film. None of the films represent young motherhood as an attractive option, highlighting the stigma they face by society, family and friends. Only Jelly Baby introduces a desirable closeness between mother and daughter that is, however, undermined by the representation of Stacey as a potentially negative influence.

Conclusion This chapter analyses the representation of the young single mother in relation to maternal stigma in contemporary German and Irish films. While Kaplan’s maternal discourses do not include young motherhood, the analysis of contemporary German and Irish films suggests the need for inclusion. This chapter shows how especially camera work, mise-en-scène and narration frame young single motherhood as a crisis and underlines the expectation that young mothers from a working-class background will fail as ‘good’ mothers. While these German and Irish films do indeed represent young motherhood, ideological norms of Western motherhood that frame the young mother as potentially ‘bad’ mother still underlie these representations. In Lucy, the urban setting underlines Maggy’s isolation as she is confined in small domestic spaces and encounters visual

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barriers that symbolically restrict her possibilities outside of the apartment. The audience is expected to see the young mother as a potentially ‘bad’ mother, Rabenmutter, and the film critics do indeed reinforce this expectation. In Jelly Baby, the social isolation of Stacey mainly manifests in her domestic isolation. While the young mother builds a strong unit with her daughter, which at least partially caters to a traditional perception of ‘good’ motherhood, institution officials expect her to harm her child due to her young age and her socio-economic class. Heartbreak shows the class differences that enable some young women to have an abortion and forces others into motherhood. The young single mother has little control over her situation and no autonomy over her own body, while the film equally restricts the young mother’s agency and falls back into the patriarchal power structure it criticises. This chapter demonstrates that contemporary German and Irish films represent young motherhood as undesirable and mainly link it to challenges for the young single mothers from a working-class background. These challenges include social isolation, the restriction of their bodily autonomy as well as the expectation of society and audience that they are potentially ‘bad’ mothers due to their young age, as well as their socio-economic background. Even though the films manage to highlight current struggles for young mothers, their representation, at times, falls back into a traditional understanding of ‘good’ motherhood and ultimately fails to challenge dominant discourses on young single motherhood. Acknowledgements My thanks go to Dr. Denis Condon and Dr. Valerie Heffernan for their continuous support of my PhD research, for their knowledge, patience and motivation. Funding This work was supported by the Irish Research Council.

Notes 1. In Germany, many people enter the workforce via an apprenticeship. An apprenticeship usually lasts three years and provides in-company training. After this period, the apprentice is equipped with the skills that allow him or her to continue work as a professional, often within the same company. 2. All translations are by the author.

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References Beck, Pola Schirin. 2012. Am Himmel Der Tag. Germany and France. Bradley, Ciara. 2018. ‘The Construction of Teenage Parenting in the Republic of Ireland.’ In Re/Assembling the Pregnant and Parenting Teenager, edited by Annelies Kamp and Majella McSharry, 147–171. Oxford: Peter Lang. Cockrell, Eddie. 2006. ‘Review: “Lucy.”’ Variety. https://variety.com/2006/ film/markets-festivals/lucy-1200518470/. Accessed: 20 March 2021. Eismann, Sonja. 2006. ‘Das Schreckliche, Das Nicht Passiert.’ Intro.De. https:// www.intro.de/kultur/lucy-henner-winckler. Accessed 26 August 2019. Fagan, Naomi. 2017. Jelly Baby. Ireland. Fischer, Lucy. 1996. Cinematernity. Film, Motherhood, Genre. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fleming, Paul J., Gary Barker, Jennifer McCleary-Sills, and Matthew Morton. 2013. ‘Gender, Equality & Development.’ Women’s Voice, Agency & Participation Research Series 1: 1–78. Grünberg, Cornelia. 2013. Vierzehn – Erwachsen in 9 Monaten. Germany. Grünberg, Cornelia. 2014. Achtzehn - Wagnis Leben. Germany. Heckerling, Amy. 1989. Look Who’s Talking. USA. Kaplan, E. Ann. 1992. Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama. London: Routledge. McLeod, John. 2000. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Perrier, Maud. 2012. ‘“You Have to Take It and Own It”: Yo’Mama Magazine as a Space of Refusal for Teenage Mothers.’ In Mediating Moms: Mothers in Popular Culture, edited by Elizabeth Podnieks, 185–203. Canada: McGillQueen’s University Press. Rich, Adrienne. 1986 [1976]. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Richardson, Valerie. 2004. ‘Young Mothers.’ In Motherhood in Ireland: Creation and Context, edited by Patricia Kennedy, 241–254. Cork: Mercier Press. Ryan, Tom. 2016. Twice Shy. Ireland, UK. Seitz, Alexandra. 2006. ‘“Lucy”: Henner Wincklers Film Über Eine Junge Mutter - Vollbremsung Mit Baby.’ Berliner Zeitung. https://www.berlinerzeitung.de/--lucy---henner-wincklers-film-ueber-eine-junge-mutter-vollbrems ung-mit-baby-15930570. Accessed 2 November 2019. Shyer, Charles. 1987. Baby Boom. USA. Thomas, Andreas. 2006. ‘Lucy – Intensive Unschärfe.’ Filmgazette.De. http:// www.filmgazette.de/?s=filmkritiken&id=209. Accessed 9 June 2017. Tynan, Dave. 2017. Heartbreak. Ireland.

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Walters, Suzanna D. 1992. Lives Together Worlds Apart. Berkeley: University of California Press. Winckler, Henner. 2006. Lucy. Germany.

CHAPTER 4

Unwed and Unwanted: Sofia and the Taboo of Single Motherhood in Morocco Julie Rodgers

Introduction: Single Motherhood in the Twenty-First Century For many women in the twenty-first century, the state of single motherhood is no longer equated with the once prominent stereotypes of shame, promiscuity, poverty, immaturity and abandonment, to name but a few. In fact, such has been the progress in the area of female reproductive empowerment that it is now even possible to voluntarily and intentionally choose to mother alone outside of the institution of heterosexual marriage in a significant number of countries, without encountering the punitive repercussions of old. As documented by Javda et al. (2009) in their study of what they term ‘choice mothers’, there has been a substantial ‘rise in the in the number of single women who actively become mothers without the involvement of a partner’ (2009, 175). These ‘choice mothers’ are also frequently referred to as the SMC movement (‘Single Motherhood by Choice’), a growing and increasingly popular body of

J. Rodgers (B) Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_4

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financially independent and informed women who are not prepared to sit around and wait for ‘Mr Right’ and who are instead taking control of their fertility. These women and their unconventional approach to motherhood are forcing many societies to reassess the ‘norms’ that have longed restricted female reproductive freedom and dictated a very limited, monolithic image of both what it means to be a mother and how one becomes a mother. As Mannis (1999) notes, the SMC movement rejects the traditional nuclear family unit, instead promoting female agency and positing the single-mother family form as legitimate, ‘to be understood in its own terms, and not in deficient contrast to any other family form’ (2009, 122). However, as Bock (2000) warns, the sense of legitimacy afforded to these particular women who choose solo motherhood of their own volition (the SMCs), is not always extended to all single mothers, even in the most modernized and enlightened cultures. The SMC, Bock argues, is a very specific type of mother: usually middle to upper class, well-educated, financially independent, aged somewhere between the mid to late thirties and early forties, and, subsequently, deemed socially responsible and admissible. Bock also points out that their appropriation of the term SMC, despite its feminist undertones, can actually be seen to differentiate them from ‘other’ single mothers, those who do not choose or whose choice is not condoned, the less socially desirable (for example, lower-class mothers and teenage mums), ‘those who are allegedly the real problem’ in society (2000, 64). In spite of this, however, it is fair to say that, for the most part, the first two decades of the twenty-first century have borne witness to major permutations in the composition of the family, so much so that mothering alone can, at the very least, now be considered as a conceivable pathway in life for many women, women in the Western world, that is. Once we move beyond the parameters of Western culture, the reality faced by single mothers shifts dramatically and collapses back into the realm of both the unthinkable and the unspeakable. Such is the case for the titular protagonist of Meryem Benm’Barek’s French-Arabic debut feature Sofia, released to much critical acclaim in 2018 and recipient of the ‘Best Screenplay Award’ in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes film festival in the same year. Set against the prescriptive and patriarchal backdrop of Casablanca, this dual-language film follows the trajectory of a young lower middle-class girl who finds herself pregnant out of wedlock, a ‘crime’ that remains punishable by law in Morocco. Indeed, it could be argued that the threat posed to Sofia by impending single motherhood is so strong that it leads her into a state

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of complete physical and psychological denial of her pregnancy, right up until the unexpected onset of labour in the opening scene of the film and even beyond. As the film unfolds, two key narrative strands relating to single motherhood come to the fore: the first centres around the urgent legal need to find a ‘father’ who will recognise this child thus sparing it the label of ‘bastard’ and saving the mother from a custodial sentence, while the second deals with the family’s attempt to undo the social and cultural shame that has been brought upon them by Sofia’s illegitimate pregnancy. Initially, it would appear that the pregnancy arose from consensual intercourse with a young man named Omar, who comes from a much more impoverished background than Sofia. Subsequently, a large portion of the film revolves around the need for this couple to get married and cohabit as a traditional family unit even though they barely know each other. However, it later transpires that Omar is not, in fact, the father of Sofia’s newborn baby, nor did they ever have sexual relations at any point. In a narrative twist that is revealed just before Sofia’s wedding to Omar, we learn that Sofia was actually raped by an older man and family friend, Ahmed. However, in large part due to the fact that Sofia’s father and Ahmed are business colleagues with the former heavily dependent on the latter’s ongoing financial investment, the rape is never publically disclosed and Sofia proceeds with her marriage to Omar. It is difficult to classify Sofia as pertaining to one specific national cinema over another as it is a hybrid production (involving France/Belgium and Morocco/Qatar) with target audiences both ‘at home’ (North Africa/Arabic nations) and ‘away’ (Western francophone countries as well as the wider European art-house movement). As previously mentioned, the dialogue of the film takes place in two languages, French and Arabic, with subtitles provided in French for the sections in Arabic. Language in the film is representative of sharp class divisions in Morocco with Sofia, Omar and their respective families (poor working class and lower middle class) speaking almost exclusively in Arabic and her cousin Léna and her mother (wealthy upper middle class) opting for French. Language also signifies differing sociocultural codes of conduct and it is important to note that the more subversive opinions relating to single motherhood in the film are often expressed by Léna in French while Arabic, on the other hand, equates more readily (and understandably) with submission to traditional views on pregnancy outside

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of marriage. Orlando (2009) observes in her analysis of contemporary Moroccan cinema that ‘the language chosen for certain dialogues characterizes the message the filmmaker desires to transmit’ (2009, 188) and, in the case of Sofia, there is no doubt that, through intentional shifts from Arabic to French and back again depending on the character and situation, Benm’Barek is highly critical of Moroccan laws concerning female sexuality and reproductive rights. Through close analysis of the film in question, this chapter will discuss the various religious, ethnic, class and gender tensions that continue to abjectify the single mother in Moroccan society. Furthermore, this chapter will also analyse the complicated negotiation of such a situation when it arises (namely, pregnancy outside of marriage) as well as its traumatic impact on the single mother. In order to do so, however, it will first be necessary to examine the subject of single motherhood out of wedlock1 within the wider Moroccan context so as to have a clear understanding as to why Sofia’s predicament is of the utmost dishonour and ignominy.

Mothering Alone in Morocco As Guessous and Guessous (2005) remark in their study of pregnancy outside of marriage in Morocco, despite the introduction of the ‘Code de la Famille’ [Family Law]2 in 2004 under King Mohammed VI which has given rise to some positive reforms to the status of women in Moroccan society, the situation of single mothers who conceive out of wedlock remains lamentable (2005, 172). The prevailing attitude towards such women in Morocco is not simply one of intolerance but also cruelty and violence. Guessous and Guessous inform us that in Morocco le discours social nous enseigne qu’une fille enceinte hors mariage ne peut être qu’une prostituée, une ‘chienne’ pour reprendre l’expression usitée. Par conséquent, elle ne mérite aucune pitié. [Social discourse teaches us that a girl who falls pregnant outside of marriage can be nothing more than a prostitute, a ‘bitch’ to use the common expression]. (2005, 23)

Understandably then, the focus for women is on marriage as the ultimate goal: it is the sole means of leaving home, building one’s own family and establishing a socially and culturally approved path to independence (2005, 25). Kreutzberger (2008) confirms this, stating that ‘anything

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related to sexual relationships outside marriage is still a huge taboo, as social norms proclaim marriage as the sole legal way for sexual interactions. Any deviation from that ideal is perceived as unnatural, detestable’ (2008, 49). And yet, despite the stringent moral and religious codes in place, Morocco is witnessing a growth in the number of unwed single mothers each year to the extent that Guessous and Guessous describe illegitimate pregnancies as ‘un phénomène inquiétant’ [a worrying phenomenon] (2005, 29). This has not led, however, to an increasing willingness to accept these women and their children, but, rather, a state of aphasia and erasure regarding their existence or, as Slimani (2020) observes, ‘an institutional culture of lying’ (2020, 7). Slimani considers such attitudes as constitutive of a desire ‘to defend a Moroccan identity made up more of myth than of reality’ (2020, 5) and a determination to uphold the idea of a nation that is virtuous and which must protect itself from Western decadence. A similar observation is made by Bargach (2005) in her study on the invisibility of single unwed mothers in Moroccan law which she sees as stemming from ‘a deeply entrenched sense of morality that refuses to attend to the real, because to acknowledge the latter is too unsettling [and] disturbing of a fixed understanding of identity’ (2005, 261). The unmarried single mother in Moroccan society is unequivocally positioned as a disorderly and aberrant subject and the repercussions for having engaged in sexual relations out of wedlock are severe. Slimani examines just how difficult it is in Morocco to step out of line and engage in behaviour that is unconventional. Islamic faith, she informs us, can only accept one kind of sex, conjugal sex (2020, 93). She continues, stating that, ‘the price of transgression is very high and anyone guilty of crossing the hudad – the “sacred boundaries” – is punished accordingly and summarily’ (2020, 4). The consequences for the unmarried single mother are both legal and cultural. As the very sober and silent opening shot of Sofia reminds us through its simple presentation of the main text of Article 490 of the Moroccan penal code on a black background, imprisonment of between one month and one year is prescribed for all persons of the opposite sex who, not being united by the bonds of marriage, pursue sexual relations.3 There are very few options for the woman who falls pregnant out of wedlock, with access to abortion being heavily restricted and punishable by law, as well as the risk of a charge of child abandonment should she decide not to keep the baby. The legal consequences extend even further,

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however, with the unmarried single mother being deprived of a legitimate civil identity and denied access to a range of important services and individual rights, such as child registration, identity papers and the Family Booklet4 (Bordat and Kouzzi 2010, 179). The unwed mother simply does not exist legally as ‘both criminal and civil laws in Morocco severely repress behaviour associated with being an unwed mother and have gaps that prevent unwed mothers from accessing their rights, leading to their social invisibility and legal inexistence’ (Bordat and Kouzzi 2010, 183). The unmarried single mother in Moroccan society finds herself, therefore, cast as a pariah: alienated, deprived of legal rights, often blackmailed, financially bereft, medically vulnerable, homeless and criminalized. Added to the severe legal repercussions are the appalling abuses meted out by family, friends and wider society with ‘honour killings, beatings and humiliations [being] the lot of hundreds of single mothers’ (Slimani 2020, 64). Given the merciless and relentless nature of their suffering and ostracization, it should not be surprising then that some women will go to any extreme to both escape from and protest against their fate. Perhaps one of the most mediatized examples is the case of Fadwa Laroui’s self-immolation in February 2011 when she doused herself in flammable liquids and set herself on fire in front of the City Hall in Souk Sebt (central Morocco) having been denied housing rights due to her status as an unwed single mother.5 It is important not to overlook the impact on the child born out of wedlock in our consideration of the fate of the unwed single mother in Morocco. As Guessous and Guessous (2005) point out, it is not only the unmarried mother figure who is stigmatized and rejected by Moroccan society, but also the child: L’enfant illégitime est considéré à jamais le fruit du péché. Il portera, sa vie durant, l’étiquette de bâtard. Un mot effroyable, chargé de haine, aux retombées désastreuses sur sa personnalité [The illegitimate child will forever be associated with sin and will carry the label of bastard for their entire life. This is a terrible word, full of hate, and which will have disastrous consequences for the child’s personal development]. (2005, 24)

Since the Family Code only recognizes legitimate paternal filiation, by which children are attributed to a father when he is legally married to the mother at the time of conception, illegitimate children born to

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unwed mothers ‘have no rights from their biological fathers, such as the right to bear his name, receive financial support, or inherit’ (Bordat and Kouzzi 2010, 183). They are just as invisible as their mother in the eyes of Moroccan society with both of them denied all possibility of ‘a positive space or role for them as persons existing in a social system with its normative values and moral hierarchies’ (Bargach 2005, 248). The unmarried single mother and her child cannot be redeemed or reintegrated because, as Bargach highlights, they have ‘turned into a hyperbole of immorality and social disintegration’ (2005, 251). Together they are the embodiment of chaos and disaster, ‘the forerunner symbol of a portending terrible and irreversible change’ (2005, 251) in traditional Moroccan society. With this context in mind, it becomes clear why in Sofia there is such a determined quest to procure paternal recognition on the part of the protagonist, for the sake of both her own future and that of her newborn child.

Film Analysis Following on from the opening still of the film which starkly presents Moroccan law on sexual relations outside of marriage, the viewer is brought directly into Sofia’s home, where she is shown to be experiencing severe stomach cramps during a family meal. As the pain worsens, Sofia is followed into the kitchen by her cousin Léna (who is roughly the same age as her). Léna inquires as to what is the matter but Sofia dismisses her concern stating ‘J’ai juste un peu mal au ventre’ [I’ve just got an upset stomach] and ‘J’ai trop mangé’ [I ate too much]. Léna, a medical student, examines Sofia’s abdomen and when the latter reveals that she cannot recall the date of her last period, her cousin realizes that pregnancy is a very real possibility. There is a moment of silence when both girls hold each other’s glance as the awful truth imposes itself. Sofia, however, to the surprise of the viewer, barely registers any acknowledgement of what has just been pronounced, resuming the task of washing the dishes and even mopping up her own waters once they break, stating ‘Ça va passer’ [It will pass over]. What the viewer is witnessing here through the character of Sofia is the manifestation of denied pregnancy. Although difficult to define precisely, denied pregnancy generally refers to ‘the odd phenomenon of women who show no awareness of their pregnancy until the last weeks of gestation, and in some cases until delivery’ (Del Giudice 2007, 251). The absence of subjective cognizance that

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occurs in denied pregnancy is to be differentiated from deliberate concealment where the mother realizes that she is pregnant but chooses to hide the signs and symptoms from those around her. There can be a number of reasons and conditions leading to denied pregnancy in a woman, but the one that is of interest to the analysis of Sofia is the possibility of the denial as a ‘primitive defence mechanism’ (Del Giudice 2007, 251) as a result of an unconscious mother–foetus conflict. The term ‘denied pregnancy’ is, in fact, employed twice in the film. It is first uttered by Léna who, in trying to explain why no one in the family was informed of this pregnancy before the actual arrival of the baby, states: ‘Elle a fait un déni de grossesse. Elle était enceinte mais elle ne le savait pas’ [She had a denied pregnancy. She was pregnant but she didn’t realize]. The second instance is when Sofia visits a female doctor to have the newborn baby checked over and it is recommended that she consult a psychologist: ‘Un déni de grossesse n’arrive jamais par hazard’ [Denied pregnancy doesn’t just happen randomly], the doctor informs her, adding that it is a form of ‘protection inconsciente’ [unconscious protection]. For Sofia, it is very probable that is was a heightened combination of shame, fear and trauma that led her into the state of denied pregnancy. Given that both Moroccan law and culture are deeply punitive of unwed single mothers, it is little surprise that such a pregnancy might be experienced as a trauma and thus unknowingly repressed as a kind of emergency strategy in extremely stressful circumstances. In fact, it is possible to argue that, in the case of Sofia, the denial extends well beyond the birth of the baby. In the scenes that follow the birth, there is very little evidence of any bonding between mother and infant. Indeed, Sofia barely looks at her daughter and is often depicted staring straight ahead into empty space as opposed to engaging with her surrounding environment and, in particular, her newborn. During labour, the midwife informs Léna that Sofia is refusing to follow instructions and allow them to examine her, which, along with the barely audible, muffled cries of pain, serve as further indicators of prolonged denial, even when the body is actively giving birth. At one point in the film, Sofia proclaims to Léna ‘Je veux me réveiller de ce cauchemar’ [I want to wake up from this nightmare], again highlighting her psychic alignment of the pregnancy with the ‘unreal’.6 It is during the scene where Sofia is furtively brought to the hospital by her cousin Léna that the viewer becomes acutely aware of just how dangerous it is for a woman to be pregnant out of wedlock in Morocco. Léna is forced to construct a story based on lies, forgotten identity papers

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and the ‘father’ supposedly away on business, but even then it is simply too much of a risk for the hospital to accept Sofia. The atmosphere is one of constant threat and surveillance, with armed guards hovering in the background. Throughout all of this, Sofia remains silent and voiceless, while Léna pleads with the hospital to find a solution. It is obvious that Sofia is in established labour but no one is willing to or even permitted to help her, such is her unlawfulness. Eventually Léna contacts a doctor friend elsewhere and manages to persuade him to take Sofia into his care. Everything is conducted in a covert and clandestine manner, again with no input from Sofia who appears both dissociated and excluded from the negotiations. Léna is warned that while they will admit Sofia, they will have to declare it to the police so it is of the utmost importance that she obtain the father’s papers as soon as possible. Furthermore, Sofia will have to leave the hospital immediately after the birth—there will be no time for convalescence or aftercare for the unmarried single mother. Already her status as social outcast is brutally apparent. Sofia has to be hidden away: ‘Il ne faut pas qu’ils vous voient ici’ [You can’t be seen here], the doctor says, referring to the chief medical staff and hospital authorities. As Slimani points out, the consequences for doctors who are involved in cases of unmarried single mothers are severe and can lead to arrest (2020, xi). Sofia is, therefore, lucky to be able to give birth in a medical setting at all. The first hospital that they visited had informed them ‘Même dans le privé, il ne vont pas vous accepter. Ils ne vont pas risquer leur réputation’ [Even in the private sector, they won’t accept you. They’re not going to risk their reputation]. According to Guessous and Guessous, many unmarried single mothers are forced to give birth alone at home without any intervention from healthcare professionals whatsoever (2005, 120). For some, the birthing conditions are even more traumatic again: ‘Il n’est pas rare que les filles accouchent dans la rue, dans un car, dans la voiture […], dans un champ’ [It is not uncommon for girls to give birth in the street, on a bus, in the car…in a field] (Guessous and Guessous 2005, 120). As previously stated, Sofia does not utter a single word while Léna is trying to organize the delivery. It is not until she is about to get changed into a hospital gown to give birth that we hear her speak, informing Léna that ‘mes parents ne doivent pas savoir’ [my parents can’t find out]. Even at the very moment when she is on the verge of a life-changing and also potentially life-threatening experience (with the very real possibility of death in childbirth), Sofia’s primary anxiety is that she will disgrace

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her family. In Moroccan society, Slimani informs us, ‘honour comes first’ (2020, 6). Women’s bodies are controlled by the group and female virtue is a public matter. A woman, Slimani writes, ‘is the guarantee of family honour and, worse still, of the nation’s identity’ (2020, 157). As soon as the baby is born, the impetus is on locating the father. At first Sofia is reluctant to divulge any information but, after much insistence from her cousin Léna, she agrees to lead her to his neighbourhood. It is essential that Sofia gain the father’s recognition if she and her child are to access a legitimate social and legal status and avoid some of the more severe repercussions. Indeed, it is the sole possibility of salvation for Sofia in a society that so stringently condemns sexual relations outside of marriage. Sofia informs Léna that the father is a young man named Omar who lives in one of the poorer suburbs of Casablanca. It takes Sofia a while to remember exactly where his home is situated, and when they eventually do find it, it is quickly made known to them that they are unwelcome and they are abruptly turned away. At this point, Sofia begins to consider what she views as the only other option available to her if Omar refuses to accept the child, that is, abandoning the baby. In a detached and coolly calm tone, she announces to Léna ‘On la laisse ici et on rentre à la maison comme si rien n’était’ [Let’s leave her here and go home as if nothing happened], while searching for a cardboard box in which to place her newborn daughter. Abandoning babies born out of wedlock is, unfortunately, not an uncommon phenomenon in Morocco. Slimani writes, To avoid […] exclusion and not risk arrest for an extramarital relationship, hundreds of women abandon children born out of wedlock. According to the Moroccan charity Insaf, in 2010 alone, twenty-four babies on average were abandoned every day, which adds up to almost nine thousand babies per year without identity or family, not to mention the corpses found in public bins. (2020, 16)

In the film, it is intimated that had Léna not been present too then Sofia may actually have gone through with this option. Having been shunned from Omar’s house, Sofia must now commence the difficult return to her own family and face the shame, anger and disappointment that await her. Her parents are, at this point, already aware of the baby as they phoned the hospital when Léna and Sofia failed to come back home within the expected time frame. Both Sofia’s mother

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and aunt (Léna’s mother) are in a state of distress while her father simply ignores her and walks straight past her, unable to hold her gaze because of what has happened. The focus is solely on honour and reputation with no concern expressed for either Sofia’s physical or psychological state in light of the trauma that she has just endured. ‘Tes parents sont anéantis. Tu les as humiliés’ [Your parents are destroyed. You have humiliated them] her aunt chides, adding ‘Tu gâches tout […]. Tu te rends compte de ce que tu nous as fait?’ [You have ruined everything. Do you even realize what you have done?]. The importance of gaining the father’s recognition and restoring a veneer of order is reiterated. The aunt states ‘On ne peut rien faire contre les ragots, mais on peut au moins essayer de réduire les dégâts’ [We can’t do anything about the gossip, but we can at least try to limit the damage]. As Bargach remarks, the main priority for unmarried single mothers in Morocco and, by extension, their immediate family, ‘remains the possibility for regularizing (i.e. getting married) their personal situation in order to protect themselves from the shame and dishonour that has become synonymous with their person’ (2005, 246). Subsequently, a second visit to Omar’s home ensues, this time with Sofia accompanied by her parents and aunt. Omar vehemently denies paternity, declaring that he has only ever met Sofia once before and that nothing more than a conversation took place between them. However, given the superior social and economic status of Sofia’s family (and, in particular, her aunt’s wealth),7 it becomes clear that they may be able to use this to their advantage in order to negotiate a way out of this crisis. This leads to a number of legal consultations after which both Omar and Sofia are temporarily imprisoned. What follows on from this appears to be a series of bribes to the legal authorities and also Omar’s family, although this is not explicitly shown in the film. It can, nonetheless, be deduced by the viewer through the double release of Omar and Sofia from prison and Omar’s sudden volteface whereby he now agrees to admit that he had sexual relations with Sofia and that the baby belongs to him having, up until that point, refuted the accusation outright.8 Despite claims of morality, faith and honour, it is evident that the most powerful authority in Moroccan society is ‘the law of cash’ (Slimani 2020, 76). Those who can buy their way out of a problem will suffer less than those who cannot afford such deliverance. Sofia’s economic and social class comes to the fore here. Although nowhere near as wealthy as her aunt and cousin, Sofia’s family is of a

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more elevated status than Omar’s. As we shall see, the significance of class difference in Morocco becomes even more pronounced as the film moves towards its conclusion. It is not until close to the end of the film that we learn that Omar was, in fact, telling the truth all along, and that Sofia was actually raped by her father’s business partner Ahmed (who was present at the family meal previously referred to and during which Sofia goes into labour). Even though abortion is largely prohibited in Morocco, reforms to Article 453 of the Penal Code in 2015 do permit it in the case of rape. Had Sofia realized that she was pregnant, this would have been a viable option for her. Simply declaring the rape would also have allowed her to avoid criminalization (in fact, this is the statement her father wished her to make in relation to Omar). And yet, when given the option by her mother and aunt to back out of her marriage from Omar and reveal Ahmed’s identity, perhaps the only moment in the film when any real agency is extended to Sofia, she unhesitatingly rejects this pathway. In her longest and most assertive segment of dialogue, Sofia outlines her plan to proceed with the marriage to Omar despite her cousin’s protestations and she explains her reasoning as follows. On ne va rien faire. Cette situation arrange tout le monde. Je ne suis pas en prison. J’ai sauvé l’honneur de ma famille. Omar va trouver du travail. On pourra aider sa famille. Papa pourra continuer son projet. Et ta mère n’aura plus à payer pour nous. Je ne veux pas annuler le mariage. [We are not going to do anything. This situation suits everyone. I’m not in prison. I have protected my family’s honour. Omar will get a job. We’ll be able to help his family. Dad will be able to continue with his work plans.9 And your mother won’t have to pay for us any longer. I don’t want to cancel the wedding].

In making such a decision, it becomes clear once more that family honour and societal acceptance in Morocco surpass the needs and desires of the individual, particularly the female, whose body and reproductive capacity is very much a public and collective matter rather than a private experience. For Sofia, marrying Omar is the best outcome for everyone concerned, even Omar, she argues, who will be able to benefit from her family’s economic position. This is not, however, the way that Omar, who is angry at having been ‘purchased’ and manipulated, views it, and he spits on Sofia when she suggests that they can grow to love each other.

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There are two victims then at the close of the film and two perpetrators: first, Sofia, a young woman who has been raped and dishonoured and forced into motherhood against her will, a victim at the hands of patriarchal culture; and second, Omar whose poverty and deprivation have been exploited and trapped him in a union that he has not freely chosen, a victim of the cruel structures of a class-based society. It is difficult to imagine how this marriage, based on lies and deceit from the outset, could ever be a happy one. One of the final images that we have of Sofia and Omar is at the wedding parade when she reaches out to hold his hand and he brusquely withdraws. And yet, Sofia is smiling. Whether this is because she is truly hopeful for her future or just performing joy for the occasion (for the purpose of appearances and to ensure that the marriage looks authentic) remains unanswered as the screen quickly cuts to black. What the viewer can discern, however, is that once the wedding plans are put in place, the bond between Sofia and her baby begins to improve. When still in the ostracized position of unwed single mother, Sofia barely acknowledges the infant’s presence, only holding her daughter to feed her in a perfunctory and distanced manner. Identity-less and referred to in generic terms (‘le bébé’) [the baby], the illegitimate newborn is as marginalized as its unwed mother. That Sofia does not name her child until near the end of the film could be a result of an inability to connect with her following the trauma of a rape and a denied pregnancy. But equally, it could be due to the fact that, as Slimani informs us While the new Family Code in Morocco allows a child born outside of marriage to be registered, if the father will not acknowledge it, then the mother must choose the child’s name from a list, all including the prefix abd, meaning ‘servant’, ‘slave’ or ‘subordinate’. Born of an unknown father, the child will be a societal outcast and subject to social and economic exclusion. (2020, 17)

Once Sofia can be assured that she will be married and that both she and her child will be spared humiliation and rejection, she names the baby. Significantly, she chooses the name ‘Emel’ which translates from Arabic as ‘hope’. By orchestrating a move from the criminalized status of unwed single mother to the more privileged and socially sanctioned position of married mother with paternal recognition for the child, Sofia

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has successfully managed to reverse her relationship with cultural definitions of ‘good’ motherhood. As Newman remarks, ‘Moroccan single mothers are barred entry to celebrated maternal belonging and are instead stereotyped as either victims of sexual violence or sexual deviants’ (2018, 53). Sofia’s actions, therefore, while seemingly conforming to patriarchal expectations of women, could also be interpreted in line with feminist thought as a reclaiming of the maternal domain that both she and her child were almost prohibited from accessing.

Conclusion: Survival Strategies and Ambivalent Feminism In terms of Moroccan cinematic history, Sofia falls into the category of what has been defined by Orlando (2009) as a third wave generation of artistic creation arising from the turn of the millennium. For the most part, these films, Orlando states, ‘are socially engaging, made in a socialrealist style that seeks not only to entertain, but also educate audiences […] about Moroccan society’ (2009, xv). They have taken up sensitive and taboo issues that were once impossible to discuss and are ‘interested in the marginalized individual and his/her “becoming” in Moroccan society’ (2009, 14). By tackling the controversial subject of the unwed single mother, Benm’Barek courageously explores unchartered waters and enters into the realm of the previously ‘unsaid’ and ‘unsayable’ for Moroccan filmmakers. Sofia, therefore, is an important film in that it contributes to an opening up of dialogue around a topic that is incredibly relevant to Moroccan society but about which attitudes remain predominantly conservative and stagnant. As Orlando remarks One of the most noticeable aspects of the transformation in the Moroccan film industry since 1999 is the increase in women filmmakers […]. These women are young, energetic and in their films tackle some of the most pressing questions that affect women in Moroccan society today. Their feature-length films and documentaries are radical and function as vehicles for social change. Their work is indicative of the power that film has to alter mentalities, offer alternatives, and propose a rethinking of women’s traditional roles in Moroccan society. (2009, 198)

And yet, Sofia is not a straightforward narrative of feminist subversion of patriarchal structures. As I have demonstrated in this chapter, the

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film is much more ambivalent than this. Through the character of Sofia, Benm’Barek delves into the complexities of what it means to be a woman and, more specifically, an unmarried single mother in Morocco today. The script revolves around moments of transgression but also submission to the cultural norms, thus mirroring the impossible situation that these women find themselves. Perhaps then, the most useful way of approaching a film like Sofia, is to read it as a narrative of renegotiation of the unwed single mother’s plight or, as Barlet and Farrell (2019) comments, ‘the strategies employed by women fighting for their emancipation – without, however, denying the inevitability of compromise’ (2019, 232). Sofia occupies a profoundly ambiguous position in relation to her single motherhood, ‘not voluntarily but out of necessity when facing the limits placed on women by Moroccan society’ (Barlet and Farrell 2019, 232). It is possible, therefore, to interpret the many scenes where Sofia remains silent and voiceless as a careful contemplation and assessment of the various options that are available to both her and her baby. In the end, one can argue that a certain amount of control and agency is exercised by Sofia regarding her fate, even if it does superficially appear that she is simply succumbing to tradition. It is clear from a film like Sofia that the conversation around unmarried single mothers in Morocco urgently needs to evolve.10 As Slimani warns, ‘the tension between the desire for modernity and the attachment – whether genuine or superficial – to traditional values is wearing down Moroccan society’ (2020, 156). The work of various NGOs such as Solidarité Féminine, who have done much to support such women in spite of the challenges that they face, is to be commended. But there is also a role for artists, writers and filmmakers to play, as this chapter has highlighted, in the reconceptualization of motherhood in Morocco. Films such as Sofia invite us to reflect on the ongoing condemnation of unmarried single mothers in Moroccan society and create a space where they can enact a transformation of sorts from victim to self-sovereign mother. Thus, in Sofia, it is crucial that the viewer see beyond what appears on the surface to be absolute surrender to patriarchal convention and instead approach the protagonist’s chosen pathway as a subtle reappropriation of maternal cultural belonging from which she would otherwise be excluded.

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Notes 1. There are, of course, many different types of single motherhood: single motherhood after divorce; after the death of one’s spouse; adopting a child as a single mother, for example. The type of single motherhood that we are concerned with here relates to the child conceived outside of marriage. It is this form of single motherhood that is the object of much scorn in Moroccan society as it involves pre-marital sex which is forbidden by Moroccan law. For the purpose of clarity, I will refer to ‘single mothers out of wedlock/marriage’ or ‘unmarried/unwed single mothers’ in this chapter. 2. All translations from French to English in square brackets are my own. 3. While the sentence applies to both males and females, obviously it is much easier for a man to deny sexual relations outside of marriage (and thereby escape punishment) than it is for a woman who risks falling pregnant and having her ‘crime’ visibly inscribed on her body. 4. The Family Booklet is a legal document issued to the father in Morocco. It contains a record of the identities of the mother and father of the child as well as other important information. Without the Family Booklet, the child has no real civil status and will thus be deprived of several rights, for example, access to healthcare. 5. See Laila Lalami’s article on Fadoua Laroui published in The Nation on 27th February 2011. 6. In an interview for RFI focusing on the film, director Maryem Benm’Barek suggests that it is also possible to interpret Sofia’s denied pregnancy as a metaphor for the Morocco’s refusal to confront the phenomenon of sex outside of marriage and unwed single mothers. She states ‘D’une manière inconsciente, le déni de Sofia représente le déni de certaines problématiques auxquelles les Marocains doivent faire face’ [Subconsciously, Sofia’s denial represents the denial of certain problems which Moroccans need to face up to]. 7. Sofia and her parents could be defined as lower middle class while the aunt is aligned with upper middle or even upper class. Omar and his family, by contrast, are lower working class. 8. It must be pointed out that Omar and Sofia are able to take advantage of one of reforms in 2004 to the Moroccan Family Code. This particular reform attributes legitimate paternity to a child conceived during the parents’ presumed ‘engagement’ period, taking steps to protect children’s rights and acknowledging that, in reality, couples may have sexual relations before marriage. However, the law does not provide for court-ordered paternity testing of a biological father against his will upon the unwed mother’s or her child’s request (Bordat and Kouzzi 2010, 183).

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9. The specific work plans that she is referring to involve an important contract with Ahmed which promises to bring much financial profit to Sofia’s family. 10. It is interesting to note that since Benm’Barek’s Sofia, a second film on the topic of the unmarried single mother in Morocco has been released. The film in question is Maryam Touzani’s Adam (2019), which has garnered much interest at a number of international film festivals but is yet to go on full general release. That two such films should emerge in such quick succession is evidence of the desire to rethink the issue of single motherhood in Morocco and challenge the stereotypes that accompany it.

References Adam. 2019. Maryam Touzani. Bargach, Jamila. 2005. ‘An Ambiguous Discourse of Rights: The 2004 Family Law Reform in Morocco.’ HAWWA 3 (2): 245–266. Barlet, Olivier, and Chloe Farrell. 2019. ‘African Cinema of 2010s.’ Black Camera 10 (2): 226–249. Bock, Jane D. 2000. ‘Doing the Right Thing? Single Mothers by Choice and the Struggle for Legitimacy.’ Gender and Society 14 (1): 62–86. Bordat, Stephanie, and Saida Kouzzi. 2010. ‘Legal Empowerment of Unwed Mothers: Experiences of Moroccan NGOs.’ In Legal Empowerment: Practitioners’ Perspectives, edited by Stephen Goulb, 179–202. Rome: ILDO. Del Giudice, Marco. 2007. ‘The Evolutionary Biology of Cryptic Pregnancy: A Re-Appraisal of the “Denied Pregnancy” Phenomenon.’ Medical Hypotheses 68: 250–258. Forster, Siegfried. 2018. ‘Text of Interview with Meryem Benm’Barek for RFI.’ http://www.rfi.fr/fr/culture/20180517-sofia-film-meryem-benmbarek-portrait-maroc-femme-homme-marocains. Guessous, Soumaya Naamane, and Chakib Guessous. 2005. Grossesses de la honte. Casablanca: Le Fennec. Javda, Vasanti, S. Badger, Mikki Morrissette, and Susan Golombok. 2009. ‘Mom by Choice, Single by Life’s Circumstances: Findings from a Large Scale Survey of the Experiences of Single Mothers by Choice.’ Human Fertility 12 (4): 175–184. Kreutzberger, Kai. 2008. ‘Single Mothers and Children Born out of Wedlock in the Kingdom of Morocco.’ Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Easter Law Online: 49–82. Lamali, Laila. 2011. ‘Fadoua Laroui: The Moroccan Mohammed Bouazizi.’ The Nation, February 27. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/fadoua-lar oui-moroccan-mohamed-bouazizi/.

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Mannis, Valerie S. 1999. ‘Single Mothers by Choice.’ Family Relations 48 (2): 121–128. Newman, Jessica Marie. 2018. ‘Aspirational Maternalism and the Reconstitution of Single Mothers in Morocco.’ Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 14 (1): 45–67. Orlando, Valérie K. 2009. Francophone Voices of the New Morocco in Film and Print: Representing a Society in Transition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Slimani, Leïla. 2020. Sex and Lies. London: Faber and Faber. Sofia, 2018. Meryem Benm’Barek.

CHAPTER 5

Advice Books for Single Mothers Raising Sons: Biology, Culture and Guilt

Berit Åström

Introduction The single mother is a figure that evokes strong reactions in US public discourse (Adair 2000; Hancock 2004). Many commentators regard her as a danger, both to her child and to society. This view is expressed, for example, by the National Center for Fathering, a non-profit organisation aiming to support men in their roles as fathers. On the website, it is stated that ‘children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems’ (‘The Consequences of Fatherlessness’). At the same time, new conceptualisations of fathers and fatherhood are emerging, where concepts such as ‘involved fatherhood’, ‘caring masculinity’ and fathers as primary caregivers are discussed (Hunter et al. 2017, 2020; Wall and Arnold 2007; Schmitz 2016). Yet, even though

B. Åström (B) Department of Language Studies, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_5

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many fathers are stepping forward to participate more in their children’s lives (Doucet 2016), parenting literature is lagging behind, still treating fathers as assistants to mothers or part-time parents (Sunderland 2006; Fleming and Tobin 2005). A renegotiation of parenting roles is thus ongoing in US society. This may cause uncertainty amongst parents, not only about what it means to be a mother or a father, but also how to raise a boy or a girl in society where gender roles appear to be changing. To combat that uncertainty, many parents turn to advice books ‘seeking information about how to help their children function in a gendered society’ (Krafchick et al. 2005, 84). Yet these books themselves play a part in the renegotiations of parenting roles and in this chapter I analyse a subcategory, the advice book aimed at single mothers raising sons. It is my contention that many of these books are part of a backlash against these renegotiations. Claiming to help and support single mothers, they in fact advocate a return to heteronormative, traditional two-parent families. In these, the father should be the head of the household and the centre of the family, yet he is not required to take part in the day-to-day care of the children. Writing from an assumption of supposed biological differences in parenting, the authors devote a great deal of energy to ‘borderwork’ (Doucet 2018; Thorne 1993), establishing and policing borders between the genders. Part of this borderwork is the claim that mothers are illequipped for dealing with boys. Whilst on the one hand the ideal of ‘intense mothering’ (Hays 1996) is promoted, on the other hand the mother readers are told that they cannot raise their sons to be men. Thus, the genre of advice books for single mothers, which purports to help mothers succeed as single parents, comes to concern itself more with the reinstating of traditional fatherhood.

The Material Advice books or self-help books are very popular in the US, perhaps more so than in many of the other countries discussed in this volume. As has been noted by Micki McGee (2005) and Steven Starker (2008), it is a genre that seems entwined with the development of the country itself. Starker argues that it is a ‘visible and powerful force in American society’ (2008, 1) and McGee notes that it is estimated that one third to one half of Americans have at some point bought a self-help book (2005, 11). These advice books ‘cover any and all issues, with titles

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specialized to address every market segment’ (2005, 12). It is then not surprising that there will also be advice books directly aimed at single mothers raising sons. What makes it important to investigate these books also in an international context is their potential global reach: written for a national market, some of the books are also sold to an international readership. To give an example, there is, as far as I have been able to ascertain, no home-grown literature of this type in the Nordic countries.1 The cultural, legal and financial situation for single mothers in these countries is very different, so on the surface there does not appear to be a market for the US style of advice book addressing specifically single mothers of sons. However, some of these books are sold, in the original English, via Swedish, Norwegian and Danish online bookshops, which suggests that there is a readership after all. Considering how other cultural conventions and ideas of family life and intimate relations travel from the US to the Nordic countries, it is important to analyse the regulatory messages they present to an international readership. The titles analysed in this chapter were gathered from the websites of Amazon and Barnes and Noble, as well as the Library of Congress. The criteria for selection were to a certain extent publishing figures, when such could be obtained, as well evidence of readers’ engagement, through comments on Goodreads. All the books chosen are aimed at mothers raising sons, and I have prioritised books that specifically target single mothers. However, in some cases, where relevant, I have included books that also address married mothers. Since the purpose of this study is to achieve an overview of what notions of single mothers and of the rearing of sons are circulated in the contemporary US, the aim of the selection has been to sample a broad range of works. The resulting body of material, 40 books published between 2001 and 2020, is thus quite diverse, ranging from books published by established publishing houses such as Random House (e.g. Latta 2013) to books published as print on demand via Amazon (e.g. Norwood 2016; Palmer 2013). Some books are over 300 pages long and aim to go through a boy’s physical and emotional development from infancy to adulthood, whereas others address his life from puberty onwards over the space of 60 to 80 pages (Moffitt 2020; Parker 2018; Pearson 2019; Tyler 2016). Some authors are white and address an intended audience of middleclass women (e.g. Buchanan 2012; Chisholm 2007; Johnson 2011; Leman 2012). Other authors are black and, although they generally present themselves as middle-class, address an audience of working class,

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poor mothers (e.g. Howland 2020; Moore and Moore 2013; Williams 2011). The authors come from diverse fields and backgrounds, ranging from medical doctors and clinical psychologists to social workers to lawyers, businessmen and youth ministers who were themselves raised by single mothers. Some books are written from a specifically Christian perspective (e.g. Stoppe 2013; Swanson 2019). Six of the books were written by two authors, five of those one woman and one man, one by two women. Of the rest, seventeen were written by women and eighteen by men. Twenty of the books are aimed specifically at an African-American readership, through their titles, covers and content (e.g. Estelle 2013; Watkins 2017). The white authors do not overtly address ethnicity. All the authors construct their ethos, establish their authority as experts on the rearing of sons, but they choose different strategies. Some draw attention to their medical or academic qualifications, either explicitly in the text, as for example, Meg Meeker, MD, or implicitly by including their titles on the covers, as Dr Josef A. Passley (2006). Some put their titles on the cover even when the degrees are not directly relevant, as is the case with Dr William C. Small, who holds a PhD in Religious Studies. Other authors, however, make a virtue out of the fact that they are not academics, but instead have real-life experience. Donna Joyce, who gives no information about her background or occupation, reiterates throughout her book that she shares the experiences of her readers—‘a single mom myself’—and promises that the advice in the book will be relevant to real lives and not ‘mumbo-jumbo psychoanalytic nonsense’ or ‘psychobabble crap’ that is of no practical help (2018, 2, 80). Similarly, John P. Dennis, former air traffic controller turned businessman, lists all the things he is not: ‘I am not an academician, a scholar, a marriage & family therapist, a psychologist, or a specialist in the area of parental studies’. Instead, he is ‘a concerned Dad…writing…from a male perspective’ (2015, 13–14). These authors promise to help the reader through common sense and experience of what actually works. What all these books have in common is the stated goal to help single mothers raise happy, healthy, exceptional, remarkable and extraordinary sons. These words are repeated in the titles, subtitles, taglines and blurbs of almost all the books: The Single Mother’s Guide to Raising Remarkable Boys (Panettieri and Hall 2008), Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys (Reist 2015), ‘how to raise Boys to become happy, healthy and responsible adults’ (Joyce 2018), ‘How Single Mothers Can Raise Exceptional Sons’

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(Bromfield and Erwin 2001), ‘Lessons Mothers Need to Raise Extraordinary Men’ (Meeker 2015). Thus, the books all share another common trait of advice books: they play on the readers’ insecurities and, in many cases, ‘foster, rather than quell, their anxieties’ (McGee 2005, 17).

The Boy Crisis In order to establish what is at stake, the authors generally take as their starting point the ‘“what about the boys”’ debate that has been ongoing in the US over the last few decades (Mills 2002, 57). Participants in this debate suggest that whilst time and resources were spent on helping girls, boys were left behind socially, emotionally and pedagogically (Haywood, Mac an Ghail and Allan 2015). This view has resulted in a number of what Martin Mills has termed ‘backlash blockbusters’ (2002, 57), such as Michael Gurian’s The Wonder of Boys: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys into Exceptional Men (1996, 2000), Christina Hoff Sommers’s The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men (2000, 2013) and Leonard Sax’s Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Men (2007). One of the most recent books in this vein is William Farrell and John Gray’s 2018 book The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It. Like Gurian, Hoff and Sax, Farrell and Grey see this crisis manifesting itself in an ‘increase in crime, incarceration, school shootings, domestic violence, rape, drugs, problems in mental health, physical health, poverty, unemployment, and [high] drop-out rates’ (2018, 114). Two causes are presented as responsible for this crisis: boys’ biological vulnerability compared to girls, and an absence of fathers, what the authors’ term ‘dad deprivation’ (2018, 105). These are claims put forward, with only minor variations, by most of the advice books analysed in this chapter, both that boys are biologically disadvantaged in relation to girls and that growing up without a father is detrimental to a boy’s mental and physical health (see for example Bromfield and Erwin 2001, xi; Bryant 2015, 36; Dennis 2015, 13). Small even goes so far as to claim that ‘[t]he greatest social, cultural, and financial problem plaguing every nation across the globe is fatherlessness’ (2017, x).

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Boys’ Biological Disadvantages The question of whether there are biological differences between the sexes, and what effects they may have, is a vexed one. Scholars such as Janet Shibley Hyde, Professor of Psychology (2005), and Cordelia Fine, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science (2010), have demonstrated through meta-studies that many of the differences taken for granted, such as an aptitude for maths, are non-existent or negligible. Psychologist Rosalind Barnett and media critic Caryl Rivers comment that even though sex differences are a reality, in most areas these differences are smaller than those between individuals within the same sex (2005, 13). Furthermore, as Fine, Barnett and Rivers note, human behaviour, and the human brain, change over a lifetime, in response to life situations: ‘We are all a product of many interacting forces, including our genes, our personalities, our environment, and chance’ (Barnett and Rivers 2005, 12). Yet almost all the authors of the advice books take as a starting point that boys and girls are born fundamentally different biologically, and that these differences regulate every aspect of their lives, both as children and adults. They express a general consensus, based on unsubstantiated claims from unspecified sources, that boys are biologically disadvantaged. According to the Australian psychologist and ‘parenting author’ Steve Biddulph, referenced in, for example, Panettieri, infant boys develop eyesight and hearing more slowly than girls; they learn to speak and read more slowly and have inferior fine motor skills (Biddulph 2013, blurb, 13).2 Bromfield and Erwin agree in their advice book: ‘boys’ brains are less well equipped for impulse control, social skills and understanding, and language’ (2001, 24). The growing male brain is presented as defective3 compared to the female, which explains why boys struggle to recognise other people’s emotions, are bad at listening, bad at ‘detecting cues by tone of voice’ and do not have as ‘detailed memory storage’ (Panettieri and Hall 2008, 19). Thus, although there is no scientific evidence for substantial, physical differences between male and female brains (Hyde 2005; Fine 2010), most of the authors of advice books carry out borderwork, agreeing that ‘boys are very different from girls’ (Panettieri and Hall 2008, 18); this in turn means that they have ‘biological and cultural needs’ that a mother cannot ‘address because of her gender’ (Allen and Dickerson 2012, 65).

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Not only do these differences make it difficult for mothers to cope with boys’ excessive energy, untidiness, lack of foresight, inability to learn from mistakes and their ‘male drive to investigate, to push ahead, to tear apart’ (Elium and Elium 2004, 6), they will also cause problems in school, since boys cannot sit still and listen. In fact, some commentators on the boy crisis argue that boys should start school a year or two later than girls (Sax 2016, 25; Biddulph 2013, 71) since at the age of five, boys’ brains are up to twelve months behind girls’ brains in development (Biddulph 2013, 70). Although research has showed that the sweeping claim that ‘all boys’ are disadvantaged in school is not borne out by the evidence (Haywood, Mac an Ghaill and Allen 2015; Anderson and Accomando 2002; Tarrant et al. 2015), some advice book authors argue not only that boys are less prepared for school, but that the ‘feminised school’ (feminised both in terms of teaching staff and pedagogy), discriminates against boys.4 Mardi Allen and James L. Dickerson claim that female teachers reward ‘feminine behavior in boys (sitting quietly and exhibiting non-assertive behaviour)’, ‘punish boys for being aggressive in the classroom or on the playground during recess’ and ‘give girls higher grades’ for work of the same standard (2012, 73–74). Similarly, Antonio Anderson maintains that the ‘lack of male teachers’ in the early years of school cause boys ‘to lose their creativity’ since ‘they have no male influence to cultivate that in them’ (2017, 8). What is revealed in these books is a tendency to treat education, and society in general, as a ‘zero-sum game; if girls advance, boys lose’ (Barnett and Rivers 2005, 119). If girls are doing better in school than they have done in previous decades, it must be at the expense of boys. The advice books are in part written to redress this injustice. The Vulnerable Boy and the Single Mother These alleged biological differences will not only place the boy raised by a single mother at a disadvantage socially and academically, but will also affect his health and development. Joyce notes that fatherless sons ‘go through puberty at a later age’ (2018, 16). Allen and Dickerson point to even more serious consequences. Despite writing that mothers should not fear ‘that they are ruining their sons’ health’ (2012, 142), they suggest exactly that when they claim that fatherless sons ‘experience more accidental injury, asthma, frequent headaches, and speech defects’ than boys

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with residential fathers (2012, 141). They also state that such children are more likely to suffer from depression and schizophrenia (2012, 141– 142). In addition, mothers ‘tend to under-evaluate their son’s discomfort’ because women have a higher pain threshold (2012, 141). Boys, who allegedly feel pain more acutely than their mothers or sisters, are told ‘to ignore the early symptoms of disease…thus increasing the likelihood that their illnesses will require more extensive treatment’ (2012, 141). The statistics quoted by advice book authors may be correct,5 but very few of them pay any attention to the potential effects of socioeconomic factors. It is sometimes mentioned in passing that fatherless children often live below the poverty line, but that is not connected to ill health, poor performance in school, depression or drug abuse. Instead, all these problems are blamed on the ineffectual parenting of the mothers.

Saving the Boy Not Spoiling Him A repeated criticism voiced in the books is that mothers are incapable of being firm with their sons, either because this is the way women are (Meeker 2015, 7; Allen and Dickerson 2012, 121), or because they feel guilt for being single (Joyce 2018, 94). Because of this inability, they are likely to spoil their sons. For some authors, such as Bromfield and Erwin, discipline rests on physical superiority, so that ‘[s]ingle mothers … may wrestle with the concept of discipline, particularly as their sons grow taller, bigger and stronger than they are’ (2001, 103). As the boy grows up, the mother is no longer able to exert authority physically. As a result, mothers avoid conflict at all costs, and they ‘soon learn that the best way to avoid the need for discipline is to allow their son to watch television for hours at a time’ (Allen and Dickerson 2012, 113). Rather than raising the boys firmly, the mothers will give into them, what Bromfield and Erwin refer to as ‘over-indulge and under-discipline’ (2001, 121). They will give the boy anything he wants in terms of expensive clothes and toys (Anderson 2017, 4; King 2015, 41), wait on him hand and foot and allow him to be disrespectful in words and actions (Anderson 2017, 5; Lewis 2010, 48) and generally ‘foster the mentality and myth of entitlement in their sons’ (Bourne 2016, 6). The image the authors construct is that of a mother at the mercy of her son’s whims and desires. This is contrasted with fathers,

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who ‘seldom threaten to punish; they usually do it on the spot’ (Allen and Dickerson 2012, 114). Teaching Masculinity It is an often repeated claim in popular discourse that for boys to ‘grow into healthy and well-adjusted men and fathers’ they need ‘positive male role models’ (Tarrant et al. 2015, 60). Many of the books subscribe to that claim, arguing that mothers cannot teach boys at all. As Anderson writes, ‘[o]nly men can raise boys to be men’ (2017, viii). If they are not raised by men, boys become what Dennis refers to as ‘Men Raised by Women’ (2015, 7). Although noting that being an ‘MRW’ need not be negative, Dennis still maintains that such men face ‘struggles in their manhood and relationships’ (2015, 11), because they have not learnt ‘what true manhood is all about’ (2015, 37). A fatherless boy will not ‘observe healthy masculine traits’ (Meeker 2015, 80) and will not assume the ‘masculine role he was created to be in’ (Joyce 2018, 78). Instead he might prefer women as friends (Allen and Dickerson 2012, 155). It is not explained why preferring women as friends is negative; it is simply a given. It is thus of vital importance that boys have access to grown men, since they only learn ‘by watching other males’ (Allen and Dickerson 2012, 18); indeed a man’s father is his blueprint. ‘Boys look to their father regarding how to treat women, their work ethic, and many other areas men need to be guided in’ (Joyce 2018, 50). It is in a boy’s ‘nature…to reserve their greatest reverence for other men, not women’ (Bryant 2015, 28). Male role models will ‘show them what true manhood is all about’ (Dennis 2015, 37). Drawing on outdated notions of male and female competencies and tasks, the authors maintain that mothers are not qualified to raise sons to be men on their own, since, for example, they ‘do not have the ability to teach their sons how to change tires, fix leaking pipes or hit baseballs’ (King 2015, 5). The solution all of the authors analysed give is that the mother must find a suitable male role model, such as a male relative, a sports coach, a teacher, a priest/rabbi/minister (Anderson 2017, 26; Bourne 2016, 84; Bromfield and Erwin 2001, 248; Dennis 2015, 33; Jones 2015, 8; Meeker 2015, 22).6 These men will teach the boy masculinity. For many authors this concept seems to be so self-evident as to not need any explanation, such as

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when Bromfield and Erwin talk about mothers who ‘celebrate their son’s masculinity’ without any further elaboration (2001, 183). But some of the words that are repeated in the books are responsibility, honour, pride, respect, discipline, self -control, sports and competitiveness. Joyce gives a list of 18 ‘“man skill” essentials’, ranging from personal hygiene and car maintenance to cooking, taking care of a baby and handling a job interview. These are ‘skills a man needs to learn, according to other men’ (Joyce 2018, 63–64). The things boys need to learn can thus be broken down into two sets: things that any human being wishing to live in a community should be able to do, and things that are very specific, such as fishing, hunting and buying a boat (Allen and Dickerson 2012, 134). What becomes clear is that for all the claims that boys are ‘hardwired’ (a word frequently repeated) to act and feel in a way that is different from girls, to many of these authors, masculinity is something that is created through the performance of certain acts and through mimicry: it is repeatedly stated that boys learn to become men by imitating other men (Allen and Dickerson 2012; Dennis 2015). In an echo of Simone de Beauvoir, Dennis writes that ‘[b]oys are taught to be men; they are not born that way’ (2015, 94). To be deprived of the opportunity to mimic, to perform these masculine acts and rituals, may create difficulties for the boy. Dennis, who, as a self-confessed MRW has struggled with his masculinity, describes his feelings of inadequacy and shame when he did not know how to change the oil in his car (2015, 6). One man Dennis has interviewed maintains that it is ‘not natural, not normal’ for a man to let his girlfriend fill up the car, and he talks about his ‘natural inclination’ to protect women (2015, 125). Yet the interviewee also revealingly mentions that although playing with his female cousins as a child did not make him ‘want to be like them’, there ‘were times’ when he did play with their dolls. Fortunately, he says, his uncle and father intervened, explaining ‘“that’s not for you – that’s for them (the girls!)”’ (2015, 125). It is therefore imperative that boys are given access to suitable role models, whom they are expected to watch and imitate. It is only through watching men that boys learn how to talk to men, construct male friendships and perform masculinity correctly. Teaching Toxic Masculinity In their very influential book Raising Cain (2000), psychologists Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson detail a number of problems with what

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they term a ‘culture of cruelty’, a particular kind of masculinity that stunts boys’ emotional growth and increases the risk of ‘suicide…binge drinking, steroid use, undiagnosed depression, academic underachievement’ (2000, viii).7 Ironically, these are the same risks and behaviours authors such as Gurian, Farrell and Gray describe as the result of fatherless homes. Kindlon and Thompson point out that a large part of the destructive culture of boys and men in the US is taken up with ‘control, competition, and criticism’ (2000, 107). Yet, self-control, particularly in the form of emotional restraint, is presented by most of the advice authors as vital to boys’ development. A great number of them also see control of others, competition and criticism, not as destructive forms of cultural interaction, but as biology, as natural, and nothing to be worried about. As Dennis writes: ‘When guys razz another guy they expect him to “manup” and be able to take it without getting his feelings hurt’ (2015, 66). This is just friendly banter, and not a cause for concern. Writing about the boy crisis, Farrell and Grey claim that ‘hazing’ is an important part of being male (2018, 151), and something it is vital that children learn, giving an example of a father who teases his children until they cry (2018, 148). This is presented as preparing them for the real world. Or, as advice author Meeker notes: ‘Many fathers have commented to me that being bullied is simply a part of life for a young boy’ (2015, 181). Mothers, being female, might find bullying and hazing difficult to accept, but they need to learn that name-calling and shoving ‘is nothing to be alarmed about. As females raising males, we need to understand boy’s different ways of interacting’ (Panettieri and Hall 2008, 42). What Kindlon and Thompson refer to as ‘continuous psychological warfare’ in the ‘culture of cruelty’ (2000, 74–75) is thus reframed in the advice books as the natural ways boys interact with each other. Competition, which Kindlon and Thompson view as destructive, is by the advice authors seen as important for a boy’s development. It is also an another area where mothers fall short. Mothers discourage competition because that means that ‘someone is hurt by being the loser’, whereas fathers see it ‘as a means of solving problems while negotiating for dominance’ (Allen and Dickerson 2012, 23). According to the authors, fathers competing with their sons, hurting their feelings in the process, is necessary since it ‘prepare[s] them for a world in which winning is more important than avoiding hurt feelings’ (2012, 24).8 Mervyn Bourne Jr addresses the same issue, but approaches it from a slightly different angle. He argues that mothers will not push their sons

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towards greatness, because they want to protect them from the pain of failure (2016, 67). This is misguided kindness, however. If the mother does not push him, in the way a father would, she is ‘creating a man who will be an emotional cripple, handicapped by his own fear’ (2016, 69). Thus, the parenting style that many of the books advocate is very similar to Kindlon and Thompson’s ‘culture of cruelty’. The books criticise single mothers for not being able to teach this kind of masculinity, for being too soft on the boys and thus leaving them unfit and unprepared for the harsh reality of life. However, it could be argued that it is this culture of cruelty, and the teaching thereof, that makes reality so harsh.

Reader Address All authors write from the perspective that single motherhood is very hard—words such as overworked, tired, etc., are often used. It is taken for granted that many mothers have more than one job, and there are references to lack of money. Generally, however, the difficulties these women face are attributed to the fact that they are single and that they are raising sons. A few authors give information about how to obtain welfare and encourage the mothers to make sure that fathers pay child support, but in general there is no criticism of a society that does not provide for its citizens. Only Panettieri and Hall (2008) suggests that single parent families are viable family constructions. The other authors tend to describe them as unfortunate accidents that need to be negotiated. The norm is still a two-parent family, and there is no suggestion that society should be restructured so that single parents are able, financially and timewise, to raise their children. Single Mothers By their very nature, advice books must begin from the starting point that the reader is ‘insufficient’ in some way, needing help; they ‘impugn the individual’ (McGee 2005, 18). This is also the case with the advice books for single mothers. The authors begin their books by explaining how important single mothers are. Andersson writes that women are ‘the backbone of this nation’ (2017, x), a sentiment echoed by Joyce, who claims that single mothers are ‘the backbone of our society’ (2018, 119). Bourne Jr tells the reader that ‘You have within you the ability to change the landscape of society’ (2016, xx). Denise Bolds wishes to

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‘uplift black single mothers’ (2008, 7). Dennis ‘sincerely view[s] mothers as supreme nurturers of the universe’ (2015, 17) and Patrick Phillips calls them ‘walking superheroes’ (2018, 12). Several authors, such as Bourne Jr (2016), Christopher Bryant (2015), Dennis (2015), and Franklin Lewis (2010), describe their own wonderful single mothers, who taught them everything they know and made them the successful businessmen, entrepreneurs and fathers they are today. Some female authors team up with the mother reader: ‘We single moms must realize we are fully capable of raising our sons’ (Joyce 2018, 95). The tone quickly changes, however, to one of criticism, fearmongering and, sometimes, outright condemnation, all in order to establish why the single mother cannot manage on her own, but needs the advice given in the book. There is a clear hierarchy of single-motherhood (Brush, 1997; Carabine 2001). This hierarchy is articulated by Allen and Dickerson, who list the ways in which men are ‘eliminated from the family unit’: through ‘death, divorce, prison, pregnancy through sperm banks, or pregnancies never revealed to the father’ (2012, 88). Death, to many of the authors, is the only acceptable way for a woman to become a single mother. The most respectable single mother is thus the widow. She did not choose to leave her husband, she did not drive him away or selfishly decide not to have a man involved at all. Few books address her much, though. Instead the authors tend to focus on the divorcee or unwed mother, and the language becomes less supportive. The image the books construct is of a woman who is bitter and resentful, who might prevent her children from seeing their father, or who distresses her son with her ‘depression and neediness’, requiring the son to take over as ‘father to the other siblings, disciplinarian and spokesperson for the family’ (Allen and Dickerson 2012, 83), who treats her son as her counsellor (Dennis 2015, 6; Joyce 2018, 55; Panettieri and Hall 2008, 220) or expects the son to function as her soul mate (Bromfield and Erwin 2001, 209), what some authors call ‘emotional incest’ (Adams 2007; Gurian 2006; Love 1990). Books written specifically for an African-American readership are particularly harsh in their condemnation of single mothers. The authors assume that the mother reader spends all her money on her own consumption (Dennis 2015, 46), undermines the boy’s masculinity by complaining about his father (Anderson 2017; Dennis 2015, 58), treats the boy as her emotional confidant (Dennis 2015, 50), subjects the boy to an endless parade of unsuitable boyfriends (Dennis’ ‘revolving door of different males’ [2015, 70] or Anderson’s ‘traffic[king] men in and out

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of your life and in your house’ [2017, 30]) who will abuse both mother and child (Anderson 2017, 25; Bourne Jr 2016, 23). These accusations stand in stark contrast to the authors’ stated aim to empower mothers rather than blame them. There is also more subtle criticism, suggesting that mothers do not focus enough on their children. Most of the books draw on the culture of ‘intensive mothering’ (Hays 1996) in which mothers are expected to devote extraordinary amounts of time, energy and resources on the care of their children. Included in the intensive mothering is that the mother should subordinate her own needs and desires to that of the child. This is evoked by, for example Bromfield and Erwin (2001), who brings up a hypothetical situation of the child asking for an opinion on school work. The reader is told to ‘read and comment thoughtfully. A cursory, “yeah, great” may get you back to your favorite show’ but it will not help the child (2001, 226). They also instruct the reader to involve the child in food preparation and washing up, ‘using that time to talk, too, rather than as a chance for you to go off and check e-mail or return a call’ (2001, 178). Allen and Dickerson similarly state that a son’s infractions should be dealt with immediately, ‘even if it means terminating a cell phone conversation with your best friend’ (2012, 120). The authors presuppose a mother reader who would rather spend time watching television or be on the phone than spend time with her child, or a mother who only thinks about herself, as Meeker does when she admonishes the reader that if her son chooses to open up to her, he ‘needs to know that you won’t turn the focus onto yourself, asking how in the world does he think that makes you feel’ (2015, 52). Thus mother readers are told that they are too soft and indulgent with their sons, whilst at the same time it is assumed that they are self-centred and distracted, putting themselves before their children. Fathers Although these are books aimed at mothers raising sons, fathers are a constant presence. They are evoked in a number of ways, and sometimes even addressed directly (Dennis 2015, 11). A recurring image is the father who was driven off by his wife. Bryant, for example, warns the mother reader that her son might think ‘“What did my mother do to cause him to walk away”’ (2015, 23). In addition, many of the books are dancing around the reality that some fathers are absent because they want to be, not because they are dead, or denied access by their former

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partners. Most of the authors purposefully avoid the idea of the ‘deadbeat dad’. Anderson specifically states that his book is ‘not about bashing fathers’ (2017, ix). Dennis, who himself does not live with the children from his first marriage, ‘appeals’ to absent fathers to be more involved (2015, 11), but gives a number of reasons for paternal absence, such as embarrassment that they are poor, or lack of knowledge of how to engage with the son (2015, 61). When authors tacitly acknowledge the fact that some fathers choose to stay away, they make the fathers’ involvement the mothers’ responsibility. Thus, for example, Allen and Dickerson write that mothers should ‘encourage absent fathers’ to engage in the child, stating that ‘[o]btaining dad’s involvement, by whatever methods work’ will be a boon to both mother and son (2012, 71, 72). Dennis also urges the mother to involve the father: ‘Let him drop the kid off at school, let him take part in parentteacher meetings’ (2015, 60). Regardless of the circumstances, to most of the authors it is always the mothers’ task to make sure that fathers play an active part in their children’s lives. A recurring problem addressed in these texts is that of child support. As Michael Kimmel has pointed out in Angry White Men (2013), paying child support is difficult for many men who are on the poverty line and male advice book authors, such as Lewis (2010), Dennis (2015), and Bryant (2015), are very critical of the system. Just as Kimmel has noted amongst fathers he has interviewed (2013, 148–149), these authors see child support not as something that their children are owed, but something that ex-wives unfairly extort from them. Bryant refers to the mothers as ‘queens of the courthouse’ who, together with Child Support Enforcement, attempt to ‘punish men’ (2015, 22). According to Bryant, who himself was sent to prison for non-payment of child support (2015, 64), trying to ‘extract unreasonable financial support’ will destroy a man and ‘he may completely lose any desires of returning to his child’ (2015, 22). The fatherhood Bryant envisages is thus conditional, financially dependent. The same idea is expressed by Allen and Dickerson (2012). They suggest that fathers should be offered ‘an attractive tax deduction’ in return for ‘agree[ing] to spend a specified number of days each year with their sons’. In short, society should pay fathers to spend time with their own sons. Society will then reap the financial benefits, since the arrangement would reduce costs for ‘juvenile crime, illness, drug use and suicide’ (2012, 174). As apologists for absent fathers, these authors end

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up painting a rather unflattering image, suggesting that fathers are more interested in money than in their children’s welfare.

What Is a Father Good for? All the books have one stated purpose, to help mothers and boys achieve better lives. They claim to want to make life less difficult, less stressful for mothers, and through the mothers, help the boys become better people, better equipped to succeed in society. Yet, for many authors this is grounded in a desire to restore the father to his rightful place in the family. Small, for example, is concerned by media representations of single mothers ‘giving the impression that a daddy is not necessary’ (2017, x). Challenging cultural ideas that women are better at caring for children, he and other authors set out to show that fathers are indispensable, both biologically and socially. One of the most explicit examples of the valorisation of fathers is Allen and Dickerson, who, for instance, repeatedly state that it is fathers, not mothers, who teach boys empathy (2012, 17). They quote research showing that the assumption that ‘empathy was a product of good mothering’ is wrong; empathy is what the father teaches and ‘empathy is what enables people to be law-abiding and compassionate citizens’ (2012, 17– 18). So if there is no father or father figure in the household, the son will not become a law-abiding and compassionate citizen. Another example is a man interviewed by Dennis who claims that ‘“men raise children better than women”’ (original emphasis 2015, 73). Dennis makes his position clear: ‘don’t fool yourself into thinking a boy is better off in some way without a father figure in his life’ (2015, 76). The father’s role is to lead, in the family and in society. As another of Dennis’ informants explains: ‘“all men are designed to be leaders … to take dominion over the whole earth”’ and women are not equipped to raise leaders (2015, 130). Thus, if fathers or father figures are not present, boys will not grow up to be men. They will be ‘“over-feminize[d]…and then they will be nothing”’ (Dennis 2015, 149). They will be sad, in-between figures who feel no purpose in life, such as one MRW Dennis interviewed, who explains that he does not mind if his wife earns more than he does, that he has ‘never been threatened by a strong woman’ (2015, 74), which Dennis presents as a weakness. Or, they will become swaggering, bragging, criminal, useless men who live off women, indiscriminately siring children but taking no responsibility for them (King 2015, 2, 40). The only way to

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stop this from happening is to make sure that boys have access to fathers or father figures. Women simply will not do. Yet, there are also books that take the opposite approach. They too wish to help the overworked, stressed out single mother who doubts that she can cope with the boy, who is so very different from her and her daughters. But in the process of doing so, they cast doubt on the efficacy of the biological father. They intimate, or state flat out, that fathers are not well suited to dealing with many of the problems boys face—that a father will not notice a son’s distress, or if he does, tells him to ‘man up’ (Meeker 2015, 28), that the father, even if he is present in the home is ‘too busy or preoccupied to be involved with [his] sons’ (2015, xvii), that he interacts less than five minutes a day with the children, ‘where is the quality “fathering” so many experts insist is essential to a boy’s healthy development?’ (Panettieri and Hall 2008, 6). Panettieri further claims that fathers ‘tend to enforce gender roles much more strongly than mothers do, and they tend to express alarm at what they perceive as inappropriate preferences in clothes, toys, or behavior’ (2008, 30). In fact, living in a household without a father may actually be good for the boy, since it might allow for the presence of more adults, such as ‘maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles’ who can give the child more attention than one father would (Panettieri and Hall 2008, 5). This would ensure that the ‘son will not have just one role model, but the opportunity to have many’ (Engber and Klungness 2006, 277). Indeed, Engber and Klungness argue that ‘having a father at home who does not provide necessary qualities of a healthy male role model can do more harm than good’ (2006, 275). Thus, the biological father’s role in the family may not be a given, yet the idea that boys need male role models is not challenged. These authors point to problems with traditional masculinity, the way boys’ lives are circumscribed by unreasonable rules and expectations and offer as a solution that the mother steps in. Although not stated outright, it is hinted that the father is himself so damaged by the paradigm of traditional masculinity that he cannot be relied on to help the boy navigate the difficult world he is growing up in (Meeker 2015, 29). Thus, it paradoxically becomes the mother’s task, because she has the sensitivity, to correct for the failures of the biological father, even though she, as a woman, is also not equipped to raise a boy to manhood. Referencing the ‘boy crisis’, Meg Meeker maintains that ‘the means to resolving this crisis often lie in the mother’s hands’ (2015, xvi). As Barnett and Rivers note

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when discussing cultural notions of women’s greater sensitivity, this ‘not only takes men off the hook but puts an impossible burden on women’ (2005, 22). What starts out as a comfort to women and an attempt to relieve stress becomes an exhortation to take on an even greater burden.

Conclusion At the core of the discussions about single mothers and their ability, or inability, to raise sons to men lies the question of masculinity. What does it mean to be a man? In 2008, Panettieri writes that the old ways of thinking about masculinity are on their way out—now there are many different masculinities to choose from. In 2013, Kimmel writes that traditional masculinity with its sense of entitlement has passed, although some men have yet to realise it. In 2016, Andrea Doucet notes ‘enormous changes’ in the representation of fatherhood, showing a ‘new, emergent form of masculinity that is directly connected to care’ (xi). And, it is true that in their 2018 book, Farrell and Gray write that being a stay-at-home father is a viable life choice for a young man, although they call him the ‘father-warrior’ (177). But their book not only pits men against women, valorising a traditional masculinity that does not show emotions and that welcomes bullying, they also claim that single mother families produce school shooters, neo-Nazis and IS warriors (106–108). And, as this chapter has demonstrated, the border work continues: there seems to be no end to advice books blaming single mothers, to books suggesting that raising boys is particularly difficult for women, to books that perpetuate the fears of emotional incest and mother–son entanglement, books that re-circulate outdated notions of gender, based on flawed or misinterpreted research. There are a few dissenting voices, authors who call out and question stereotypes, who hint that biological fathers are not an absolute requirement. Yet, even these authors reinforce the idea that a single mother needs backup from men in order to raise a boy to man. What might at first glance constitute a counternarrative thus ends up confirming the stereotypes. That these books are still produced, bought, read, discussed and recommended on, for example, Goodreads, suggests that change is not quite as close as might be hoped. There is still a lot of work to be done.

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Notes 1. What there is, are books such as the Swedish Makalösa föräldrar [Single/Peerless Parents] (Salmson 2007), a collection of interviews with single fathers and mothers on subjects such as co-parenting and personal finances, and the Norwegian Bare Mamma [Only Mum] (Gikling 2010), a guidebook for pregnant women without a male partner. 2. For an in-depth criticism of Biddulph’s and other authors’ tendency to universalise ‘the boy’ and ignore socioeconomic factors, see Anderson and Accomando (2002). 3. Biddulph emphatically states that ‘different’ does not mean ‘defective’ and should not be taken as an excuse for disruptive or destructive behaviour (67), but that is precisely how many of the authors use these supposed scientific facts. 4. Some boys are disadvantaged in school, but, as research shows, class and ethnicity are important factors (Haywood et al. 2015; Anderson and Accomando 2002; Tarrant et al. 2015). 5. Since they rarely give references, it is difficult to check their facts. 6. The efficacy of role models has been questioned, by, for example, Tarrant et al (2015). 7. For a critique of Kindlon and Thompson, see Anderson and Accomando (2002). 8. If the reader does not think that winning is more important than not hurting people, ‘then you are most likely a female’ (24).

References Primary sources Allen, Mardi, and James L. Dickerson. 2012. Sons Without Fathers: What Every Mother Needs to Know. Jackson: Sartoris Literary Group. Anderson, Antonio D. 2017. 7 Successful Principles for Single Mothers Raising Sons. Morrisville: Lulu Publishing Services. Biddulph, Steve. 2013. Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different—And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men. 3rd ed. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press. Bolds, Denise. 2008. Raising Princes to be Kings: A Single Black Mothers’ Guide to Raising Her Black Son. Poughkeepsie. Bourne, Mervin A., Jr. 2016. A Single Mother’s Guide to Raising a Son. USA: Mervin A. Bourne Jr. Bromfield, Richard, and Cheryl Erwin. 2001. How to Turn Boys into Men Without a Man Around the House: A Single Mother’s Guide. Roseville: Prima Publishing.

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Bryant, Christopher. 2015. An Open Letter to My Son: Lessons for Sons of Single Mothers. Atlanta: Christopher K. Bryant. Buchanan, Bay. 2012. Bay and Her Boys: Unexpected Lessons I Learned as a (Single) Mom. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. Chisholm, Dana. 2007. Single Moms Raising Sons: Preparing Boys to Be Men When There’s No Man Around. Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press. Dennis, John P. 2015. Men Raised by Women: What He Won’t Tell Mom. USA: John P. Dennis. Elium, Don, and Jeanne Elium. 2004. Raising a Son. Third edition. Berkeley: Celestial Arts. Engber, Andrea, and Leah Klungness. 2006. The Complete Single Mother 3rd ed. Avon: Adams Media. Estelle, K. 2013. 7 Principles for Raising Black sons: A Practical Hand-Guide for Today’s Single Black Mothers. Next Level Publications Incorporated. Howland, MaryAnne. 2020. Warrior Rising: How Four Men Helped a Boy on His Journey to Manhood. New York: TarcherPerigee. Johnson, Rick. 2011. That’s My Teenage Son: How Moms Can Influence Their Boys to Become Good Men. Grand Rapids: Revell. Jones, LaVeda M. 2015. Raising a Prince Without a King: A Single Mother’s Journey to Victory. Dallas: Love Clones Publishing. Joyce, Donna. 2018. Single Moms Vol 2. Raising Boys. Donna Joyce. Kennedy, Neil. 2014. A Mother’s Guide to Raising a Fivestarman. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. King, Darrell W. 2015. 7 Things Every Mother Should Teach Her Son: For Every Woman Trying Hard to be Mom and Dad. Get Knowledge Books. Latta, Nigel. 2013. Mothers Raising Sons: What Every Mother Needs to Know to Save Her Sanity. London: Vermillion. Leman, Kevin. 2012. What a Difference a Mom Makes: The Indelible Imprint a Mom Leaves on Her Sons’ Life. Grand Rapids: Revell. Lewis, Franklin Donny D. 2010. Single Mother’s Guide to Raising Black Boys. Bloomington: Xlibris Corp. Meeker, Meg. 2015. Strong Mothers, Strong Sons: Lessons Mothers Need to Raise Extraordinary Men. New York: Ballantine Books. Moffitt, Betina. 2020. Raising a Boy into a Man: A Mother’s Journey After Divorce. Fiery Beacon Publishing House. Moore, Derrick, and Stephanie Perry Moore. 2013. Raise Him Up: A Single Mother’s Guide to Raising a Successful Black Man. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Norwood, Lisa. 2016. Mothers Raising Sons: The MANual. Vol 1. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Palmer, Shondreka. 2013. Independently Raising a Man: Thoughts from a Single Mother’s Perspective. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

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Panettieri, Gina, and Philip S. Hall. 2008. The Single Mother’s Guide to Raising Remarkable Boys. Avon: Adams Media. Parker, Joseph R. 2018. Raising Sons: The Key to Raising Healthy Sons and Helping Them Become Extraordinary Men. Joseph R. Parker. Passley, Josef A. 2006. Single Parenting in the 21st Century and Beyond: A Single Mother’s Guide to Rearing Sons Without Fathers. Victoria: Trafford Publishing. Pearson, Jenieka L. 2019. Rise Before the Son: Advice for Single Mothers on Raising Successful Boys. iUniverse. Phillips, Patrick. 2018. Don’t Just Love Your Son…Raise Him: 15 Thought Provoking Questions for Single Moms Raising Sons. Akron: Educational Empowerment Group. Reist, Michael. 2015. Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys. Toronto: Dundurn. Small, William C. 2017. Single Mothers and Sons: A Journey into Manhood. Dallas: FirstWorld Publishing. Stoppe, Rhonda. 2013. Moms Raising Sons to Be Men. Eugene: Harvest House Publishers. Swanson, Monica. 2019. Boy Mom: What Your Son Needs Most from You. WaterBrook. Tardy, Cederick W. 2012. The Big Payback: Single Mother’s Guide for Raising Young Men. Cederic Tardy Enterprises. Tyler, Jamie. 2016. Parenting for Single Mothers: Being a Good Mom and Raising Great Kids. Watkins, Deborah. 2017. Some Will Be King Makers: A Single Mother’s Journey Raising African American Males. Buffalo: M2M Publishing. Williams, Cathleen. 2011. Single Mother the New Father. Blackcurrant Press Company.

Secondary sources Adair, Vivyan Campbell. 2000. From Good Ma to Welfare Queen: A Genealogy of the Poor Woman in American Literature, Photography and Culture. New York: Garland Publishing. Adams, Kenneth. 2007. When He’s Married to Mom: How to Help MotherEnmeshed Men Open their Hearts to True Love and Commitment. New York: Fireside. Anderson, Kristin J., and Christina Accomando. 2002. ‘“Real” Boys? Manufacturing Masculinity and Erasing Privilege in Popular Books on Raising Boys.’ Feminism and Psychology 12 (4): 491–516. Barnett, Rosalind, and Caryl Rivers. 2005. Same Difference: How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children, and Our Jobs. New York: Basic Books.

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Brush, Lisa D. 1997. ‘Worthy Widows, Welfare Cheats: Proper Womanhood in Expert Needs Talk about Single Mothers in the United States, 1900 to 1988.’ Gender and Society 11 (6): 720–746. Carabine, Jean. 2001. ‘Constituting Sexuality Through Social Policy: The Case of Lone Motherhood 1834 and Today.’ Social & Legal Studies 10 (3): 291–314. Doucet, Andrea. 2016. ‘Foreword.’ In Pops in Pop Culture: Fatherhood, Masculinity and the New Man, edited by Elizabeth Podnieks. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Doucet, Andrea. 2018. Do Men Mother? 2nd ed. London: University of Toronto Press. Farrell, Warren, and John Gray. 2018. The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It. Dallas: BenBella Books. Fine, Cordelia. 2010. Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. New York: W. W. Norton. Fleming, Linda M., and David J. Tobin. 2005. ’Popular Child-Rearing Books: Where Is Daddy?’ Psychology of Men and Masculinity 6 (1): 18–24. Gikling, Eva. 2010. Bare mamma [Only/Lone Mum] Skrivekrampe forlag. Gurian, Michael. 2006. The Wonder of Boys: What Parents, Mentors and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys into Exceptional Men. TarcherPerigee. Hancock, Ange-Marie. 2004. The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen. New York: New York University Press. Hays, Sharon. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Haywood, Chris, Máirtin Mac an Ghail, and Jonathan A. Allan. 2015. ‘Introduction: Schools, Masculinity and Boyness in the War Against Boys.’ Boyhood Studies 8 (1): 15–21. Hunter, Sarah C., Damien W. Riggs, and Martha Augoustinos. 2020. ‘Constructions of Primary Caregiving Fathers in Popular Parenting Texts.’ Men and Masculinities 21 (1): 150–169. Hunter, Sarah C., Damien W. Riggs, and Martha Augoustinos. 2017. ‘Hegemonic Masculinity Versus a Caring Masculinity: Implications for Understanding Primary Caregiving Fathers.’ Social and Personality Psychology Compass 11 (3): e12307. Hyde, Janet Shibley. 2005. ‘The Gender Similarities Hypothesis’. American Psychologist 60 (6): 581–592. Kimmel, Michael.2013. Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York: Nation Books. Kindlon, Dan, and Michael Thompson. 2000. Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys. New York: Ballantine Books. Krafchick, Jennifer L., Toni Schindler Zimmerman, Shelley A. Haddock, and James H. Banning. 2005. ‘Best-selling Books Advising Parent About Gender: A Feminist Analysis.’ Family Relations 54 (1): 84–100.

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Love, Patricia. 1990. The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to Do When a Parent’s Love Rules Your Life. New York: Bantam Books. McGee, Micki. 2005. Self-Help Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mills, Martin. 2002. ‘Shaping the Boys’ Agenda: The Backlash Blockbusters’. International Journal of Inclusive Education 7 (1): 57–73. National Center for Fathering http://fathers.com/statistics-and-research/theconsequences-of-fatherlessness/. Salmson, Karin. 2007. Makalösa föräldrar [Single/Peerless Parents.] Stockholm: Bokförlaget DN. Sax, Leonard. 2016. Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men. New York: Basic Books. Schmitz, Rachel M. 2016. ‘Constructing Men as Fathers: A Content Analysis of Formulations of Fatherhood in Parenting Magazines.’ Journal of Men’s Studies 24 (1): 3–23. Sommers, Christina Hoff. 2015. The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men. New York: Simon & Schuster. Starker, Steve. 2008. Oracle at the Supermarket: The American Preoccupation with Self-Help Books. London: Transaction Publishers. Sunderland, Jane. 2006. ‘“Parenting” or “Mothering”? The Case of Modern Childcare Magazines.’ Discourse and Society 17 (4): 503–527. Tarrant, Anna, Gareth Terry, Michael R. M. Ward, Sandy Ruxton, Martin Robb, and Brigid Featherstone. 2015. ‘Are Male Role Models Really the Solution? Interrogating the “War on Boys” Through the Lens of the “Male Role Model” Discourse.’ Boyhood Studies. 8 (1): 60–83. Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Wall, Glenda, and Stephanie Arnold. 2007. ‘How Involved Is Involved Fathering: An Exploration of the Contemporary Culture of Fatherhood.’ Gender and Society 21 (4): 508–527.

PART II

Single Fathers

CHAPTER 6

Single Dads in the Entertainment Arena: Hegemonic Hierarchies and Happy Endings Rebecca Feasey

Introduction Single fathers make up a small, yet growing number of families in the UK, US and beyond. Irrespective of whether these men are divorced, widowed or single fathers by choice via adoption or surrogacy, there exist few media depictions of this paternal role beyond children’s animation and the situation comedy genre.1 While Disney and DreamWorks have presented a myriad of animated single fathers over the past twenty years, it is the television situation comedy that has the longest running history of depicting the single father as caregiver. For nearly six decades, in shows ranging from My Three Sons (1960–65), The Andy Griffith Show (1960– 68), Who’s the Boss (1984–92) and My Two Dads (1987–90) to Full House (1987–95), Blossom (1990–95), Two and a Half Men (2003–15) and Suburgatory (2011–14), the single dad has been a staple of the situation comedy schedules. More recently, there has been a trend for single dads

R. Feasey (B) School of Creative Industries, Bath Spa University, Bath, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_6

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within police and crime procedurals, with Bones (2005–17) and Castle (2009–16), like their sitcom counterparts, leaning heavily on the comedy within their crime drama credentials. Alternatively, with less scope for comedic containment, single fathers such as Jack Bauer/Kiefer Sutherland (24, 2001–10) and Rick Grimes/Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead, 2010–) are held to different paternal standards as they are saving the world from terrorist and zombie threats, respectively2 (Feasey 2008, 80–93). Although there exists a number of popular and long running depictions of single fathers on the small screen, it is worth noting that such figures exist within and alongside a broader entertainment landscape. With this in mind, this chapter will look at the ways in which single fathers are depicted in popular media culture, from single fathers speaking about the triumphs, trials and tribulations of lone parenting in the Good Men Project to their fictional screen counterparts in the UK and US. The analysis will consider the relationship between the key themes and recurring tropes that exist in such media texts in relation to broader debates around single fatherhood. It is important to acknowledge the ways in which lone fathers are both represented and responded to in contemporary scholarship and broader channels of discourse. Indeed, a consideration of extra textual materials that surround a media text, or what Martin Barker refers to as ‘ancillary materials’ (Barker 2004) is an important part of the analysis due to the fact that media texts are not experienced in isolation from cultural commentaries or popular debates. Rather, they are consumed among a myriad of wider entertainment titles, information channels and networks.

Single Fatherhood in the UK and the US The figure of the lone father in general, and the single father by choice in particular, can be said to challenge problematic stereotypes as they relate to hegemonic masculinity, ineffectual and absent fathers and the ideology of intensive motherhood; however, the lone paternal role is under-represented in the media and barely supported in the current pronatal climate (Turchi and Bernabo 2020). This absence of representation is at best surprising, and at worst, problematic, when one considers the number of single fathers in contemporary society. Almost three million families are headed by a single parent in the UK, and while single mothers make up the majority of those households, around 10% are headed by lone fathers (Rabindrakumar 2018;

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ONS 2019; Gingerbread 2020). And although there are small peaks and troughs in the number of single male and female headed households, the statistics are relatively stable in that approximately twenty-five per cent of families have been headed by a single parent over the past two decades (Rabindrakumar 2018).3 On the other side of the Atlantic there are numerous similarities of experience. According to the most recent report released by the U.S. Census Bureau, 13.7 million single parents are currently responsible for 22.4 million children in the US (U.S. Census Bureau cited in Wolf 2020; Grall 2020). In short, 27% of children under 21 are being raised in a single parent household, similar to the figure in the UK. Similar patterns emerge between the two countries in that the majority of single parents were married or cohabiting, not planning, choosing or expecting to be single parents with the vast majority raising small families. However, while around 10% of single parents in the UK are lone fathers, that figure rises to nearly 20% in the US (U.S. Census Bureau cited in Wolf 2020; Grall 2020). In a verywellfamily article,4 Jennifer Wolf examines the aforementioned statistics in order to challenge the myths and stereotypes often associated with single motherhood, particularly as they relate to employment, economic status, age and family size (Wolf 2020). However, there is little mention of single fathers in the article, an article entitled ‘The Single Parent Statistics Based on Census Data’ (Wolf 2020, emphasis added). What is missing is an indication of the number of men who are single through divorce, bereavement, never having married or choice, looking to the ways in which such data could help to inform media representations, challenge partial stereotypes and help guide relevant support services. Although the notion of ‘Single Mothers by Choice’ or ‘Choice Moms’ is becoming commonplace as single women look to donor inseminaton, surrogacy or adoption for family building and extension (SMC 2019), it is currently less common for single men to take this route to parenthood. The lower figures are due in part to legislation and complications associated with finding a gestational surrogate (Feasey 2019). According to the founder of NGA Law,5 Natalie Gamble, current UK policy states that ‘surrogacy is such a serious undertaking it should be restricted to couples’ (Gamble cited in Blincoe 2013) and although some men travel abroad for such services ‘[t]here is no legal framework to support these fathers’ (Blincoe 2013). Even though intercountry adoption provides married, cohabiting and single females with a route to family

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building, many countries do not allow men to adopt as single parents (Travel State Gov 2019). There is no question that growing numbers of men are taking on the challenge of single parenthood; indeed, the number of lone fathers in the US has increased nine-fold since the 1960s. However, we have little data and scarce acknowledgement of the single father by choice in the contemporary period (Ludden 2012; Parker 2019; Blincoe 2013).6

Conforming or Confounding Hegemonic Masculinity Support for single mothers, by choice or otherwise; expectant mothers, new mothers, adoptive mothers, other mothers and women affected by an infertility diagnosis exist in a myriad of online and traditional media forms and formats including blogs, vlogs, online networking sites, magazines and book length volumes (Feasey 2019, 37–86). However, even a cursory glance at online forums and more traditional media texts make it clear that while a wealth of support is offered to mothers in general and single mothers in particular, there remains a paucity of such support, practical or emotional, for their paternal counterparts. Jennifer Turchi makes this point when she states that single fathers ‘have a much harder time adjusting to the primary caregiver role and find little parenting and social support’ (Turchi 2014). This disparity of representation, and by extension, available visibility and support continues from screen to magazine media, because while there exists a wealth of maternal titles in the online and print market, there is little in this sector dedicated to fathers. Moreover, the few supporting events and materials that do exist tend to rely on action-packed fun7 (Dangerous Dads 2020) or a militaristic iteration of masculinity that appears to value male performance over paternal connectedness8 (Sinclair 2012, Sinclair 2014, Sinclair 2016). Research on the ways in which new fathers use social media to make sense of their roles, informs us that these men employ ‘DIY language to describe work traditionally considered feminine’ in order to imbue their chores and domestic routines with a more predictable, traditional iteration of masculinity than the paternal responsibilities might otherwise warrant (Ammari 2018). The point here is simply that the active, action and adrenaline fuelled father might well score high in the hegemonic hierarchy, but this may be at odds with the idea that successful fatherhood combines paternal

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authority, protection and security with listening, affection, connectedness and patience (Momjunction 2019).

Where Have All the Single Fathers Gone? While an Amazon search for ‘Single Dad Parenting’ books offers more steamy titles in the Mills and Boon tradition than it does volumes that look to help or support lone fathers, what is also interesting here is how few titles in this category acknowledge lone fathers by choice. Within the first 50 entries of the search we are provided with notebooks, books marketed towards new mothers, more general parenting manuals and litigation volumes. Although a small number of advice books do exist for new and expectant fathers, there is a paucity of material available for the single father, and virtually nothing for the single father by choice. Single fathers in general and single fathers by choice in particular are less visible in the traditional pregnancy and new parent market, and as such, it is crucially important that we acknowledge where these men are seen and where these paternal voices are heard in the media landscape. After all, ‘representations of families and individuals impact our understanding of fatherhood’ (Turchi and Bernabo 2020). Therefore, this examination of single fathers is crucial, not because such representations are an accurate reflection of reality, but rather, because they have the power and scope to foreground culturally accepted social relations, define sexual norms and provide ‘common-sense’ understandings about male identity, paternity and family for a contemporary audience (Turchi and Bernabo 2020).9 There is a wealth of research that looks to the ways in which contemporary media representations can offer emotional camaraderie and more practical support to viewers, audiences, listeners and readers on topics ranging from illness (Ashton and Feasey 2014), infertility (Feasey 2019, 37–86), motherhood (Feasey 2016; Le Vay 2019) and new fathering (Ammari 2018). In terms of the ways in which media representations can help parents make sense of their new found or changing role, it is clear that visibility and diversity of visibility are key (Feasey 2016; Le Vay 2019). In this way, representations of the single father on screen and beyond has the ability to make single fatherhood routine and ordinary. Speaking about the acceptance of gay and lesbian characters on screen Benjamin Svetky stated that ‘in 2000 A.D. (After DeGeneres), gay characters are so common on television, so unexotic, that their sexual

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orientation has become all but invisible to most viewers. It is, in a sense, the ultimate sign of acceptance’ (Svetky cited in Battles and Hilton Morrow 2002). However, representations of single fathers remain exotic, our desire to single them out, put them on listicles,10 like and share on social media and offer praise and plaudits for their efforts sets them apart from single mothers or more traditional nuclear units. It is clear then that media representations have a role to play in the wider social acceptance of single fathers, removed from explanation, justification or romantic ‘fixing’. In a range of mainstream media texts, fatherhood is less prolific than motherhood, single fatherhood is less visible again, and single fatherhood by choice is noticeable in its absence (Turchi and Bernabo 2020). In a recent spate of television documentaries that take adoption as their starting point, we spend time meeting social workers, foster carers, children in need of forever homes and prospective adopters. However, even here, where the notion of much needed loving homes is central to the narrative, we do not meet any single fathers by choice (Wanted: A Family of My Own, 2014; 15,000 Kids and Counting, 2014; Finding Me a Family, 2017). The documentaries make it clear that all families are welcome, and indeed, encouraged: older, younger, married, gay, straight and single. However, single in these examples means lone mothers. This is not to suggest that the documentaries are agenda setting, merely that this potential paternal demographic is not represented. At a time when both the media and society appear to be embracing gay and straight stay-at-home fathers in a range of television shows spanning age and genre conventions—be it Two and a Half Men (2003–15), Modern Family (2009–2020), Doc McStuffins (2012–), The Blacklist (2013–), Broadchurch (2013–) or Motherland (2016–)—the omission of the single father, divorced, widowed or by choice, must be acknowledged.11 This omission could be due in part to the fact that although the stay-at-home dad appears a relatively stable figure, the single father might be less so.

Single Father or Divorced Dad? There are difficulties in trying to reach a ‘precise definition’ as it relates to single parenthood (Letablier and Wall 2017). Single parenting is not a static or rigid status and some families ‘transition in and out of marriage, cohabitation and single parenting’ (Robinson 2019). While this difficulty

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of definition applies to single mothers and fathers alike, the issue of definition is further complicated when Doug Zeigler differentiates between ‘single fathers’ and ‘divorced dads’ (Zeigler 2018). The two terms, we are told, are used differently, rather than interchangeably. Writing for the Good Men Project, a site that looks to challenge the gendered stereotypes that present men as ‘mindless, sex-obsessed buffoons’ or ‘stoic automatons’ that ‘our culture so often makes them out to be’ (Good Men Project 2019), Zeigler is speaking from the point of view of those eponymous good men who work to be ‘smart, compassionate, curious, and open-minded … good fathers and husbands, citizens and friends’ (Zeigler 2018). He finds that: men who do not have their children full time are not single fathers. They are considered divorced dads. Single fathers are those that care for their children full time and ‘understand’ what a single mother contends with on the day-to-day as a result. Divorced dads are men who have their children every other weekend and have all kinds of freedom in between, and as such do not act like fathers during that time. They don’t always consider the time they have outside having their children at all intersecting with the time they spend with their kids, which makes them seem irresponsible. (Zeigler 2018)

Zeigler, himself a ‘divorced dad’ rather than a ‘single father’ to use the terminology presented in the article, suggests that the reason for the differing terms and their meanings and the values associated with them are based on a number of interconnected factors. In part to the longstanding assumption that women are innately more nurturing than men and the reality of custody demographics whereby children are still more often living with mothers than fathers (Rabindrakumar 2018); in part due to a nostalgic longing for a bygone nuclear family unit routinely depicted in post-war situation comedy family structures12 (Feasey 2012), and in part to more recent representations of single fathers in primetime television. In relation to this final point, it has been argued that those ‘men with primary physical custody are more positively stereotyped’ than their ‘divorced dad’ counterparts on the small screen. Indeed, these single fathers are said to be ‘increasingly depicted as warm and nurturing, mirroring an increase in custodial single fathers’ levels of “mothering activities,” [and] rejecting the notion of father-as-backup’ (Turchi and Bernabo 2020). That said, ‘because of our historically gendered notions

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of parenting’, the depiction of lone fathers, even those in the position of sole caregiver, are seen to be struggling with day-to-day childcare. Representations of single fathers who are strained and stressed by the daily chores, physical and organisational labour associated with their paternal role are routinely exploited in programmes such as Guys with Kids (2012– 13), Splitting up Together (2018–19) and Single Parents (2018–20) as they show these men leaning on ‘outside assistance in parenting their children’ (Turchi and Bernabo 2020).

Single Dads in the Media: Aka Widower Seeks New Wife and Mother On-screen single fathers, widowed or divorced, have a tendency to rely on ‘some kind of surrogate mother, who often works or volunteers in a caring capacity. This both “reassures” the audience that traditional gender roles are still in play and provides the possibility of (heterosexual) romance’ (Shipley 2012). Codes of romance are not new in relation to the depiction of the single father on screen. Rather, back in the 1950s and 1960s, Bachelor Father (1957–62) and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1969–72) introduced a romantic narrative thread for the central paternal protagonist. Indeed, the plot synopsis for the latter is simply that ‘Widower Tom Corbett must raise his son Eddie … who is always scheming to get his dad remarried’13 (IMDB 2019). Widowed fathers have long been seen on our screens, with plot lines routinely looking to ‘fix’ the problem of single fatherhood. Children look to create happy nuclear units by finding a new wife for their father and by extension, a new mother for the home. The problematic suggestion here is that ‘men cannot be happy and functional without a love relationship, and that a dad cannot properly parent without a woman by his side’ (Shipley 2012).14 Although most single fathers have become solo parents via divorce (ElHage 2017; ONS 2017; Rabindrakumar 2018), it is widowers rather than divorced dads who have dominated televisual representations of lone fatherhood. Television’s commitment to the representation of widowers over their divorced counterparts has existed since the 1950s (Bachelor Father), through the 1960s (The Andy Griffith Show 1960–68, My Three Sons 1960–1972, Family Affair 1966–71, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father), 1970s (Diff’rent Strokes 1978–1986), 1980s (Who’s The Boss? 1984–1992, Full House 1987–95), 1990s (The Nanny 1993–99) and into the millennium (24 2001–10, Arrested Development 2003–, Supernatural

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2005–, Glee 2009–15, Hannah Montana 2006–11, Ugly Betty 2006–10 and The Walking Dead 2010–). In his work on the structures and characteristics of families on popular prime-time television from the mid-1940s to 1990, Marvin Moore noted that nine out of ten single fathers on screen during this period were presented as widowed in the text (Moore 1992), a stark difference to the lived experience of single fathers in society. In short, there remains a ‘disconnect between media representations’ and the reality of single father families. After all, while representations of single fathers on screen are dominated by widower narratives,15 only 11% of single fathers in society have experienced bereavement16 (Turchi and Bernabo 2020). Jennifer Turchi and Laurena Bernabo have suggested that ‘this misrepresentation of single fathers could be due to cultural “push back” of the rapid shift away from traditional family structures during the 1980s and 1990s’ (Turchi and Bernabo 2020). The aptly titled mini-series, Single Father (2010) follows Dave/David Tennant as he is widowed and struggling to raise his four children before developing feelings for his deceased wife’s best friend. Complicated and emotionally challenging, yes, but also wholly predictable in line with existing representations of single fathers on screen. In her work on the absent mother and postfeminist fatherhood in the media, Berit Åström highlights the long-standing trend for mothers as ‘expendable, untrustworthy, and dangerous’ (Åström 2015, 595) compared to their more reliable and supporting paternal counterparts. We are told that ‘[u]nlike most other narratives employing the trope, Single Father goes beyond simply negating the mother before moving along with the narrative. The death of the mother is instead invoked repeatedly as a romantic necessity, creating a narrative, which viewers perceive as a love story with a happy ending’17 (Åström 2015, 595). Another narrative, another partial representation. After all, research suggests that single fathers in society ‘regularly forgo romantic relationships in order to keep their home lives “drama free” and to protect their kids from possible disappointment’ (Turchi 2014). These off-screen single fathers ‘also indicate that sacrifices allow them time to adjust to their new role as a single parent’ (Turchi and Bernabo 2020). The point here is that ‘on-screen single fathers who maintain their lifestyles are the minority and do not accurately represent off -screen single fathers … today’ (Turchi and Bernabo 2020, emphasis in original).

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With the exception of Henry Warnimont (Punky Brewster, 1984–88) and Joe West (The Flash, 2014–), there are few examples of single fathers by choice, be it via adoption or surrogacy, on the small screen. Indeed, we are as likely to find stories of maternal abandonment as we are narratives of single fatherhood by choice18 (Blossom 1990–1995; Suburgatory 2011–). The only routine and consistent exception takes us from live action television to children’s big screen animations. In films such as Brother Bear (2003), Chicken Little (2005), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Despicable Me (2010), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) and Mr Peabody and Sherman (2014) the single father has adopted, rather than been left to care for children through death or divorce. Although lone fathers in the cartoon realm are compassionate, caring, patient and authoritative in line with the ideal paternal role, what they are not, is human. Adoption in the cartoon canon positions anthropomorphic animals as choosing to take on solo paternal roles (Åström 2015, 2017). The fact that single fathers by choice are seldom seen beyond this particular media form leaves us to question if it is animation, children’s animation or the depiction of animated animals more specifically, that makes these single fathers by choice less challenging and therefore more acceptable than their live action counterparts. The fact that much children’s animated fare routinely features anthropomorphic animals, be it The Jungle Book (1967) or Jungle Beat (2020), leads us to conclude that it is indeed the cartoon format which either finds space for, or actively encourages complex images of single fathers. Animation is in an ideal position to present alternative and even subversive representations of family, friendship, masculinity and paternity on the silver screen. Paul Wells makes this point when he comments that the film form ‘offers a greater opportunity for filmmakers to be more imaginative and less conservative’ in their depiction of contemporary family structures (Wells 1998, 6; see also Tueth 2003, 140). Although mature audiences find enjoyment and escapism in children’s animation (and adult animation in its own right as it is popular with their target demographic), cartoons are routinely understood as a children’s medium. While many of the most positive and progressive depictions of single fathers are created for children, the suggestion here is that younger audiences are more open to diverse family units than their more mature counterparts. In the same way that children’s animation is able to educate its audience about tolerance and acceptance of nonbinary characters and relationships (Feasey 2017b), so too, the form is

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able to present viewers with family dynamics which challenge the hegemonic nuclear family unit. As Åström states ‘there is no suggestion’ in these films that these single parent households are incomplete (Åström 2017, 254).19

From Screen Space to Social Support Although much screen and media fare suggests that men are keen to date and/or find a mother substitute in the home, the reality is that single fathers are struggling to secure targeted emotional support, and are suffering from loneliness and isolation. Recent research from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences tells us that ‘single fathers are significantly less likely to have … social networks that could help to enhance their health, productivity, and wellbeing in society’ (Chiu et al. 2018, 120).20 We are told that these men ‘have a greater risk of mortality … poorer self-rated health and mental health, higher levels of psychological distress, and generally a lower socio-economic status’ than their female counterparts (The Lancet 2018, 100). That said, although single fathers are said to be less likely to have a supporting social network around them (Chiu et al. 2018; French 2018), it is not yet clear whether men are asking for but being refused emotional support, or whether the hierarchy of hegemonic masculinity is at play, stating as it does that men should be stoic and self-sufficient rather than connected and willing to seek help (Connell 1995). Extant literature from the social sciences, health services and from single fathers themselves make it clear that having emotional support and access to a like-minded community is the key to successful single parenting in general, and single fatherhood in particular (Tessier 2010; Chiu et al. 2018; The Lancet 2018). However, in order to encourage such community building, visibility is key. The depiction of diverse, complex and multifaceted single fathers are needed to challenge the paucity of partial, playful and problematic representations (Wiltsher 2019).

Conclusion This chapter has looked at the ways in which media representations are committed to the depiction of lone fathers as widowers rather than divorcés, with these men routinely positioned in romantic situations so

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as to alleviate the potential challenge of single fatherhood to more traditional depictions of family life. Returning to a traditional family unit via dating, engagement and re-marriage enables single fathers to embrace or regain their traditional masculine credentials rather than disrupt or destabilise the hegemonic hierarchy. What remains clear throughout is that media representations of single fathers are key, not just to creative entertainment, but to broader cultural visibility, and by extension, family support. Visibility is key, and as such, here is a call to those media researchers, creatives, practitioners and commissioners who are in a position to bring ‘more emotionally authentic depictions of the realities of single fatherhood’ beyond the romance drive, assertive hard bodies and bumbling buffoons to our collective attention (Wiltsher 2019). Future research needs to speak to the creative industries about the role, representation and responsibility of single fathers in the entertainment and media marketplace, drawing on audience research to understand the ways in which readers, viewers and listeners make sense of these representations. Such research could in turn be used as the basis for localised support for single fathers in society.

Notes 1. The popular TV Tropes wiki does not have an entry for ‘single father’. There is a link to the television show of the same name, but not to the plot conventions and devices that inform the sole paternal role in the media. This exclusion cannot be overstated. (TV Tropes 2019). 2. Extant academic literature and popular media commentary share a consensus when they tell us that the bar for acceptable, appropriate and even ‘good’ fatherhood is set lower than that for acceptable motherhood and motherwork (Feasey 2008, 32–44; Feasey 2012). Irrespective of whether we find the representations of ‘bumbling, bungling single dads’ entertaining, endearing or troubling (Williams 2012; Smith 2015), these men appear to be judged differently than their maternal counterparts. 3. Statistics are available relating to the number of single households in the UK and to the ways in which these households vary across different ethnic groups. Recent government figures tell us that while Asian families have the lowest number of single parent households (8.8%), White and Other families rise to 10.2 and 10.5%, respectively. The numbers increase again for both Mixed and Black households at 19.1 and 24.3% (GOV.UK 2019). These figures are useful but tell us little about the ethnic breakdown of single fathers. Future work should look to examine the breakdown of single fathers by ethnic group in relation to existing

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media representations, considering where and how these figures are over or under-represented. In their recent work on the representation of single fathers on the small screen Jennifer Turchi and Laurena Bernabo concluded that they could not ‘draw conclusions regarding the impact of race because all but two fathers’ in their sample were white’ (Turchi and Bernabo 2000). They were, however, we are told ‘clearly stereotyped as unknowledgeable and irresponsible caregivers’ (Turchi and Bernabo 2000). Verywell is a health and wellness website whose content is created by health experts and certified physicians. The website employs a deliberately engaging and energetic tone to counter more traditional health information portals. NGA Law was the UK’s first specialist fertility law team who have changed law and policy through their cases, campaigning work and non-profit surrogacy agency (NGA Law 2020). Research on paternal adoption routinely looks at gay couples as they start or extend their family and yet little work to date examines the gay or straight single father by choice (Tessier 2010, Newman 2012, Carone, Baiocco and Lingiardi 2017, Scher 2018, White 2018). Speaking as a choice father, Brian Tessier states that what such prospective fathers by choice need most is visibility, information, emotional support and ‘a community of likeminded individuals in which to connect’ (Tessier cited in Newman 2012). However, this community is slow to find a media presence. Back in 2013, Nicholas Blincoe stated ‘[i]f celebrities are any pointer to long-term trends, we could be seeing more single fathers by choice’ based on the fact that the singer Ricky Martin had twins back in 2008, while Cristiano Ronaldo became a father by choice in 2010. However, more than a decade after Martin welcomed his twins into the world, only Andy Cohen, the Watch What Happens Live (2009- ) host, has offered further celebrity visibility to this form of family building (Blincoe 2013). Dadfest is the only festival in the UK targeted to men as parents and carers, and their children. Although there is no discussion as to the marital status of the fathers who attend the event, the ‘adventurous’ activities on offer align with those of commando Sinclair, as they include camping, storytelling in the woods at night, bushcraft, campfire pancakes, spoon carving, den building, archery, star-gazing, water rockets, drumming workshop, mud kitchen, mackerel fishing and bat walks (Dangerous Dads 2020). Neil Sinclair, ex-commando and dad of three, has written several book length volumes on the importance of fatherhood from pregnancy through the formative years (Sinclair 2012, 2014, 2016). Playing on his status as a former commando in active service, Sinclair peppers his books with military terminology and operative phrasings, and the commando father

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approach is interesting here for the ways in which it exploits long-standing and traditional iterations of hard bodied, powerful, forceful, authoritative, hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1995; Connell 1998). Patty Kuo and Monique Ward examine the ways in which paternal representations impact on first time fathers (Kuo and Ward 2016) while Jennifer Turchi and Laurena Bernabo note that representations of families on the small screen ‘implicitly provide lessons about how families ought to behave’ (Turchi and Bernabo 2020) A listicle is a blend of both list and article, made up of facts, tips or examples orchestrated around a theme, topic, category or genre. Numbered or bulleted, they are common online, in magazines and the blogosphere. They routinely pick up on the zeitgeist of the period and are a popular media reference point for contemporary audiences. In a blog post entitled ‘Where Are All The Stay-At-Home Dads On Film And TV?’ we are told that ‘[m]ost of the examples of dads spending time with their kids appeared to be because the partner had died / left, or they’d lost their job’ (Dadventurer 2017). These affable sitcoms were presenting a fantasy of economic security, social stability and family togetherness that was not necessarily in keeping with the wider social or sexual context of the period. The economically stable nuclear family unit with a breadwinning father and a satisfied stay-at-home wife and mother has only ever represented ‘a certain population, and only for a very restricted period that is now long past. It was never, in fact, traditional ’ (Kinser 2010, 26; italics in original). There is evidence to suggest that widowed parents are slightly more likely to re-partner than their separated or divorced paternal counterparts (Robinson 2019). While family friendly entertainment narratives look to combine a single father storyline with a romance narrative in line with the heterosexual imperative that drives much mainstream media fare (Demory and Pullen 2013), this drive to tame and contain lone fatherhood by way of PGrated romance, cohabitation and marriage is not restricted to the fictional widower. After all, even a cursory glance at online support for single fathers makes it clear that there is an inextricable link between support for single fathers and relationship advice for these selfsame men (Parker 2019; Browning 2017). Jennifer Turchi and Laurena Bernabo looked to update Moore’s seminal study and found that ‘successful family series of the past decade more accurately reflect broader demographic populations of families: 35% are single-parent households, of which 52% are mother-led, 26% are fatherled, and 22% share custody’ (Turchi and Bernabo 2020). While two per cent of single mothers are widowers, that number rises to 11% for their paternal counterparts, helping to explain why the average

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age of a single father is older than that of the average single mother (Rabindrakumar 2018). The lone father is routinely second to the missing, dead or absent mother as she exists in teen drama (Feasey 2017a), the horror genre (Träger 2017) and family films (Åström 2017). This research has come to the conclusion that single fatherhood looks like an energetic and engaging alternative to having a maternal presence in the home (Boxer 2014). Playing to the absurdity of the comedy genre, Raising Hope (2010– 14) finds Jimmy Chance having a one-night stand with a serial killer, discovering that she was pregnant only when she ends up on death row. Åström is building on the work of Hannah Hamad, who analyses mainstream films such as Minority Report (2002), Road to Perdition (2002) and Signs (2002) for their turn away from motherhood to the representation of the widowed single father as caregiver and provider (Åström 2015, 2017; Hamad 2013). She notes that although it is important that children are exposed to a range of family units, the recent turn to single fathers in much animation is at the expense of the maternal role. She concludes that fathers have ‘gone from being bumbling and inept to being the only parent a child … needs’ (Åström, 2017, 254; emphasis added). This research builds on a previous study that discovered that ‘single fathers were twice as likely to report poor self-rated health and mental health as single mothers, but were only half as likely to access health services’ (Chiu et al. 2018, 115).

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ONS. 2017. ‘Families and Households.’ Office for National Statistics. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeaths andmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2017. ONS. 2019. ‘Families and Households.’ Office for National Statistics. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeaths andmarriages/families/datasets/familiesandhouseholdsfamiliesandhouseholds. Parker, Wayne. 2019. ‘Adjusting to Life as a Single Father.’ Verywellfamily. https://www.verywellfamily.com/adjust-to-life-as-a-single-father-1270849. Rabindrakumar, Sumi. 2018. ‘One in Four: A Profile of Single Parents in the UK.’ Gingerbread. https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ 2018/02/One-in-four-a-profile-of-single-parents-in-the-UK.compressed.pdf. Robinson, Andrea. 2019. ‘Single Parent Statistics: UK Facts and Figures.’ Single Parents on Holiday. https://singleparentsonholiday.co.uk/single-parent-statis tics-new-facts-and-figures/. Scher, Avichai. 2018. ‘Gay Fathers, Going It Alone.’ New York Times, October 25, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/nyregion/single-gay-fat hers-through-surrogacy.html. Shipley, Diane. 2012. ‘Daddy Issues: Pop Culture’s Pioneering Single Dads.’ bitchmedia. Accessed September 19, 2019. https://www.bitchmedia.org/ post/daddy-issues-pop-cultures-pioneering-single-dads. Sinclair, Neil. 2012. Commando Dad Basic Training: How to Be an Elite Dad or Carer. Summersdale. Sinclair, Neil. 2014. Commando Dad Advice for Raw Recruits: From Pregnancy to Birth. Yellow Kite. Sinclair, Neil. 2016. Commando Dad Mission Adventure: Get Active with Your Kid. Vie. SMC. 2019. ‘Single Mothers by Choice.’ SMC. https://www.singlemothersby choice.org/ Smith, S.E. 2015. ’I’m Over the Bumbling Single Dad Stereotype.’ This Ain’t Livin’ Stillness Is a Lie, My Dear. Accessed September 19, 2019. http://mel oukhia.net/2015/08/im_over_the_bumbling_single_dad_stereotype/. Tessier, Brian. 2010. The Intentional Father: Adventures in Adoptive Single Parenting. Xlibris, Corp. The Dadventurer. 2017. ‘Where Are All The Stay-At-Home Dads On Film And TV?’ https://thedadventurer.com/sahd/stay-home-dads-film-tv/. The Good Men Project. 2019. ’About Us.’ The Good Men Project. https://goo dmenproject.com. The Lancet: Public Health. 2018. ‘Single Fathers: Neglected, Growing, and Important.’ Lancet Public Health. 3:3, e100. Träger, Eike. 2017. ‘Symbolic Matricide Gone Awry: On Absent and—Maybe Even Worse—Present Mothers in Horror Movies.’ In The Absent Mother in

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the Cultural Imagination: Missing, Presumed Dead, edited by Berit Åström, 207–222. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Travel.State.Gov. 2019. ‘Intercountry Adoption.’ U.S Department of State: Bureau of Consular Affairs. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/Int ercountry-Adoption.html. Tueth, Michael. 2003. ‘Back to the Drawing Board: The Family in Animated Television Comedy.’ In Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture, edited by Carol Stabile and Mark Harrison, 133–146. London: Routledge. Turchi, Jennifer, and Laurena Bernabo. 2020. ‘“Mr. Mom” No More: SingleFather Representations on Television in Primetime Drama and Comedies.’ Critical Studies in Media Communication 37 (5): 437-450. Turchi, Jennifer. 2014. Single Father Families: The Mediating Role of Parents’ Resources, Stress, and Family Environment on Children’s Physical and Emotional Wellbeing (Doctoral dissertation). Iowa Research Online. TV Tropes. 2019. ‘Single Father.’ TV Tropes. Accessed September 19, 2019. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SingleFather. Wells, Paul. 1998. Understanding Animation. London: Routledge. White, Garry. 2018. My Quest to Be A Single Dad: Thirty-Plus Years Trying to Adopt. Enumclaw: Redemption Press. Williams, Mary Elizabeth. 2012. ‘TV’s 10 Best Single Dads: The “Two and a Half Men” Fiasco Reminds Us That Television Loves a Guy with Kids.’ Salon. https://www.salon.com/2012/11/27/tvs_greatest_single_dads/. Wiltsher, Mary-Jane. 2019. ‘An Open Letter to All the Single Dads, From a Woman Who Was Raised by One.’ Stylist. https://www.sty list.co.uk/long-reads/fathers-day-single-dads-raising-family-fath er-daughterrelationship-fleabag/272384. Wolf, Jennifer. 2020. ‘Single Parent Statistics Based on Census Data.’ Verywellfamily. https://www.verywellfamily.com/single-parent-census-data-299 7668#citation-2. Zeigler, Doug. 2018. ‘Are You a Single Father or a Divorced Dad?’ The Good Men Project. https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/single-fatherdivorced-dad-dkz/.

CHAPTER 7

Single Fathers with Daughters in American Film Carol M. Dole

Introduction Both gender norms and family constellations in the U.S. have changed substantially since the women’s movement of the 1970s, and the last decade has seen a particularly active reconsideration of these areas. During the last few years, American culture has experienced profound changes in related societal structures through such high-profile events as the Me Too movement and the 2015 marriage equality ruling, which guaranteed Americans in every state the right to same-sex marriage. Meanwhile more gradual changes in family arrangements and gender expectations have occurred slowly but relentlessly. One of those changes is in perceptions and involvement of fathers. That change is evident in numerous forms of popular culture. Canadian sociologist Andrea Doucet has noted the dramatic differences she found in conducting research on fatherhood in 2002, when images of

C. M. Dole (B) Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_7

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‘the hapless, incompetent father’ were rampant on television and caretaker fathers felt so outnumbered by mothers that they avoided playgroups; and 2012, when a collective of eleven hundred fathers in New York City were supporting each others’ caregiving practices and banding together to ‘counter negative ad campaigns’ such as a Huggies diaper ad that had ‘belittled fathers’ caregiving abilities’ (Doucet 2015, x). By 2015, Doucet, along with many media commenters, was surprised to see that the broadcast of the Superbowl, the U.S.’s preeminent sports event and home of the year’s highest-priced advertising, featured not just its usual masculinefocused ads (traditionally ‘barroom banter and beer, fast cars, scantily clad female cheerleaders’), but ‘ads focused on men as fathers, with storylines that sought to engender more positive and empowered images of men as caregivers’ (x–xi). This change in advertising reflects the realities of fathers’ increasing involvement in child-rearing. A notable feature of this change is the increase in single fathers raising children. In 2017, 27.1% of all U.S. children under the age of 18 were being raised in single-parent households, and of this group the percent being raised by single fathers was 16.1%—no rival to the number of single mothers, but nonetheless a significant increase over the 12.5% figure of single fathers raising children in 2007 (U.S. Census). The president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, Christopher Brown, explains this increase as resulting in part from increasing willingness by courts to award custody to fathers and in part by the fact that now ‘Men are seen as more capable parents, in general, and accepted as single fathers, specifically’ (ElHage 2017). But while U.S. men are increasingly contributing to parenting, the U.S. has lagged in implementing the sort of structural social changes that Johansson and Andreasson stress as so central to encouraging egalitarian parenting in the Nordic countries (2017). In the U.S., tensions for fathers between the traditional role of breadwinner and the emerging role of caregiver are exacerbated by a patchwork of parental leave structures that often eliminate pay, forcing a choice between the roles (Miller 2019). Moreover, the fact that there is no federal policy on paternity leave, which varies from state to state and employer to employer, conveys the subliminal message that American culture does not place a well-considered value on involved fatherhood. With the roles of breadwinner and caretaker consistently in tension for men, studies show that most men take shorter leaves from work than do women, even in companies with gender-neutral paid leave

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(Lenhart et al. 2019). Clearly the father’s role in parenting remains in flux. But in what ways do media representations reflect the changing cultural attitudes towards fathers? Recent scholarly collections such as Pops in Pop Culture (Podnieks 2016) address evolving depictions of fatherhood in an expansive range of media, encompassing ‘film, television, blogs, memoirs, bestselling fiction, stand-up comedy, commercials, newspaper articles, parenting guidebooks, and video games’ (21). My own interest is in cinematic representations of fathers, the subject of this essay. Film, with its high budgets and relatively slow production timetable, can lag behind other media forms in its responsiveness to emerging cultural mores, but its representation of fathers is slowly evolving. The purpose of my study is to analyse the ways that U.S. films of the 2010s respond to, and reflect, shifting norms of fatherhood.

Methods My narrow focus on fatherhood films of 2011–2018 is designed in part to provide consideration of the most recent of U.S. films, and in part to expand on the important work done in Hannah Hamad’s Postfeminism and Paternity in Contemporary U.S. Film (2014), a monograph which covers a wide range of fatherhood films produced in the earlier twentyfirst century. My essay uses Hamad’s findings about the typical tropes of the postfeminist fatherhood film in earlier years and studies to what degree those tropes persist through the cultural changes of recent years, as well as what other tropes emerge. The films in my study are limited to those that take the parent–child relationship as their central concern, rather than those that use the father–child relationship as pretext for an action film or a romantic comedy. My focus is on single fathers. Consistent with widespread usage in the U.S., I use the term ‘single’ to refer to all types of parenting on one’s own. The U.S. feature films of this time period that highlight single fathers portray them as either widowers or men whose former (always female) partners have left and do not share custody of the children; no features were produced during these years portraying fathers who chose to parent alone. My concentration is particularly on fathers raising daughters. Whereas films featuring sons may provide valuable evidence as to which elements of masculinity are currently considered vital to pass on to sons, films focused on fathers’ relationships with their daughters can

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be more suggestive of how fathers can incorporate the lessons of feminism and the model of mothering into the new masculinities that have gradually emerged since the women’s movement of the 1970s. Moreover, given American culture’s persistent valuation of the protectionist father, and implicit assumption that daughters need more protection than sons, these films can potentially be more revealing of the negotiation of traditional and emerging gender norms. My study embraces all feature-length, widely distributed U.S. films focusing on single fathers of daughters released from 2011 to 2018, as long as they have a primary focus on domestic family relations. Almost all of these films feature daughters alone. I have included one film that features an older son as well as a young daughter, We Bought a Zoo, because of its usefulness in helping to demonstrate the tropes that Hamad identifies as dominating fatherhood narratives in the previous decade. However, I have omitted films such as 2016’s Captain Fantastic that feature large families that mix daughters with multiple sons. While my main purpose in this study is to analyse repeated and emerging tropes in fatherhood narratives, I secondarily consider whether these films are successful in attracting cultural approval, as indicated by their financial success or by other markers of cultural approbation. Many factors go into the reception of a film, including the freshness of the script, the skill and likeability of the actors and the talent of the director, but the reception of films can also serve as a rough measure of current cultural acceptability of modes of representing categories of people. Measuring financial success is complicated, however, for two reasons. One is that only success in theatrical screenings can be reliably measured, given that DVD sales are estimates and that streaming services like Netflix do not share their viewing figures; yet many films go on to have far more widespread success in home viewing than they did in theatres. Another is that box-office numbers are affected by marketing and distribution, so that less widely circulated films may draw relatively few viewers, making overall attendance misleading: low-budget independent films are considered financial successes if their profits outstrip their budgets. As for indicators of positive reception other than financial, I sometimes invoke industry awards and sometimes the critic scores and audience scores found on the popular aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

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Categories of Films Under Study Hannah Hamad (2014) argues that fatherhood has become ‘the dominant paradigm of masculinity across the spectrum of mainstream U.S. cinema’ (1) in the twenty-first century. She sees the figure of the father as able to negotiate ‘a range of masculine identities’ (1) available in postfeminist culture, ranging from traditionalist expectations of father as protector and breadwinner to evolving assumptions that men should be more involved in nurturing children. Hamad concentrates primarily on films from the first decade of the twenty-first century, though her 2014 monograph does touch as well on some of the earliest films of the second decade. My own discussion begins by establishing the dominant fatherhood narrative, by examining the higher-budget films that adopt many of the tropes Hamad identifies in the fatherhood films of the early years of the twenty-first century. I focus primarily on the two that were financially successful, both from 2011: The Descendants and We Bought a Zoo. This section of my essay also briefly considers the financial failure of two 2016 films that departed from the template: Fathers & Daughters (a U.S.–Italian coproduction) and Trouble with the Curve. After reviewing the inherited template for the widely accepted fatherhood narrative, this essay will focus particularly on low-budget films that experiment with depictions of fatherhood, though they often maintain some vestiges of the earlier tropes. These include Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), Gifted (2017), Eighth Grade (2018) and Leave No Trace (2018).

The Dominant Fatherhood Narrative Higher-budget films, careful to follow a narrative that will appeal to a relatively large audience, adopt what Hamad calls ‘the new hegemonic masculinity’ (1), one that incorporates traits long associated with masculinity as well as some of the lessons of feminism. As she outlines, in response to the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s American cinema often treated changing gender roles as comic in the 1980s, but the 1990s’ surge in actions films found ways to articulate a ‘strong/sensitive’ dualism for fathers and father-figures (15). After the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, a ‘post-9/11 cultural logic’ allowed action heroes

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to combine ‘recidivist masculinity’ with the ‘involved fatherhood’ of postfeminism, often by featuring revenge or rescue plots in which fathers protect their children, as in Taken (2008). These features often incorporate melodrama, as do many of the films about fathers outside the realm of action (17). Hamad identifies several features that characterize the fatherhood narrative that dominates early twenty-first-century American cinema, though varying according to genre. She identifies typical fatherhood films as tracking the father’s journey to becoming more ‘emotionally articulate’ as well as more ‘domestically competent’ (2). This dominant formulation of fatherhood also incorporates a balance or confluence of ‘private sphere fatherhood and public sphere paternalism’ (2). This blending of public and private paternalism that Hamad identifies does indeed persist in the financially successful high-budget films of the 2010s and indeed in some of the low-budget independent films. Given that men have long been seen to inhabit a public realm in contrast to women’s confinement through the centuries in the private realm, it is unsurprising that the dominant fatherhood narrative invariably shows fathers as placed in a larger society—even in the specifically domestic films that I examine. A striking finding of my own study of domestic films is that these fathers go beyond ordinary success in the public realm, inflating the father’s role in the wider world so that it becomes extraordinary. In Fathers & Daughters (2016) Russell Crowe writes a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel while taking care of his young daughter. In The Descendants (2011) George Clooney has large tracks of ancestral lands on Kauai to dispose of wisely. In Trouble with the Curve (2012) Clint Eastwood as an ageing baseball scout is the one person able to deliver key talent to a major-league baseball team. In Gifted (2017) an uncle is tasked with developing his niece’s world-class mathematical genius. As in the previous decade, fatherhood films of the 2010s continue to play up their extraordinary real-life origins when feasible: just as the highly successful 2006 film Pursuit of Happyness had portrayed a true-life rags-to-riches story of a homeless single father who became a wealthy stockbroker, We Bought a Zoo (2011) uses its title to advertise a real-life rescue of a zoo. While scriptwriters of films of many kinds must devise an inherent conflict that a protagonist can overcome, these situations go beyond everyday reality even though the films are centred on the very common experience of domestic family relations. Such outof-the-ordinary plots suggest that single parenting by fathers continues

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to be seen as anomalous rather than normative—worthy of examination only if ratified by worldly endeavours. American filmmakers throughout the twenty-first century still appear to feel the need to stake a claim for studying a father in domesticity at all. To return to the tropes that Hamad identifies: In the dominant fatherhood narrative the father’s public engagement often parallels his education in domesticity and emotional parenting. He either is, or becomes, a capable homemaker. He retains his traditional roles as protector and provider, while also learning to balance moneymaking with family obligations. These tendencies hold, regardless of the gender of the children, in the financially successful higher-budget films that I examine, but not in the unsuccessful ones. George Clooney’s journey as Matt King, in The Descendants, is exemplary of the dominant fatherhood narrative. The film centres on Matt, a father of two daughters, whose wife Elizabeth is comatose following the boating accident that sets the plot in motion. An ambitious lawyer, Matt had previously devoted his energies to being a breadwinner, leaving his wife to care for the children and, as he now learns, to turn to another man. Both girls are troubled and have been for some time; the film hints that parental negligence may be to blame. As the film opens, Matt is already promising his comatose wife that ‘I’m ready to be a real husband and a real father’. Subsequent scenes suggest he has a lot of ground to cover, since he has no idea how to run the household or manage his younger daughter’s bullying of other children. The narrative tracks the father’s education in parenthood and in understanding the primacy of emotion over money, through a literal road trip: he swallows his jealous outrage to search out his wife’s lover to invite him to bid goodbye to her before she is taken off life support. By the end of the film, Matt has largely solved his family’s problems. The final shot of the film sees him on the couch between his two daughters, as they settle in to watch a movie together. The confluence of public and private agency characteristic of the postfeminist fatherhood film is embodied, even overdetermined, in this film. Matt’s extended family has inherited 25,000 acres of untouched land in Kauai, and Matt alone is the sole trustee, empowered to decide whether to sell to a developer as his money-hungry cousins are pressing him to do. At the climax of the film, pen in hand, he suddenly decides to preserve the land, protecting natural beauty as he has learned to protect his daughters. The film makes it impossible to separate his public and private motivations: does he drop the pen because of his increased emotional

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intelligence, or because the deal is tainted by his having learned that the developer is the brother-in-law of his deceased wife’s lover? The confluence of private and public protectionism is complete. The other higher-budget film of the 2010s that turned a profit followed a similar narrative of intertwined public and private paternalism mixed with a father’s emotional education. We Bought a Zoo, like The Descendants, features a recent widower played by a likeable star (Matt Damon) who is promptly seen in the genre’s prototypical scene of a single father trying to manage his daughter’s hair. Soon the father buys a house with an attached zoo to give his children a new interest. Once again public and private paternalism converge: though Benjamin knows nothing about running a zoo, his discoveries about how to treat the animals and how to treat his children are frequently paralleled, allowing a triumphal ending as the family is emotionally reconnected in the process of preparing the zoo’s grand opening. Films of the 2010s departed from the emotional education script, or the expectation of paternal protection, at their peril. The two films of the period that featured fathers who did not undergo a significant trajectory of education, and whose troubled adult daughters judged them to have been failures as protectors, both lost substantial amounts of money and achieved lower audience scores than other films. Trouble with the Curve and Fathers & Daughters are each split between the adult daughters’ and the fathers’ perspectives, making the father lose one element of his traditional dominance. In Fathers & Daughters, widower Russell Crowe is shown in numerous scenes as a devoted father to his little girl, battling illness, financial failure and meddling relatives to keep her safe; but the film withholds until its finale the revelation that his adult daughter’s anger at being abandoned is completely unjustified, given that he died trying to protect her when she was still little. Similarly, Trouble with the Curve focuses on an adult daughter’s anger that her widowed father Clint Eastwood had banished her as a little girl from his baseball talent scouting tours, withholding from the audience until the final act the understanding that the father was saving his little daughter from sexual predators. Although in fact both of these fathers are revealed to be successful protectors by the end of the film, during long stretches of each film the audience is led to perceive the father as neither dominant nor emotionally available nor successfully protective. The commercial failure of these costly films demonstrates the dangers for filmmakers of departing

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from the fatherhood script inherited from the previous decade without finding improved ways to align women’s interests with men’s.

Innovations of the 2010s Women’s Position in Fatherhood Films A trope of fatherhood films of earlier years is the erasure of the mother. Feminist critics have long been concerned about the ways in which fathers might become more involved in childcare and the ways women’s longstanding contributions might be devalued. Some have found this fear confirmed in media representations of fatherhood. Hamad lists a large number of such concerns about films of the 1980s and 1990s (17–18). In her analysis of the film Three Men and a Baby, for instance, Tania Modleski worries that the feminist call for men to contribute more to parenting arrangements is insufficient: ‘it is possible, the film shows, for men to respond to the feminist demand for their increased participation in childrearing in such a way as to make women more marginal than ever’ (1991, 88). Yvonne Tasker, in her reading of Daddy Day Care (2003), a comedy about a stay-at-home dad with a high-earning wife, notes how childcare can be transformed into something different from maternal nurturing: ‘The scene of childcare becomes manageable or pleasurable only when it is transformed into a site of paid labour, a process that points to a significant cultural anxiety around constructing a suitably masculine form of male parenting’ (2008, 181). Hamad surveys how many twenty-first-century films about fathers invent improbable situations to diminish the mother’s role, but concludes that the ‘preferred paradigm’ in the new century is to kill the mother off before the film’s timeframe begins, resulting in the improbable proliferation of films about widowers (19). The higher-cost films of the 2010s indeed use the widower paradigm to effect a concentration on the father without fully displacing the mother. My study reveals that most of the films of the 2010s also develop additional ways to skirt the danger of offending female audience members, by reconfiguring women’s roles. The very prevalence of so many films in the 2010s about men learning to parent after the death or simple departure of the mother helps avoid the competition between mothers’ and fathers’ parenting that had bedevilled films since the custody battle in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). Moreover, films of the 2010s increasingly pay

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tribute to women’s wisdom about child-raising and about emotional intelligence. Films of slightly earlier years, as Hamad has noted, had already developed the daughter character who is ‘wise beyond her years’ (111) in such films as Jersey Girl or The Secret Life of Bees, but that wise daughter becomes even wiser in the 2010s, and more ubiquitous: she figures in higher-budget films and more experimental low-budget films as well. More female advice-givers from outside the family appear as well in the films of the 2010s. On the other hand, a split in strategies of representing women occurs between the more conventional fatherhood narratives of the 2010s and the more experimental films. Deceased mothers in the conventional films reach back as beneficent spirits from beyond the grave to assist the fathers, who still control point of view; but in low-budget experimental films the fathers are more fully on their own but the dominant perspective in the film is the daughter’s. In both cases, the traditional dominance of the father is more equitably balanced by the wisdom of female characters. Financially successful films pay tribute to women’s importance. We Bought a Zoo, a costly film released by a major studio, features all three types of womanly wisdom. The zookeeper played by Scarlett Johansson, a divorcee who has no children herself, nonetheless dispenses both motherly and psychological wisdom on a regular basis. An even more effective educator is seven-year-old Rosie, a daughter wise beyond her years. It is Rosie who explains her teenage brother’s issues to her father, and Rosie who wisely persuades her father to ignore his brother’s financial advice and to buy the zoo, leading to the family’s ultimate healing. The deceased wife, whose beloved spectre hovers over the family through frequent flashbacks, serves as fairy godmother: knowing her husband’s risk-taking, she had saved up a secret fund for him to spend on an adventure after she succumbed to cancer—a bequest revealed just in time to save the zoo. Once again, emotional wisdom is the province of women and daughters. So it is in The Descendants. Daughter Alex, at 17, quickly abandons her own bad behaviour after her mother’s accident and becomes her father’s teacher. It is she who knows her mother had been having an affair, she who knows how the household runs, she who knows how to handle her younger sister’s bullying of schoolmates. As in so many father–daughter films, the daughter becomes her father’s guide into emotional understanding. This film not only attends to the departed mother; it may also be read as interrogating the fatherhood film’s earlier trope of erasing her. Through most of this film the mother is represented by a life-in-death

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body in a hospital bed who can be spoken to but not answer back. Several people, including her daughter Alex and Brian’s betrayed wife, visit Elizabeth’s bed to alternately accuse and forgive her. With no loving flashbacks of happy family times, and her mute body often on display, this oftenironic film seems to call attention to the deafening silence of the mother who has been written out of the script. Warding off Incest Concerns Along with the rise in films about fathers raising daughters on their own in the 2010s, films adopted various subtle strategies to hedge fears of incest, especially in films featuring father–daughter dyads. Although in actual life women too sometimes sexually abuse children, the stereotypical abuser is male, often either a father or father-figure. Film plots and cinematography are designed to banish any suspicion of such a possibility, in both conventional and experimental films. In The Descendants, when Matt goes off on the road trip with 17-year-old Alex, played by the attractive Shailene Woodley, her boyfriend tags along for no apparent narrative reason, but his presence effectively erases the incest threat. In We Bought a Zoo, the father’s quiet attraction to Scarlett Johansson’s zookeeper testifies that his sexual energies go in an acceptable direction, while the near-constant presence on the compound of both the zookeeper and her teenage niece reassures the audience that little Rosie is well supervised. The experimental films, individually discussed below, adopt different strategies but similarly deny incest.

Low-Budget Independent Films of the 2010s Since films with modest budgets have less need to draw a wide swath of viewers in order to recoup their costs, financiers are more willing to back films that depart from popular genres, that may encapsulate the ideology of only certain parts of the varied U.S. population, and that diverge from classical Hollywood narrative expectations. Such films have limited advertising budgets and most often play to self-selected audiences during theatrical release, typically in independent theatres rather than in big theatre chains. Rarely do they bring in large box-office earnings, though their earnings may increase if they are singled out for attention through Academy Award nominations. This section will focus on the four low-budget films about single fathers with lone daughters released

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in the 2010s. Three of these films were financially successful, in terms of their cost-to-earnings ratios, bringing in several times their cost: Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), Gifted (2017) and Eighth Grade (2018). Leave No Trace (2018), on the other hand, lost money in spite of stellar reviews. These low-budget films experiment with less dominant or less capable fathers, and three transfer primary narrative perspective from the father to the daughter. Two of these films choose settings off the grid and so implicitly question gender expectations as they question a larger constellation of values that compose mainstream society. Gifted Gifted was produced in 2017 by Fox Searchlight, the quasi-independent branch of a major studio that had earlier produced the star-driven and higher-budget fatherhood film The Descendants (2011), which had taken in $82 million at the domestic box office and another $94 million internationally on a $20 million budget. In addition to turning an impressive profit, The Descendants had brought status to the studio through its four Academy Award nominations and its win for Best Adapted Screenplay. Twentieth Century Fox, the major studio that owned Searchlight, had also produced We Bought a Zoo in the same year and turned a profit on that film as well, albeit a lesser one. Given this track record, it is unsurprising that Fox Searchlight’s Gifted adheres to the dominant fatherhood script inherited from the previous decade. At the same time, that script is slightly updated to match the emerging concerns of the later 2010s. With these tweaks, the fatherhood formula again succeeded financially: Gifted took in more than triple its modest cost ($7 million) at the domestic box office ($24.8 million) and added another $18 million abroad. Gifted is the tale of an uncle named Frank who is raising and homeschooling the daughter of his sister Diane, a brilliant mathematician who committed suicide during her daughter’s infancy. Both the child’s British grandmother and her biological father had turned their backs on her, leaving her uncle as guardian. This dedicated young father-figure, a former professor, lacks confidence in his own parenting skills, but his scruffy look and part-time job fixing boats signal that some kind of educational trajectory is on the way. When he enrols little Mary in first grade in a conventional public school so that she will have a normal life, school officials recognize the girl’s disruptive brilliance and suggest her

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transfer to a private school. Her driven grandmother, also a mathematician, appears after seven years of silence, intent on harnessing Mary’s genius, setting off a custody fight and the placement of the tearful child in foster care. Eventually Frank wins the day, summoning a new selfconfidence to reclaim Mary by buying off his mother. His moral education completed, he enrols little Mary in ‘normal’ public school but also in college courses, where she appears in a Brownie uniform that signifies her integration into ordinary childhood. At the same time, Frank’s educational compromise signals his responsibility to the larger world as he helps prepare a brilliant mathematician for her future work, allowing the film to dramatize the fatherhood narrative’s typical confluence of public and private paternalism. Gifted deploys the usual tropes to distinguish Frank as a suitable example of postfeminist fatherhood. The film, while featuring some scenes of Mary at school or with her babysitter, primarily tracks Frank and his decisions. Although the narrow budget could not buy a major star, Chris Evans’s likeability and track record in popular Captain America films work to effect audience allegiance to this father. Frank’s ceaseless efforts to safeguard Mary, including an eleventh-hour rescue of her beloved cat from being euthanized, guarantee his credentials as paternal protector. The film also incorporates the respect for women’s influence typically built into films of the 2010s. Frank is open to, indeed reliant on, advice from women. His neighbour and friend Roberta frequently imparts sage advice on child-rearing and helps him rescue Mary. As in the other financially successful films of the 2010s, this one is haunted by the spectre of the benevolent dead mother, Diane. Although she is not reincarnated in flashbacks, Diane’s wish that her daughter lead the normal life Diane had not been allowed rules Frank’s decisions for Mary. And like the mother in We Bought a Zoo, Diane bequeaths Frank the solution to his problem: the ground-breaking mathematical discovery she left with him on her death allows him to buy off his mother and restore Mary to her true home with Frank. This film also works to limit incest fears. Roberta’s close stewardship of Frank’s relationship with Mary serves as a guarantor against any fears of abuse. Roberta’s overnight with Mary every Friday so that Frank can have a social life further allows the film to establish that Frank’s sexual interest is in adult women, even to the point that he strikes up a romantic relationship with Mary’s first-grade teacher.

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While Gifted closely follows the fatherhood template of the early century and incorporates the respect for women and reassurance about the child’s safety characteristic of the 2010s, it also accommodates to some degree the evolving preferences of the later 2010s, particularly of the younger audiences who represent the most frequent filmgoers. In a time that younger Americans especially were calling for a more intersectional feminism, Gifted included a character of colour in this tale of a white family by casting Olivia Spencer as Frank’s friend Roberta. And while the film retains the genre’s typical focus on a heterosexual father, Gifted is more relaxed about premarital sexual activity, consonant with the current sexual habits of young adults. Moreover, in an age of slowly increasing gender parity, it features both positive and negative characters among women as well as men. Frank is a younger and less dominant father-figure than his predecessors, more prone to banter with his young charge than to order her about. Diane and Frank’s mother Evelyn, not Frank, is the excessively dominant parent figure: she had been so determined to maintain control of her genius daughter that she had charged the boyfriend of 17-year-old Diane with kidnapping when the young couple went on a ski trip together, and she threatens to keep Mary on a similarly tight leash. In making Evelyn’s tight control appear responsible for Diane’s suicide, the film takes a small step towards rejecting dominance and endorsing a parenting model that better balances traditionally gendered parenting roles. Beasts of the Southern Wild Like Gifted and The Descendants, Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) was distributed by Fox Searchlight, although the company bought the film by first-time director Benh Zeitlin only after its success at the Sundance Festival for independent films. With no creative input, Searchlight could not shape the plot to meet cinematic fatherhood traditions, but their purchase was shrewd. Not only did the film yield a domestic gross of $12.7 million on a $1.8 million budget, but it came out of nowhere to score four prestigious Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. Wink and his 6-year-old daughter Hushpuppy are members of a fishing community living off the grid in coastal Louisiana, in an area dubbed The Bathtub, perhaps because of its tendency to flood in storms. This community seems at once downtrodden—with people living in

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ramshackle trailers, usually foraging for their own food, and at risk of drowning—and utopic, a place of racial harmony, mutual support and plenty of parties. The script offers no direct explanation for this single father’s apparent illness or his unconventional parenting practices. Everything is filtered through the limited knowledge of his small daughter, whose voiceover runs throughout the film. When Wink disappears for days and then staggers home in a hospital gown, viewers draw their own conclusions, conclusions that Hushpuppy reaches very slowly. The child’s impending loss of her father is part of a world of dangers: stoves lit by flamethrowers, a storm that drowns livestock and threatens the Bathtub’s human inhabitants, the government officials that keep trying to round up and institutionalize these people to preserve their physical health. Wink is far different from the cinematic fathers that preceded him. Sometimes drunk and often angry, Wink offers his six-year-old scant dayto-day protection and even less sensitivity. Nonetheless, he ultimately accomplishes the central task of paternal protector when his daughter faces outsized threats. He bullies her into safety when a devastating storm arrives, and later he schools her in the survival skills she will need when he dies, teaching her to catch fish with her hands and to rip into shellfish without cutlery. He is always urging her to shout ‘I’m the man!!’ and to rely on herself, even when aid is available. His fathering priorities, while far from those demanded in mainstream society, provide the toughness necessary to live in the Bathtub. His success is evident at the end of the film. Earlier, Hushpuppy had learned in the community’s makeshift school about the extinction of prehistoric mammals called aurochs, and she fears the dangerous beasts will be released by the melting of the icecaps. Her imagination comes to life on screen when the aurochs appear to threaten her. By the time Wink lies on his deathbed, she has faced down her fears, in the form of the imaginary prehistoric beasts, and is ready to accept her father’s death and move forward with her own life. The film never spells out the orphaned child’s future, but hints that between her own self-reliance and the place her father has made for her in a loving community, she will survive. The film also adheres, with a difference, to other elements of the inherited fatherhood script. This father too is involved in public as well as private protectionism. After he helps his child survive the storm, he must join with fellow community members to protect their land from the storm’s aftermath by blowing up a levee to allow the water level in the Bathtub to recede before all their food is destroyed. This film also shares

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a characteristic of many 2010s films featuring father–daughter dyads: it banishes fear of incest. The father and his six-year-old each live alone in separate though neighbouring structures, an unusual system that is never explained. Even after Hushpuppy angrily sets fire to her own place and must move into her father’s, he insists they draw a line separating his space and her space. They are rarely seen to touch. Like other films of the 2010s, this one repeatedly registers the importance of women, but in a somewhat different way. Though no woman is seen advising the father, women are important to Hushpuppy. Her female teacher inspires the child’s imagination and offers her help. The mother too is a presence, though with a difference. Unlike in more conventional fatherhood films, this child’s mother has abandoned the family, not died. The little girl doesn’t remember her mother, but longs for her, habitually rearranging her mother’s red shirt to suggest her physical presence. After realizing her father may die, Hushpuppy goes on a dreamlike journey to discover, in a brothel on the water, a woman who may or may not be her mother. The woman prepares the child a dish reminiscent of food the mother had once made for the family. Hushpuppy and the (possible) mother embrace in a slow and tender dance, but then Hushpuppy must return home to face her fears and her father’s death. The infusion of love she comes away with sends her directly to conquer her fears, as represented by the aurochs, and to reconcile with her dying father. Seen from the little girl’s perspective, the mother in this film diverges from the typical pattern in that she gives no guidance and receives no praise, but the child’s longing and later emotional sustenance testify to the woman’s importance in equivalent ways. While it differs from previous fatherhood films in numerous ways, this film honours the father’s teaching and his persistence. Directed and cowritten by a man in his late twenties, the film also integrates the hopes and fears of the millennial generation. The seamless community of the African-American main characters and their neighbours regardless of race not only reflects Louisiana’s history of racial and ethnic mingling, one unusual in the American south, but echoes the short-lived sense of a post-racial society that was talked about during the early Obama era. Anxiety about climate change is registered in repeated shots of melting glaciers and in fear of coastal flooding particularly intense in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 devastation of Louisiana. Beasts of the Southern Wild subtly suggests that fathers too must change to adapt to their times

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and conditions, as parenting must change to adopt to the burgeoning of non-traditional families in the twenty-first century. Leave No Trace Leave No Trace (2018) also highlights the importance of context in a film about a father–daughter dyad living off the grid. In this film too we see through the daughter’s perspective rather than the father’s. This father, a veteran, is physically healthy but suffers from PTSD. When the film opens he has been living secretly for years with 13-year-old Tom in a large park on the edge of Portland, Oregon. Like the father in Beasts, he educates his daughter for the life they are living, carefully instructing her on starting fires, preparing food and moving through the forest without leaving a trail. He also teaches her to study encyclopaedias and to play chess, preparing her for a more conventional world as well as their hidden camp. His disability checks provide the pair with necessary clothing and with food they cannot grow themselves. For their life in the woods, Will seems an almost ideal protector and instructor. At this stage he is a skilled nurturer as well, sensitive to the flux of his daughter’s feelings. Things change after the authorities discover their camp and take them into custody, eventually setting them up to live and work on a farm. But the father cannot tolerate living in community, even in their own house. Insisting that they run away, he leads his daughter into danger as they first try to hop on a train and then get lost in the frigid cold in a distant forest. As the father loses his bearings Tom, the patient daughter, slowly takes over as the parent. She rescues her dad from sure death after he falls on the way to town; finds a community of genial outsiders including other veterans to let him heal at their mobile home camp in the woods; and learns ways of managing nature that he does not know. At the film’s end, Will insists on returning to a solitary life in the woods, but his daughter decides for both of them that community is better for her, explaining to her father that ‘the same thing that’s wrong with you isn’t wrong with me’. He heads for the woods, she to join the welcoming mobile home community. She is the adult now—a credit to her father—arguably allowing this film too to fit into the standard fatherhood narrative. The film also features other characteristics of the fatherhood narrative of the 2010s. The sole film to bring up the threat of incest directly, Leave No Trace scripts two occasions when concerned outsiders (a social worker,

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a truck driver who hesitates to give them a ride) interrogate Tom separately to make sure she has not been molested. After the pair run away from Portland’s social workers, the film also features women who help and advise, though not directly advising the father. Dale, an older woman, arranges their temporary housing in an ad hoc mobile home community in the woods and brings in male veterans to assist Will. A woman beekeeper patiently teaches Tom how to tend bees and gather honey—a skill she tries to share with her father—and metaphorically teaches her the importance of community through the image of ‘the warmth of the hive’. While Tom’s absent mother is neither explained nor lamented, these two women at the RV camp fulfil her need for emotional nurture after her father has turned so far inward that he ignores his daughter’s feelings. In spite of its inclusion of standard elements of the fatherhood film, Leave No Trace did not succeed in drawing an adequate audience. Among the four low-budget films, only this one failed to recoup its costs, in spite of a respected director, strong acting and the strikingly high critical rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. The problem may well have been its sober pace and its sober ending. American filmgoers, schooled by Hollywood to expect strong and positive resolutions, might well have avoided a film that lacked a final triumph (as in Gifted) and that saw the father’s narrative of decline unredeemed by death, as it had been in Beasts of the Southern Wild. Eighth Grade Another father–daughter film that shifts narrative interest to the daughter is Eighth Grade, a very low-budget independent film that did just as well at the box office as Beasts and likewise scored high on Rotten Tomatoes in both the critic (99) and audience (83) scores. Writer/director Bo Burnham’s comedy about the pains of being 13 features a daughter named Kayla living with a single father. Once again, the perspective is the daughter’s. Kayla reveals her feelings not through standard voiceover narration but through narration on the advice videos she creates and posts on the internet. Kayla, who suffers from anxiety like so many American teenagers in the 2010s, goes through the usual middle-school traumas of embarrassment and rejection, ultimately learning to stop trying to gain acceptance by the cool kids and to accept herself and new friends she has more in common with. Although this story of a middle-class suburban girl’s daily travails represents the most ordinary of situations, Eighth Grade may be

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the most radical of all the films in this group. In this film the father has no need to undergo an education: he has already arrived. The film steps away from every trope of the other fatherhood films, presenting its father as capable and without need of women helpers. Kayla’s father, Mark, is already good at running a house. He serves well-balanced dinners at the dining table, is often seen washing dishes, and keeps a row of plants on the kitchen windowsill. He even gets compliments on his effective participation in the school fundraiser. Although his job is not discussed, he clearly has managed to earn enough to run a comfortable house while still being home for his daughter much of the time. He also works at their relationship, repeatedly trying to engage Kayla in conversation, to gauge her moods and to support her when she is troubled. He frequently tells her he loves her. He does his best to protect her, supervising her activities and, in a comic scene, trying to watch her secretly during her mall outing with older teens. Though he seems ‘dorky’ at times through the eyes of his critical 13-year-old and she keeps trying to escape his suggestions, his effectiveness is proven by the fact that Kayla repeatedly replicates, in the advice videos she produces for fellow teens, the same advice her father had just given her. Nor does this father need womanly advice. There are no wise neighbours or friends talking things over with him. The only woman’s voice to give encouragement is that of a high-school senior who befriends the younger girl, and she speaks only to Kayla. The absent mother, who left in Kayla’s infancy, is neither excoriated nor grievously missed; the only indication of a mother’s importance is that the father confesses that he had been ‘really, really scared’ when Kayla’s mother first left. Nothing in the plot seems to hedge against the fear of incest. This film, written and directed by a man in his twenties, seems born of a generation that came of age after parenting practices had become less gendered than they were in the twentieth century.

Conclusion My findings suggest that many of the tropes Hamad identified are maintained in fatherhood films of 2012–2018, but that lower-budget independent films—particularly those crafted by younger filmmakers— increasingly experiment with erasing those tropes or with aligning them with emerging values of younger generations. The young writer/director of 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild is among the earliest filmmakers

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of the decade to recast parental gender roles for changing cultural and environmental conditions, while the young writer/director of 2018’s Eighth Grade is able later in the decade to sidestep almost all gendered assumptions about parental roles inherited from the twentieth century. The overall trajectory of the decade is to move farther away from the notion of paternal dominance. The circulating voices of Eighth Grade, in which social media facilitates echoes between father’s voice and daughter’s, are characteristic of a larger pattern shared by Beasts and Leave No Trace, a pattern that may signal a slow cultural shift away from the dominant father and towards a more egalitarian power distribution that is less aligned to hegemonic masculinity. The shift from the paternal point of view, as evident in the use of voiceover by the father in The Descendants, to the daughter’s perspective helps equalize the balance between males and females. The expanded presence of female advisors and role models in many of these films also helps counterbalance traditional male dominance, while the lack of stars in lower-budget films helps prevent casting from tilting admiration towards the father. At the same time, these newer films depict fathers being quietly competent at household tasks and wise enough, on their own, to parent effectively. The daughters in these films are reasonably self-sufficient, not overly dependent on the father’s support and boundary-setting. While filmmakers are not risking big money on these new directions, these low-budget experiments suggest a possibility of moving away from traditional gender paradigms and towards more gender-neutral cinematic configurations of family. As young Americans increasingly begin to question binary gender roles in every cultural arena, the success of the more experimental fatherhood films of the 2010s hints that cinema, like culture, will continue its gradual move towards more available scripts for both mothers and fathers, and more generally for individuals breaking away from inherited gender roles.

References Beasts of the Southern Wild. Directed by Benh Zeitlin, Fox Searchlight, 2012. The Descendants. Directed by Alexander Payne, Fox Searchlight, 2011. Doucet, Andrea. 2015. ‘Foreword.’ In Pops in Pop Culture: Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the New Man, edited by Elizabeth Podnieks, 1–27. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Eighth Grade. Directed by Bo Burnham, A24, 2018.

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ElHage, Alysse. 2017. ‘Five Facts About Today’s Single Fathers.’ Institute for Family Studies. https://ifstudies.org/blog/five-facts-about-todays-singlefathers. Fathers & Daughters. Directed by Gabriele Muccino, Voltage Pictures, 2015. Gifted. Directed by Marc Webb, Fox Searchlight, 2017. Hamad, Hannah. 2014. Postfeminism and Paternity in Contemporary U.S. Film: Framing Fatherhood. New York: Routledge. Johansson, Thomas, and Jesper Andreasson. 2017. Fatherhood in Transition: Masculinity, Identity and Everyday Life. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Leave No Trace. Directed by Debra Granik, Bleeker Street, 2018. Lenhart, Amanda, Haley Swenson, and Brigid Schulte. 2019. ‘Lifting the Barriers to Paid Family and Medical Leave for Men in the United States.” New America. https://www.newamerica.org/better-life-lab/reports/liftingbarriers-paid-family-and-medical-leave-men-united-states/. Miller, Claire Cain. 2019. ‘Why Men Don’t Take Their Full Family Leave.’ New York Times, 5 December 2019, B5. Modleski, Tania. 1991. Feminism Without Women: Culture and Criticism in a ‘Postfeminist’ Age. New York: Routledge. Podnieks, Elizabeth. 2016. ‘Introduction: Pops in Pop Context.’ In Pops in Pop Culture: Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the New Man, edited by Elizabeth Podnieks, 1–27. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tasker, Yvonne. 2008. ‘Practically Perfect People: Postfeminism, Masculinity and Male Parenting in Contemporary Cinema.’ In A Family Affair, edited by Murray Pomerance, 175–187. London: Wallflower Press. Trouble with the Curve. Directed by Robert Lorenz, Warner Brothers, 2011. U.S. Census Bureau. 2017. ‘More Children Live with Just Their Father Than a Decade Ago.’ https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/liv ing-arrangements.html. We Bought a Zoo. Directed by Cameron Crowe, 20th Century Fox, 2011.

CHAPTER 8

DILF or Ditched? Representations of the ‘Single Father’ in Swedish Internet-Based Forum Discussions Ulrika Widding

Introduction The present study is set in Sweden, and the ‘single father’ must be understood in relation to notions of fatherhood and masculinity and the number of Swedish political campaigns since the 1970s to encourage men to become gender-equal and involved fathers (Johansson and Klinth 2008). Forsberg (2009, 11) has described ‘involved parenthood’ as ‘the cultural norm prescribing that parents are to be responsible for their children, spend as much time as possible with them, and try to develop close relations to them’, and argues that this parenting ideal has become more and more associated with men and involved fatherhood in Sweden (Forsberg 2007; see also Molander et al. 2019). Gender equality and shared parental responsibilities are not only part of a dominant discourse in the

U. Widding (B) Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_8

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Nordic countries (Magnusson 2006). In the western world, it seems as if the ideal of the involved father has become a crucial alternative to the notion of the father as mainly the breadwinner (Wall and Arnold 2007). Involved fatherhood is thought not only to make men healthier and happier, but also to benefit their children in terms of a healthy emotional and intellectual growth. However, it must be remembered that ideals of involved fatherhood, or notions of the ‘new father’, is not always the way fatherhood is actually practiced in different everyday contexts (Wahlström Henriksson 2019). Expressions of involved fatherhood have nevertheless become increasingly visible, for example, in books by men writing about their experiences as involved fathers (Wahlström Henriksson 2016). Other examples are the ‘daddy blogs’, where men engage in ‘online paternal life writing’ (Friedman 2016, 87) and descriptions of transitions to fatherhood (Åsenhed et al. 2013). Such blogs often accentuate involved fatherhood, and the men behind them express the love and joy they feel for their children, in written texts as well as pictures (Andreasson and Johansson 2016b). According to Friedman (2016), some daddy bloggers illustrate a more traditional masculinity and their role in socializing, especially their sons, to be ‘tough’ and ‘strong’, while other fathers describe their parenting as being similar to intensive motherhood (see Hays 1996). Involved fatherhood has also become imbued with other, perhaps unexpected, meanings. For example, Richardson and Wearing (2014, 42) describe how ‘new masculinity’ in the L’Enfant photo (the famous poster, heralding a photographic genre, where a muscular, good-looking man is holding a baby) in the late 1980s came to represent a man with a soft side, dedicated to parental responsibilities, who also had a highly eroticized body. Today, the term DILF (Dad I’d Like to Fuck) not only includes the fit and muscular father but also the chubby ‘Dad bod’, and the idea that a self-respecting man prioritizes taking care of his children ahead of going to the gym (Smith 2018). In this sense the ‘involved father/daddy’ has become (hetero)sexualized and regarded as a desirable type of masculinity. Yet, Steinour (2018) has pointed out that prevailing discourses make it hard for men to incorporate caregiving into their identity and that such discourses are not only expressed at a societal level but are also taken up by their children’s mothers and women in their families and circle of friends. Friedman (2016) also reports how involved fathers have been regarded as strange and have been ridiculed. Wall and Arnold (2007) conclude that

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it is still the mothers who are represented as the primary parents and that fathers are depicted as part-time, secondary parents. One important arena for strengthening and supporting fathers is the Internet, where men can seek support within specific forums for fathers (Salzmann-Erikson and Eriksson 2013). StGeorge and Fletcher (2011, 157) report that when within such forums, fathers discuss feelings of exclusion from ordinary ‘infant–parent welfare’, how to balance the demands of being a breadwinner and an involved father, and how to safeguard a space (virtual and cultural) where fathers could learn from each other. Fathers participating in online forums are not only interested in practical advice but also want to discuss what fatherhood actually means. Fletcher and StGeorge (2011, 1106) also found that fathers use ‘empathic responses’, ‘self-disclosure’ and ‘humor’ as ways of both offering and seeking support among other fathers. However, an underlying assumption in these studies appears to be that a father seeking advice from other men on the Internet is living together with the mother of his child/children. In this sense, there seems to be a lack of knowledge about how ‘the single father’ is discussed on the Internet.

Single Fathers Although involved fatherhood is regarded as exemplary, the central family ideal still rests on the nuclear family norm, which is understood as a normal family able to provide stability, in that two parents are present and that these (heterosexual) parents complement each other (Zartler 2014). In relation to this ideal, single-parent families are perceived in terms of deficits, and single parents are in general often viewed as problematic, irresponsible and unable to provide proper support to their children. For example, previous research has pointed to the associated risks for children in single-parents families, such as school failure (Amato et al. 2015), antisocial behaviour and substance use (Breivik et al. 2009) and youth crime (Wong 2017). Research also suggests that single mothers ‘provide more closeness, monitoring, and supervision, than do fathers, who appear more lenient, allowing children to experiment a bit more’ (Coles 2015, 159). As fathers in general are regarded as not being as competent as mothers, single fathers in particular are often seen as irresponsible and not fully capable of caring for their child/children (Ziol-Guest 2009). However, an American review of research on single fathers shows that single fathers tend to be ‘better off in terms of income and social support

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than single mothers’ (Coles 2015, 159). Similarly, a study of ‘single fathers by choice’ shows that these men have relatively high education, are working as professionals, and are financially secure (Carone et al. 2017). Further, Zartler (2014) argues that there is a lack of knowledge about single fathers, their experiences of parenthood, and their strategies in relation to the nuclear family ideal. It is also important to note that ‘single father’ can mean many things, for example, a father living with his child/children due to a separation or death of his partner, a father with joint residential custody cohabiting with another adult who is not a parent to the child, a father single by choice and so forth. The ideal of involved fatherhood in the Swedish context has been expressed not only in political campaigns but also in changed legislation, which in turn has affected single fathers. In 1973, amendments were made to the law that declared that fathers should have the right to joint custody even if the parents were unmarried before separation, and changes in 1983 stated that no special court decision was needed for joint custody for parents after a divorce (SOU 2017:6). Hence, the ideal of involved fatherhood is one of the reasons why the number of children living with both the mother and father after a separation (joint residential custody) has increased since the mid-1980s. Of all the children whose parents do not live together,1 approximately 28% share their time between their mother and father and about 15% live mostly or only with their father2 (SCB 2018). In a Swedish study of men who had become part-time fathers after separation/divorce, these men explained that it was more or less selfevident for them to share parenthood/custody equally, because not taking on responsibilities as a father was regarded as problematic masculinity (Andreasson and Johansson 2016a). Parenting on their own had made these fathers realize the efforts of motherhood, which made them somewhat anxious about how to cope, but also made them value the time with their children more. Some men were confused about the notion of the good parent—and what this actually meant, and others felt it was the mother that mostly had the upper hand. Andreasson and Johansson (2016a) also describe how the men had to deal with new circumstances and learn to communicate and coordinate everyday practices in order to get things to work in relation to their ex-partners. Part of these men’s new life was about one week dealing with their children’s needs and activities, and the other week managing their feelings of loneliness and longing for their children.

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Although the ‘single father’ is sometimes represented as insufficient and lonely, he is also depicted as an involved father, somewhat of a ‘super dad’, and a desirable man, in, for example, movies and TV series broadcast internationally. On Swedish dating sites, the single father is advertised as an attractive potential partner, since he is presumed to be ‘able to show his soft side’, and that he is ‘handy’ and ‘serious’ (Mötesplatsen n.d.). Therefore, there seem to be competing meanings associated with single fatherhood, which will vary in the possible ways that norms related to masculinity and, for example, age, social class, ethnicity and sexual orientation intersect (Locke and Yarwood 2016). As noted above, the Internet is one arena where parenthood and fatherhood in particular can be discussed by both men and women. The aim of this chapter is therefore to explore and analyse representations of the single father in Internetbased forum discussions, and how different meanings of single fatherhood are negotiated among the various forum participants.

Analysing Meaning Making To describe and analyse how the single father is discussed in Internetbased forum discussions, I will make use of critical discursive psychology, which is well suited for analysing how micro and macro discourses on parenting work in action (Locke and Yarwood 2016). Since the Internet offers ‘an ideal arena to explore “everyday” talk (or at least talk not explicitly generated for research purposes)’ that enables ‘the expression of multiple, fraught and contradictory ideas and representations’ (Callaghan and Lazard 2012, 942), critical discursive psychology is particularly apt. Not least because its theoretical starting point is the assumption that people mobilize and rework discursive resources in various ways (Wetherell 2005, 70) when trying to make sense of experiences, feelings and identity in different sorts of conversations (see Potter and Wetherell 2001). Such discursive resources are the ‘particular images, metaphors, story lines, and concepts’ people find useful for discussing specific topics in particular settings (Davies and Harré 2001, 262). Further, discussions in Internet forums are one example of dialogues ‘in which contested definitions of good and bad parenting are negotiated’ (Callaghan and Lazard 2012, 942). Since different discourses provide different meanings, conversations can often reveal alternative worldviews in terms of fragmented and contradictory statements. Competing discourses can also be expressed as ‘a

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dilemma of stake or interest’ (Potter et al. 1993, 389) where, for example, a single father might find his credibility and ability to care for his children to be questioned. To manage such dilemmas, or to defend the interest at stake, people make use of linguistic tools. For example, an extreme case formulation refers to what is taken to be supposedly common knowledge in order to justify ideas or actions by the individual speaker (Pomerantz 1986). Another linguistic resource is to defend a problematic position by referring to the in/ability to make a choice or to use one’s free will (Reynolds, Wetherell and Taylor 2007). This could be, for example, to argue that becoming a single father was not a personal choice and therefore is a position that the individual cannot be blamed for. The subject positions that are constructed when people engage in different discourses can be analysed in terms of including/excluding categories with certain sets of characteristics (Davies and Harré 2001). It is also important to examine how various subject positions are questioned, criticized and regarded as troubled, like, in some cases, that of the single father, while untroubled positions are talked about as normal and proper (Wetherell 1998). Similarly, troubled subject positions are discussed as ‘inappropriate, destabilized, difficult’ in relation to the norm and the ideal identity within a certain discourse (Staunaes 2003, 104). Accordingly, subjects who are part of the norm can talk about themselves as ordinary and normal persons, without the need to explain or defend themselves or their actions. Troubled subjects rather describe themselves ‘at the margin of appropriateness’ (Staunaes 2003, 106). With this theoretical framework, it is possible to describe and analyse how different discursive resources are used to make sense of ‘the single father’, and how this subject position might be un-/troubled in various ways in the Internet-based forum discussions.

Tools and Material The Internet forum discussions of interest for this study took place asynchronously; thus, the method could be described as text analysis. The written discussions were selected from a website focussing on issues such as family life and parenthood, considered one of the larger social media platforms in Sweden.3 Websites like this one are said to mostly engage women, but there are also men who take part in the discussions. Although sites like this have been criticized, for example, regarding the matter of ‘trolls’ writing to cause a stir, people are obviously turning to different

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online forums to seek support and advice on a wide range of everyday family issues. Data were collected from Språkbanken (the Swedish Language Bank), which is a digital Swedish text corpus that includes texts published in social media, such as the specific website of interest for this study. Using the search engine Korp, I searched for discussions (i.e. queries or comments and ensuing discussions) related to ‘the single father’ in various combinations of terms. Taken together, this resulted in a vast number of hits: ‘ensamstående pappa’, 986 hits; ‘singelpappa’, 255 hits; ‘singelfarsa’, 15 hits; ‘heltidspappa’, 96 hits; ‘deltidspappa’, 52 hits; ‘ensamboende pappa’, 0 hits; ‘solo pappa’, 0 hits; ‘DILF’, 75 hits; ‘dilf’, 9 hits; ‘PILF’, 77 hits; ‘pilf’, 22 hits.4 To get a sense of the contemporary debate on ‘the single father’, the next step was to select texts from 2014 onwards. Another criterion for selection was whether the texts had generated some debates, defined as at least 10 posts in the thread (see StGeorge and Fletcher 2011). In addition, the starting post should be a query or comment that dealt with an issue related to ‘the single father’. Discussions matching these criteria were copied and pasted into a Word document, resulting in 14 discussions equalling 226 pages.5 These discussions were then organized into five themes (Table 8.1): It has been argued that ethical considerations in qualitative Internet research have to be handled with a process approach. It has also been suggested that regular ethical guidelines for avoiding causing participants harm do not always work well when in virtual contexts (Markham and Buchanan 2012; Svedmark 2016). For example, it is problematic to gain informed consent from persons who are anonymous and unknown, like in this particular case, and who might have participated in the discussions of interest several years ago (Svedmark 2016). Thus, although some of the participants in the forum discussions seemed to be single parents, and Table 8.1 Discussion themes Discussion themes

Number of threads

Is it ok to leave my child home alone? Single father feeling lonely and suffering from ill health How to relate to your boyfriend’s child/children and his ex? I feel tied to my ex/the mother of my children Are single fathers attractive to women?

I I III I IIIII III

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therefore could be viewed as belonging to a relatively vulnerable group in extra need of protection (Markham and Buchanan 2012), I have treated these discussions as public texts. In particular, since the texts about single fathers, albeit possibly of a private nature, seemed to be not regarded as sensitive on the website. The people writing seemed aware of being in a public space and I have therefore not asked for informed consent. Yet, the texts have been used carefully and material that could be regarded as sensitive in some sense has not been cited. The preliminary results and possible ethical dilemmas have also been presented and discussed in different groups of fellow researchers (see Markham and Buchanan 2012). Since people taking part in Internet forum discussions most often use pseudonyms or act as anonymous, it is in some sense easier to meet confidentiality requirements. Still, I have not referred to user names of the participants, and quotations from their discussions are not literal translations from Swedish to English. Material that might be seen as sensitive is described in general terms in the running text. In addition, it is of relevance to underline that it is the discussions, not the individuals behind these texts, that are of interest for the analysis.

The Un/Troubled Single Father The first theme concerns a father who asks if it is acceptable to leave his child home alone for a couple of hours in the evening, so that he, as a single father, can find some time for amusement. Some people have responded to this question with a sense of irony. For example, one person writes that leaving the child alone is quite all right, but that the father should beware so he ‘should not get his tail caught in the door’ when he sneaks out. This and similar responses seem to imply that the question is not only unthinkable but also unacceptable, and therefore not asked seriously, in which the reference to the ‘tail’ implies that the person writing is a ‘troll’ with the intention of upsetting people. Others seem to get upset and respond rather curtly (as if referring to common knowledge, i.e. an extreme case formulation): ‘No, single fathers are not allowed to have fun. The answer to your question is simply no’. Alternatively, in a longer answer, the conclusion is that ‘This shouldn’t even be a question. It is obvious that you don’t leave your child alone just because it suits you’. Regardless of whether the question was genuine or not, it is obvious that the person writing is positioned as a troubled subject, i.e. a single father who acts irresponsibly, and/or as a ‘troll’, not even worth taking seriously.

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The second theme is about a part-time father, unemployed and in ill health, who feels terribly lonely after the separation from the mother of his child. Not only does he miss his son every other week, but he also notes that his friends have disappeared, even though he has endevoured to keep his friendships going. Further, his ill health is related to his unemployment, and combined with his loneliness, this has made him anxious; he suffers from sleep deprivation and has increased his alcohol consumption. In addition, the father describes how his illness makes it hard for him to do certain things as a parent. By presenting himself this way, the writer implies that his situation (unemployed, ill, abandoned by friends) is not self-inflicted and that he therefore cannot be blamed for the situation. The responses to the father also seem well intentioned and non-judgemental. The advice he is given is to stop drinking (since this positions him as troubled and could deprive him of his only joy, his son), to try to engage himself in hobbies that he and his son like and possibly to find some suitable job. Apart from warning this father about drinking too much alcohol, no one seems to question his fatherhood and his ability to be an involved father; rather, one of the people responding congratulates the father for having such a good relationship with his son, thereby positioning him as an untroubled father. Some wish him good luck and ask him to let them know how things are going. The third theme deals with women asking for help in relating to a boyfriend who has children and regularly sees his ex-wife. For example, one woman questions whether her boyfriend should spend time with his ex-wife and why he so often, with very short notice, prioritizes being with his child instead of carrying out plans he has made with her. Most of the people responding to this question seem of the opinion that as a father, this man needs to put his child first and that it is important that he has a good relationship with his ex-wife. One of the writers remarks, ‘I think that he seems to be a very nice father. It is also good that he has such a good relationship with the mother of his child. Try to turn this into something positive’. Yet, another one explains, ‘It is really hard to be with someone who has children. It is a classic problem that you are a bit jealous of the child. But you have to claim a little more space for yourself’. Several of the other participants also problematize this man’s behaviour, not as an involved father, but as a boyfriend, since he seems ‘disrespectful’, ‘negligent’ and ‘inconsiderate’, and some even warn her about men who exhibit this behaviour. The underlying assumption in this discussion points to a dilemma (i.e. different discourses), since it seems

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hard to combine being an untroubled, involved, part-time father and an untroubled, attentive and devoted boyfriend. Another example is that of a woman who has been seeing a part-time father of two rather small children for some months and wants to know if he is willing to get serious with her. She describes him as ‘good-looking, perfect for cuddling, a perfect father – you won’t find a more responsible person. He can handle money and he is not tight-fisted’. However, the woman writing thinks that he prioritizes his children a bit too much and is not willing to let her meet them. He is also said to be terrified of his ex-wife and maintains contact because he is afraid she will prevent him from seeing his children. Against this background, the woman wants advice about whether she should go on seeing this man, whom she is really in love with, or if she is wasting her time waiting for something that will never happen (i.e. starting a family with this man). The answers she receives are mostly about giving it more time—‘You have to slow down…. you will scare him off’—and that it is important that she gets to know him well. Some responses underline that his children will always be his primary interest and that she has to understand that this man is busy learning how to deal with his ex-wife in order to create a well-functioning cooperation around their children. As in other discussions, people want the woman posting to write and keep them updated on how things are going. Some time later, she writes that there has been no progress and that she gave him an ultimatum to introduce her to his children, but since he wanted to wait a bit more, she chose to break up with him. She declares that she is really sad about this but feels that she will never be a part of his life. One participant responds to this information by explaining that they are at totally different stages in their lives, and although this father is honest about his inability to go further with their relationship, he should not have become involved in a new relationship so soon after separating. The underlying assumption in this discussion is that the children’s, and his ex’s, best interests must come first, which in this case means that the father cannot commit to a new partner so soon. In this sense, this man is positioned as an untroubled involved father, which again points to the dilemma of involved father–devoted boyfriend. The fourth theme concerns a single, part-time father who is having trouble establishing a sensible relationship with his ex, the mother of his children. Due to her working hours and because they live rather near each other, the children—and their mother—spend a lot of time in his home. He describes that he and his ex-partner enjoy each other’s company, and

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that they have sex (although this is because she feels sorry for him), but he realizes that he has feelings for her that will not be returned, and therefore thinks he needs to limit their time together. His dilemma is that he would feel bad restricting his ex from coming over because he thinks the children benefit from spending time together as a family. Moreover, he finds it difficult to come up with a good solution for their joint residential custody when her working hours are such that she will often need a baby sitter. The people responding to this post, on the one hand, problematize the behaviour of the mother of his children, since she is described as using him for babysitting, free meals and casual sex. On the other hand, the father writing the post is positioned as a troubled subject not using his free will, that is, as a weak man who lets himself be used by his ex-partner: ‘You are truly going to regret that you were such a wimp and that you didn’t make any demands of your own’. Although the posting father argues he wants the best for his children by meeting as a family, people respond by claiming that this is only a charade that will confuse their children. By claiming this as a common sense truth (i.e. an extreme case formulation), one of the responders draws attention to the children’s best interests: ‘The most important thing in all this is that you both seem to have forgotten that there are children in the middle of this circus, whom you are really confusing with all of this’. Several writers suggest ways the parents can arrange their joint residential custody in relation to their working hours, but the bottom line seems to be that this father needs to put his foot down (like a ‘real man’), since their family practices (i.e. performing like a ‘real’ nuclear family) will hurt him and confuse their children. Put differently, separated parents with a proper plan for their respective time and responsibility for their children are better than a badly performed nuclear family. In this sense, the nuclear family norm is, on the one hand, questioned, since single parenthood is argued as the solution to the problem. On the other hand, the ideal of the ‘real’ romantic heterosexual relationship as the base for a family is still reproduced. The fifth and last theme is the most discussed topic and concerns whether single fathers are/are not attractive to women. While browsing the website, it became apparent to me that this question was not only asked by single fathers; single mothers also wanted to know if they were desirable ‘on the market’. Some people stated that the single (at least parttime) father could be regarded as a plausible and attractive partner. It was argued, for example, that a man with children will be more understanding

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of a woman who already has children, knowing what it is like to live with children and that they always have to be considered, which is a crucial experience: ‘I could not imagine dating a man without children! … As a parent you start to think and prioritize in totally different ways than before you had children’. Some argued that, as they had got older, they had come to realize that people who have lived for a while often have previous relationships and children as part of their life experience, and that this experience might be a kind of symbolic capital and relationship value: ‘I would see it as an asset, both your age and that you have children. Experience of being in a relationship, living together with someone, children and life experience in general’. Others claimed that it is easier for a single father to find a single mother in his own age bracket and that it is always easier to find a new partner if he has a stable life, exercises and stays healthy. It was also claimed that involved fatherhood is regarded as positive, and some argued that previous experience of fatherhood is an asset if the woman wants to have a child: ‘I can find it a bit sexy to be with a man who is a really good and cuddly dad. Then you get to see what kind of dad you will get for your own child one day’. Others claimed that a single father is attractive because he is used to taking on responsibilities: ‘I find single daddies extremely attractive. I like men that are responsible, hardworking (no lying on the couch and dirty dishes everywhere), and grown up. Daddies with a pram! Wow!’ This not only points to a discourse where the involved father is in an untroubled position, but also highlights the symbolic value of a masculinity that includes capability for household work, and implicitly, gender equality. Those who regard the single father as a troubled subject argued that a single father is unattractive (especially for younger women) in terms of his previous life experience: ‘No, thanks. You can never get away from the ex-wife because of the children. Who would constantly want to meet your husband’s ex?’ Some thought that this type of ‘baggage’ distorted their view of a proper family life: ‘I would not like to find myself in stepfamily hell, I want to live in a nuclear family. I don’t like other people’s children, and I find parents in general very unattractive’. Others elaborated on that theme, in the sense that they did not want to find themselves less prioritized compared to their partner’s children and that they would feel jealous of the ex-partner: ‘You would simply want to be the first woman that give birth to his potential children!’ Another example also touched upon the importance of starting a first family together: ‘I do not want to have anything to do with his ex. I do not want his ex’s kids to be

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involved in my family, and I want a real nuclear family, that is, me, my husband and our mutual children. There shall be no other children. I also want that my first child is also my husband’s first child, not that he has already experienced all of that with someone else’. It was also hard for some to think of a parent as attractive and desirable: ‘I think it is disgusting that parents are sexually active and outgoing. Like kiss their little child goodnight and then go to the toilet and put their butt plug in… whew’. For a single father to be in the least interesting, he would have to have older children that preferably had moved away from home. Alternatively, the single father would have to have plenty of money to buy fancy dinners and travels abroad. If not, ‘You’re just as screwed as the other poor single dads’. And ‘As a single dad with a limited budget you only have a shot at the leftover ladies, and the ones that are childless don’t look good – and some moms, but they want to be treated because they are short of money. Wealthy single moms that look decent have high demands on men’. According to this discourse, the single father is a troubled subject in that he has relations (his children and his ex-partner) that might intrude on his involvement with a new partner. Further, the single father is also problematic due to the assumption of a woman’s desire to live in a nuclear family where both the woman and the man experience having children for the first time together, that is, a kind of virginity when it comes to parenthood/becoming a family. Further, some find it troublesome to think of a parent as sexually active, and others position the single father (with no wealth) in a troubled position on a marketplace for relationships where he is presumed to only have a shot at ‘leftover ladies’ or single mothers who are financially not well off.

Contested Fatherhood and Family Ideals? By looking at how the single father is discussed on Internet-based forums, we can get a sense of discourses on fatherhood used in everyday talk, and how people rework discursive resources to negotiate various meanings associated with the single father. These forum discussions show that involved fatherhood, on the one hand, is a taken-for-granted assumption of the involved single father as untroubled. His previous experiences of relationships and children are seen as valuable assets and a natural part of a ‘normal’ life course. In alignment with this idea, the single father is (hetero)sexualized and regarded as a desirable type of masculinity and a potential partner. This understanding of the single father can therefore be

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seen as an expression of a discourse where involved fatherhood and shared parental responsibilities are ideals (Forsberg 2007; Magnusson 2006) and part of a proper masculinity (Andreasson and Johansson 2016a). On the other hand, ‘the involved single father’ is discussed as a position that is hard to combine with the meanings associated with ‘the devoted boyfriend’, and this is where the single father becomes a troubled position. It seems that having children and an ex-partner signals trouble, not only because these relations limit the single fathers’ involvement with a new partner (and a potential new family) but also because they are associated with ‘stepfamily hell’ and different kinds of negative feelings. This is how ‘the single father’, at least partly, becomes associated with traditional discourses where the mother is seen as the primary parent (Wall and Arnold 2007), and where fathers experience subordination in relation to the ex-partner in the work to organize shared residency for the children (Andreasson and Johansson 2016a). Not least, the single father becomes a troubled position because he is unable to fulfil the ideal of ‘parenthood/family virginity’; that is, he has already experienced becoming a father, which makes him unattractive and problematic according to some discussants. In this argumentation, the single father (especially with no wealth) has no value on the heterosexual relationships marketplace, where he has to make do with ‘leftover ladies’ with no children or single mothers with scant financial resources. This line of argument implies that having children is a handicap, and that you need to have financial capital to be in a good position to ‘trade’ in the heterosexual relationships marketplace. Hence, in these forum discussions, the notion of the single father intersects with ideals of masculinity, such as involved fatherhood, and notions of social class, and sexual orientation (Locke and Yarwood 2016). Moreover, the focus on the value of the single father in a heterosexual relationship marketplace might also reproduce norms about coupledom (and the nuclear family), which in turn might also reproduce notions of the single parent as a questioned, criticized and troubled subject position. Yet, the single-parent family can sometimes be regarded as the best solution—if the alternative is to have a ‘fake’ nuclear family (e.g. the father who felt tied to his ex-partner). As noted above, a possible effect of this argument might be that the nuclear family constellation is contested, although the ideal of the romantic (heterosexual) relationship as the basis for a nuclear family is still reproduced. This might in turn position other

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family constellations (for example, variants of multi-generational families or people living collectively) as deviant and problematic. It is also worth noting the impact of the specific context of these discussions. It has been argued that fathers seeking support on the Internet use ‘empathic responses’, ‘self-disclosure’ and ‘humor’ (Fletcher and StGeorge 2011, 1106). It may well be that anonymous online discussions allow a certain degree of freedom that enables self-disclosure (such as for the unemployed father with ill health or the father who felt tied to his ex-partner) and the empathic responses that were directed to these fathers, giving advice and asking for follow-ups. If so, these discussions might support what is sometimes referred to as a ‘new masculinity’ that allows men to express vulnerability. It may also be that anonymous online discussions allow everyday expressions, humour and sometimes rather coarse language, which was seen in some discussions. In this sense, similar online discussions are of specific value for researchers interested in different versions of everyday talk. Finally, StGeorge and Fletcher’s (2011) study showed that fathers felt excluded from ordinary ‘infant–parent welfare’ and used online forums to get practical advice about parenting and to discuss the meaning of fatherhood. However, such discussions were rather rare in this study, where the material mainly revolved around the single father in relation to his ex-partner, his girlfriend or a potential new female partner. This implies that heterosexuality is a taken-for-granted interest among the discussants, but does it also signal that parenting practice is uninteresting to single fathers—at least in this forum? Alternatively, is the lack of discussion on fatherhood and practical advice an expression of an involved fatherhood where single fathers already feel confident and sufficient in their fatherhood? Since the notion of the involved father is somewhat of a taken-for-granted ideal in the Swedish context, this might explain why fathers do not feel a need to discuss the meaning of fatherhood. Yet, it has been reported that also Swedish fathers feel excluded from welfare services, such as maternal health services, child welfare centers and parenting programmes (see, for example, Salzmann-Erikson and Eriksson 2013; SOU 2008:31). This might mean that Swedish fathers possibly seek support and practical advice in other places, perhaps in closed online groups for fathers. If so, and what this means to single fathers is best answered by single fathers themselves, which calls for further research.

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Notes 1. About 25% of all the children in Sweden do not live with both of their parents together (SCB 2018). 2. This means that 57% of the children live only or mostly with their mother (SCB 2018). 3. For ethical reasons the name of the website is not mentioned. 4. ‘Ensamstående pappa/Father in one person household’, ‘Singelpappa/Single father’, ‘Singelfarsa/Singel daddy’, ‘Heltidspappa/Full time father’, ‘Deltidspappa/Part time father’, ‘Ensamboende pappa/Father in one person household’, ‘Solo pappa/Solo father’, ‘DILF/dilf/Daddy I’d like to fuck’, ‘PILF/pilf/Papa I’d like to fuck’. 5. Since the participants on the website use pseudonyms, it is impossible to get a sense of the actual number of women and men writing. Yet, the participants positioned themselves as both ‘fathers/men’ and ‘mothers/women’.

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PART III

Solo Mothers Through Assisted Reproductive Technologies

CHAPTER 9

On the Margins: The Experiences of Single Women Who Conceive at Australian Fertility Clinics Fiona Kelly

Introduction Over the past two decades, the number of single women choosing to have a child without a (male) partner—often referred to as ‘single mothers by choice’ (SMCs)—has grown rapidly in Australia. While some of these women conceive at home using self-insemination and the sperm of a known donor, the majority conceive at fertility clinics and are doing so in unprecedented numbers. Since 2015, single women have been the largest user group of donated sperm in the state of Victoria, the only state to keep such statistics in Australia, where they represent more than 50 per cent of the market (VARTA Annual Report 2018).

F. Kelly (B) La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_9

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The increase in the number of women choosing to parent without a partner is the product of a confluence of recent social, legal and technological changes that have created the conditions under which choosing single motherhood has become possible, at least for women who already have a degree of economic and racial privilege. With the final legal barrier to accessing clinic-based donor insemination and IVF services removed in 2017, single women now have access to donor gametes and a wide variety of reproductive services across Australia, though some inequalities remain. Women’s growing workplace participation and economic independence, as well as the increased social and legal support in recent years for nonnormative families of various kinds, have created an economic and social environment in which some women may conclude that intentional single motherhood is a viable choice. Yet, while the overt obstacles to becoming an SMC may have diminished, single women still rarely experience what can be termed ‘inclusive practice’ within the industry. To engage in ‘inclusive practice’ is to provide a service that is responsive to the needs of all users and where diversity is acknowledged and respected (Hayman et al. 2013). The phrase ‘inclusive practice’ is used in preference to ‘inclusion’ to reflect the understanding that it is not a state, but a way of working that evolves and transforms with new knowledge. To build comprehensively inclusive services, a fertility clinic needs to engage in a continual process of research, review and professional development for staff. Inclusive practice also requires service providers to be flexible and client-centred, so that it is capable of respecting and responding to individual needs. Though single women have become a large and lucrative market for Australia’s fertility industry, there is little evidence that clinics have evaluated or reformed their practices in light of their unique needs. In fact, as this chapter demonstrates, single women are typically processed through a normative framework, premised on infertility and heterosexual coupledom. The chapter begins by situating the rise of single mothering by choice in Australia within its socio-legal context. Part I provides an overview of the various social and legal hurdles single women in Australia were required to overcome in order to gain access to assisted reproduction, highlighting the extent and fairly recent nature of the public and political opposition to single mothering by choice. Drawing on 25 qualitative interviews with SMCs who conceived at Australian fertility clinics, Part II discusses how clinics have responded to the growing number of single women using their services now that access is widely available. The use

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of qualitative data provides unique insight into how clinical practice is experienced by those ‘on the ground’. The chapters argues that while fertility clinic websites and clinic staff frequently state that they embrace single women as patients, they have done little to create an inclusive practice. Many of the women reported that they were made to feel like they were undeserving recipients of clinic-based services. Women raised concerns about the use of inappropriate language, paperwork and questioning, judgement, and in one case, refusal to treat. However, a significant portion of the women appeared to have internalized the idea that they were ‘less deserving’ recipients of treatment, with many diminishing the significance of non-inclusive practices by re-framing them as something that needed to be endured if they wanted a baby. The article concludes with a consideration of how clinics can incorporate inclusive practice into their service provision.

The Socio-Legal Path to Access Single women have battled for almost three decades to gain access to fertility services across Australia. As has also been the case in other countries, their efforts have attracted an extraordinary degree of backlash from politicians, religious leaders, the general public and clinicians (Gurmankin et al. 2005; Lawrence et al. 2011). The first regulation of the fertility industry in Australia commenced in 1982 when the National Health and Medical Research Council, a regulatory body operating within the federal Department of Health, issued guidelines which stated that the ‘clinical indications’ for use of reproductive technology was infertility of those in ‘accepted family relationships’. Single women (and lesbian and gay couples) were therefore prohibited nationally from accessing clinicbased assisted reproduction. While the ‘accepted family’ wording was omitted in the next two versions of the guidelines, issued in 1996 and 2004, the subsequent iterations nonetheless endorsed three new state laws that explicitly limited access to services on the basis of marital status. This meant that single women in South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria were expressly prohibited from accessing clinical services. In the remaining states, access was determined on an ad hoc basis, with many clinics choosing to not treat single women, while others permitted access only if medical infertility could be demonstrated (Millbank 2006). A successful legal challenge to state-based marital status restrictions was brought by three heterosexual de facto couples in 1997 (M.W. [1997]

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HREOCA 6). They argued that limiting access to those who were legally married violated the federal Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) (‘the SDA’), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of marital status. Following the positive outcome in this case, states were forced to amend their legislation to permit access for heterosexual de facto couples, though Western Australia and South Australia required a minimum cohabitation period of 5 years. The prohibitions on access by single and lesbian women (who could not legally marry) remained. The issue of single women’s access to fertility clinics arose explicitly in 2000, when Leesa Meldrum, a single woman with a diagnosis of infertility, challenged Victoria’s legislative ban on single women’s access in the case of McBain v Victoria [2000] FCA 1009. The case attracted significant media and political attention, the vast majority of which endorsed the ban on access (Walker 2000). Opposition to single women’s access stemmed primarily from a concern around the impact on children of being raised in ‘fatherless families’, an argument adapted from the family law reform context where it was utilized by fathers’ rights groups advocating for presumptions in favour of joint custody (Kaye and Tolmie 1998a, 1998b). Single women who wanted to be mothers were labelled as ‘selfish’ and ‘unsuitable’ and their families were deemed contrary to the ‘natural order’ (Smith 2003). At one point the then Prime Minister, John Howard, intervened in the debate via a media release about the case, in which he stated that ‘[t]his issue primarily involves the fundamental right of a child within our society to have the reasonable expectation … of the care and affection of both a mother and a father’ (Howard 2000; Johnson 2003). Following the precedent set by the decisions relating to de facto couples, the Federal Court concluded in McBain that the ban on single women was contrary to the ‘marital status’ anti-discrimination clause of the SDA. In the years that followed, however, the federal government twice sought, unsuccessfully, to amend the SDA to overturn the effect of the ruling in McBain. And in an extraordinary intervention, the federal Attorney-General made a rare grant of his fiat to the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference so it could seek judicial review of McBain, stating that such an action was necessary to protect the public interest (Re McBain; Ex parte Australian Catholic Bishops Conference [2002] HCA 16). While the intervention was ultimately unsuccessful—the High Court concluded that the Bishops Conference did not have standing in the

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matter—it highlights the extent and intensity of the political opposition in Australia to single women’s access to fertility services (Walker 2002). Initially, McBain was understood as a victory for single women. However, three limitations on access remained, two of which endure today. First, in two states, Victoria and South Australia, the majority of single women continued to be excluded from fertility clinic services on the basis of a narrow interpretation of “infertility” that limited eligibility to those who were “clinically infertile” (Sifris 2004). The test for clinical infertility used by clinics at the time was that a woman engage in heterosexual sex for 12 months without conceiving. Some clinics chose to apply this test as an automatic barrier to treatment for single and lesbian women. The restriction was eventually removed in Victoria in 2010 following a review of the law by the Victorian Law Reform Commission, while in South Australia it remained in place until 2017. The second limitation, which continues to apply today, is that in some states clinics allow donors to restrict who can use their donation (Millbank 2006), limiting the number of donors available to single women in a country that is already experiencing a donor shortage. Though this is almost certainly unlawful under both state and federal anti-discrimination laws, the practice has never been legally challenged. Finally, access to significant government rebates through the Medicare system that offset the cost of fertility services by about half are only available to women who have a diagnosis of clinical infertility, highlighting the ways in which the distinction between social and medical infertility still shapes access. There is no prescribed medical definition of clinical infertility, leaving each treating doctor to exercise his or her own judgement. It is common practice for single women to have to experience several unsuccessful cycles before they are declared ‘infertile’ and become entitled to the rebate. Thus, the initial cost of fertility treatment, which is approximately $AUD10,000 per IVF cycle, remains higher for single (and lesbian) women than for heterosexual couples, and for some this barrier may be insurmountable. The road to accessing fertility clinic services has been a long and arduous one for single women. Their demands for inclusion have been met with significant opposition from politicians, religious leaders, and broader society, many of whom have argued that only ‘traditional’ opposite sex (married) couples should have access to assisted reproduction, particularly where it is subsidized by the state. However, for the vast majority of single women who want to become mothers, the doors of

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Australia’s fertility clinics are now open. What happens when they go inside?

The Study To explore the experiences of single women who conceive using the services of Australian fertility clinics, 25 semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with SMCs from four Australian states between June 2015 and February 2016. Women were eligible to participate in the study if they had conceived a child at a fertility clinic using donated sperm and were un-partnered at the time of conception. Participants were recruited through an invitation posted on the Single Mothers by Choice and Donor Conception Australia Facebook groups, and the Solo Mothers by Choice Australia online forum. While it is difficult to know how representative the women were of SMCs generally, as noted below, demographically they were very similar to SMCs who have participated in other research (Hertz 2006; Jadva et al. 2009; Graham 2014; Kelly 2015). However, there is some possibility that by recruiting solely through the online SMC community, the study does not capture the experiences of women who are not actively engaged in the community or who do not embrace the SMC ‘identity’. For this reason, the results should be read with caution. Each interview was recorded, transcribed, and de-identified. Pseudonyms have been used. The transcripts were analysed using frequency counts and qualitative thematic analysis, which emphasizes the meaning generated in the text. Themes were grouped and reduced in order to answer the research questions. Following the method outlined in Waller et al. (2016), transcripts were read and re-read several times to develop an initial coding scheme. The coding scheme was refined by themes that worked conceptually across the data set. Data were coded using NVivo software, which enabled counting of the number of interviews in which a specific theme appeared and the number of times the theme occurred across all interviews. In total, the 25 women interviewed had 36 donor-conceived children. They ranged in age from four months to 18 years old, with an average age of five. None of the women had a partner at the time of the interview. Demographically, the women were quite similar to the American, British and Canadian SMCs who have participated in other academic research on the topic (Hertz 2006; Jadva et al. 2009; Graham

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2014; Kelly 2015). They were a fairly homogenous group, easily distinguished, at least demographically, from other single mothers. Almost all were Anglo-Australian and the majority had a university degree. Almost three quarters of the women owned their own home, a rate slightly higher than the national average (65%) (Census 2016). Most were professionals of some sort, though several had returned to university to re-qualify after their child was born, with most favouring a new occupation that gave them more flexibility. Two-thirds earned more than the Australian median personal income, though the majority earned below the median household income. Those who earned below the median personal income tended to be university students who were pursuing graduate studies or qualifying for a new occupation. Thus, with a few exceptions, most of the participants were fairly privileged, and certainly more privileged than the average single mother in Australia.

Findings Overall, the majority of women spoke about their clinic experience in positive terms. However, when probed about specific issues, more than two-thirds provided examples of frustrating or uncomfortable conversations and instances of exclusion. Six women described their experience as explicitly negative. I have concluded that in many instances the women’s description of the experience as positive stemmed not so much from their experience at the clinic, but from the fact that they had a successful pregnancy. In other words, they were willing to endure or even overlook non-inclusive practices if they came home with a baby. ‘It Was a Very Positive Experience’ The majority of the women (n = 19/25) described their experiences with their fertility clinic in positive terms. Several noted that the clinic staff were kind, inclusive, and accepting of their decision to become a single mother. For example, Helen described her experience as welcoming, though she admitted to doing some due diligence before making her appointment: My clinic was very welcoming and inclusive. I don’t recall any assumptions of a partner, apart from perhaps being asked at the very beginning when I first attended an appointment. But that’s just information gathering. The

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doctor and counsellor were both very accepting and clearly experienced with SMCs. No problems at all. Though I did google clinics before I chose one to make sure they clearly accepted single women and mentioned them on their website.

Jasmine had a similarly positive experience, noting in particular that the counsellor focussed on the specific experience of single motherhood through donor conception. I’m pretty sure my clinic deals with a lot of solo mums and same sex couples. I was never asked about a partner. The counselling session was all about being a solo Mum. It was a very positive experience.

Rhonda also spoke positively of her clinic experience. She had a variety of health issues that made her treatment complex. However, she always felt well supported by the clinic programmes and staff. I have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) which makes getting pregnant harder and can also cause weight gain. The clinic had something they called The Big Girls Group, which I joined. It was for anyone who was a bit heavier, but a lot of us had PCOS. It was such a supportive group of women and the clinic provided all sorts of extra services for us. I was the only single woman in it, but I always felt included. No one judged. It was just a really warm environment during a very stressful time.

Finally, several of the women spoke positively about how their clinic doctors managed the issue of medical versus social infertility for the purpose of accessing the Medicare rebate as a single woman. Four of the women indicated that their doctor ‘fast-tracked’ their infertility diagnosis by inquiring about their past relationship history, suggesting that if they had not conceived in the past they could be considered medically infertile. As Avery explained: My doctor told me about the whole medical infertility issue and how I wouldn’t get the Medicare rebate if I didn’t have an infertility diagnosis. Then she said in this kind of suggestive voice, ‘So maybe you had a partner previously and maybe you were trying to get pregnant with him?’ I just said yes, I’d had a boyfriend in my early 30 s and we didn’t get pregnant. And then she ticked a box and that was that. I got the rebate without having to show anything else.

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Natalie similarly recounted, ‘My fertility doctor literally saved me tens of thousands of dollars by getting around the Medicare rebate issue. I was so grateful. He made sure I wasn’t discriminated against just because I was single’. While the majority of women initially described their experience in positive terms, when asked more specific questions about clinic practice, more than two-thirds recounted experiences which suggested the clinic was less welcoming than they had initially described. When discussing these instances, the women suggested ways in which clinical practices could be improved to make the experience more comfortable and welcoming for them. ‘You and Your Partner This…You and Your Partner That’ For some women, their sense of exclusion started before they even walked through the clinic door. In most cases, Australian women can choose which fertility clinic they attend, particularly if they reside in a city where large numbers of clinics compete for business. Most made their choice by looking at the clinic’s website. When asked about this experience, a number of the women expressed frustration with the fact that few clinic websites provided SMC-specific information. Many had specific web pages for heterosexual and even same-sex couples, but not for single women. This created a certain degree of nervousness for women when they first approached the clinic. As Leanne explained: I went with [a fertility clinic in Queensland] and had no problems. However, their website only mentions couples, so when I approached them I had no idea if they would even treat me.

While Leanne found her clinic welcoming once she arrived, she was frustrated that its website, through the text and photos, painted a very normative picture of ‘family’. Studies of fertility clinic websites in Canada and the United States suggest this a fairly universal phenomenon, even when the client base of the clinic no longer reflects this ‘norm’ (Corbett et al. 2013; Johnson 2012). For Leanne, the absence of any reference to single women made her question whether the clinic was truly inclusive. It’s in Queensland so, you know, we’re not known for being progressive. So it made me wonder if they’re trying to hide that they treat single women

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or if I’d be treated differently. It made me really nervous when I first started the process.

In a similar vein, many clinics offered information nights for prospective patients, but the presumption of those who ran them was that everyone who attended was part of a couple. Sarah went to an information session for a Victorian clinic and left feeling she was not particularly welcome: From the moment I arrived it was ‘you and your partner this…you and your partner that’. The forms were for you and your partner, and the speaker kept saying you and your partner will do this, and you and your partner will do that, and you are your partner will feel grief. At one point I said to the woman talking to us, ‘Well, I don’t have a partner so that won’t be the situation for me’. Because it was just her assumption that everyone had a partner, even though several women in the room were there alone.

Once the women arrived at the clinic, references to their ‘partner’ continued. Not all of the women had an explicitly negative response to this, with some suggesting that clinic staff were perhaps ‘used to dealing with couples’. However, they all agreed that once it had been established they were single, staff should have been able to use the correct language in subsequent interactions. However, this was often not the case. The non-inclusive nature of the clinic paperwork was raised by 24 of the 25 women. All of the paperwork presumed the patient was part of a couple. The women were routinely required to cross out sections that were not relevant and correct language that was used. As Lisa noted: I noticed the paperwork was certainly not inclusive at my clinic. SMCs simply have to ignore the sections about the partner or cross them out. That annoyed me. It kind of reinforced that I should have been there with someone, with a partner. There’s no separate paperwork for SMCs. It’s clearly been designed for partnered women.

Isabel had a similar experience: ‘From the paperwork to the information session, it was all very partner-centric and that was the thing I found hard. Everything was centred around couples’. The use of language that acknowledges and respects the diversity of a clinic’s client base is a key component of inclusive practice. To consistently use language that excludes un-partnered women is unlikely to make

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them feel that they belong at the clinic or that the health professionals overseeing their care are going to be attentive to their individual needs. Beyond the paperwork, many of the women commented that the various health professionals they encountered in the clinic also often assumed they had a partner. It was not uncommon to have to correct clinic staff several times per appointment. Many of the women found this annoying and rude given their file would clearly have stated that they did not have a partner. Serena recounted interactions with nurses and office staff. I went through [a South Australian fertility clinic] and found that while the doctors were appropriate, a majority of the nursing and office staff needed a bit of re-education. I had many comments about my husband doing the needles [for IVF treatment], or why don’t I get my husband to do this or that. Ridiculous. Not only for a solo mother, but what if I preferred women? They were pretty archaic views.

Negative Experiences Though the majority of the women described their overall clinic experience in positive terms—though there was certainly room for improvement—six women recounted explicitly negative experiences. Almost all of the negative experiences occurred during counselling sessions with a clinic counsellor. When conceiving through the use of donated gametes, the recipient must undergo a mandatory counselling session with an approved counsellor who is usually employed by the fertility clinic. While some women experienced these sessions as helpful, others found their counsellor judgmental or lacking any insight into the unique experiences of SMCs. The experiences of these women were the antithesis of inclusive practice. For example, Tara’s counsellor came across as unsupportive of her decision and made unhelpful assumptions about her sexuality. The counsellor’s focus on irrelevant issues also meant that the session provided Tara with no support around the bigger question of how best to raise a donor conceived child alone. As Tara explained: The counsellor seemed to be trying to convince me not to go ahead. She kept asking ‘What happens if you meet a man and you’ve got a baby who isn’t his?’ I eventually said I was same-sex attracted and then she dismissed the question and said it wouldn’t be an issue then. So she managed to insult me twice! But my bigger concern was that everything was about

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some hypothetical man who might come into my life, rather than about how I was going to raise this child alone.

Audrey also had a negative experience with her counsellor that left her feeling confused and uncomfortable: My counsellor tried to draw a comparison between me being an SMC and a woman who uses her dead partner’s sperm to conceive. I couldn’t work out what he was talking about. He also asked how I’d ensure my child didn’t procreate with a donor sibling, which just seemed like a really odd question.

These experiences suggest that clinics and their counsellors have more work to do in developing inclusive practices around SMCs, particularly given that a pre-conception counselling session is mandatory. What this might look like will be discussed further below. Other women who indicated that they had a negative experience with their clinic cited a series of accumulative, non-inclusive practices that meant that they felt generally unwelcome. Lara, for example, argued that her clinic created an unwelcoming environment due to: (i) repeated instances where it was presumed she had a husband or (male) partner; (ii) the inability of clinic staff to remember she was single despite her correcting them numerous times; (iii) the non-inclusive nature of the clinic paperwork; (iv) the counselling session that focussed on grieving infertility when there was no evidence she was infertile; and (v) the clinic’s promotional material featuring only heterosexual couples. As she put it: ‘Everything they did made it clear to me I didn’t belong. That I was an afterthought. An afterthought who paid them $40,000 to get pregnant’. ‘We Often [Feel] Lucky to Be “Allowed” to Have a Baby’: A Case of Low Expectations? As noted above, while the majority of the women indicated that they had a generally positive experience with their clinic, many did not in fact encounter what might be defined as inclusive practice. In fact, it was striking how many of the women described their experience as positive, but then gave examples of exclusionary practices, language and behaviour. It seemed that for many of the women it was bringing home a baby

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that made the experience positive; the lack of inclusivity was perceived as simply the price they paid as outsiders. Jasmine’s description of her experience captures the contradictory nature of the narrative of positivity that many of the women presented. She stated: ‘I felt very supported and never judged or questioned. Almost every time I visited the receptionist would say things like “You girls are so brave to do it on your own”. It was really patronizing, but it was better than criticism’. This quote suggests Jasmine had anticipated criticism from the clinic staff. In its absence she felt grateful, but perhaps also more willing to accept being patronized instead. Susie expressed a similarly contradictory notion of inclusivity: My clinic was always accepting and inclusive. I liked them a lot. The clinic paperwork was all directed at couples, of course. There was no separate paperwork for SMCs, so I had to cross stuff out and it got kind of confusing. And it was constantly ‘your hubby this, your hubby that’ with the nurses. But that’s totally fine, I get it. The clinic itself was really good. They gave me my son, you know.

Susie’s comments highlight the dilemma many of the women faced when asked about their clinic experience. Thanks to the work of the clinic staff, and often after many attempts to conceive, all of them had eventually come home with the baby they desperately wanted. In this context, it became very difficult to then suggest that the experience had been negative. Some of the women, such as Jasmine and Susie, were willing to acknowledge the exclusionary practices they had encountered, but diminished their significance—‘[it’s] totally fine, I get it’—perhaps to make sense of the contradiction or, as will be discussed below, because they entered the clinic environment with low expectations. The sense of disconnect demonstrated by some the women’s comments may also be the product of a number of social, legal and historical factors. First, it is possible that because single women have only recently been granted unfettered access to fertility clinics in Australia, they do not all see themselves as ‘worthy’ patients, making their expectations of clinics low. For example, Susie’s comment that ‘of course’ the clinic paperwork was directed at couples, suggests she did not expect the clinic to make an effort to include her. In fact, it was not uncommon for women to indicate that they were thankful to even be allowed to use a clinic, reflecting the fairly recent legal and political battles around single

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women’s right to access fertility clinics. Leanne stated, for example, that she ‘was just so grateful for any assistance and kindness I was shown’. It is thus possible that because they did not expect kindness or to be fully welcomed, the women were willing to overlook non-inclusive practices. They were something that had to be endured in order to gain access. A second explanation for the disconnect may be that while various online and face to face support groups have emerged over the past decade to create an ad hoc, usually online, ‘community’ of SMCs, the group has no history as a politically active collective beyond participation in generalist organizations for single mothers which tend to focus on poverty and the impact of separation and/or divorce. Unlike the LGBT community, for example, which includes numerous well established community organizations that routinely lobby for legal and social change around assisted reproduction in Australia, there is no historical political movement or consciousness to draw from to help articulate what equality and inclusivity might look like for SMCs. It is thus perhaps not surprising that almost all of the women in the sample who had a negative critique of their fertility clinic experience identified as lesbian or queer. They were most likely to identify non-inclusive practices as problematic, but could also provide a nuanced picture of what a fertility clinic that welcomed SMCs might look like, often drawing on arguments made by LGBT community organizations around family diversity, the importance of inclusive language, and how inclusive health practices promoted equality and supported the mental health of patients. In fact, a significant amount of the academic literature, as well as government policy, on inclusive practice in health care focuses on the experiences of LGBT community members. Lara, who identified as queer and explained how this identity informed her understanding of equality, challenged the positive narrative around clinics that she had heard other SMCs articulate. She did not intend to criticize them, but believed they were too accepting of the ‘othering’ many of them had experienced at clinics. As she explained: So many of us feel we are the ‘other’ in these clinics as solo parents and therefore feel grateful for any kindness we’re shown. The definition of inclusive means to include and treat everyone equally. I think one of the issues with being treated as not the norm is that we often end up feeling lucky to be ‘allowed’ to have a baby. As a queer person, my benchmark for whether I’ve been treated equally is not whether other people are nice to me. It’s whether I was treated any differently. There’s no such thing as a

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deserving or undeserving parent, but being positioned as the odd one out sets up this idea that some people belong in that clinic and others don’t, or are at least lucky to have been let in.

For Lara, not being overtly discriminated against is not the same as being included. Rather, inclusion is an active behaviour that necessarily includes an element of welcoming. Thus, in contrast to some of the other women, Lara cited the lack of SMC-specific paperwork and constant references to male partners not as an inconvenience, but as examples of active exclusion. Rita, who identified as a lesbian, took a similar view. When the first thing a clinic does is present you with paperwork that includes sections for your ‘husband’, you instantly know you don’t belong. I mean, what were they thinking? I asked the nurse if they had other forms for single women and she said, ‘If you don’t have a hubby, just cross those sections out’. So from the very beginning I felt defined by this mythical, missing ‘hubby’. Which is a weird feeling for a lesbian who’s been out for 20 years!

For both Lara and Rita, the ability to identify and name non-inclusive practices seemed to stem at least partly from their experiences as members of the LGBT community. Unlike many of their SMC peers, both women expected to be actively included, rather than managed as an exception to the norm. It is possible, however, that as SMCs become more visible, build community, and perhaps form an active national organization that can represent them in political and legal debates, their expectations of what it means to be included may evolve.

Conclusion: Moving Towards an Inclusive Practice As the number and expectations of SMCs continue to grow, fertility clinics will need to consider how they can incorporate inclusive practice into their service model. A number of concrete recommendations emerged from the interviews, though as noted above, inclusive practice is not a static concept. Providing culturally sensitive and inclusive healthcare requires service providers to engage in a continuous process of review and reform to promote A clear recommendation to emerge from the interviews was that clinics need to develop an SMC-specific counselling protocol. Clinic counsellors, as well as private counsellors working in the field, need to be trained in

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how to conduct a counselling session that pertains specifically to issues single women may have experienced in deciding to pursue fertility treatment, as well as the types of challenges they may encounter parenting a donor conceived child on their own. Research has demonstrated that the experience of raising a child conceived through donor conceptions varies by family type (Hertz et al. 2013; Beeson et al. 2011). Developing counselling protocols tailored to meet the specific needs of heterosexual couples, lesbian couples, gay couples and single women (or men) is an appropriate response to these differences. The second concrete recommendation arising out of the interviews is that clinics should develop SMC-specific paperwork. Completing intake forms is often the patient’s first interaction with a clinic. Presenting single women with paperwork that does not require them to cross out large sections is a simple, low-cost step that clinics could take towards being more inclusive. Many clinics have already adapted their paperwork for same-sex couples. The same should be done for SMCs. In a similar vein, clinics that have not already done so should include on their websites a page specifically for SMCs to signal that they are welcome and that the clinic recognizes that their experiences of treatment may be different from that of other patients. The remaining recommendations are far more complex as they relate to the subtle forms of exclusion identified by Lara and Rita. For these women, inclusive practice meant being embraced by their clinic through active inclusion. They wanted to see images of single mother families on clinic webpages and reception walls, active statements of inclusion on websites and clinic pamphlets, information nights specifically for SMCs similar to those clinics sometimes ran for same-sex couples, counsellors who were familiar with their families, and clinic staff who did not need to be reminded at every visit that ‘hubby’ was not waiting at home. As Lara put it, they did not want to be ‘positioned as the odd one out’, always the exception to the status quo. They wanted to be acknowledged and welcomed as valuable members of the diverse community of people who create their families through assisted reproduction.

References Beeson, Diane, Patricia Jennings, and Wendy Kramer. 2011. ‘Offspring Searching for Their Sperm Donors: How Family Type Shapes the Process.’ Human Reproduction 26 (9): 2415–2424.

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Corbett, Shannon, Helena M. Frecker, Heather M. Shapiro, and Mark H. Yudin. 2013. Access to Fertility Services for Lesbian Women in Canada. Fertility and Sterility 100 (4): 1077–1080. Census (Australia), Australian Bureau of Statistics (2016). Graham, Susanna. 2014. ‘Stories of an Absent “Father”: Single Women Negotiating Relatedness from Donor Profiles.’ In Relatedness in Assisted Reproduction: Families, Origins and Identities, edited by Tabitha Freeman, Susanna Graham, Fatemeh Ebethaj, and Martin Richards, 212–231. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gurmankin Andrea, Arthur Caplan, and Andrea Braverman. 2005. ‘Screening Practices and Beliefs of Assisted Reproductive Technology Programs.’ Fertility & Sterility 83 (1): 61–67. Hayman, Brenda, Lesley Wilkes, Elizabeth Halcomb, and Debra Jackson. 2013. ‘Marginalised Mothers: Lesbian Women Negotiating Heteronormative Healthcare Services.’ Contemporary Nursing 44 (1): 120–127. Hertz, Rosanna. 2006. Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood Without Marriage and Creating the New American Family. New York: Oxford University Press. Hertz, Rosanna, Margaret Nelson, and Wendy Kramer W. 2013. ‘Donor Conceived Offspring Conceive of the Donor: The Relevance of Age, Awareness, and Family Form.’ Social Science & Medicine 86: 52–65. Howard, John. Press Release Amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act, Office of the Prime Minister, 1 August 2000. Jadva, Vasanti, Shirlene Badger, Mikki Morrissette, and Susan Golombok S. 2009. ‘“Mom by Choice, Single by Life’s Circumstance . . .” Findings From a Large Scale Survey of the Experiences of Single Mothers by Choice.’ Human Fertility 12 (4): 175–184. Johnson, Carol. 2003. ‘Heteronormative Citizenship: The Howard Government’s Views on Gay and Lesbian Issues.’ Australian Journal of Political Science 38 (1): 45–62. Johnson, Katherine. 2012. ‘Excluding Lesbian and Single Women? An Analysis of U.S. Fertility Clinic Websites.’ Women’s Studies International Forum 35 (5): 394–402. Kaye, Miranda, and Julia Tolmie. 1998a. ‘Discoursing Dads: The Rhetorical Devices of Fathers’ Rights Groups.’ Melbourne University Law Review 22 (1): 162–194. Kaye, Miranda and Julia Tolmie. 1998b. ‘Fathers’ Rights Groups in Australia and their Engagement with Issues in Family Law.’ Australian Journal of Family Law 12(1): 19–67. Kelly, Fiona. 2015. ‘Autonomous from the Start: The Narratives of Twenty-First Century Single Mothers by Choice.’ In Autonomous Motherhood: A Socio-Legal Study of Choice and Constraint, edited by Susan B. Boyd, Dorothy Chunn,

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Fiona Kelly, and Wanda Wiegers, 172–211. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lawrence Ryan, Kenneth Rasinski, John Yoon, and Farr Curlin. 2011. ‘Obstetrician-Gynecologists’ Beliefs About Assisted Reproductive Technologies.’ Obstetrics & Gynecology 116 (1): 127–135. Millbank, Jenni. 2006. ‘Recognition of Lesbian and Gay Families in Australian Law: Part Two Children.’ Federal Law Review 34 (2): 205–260. Sifris, Adiva. 2004. ‘Dismantling Discriminatory Barriers: Access to Assisted Reproductive Services for Single Women and Lesbian Couples.’ Monash University Law Review 30 (2): 229–268. Smith, Jennifer Lynne. 2003. ‘“Suitable Mothers”: Lesbian and Single Women and the “Unborn” in Australian Parliamentary Discourse.’ Critical Social Policy 23: 63–88. Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA), Annual Report, 2018. Walker, Kristen. 2000. 1950s Family Values vs Human Rights. In Vitro Fertilisation, Donor Insemination and Sexuality in Victoria. Public Law Review 11 (4): 292–307. Walker, Kristen. 2002. ‘The Bishops, the Doctor, his Patient and the AttorneyGeneral: The Conclusion of the McBain Litigation.’ Federal Law Review 30 (3): 507–523. Waller, Vivianne, Karen Farquharson, and Deborah Dempsey. 2016. Qualitative Social Research: Contemporary Methods for the Digital Age. London: Sage.

Cases McBain v Victoria [2000] FCA 1009. M.W. [1997] HREOCA 6. Pearce [1996] SASC 5801. Re McBain; Ex parte Australian Catholic Bishops Conference [2002] HCA 16.

CHAPTER 10

Faire un bébé toute seule [A Child on One’s Own]: Challenging France’s Patriarchal Reproductive Laws in Single Mothers’ Blogs and Discussion Forums Nathalie Ségeral

Introduction In France, access to assisted reproductive technologies such as IVF and insemination with donor sperm is still forbidden to lesbians and single women, while egg-freezing and surrogacy are illegal for all. On 27 September 2019, the French National Assembly passed an historic bioethical law (55 votes in favour and 17 votes against)1 allowing access to ART for all women, regardless of their relationship status or sexual orientation. On 22 January 2020, in the wake of another protest, the Senate approved the motion to open ART to all women. However, it is a bitter-sweet victory for the proponents of ART for all, since the revised bioethical

N. Ségeral (B) University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_10

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law stipulates that ART will only be covered by the national health care system in cases where a medical cause for infertility has been documented, thereby excluding from coverage most single and lesbian women. While it is still going to take some time before ART becomes accessible to all women in practice, as it needs to go through several more rounds of discussion and motions of approval before being implemented, things are moving forward and, after a formal vote on 4 February 2020, the law received a final approval2 by the National Assembly on 31 July 2020. It should be implemented in 2021, after various provisions have been made for its coverage by the National Health Scheme. This law comes in the wake of seven years of heated debates and intense protests. Echoing the early 1970s, when abortion was illegal but current underground practice, some French single women have been finding alternatives to these prescriptive politics and have ‘broken’ the law—usually by travelling to neighbouring countries, such as Belgium, Spain and Denmark, to achieve their motherhood dream when they can afford it, thereby creating a class gap. To put things into context, ART for lesbian couples and single women is currently legal in nine European Union countries out of twenty-seven, as well as one former member state: Portugal, Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. In seven other EU countries, it is legal for single women but not for lesbian couples: Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus. On the other hand, Austria and Malta allow lesbian couples to access ART but not single women. In the context of these discrepancies and of the controversy surrounding President Macron’s proposal to revise the bioethical council’s ban on assisted reproduction for women who are not in a heterosexual partnership, this paper examines the underlying arguments and rhetoric upheld by, on the one hand, the opponents of ART for all and, on the other hand, two French blogs (Icimamasolo [Here for solo mamas] and Graines d’amour [love seeds]) and an online discussion group (un bébé toute seule [A child on one’s own]) devoted to single mothers by choice. These online venues chronicle anonymous single French women’s struggles to overstep the boundaries imposed on them by French law and society and become mothers, thus taking up the May 68 motto ‘Un bébé quand je veux si je veux’ [A baby whenever I want to and if I want to] and furthering it into ‘comme je veux’ [the way I want it]. These websites constitute a new form of online lifewriting exclusively focused on the female body, detailing these women’s

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fertility treatments, medical examinations, miscarriages and therapeutic abortions in their long quests for pregnancy and live-birth. Through a close linguistic and thematic reading of these online diaries, I will highlight the emergence of a new, complicated sexual politics, that constitutes a form of resistance to the prejudice faced by these women. These online materials can be read as producing a counter-discourse to the rhetoric used by those against ART for all, who have been extremely active in the French public space over the past six years, contrary to expectations that such a liberal country as France would have no issue making ART accessible to all women. Much of the opponents’ rhetoric has been focused on the patriarchal belief that the lack of a father would lead to mentally unbalanced children and the fall of the traditional nuclear family. Their rhetoric and shocking visual campaigns strongly echo some of the darkest times of France’s recent history with the Vichy regime’s motto ‘travail, famille, patrie’ [work, family, fatherland] that created Mother’s Day under Nazi-occupied France, heralding the single mother as the ‘ultimate 21st -century scapegoat’ (Rose 2018, 1). I will thus focus on single mothers by choice and explore the discourses and representations surrounding them in the French public sphere through various online venues.

The Rhetoric of the Debate and Its Stakes The recent law voted by the French National Assembly allowing access to ART for all women, regardless of their marital status or sexual orientation, constitutes a major step forward in women’s rights and is expected to put an end to social and financial inequalities in terms of access to reproduction. However, it will not be implemented in practice until 2021 at the earliest and, in the meantime, hundreds of single or lesbian French women will have to continue finding ways to conceive clandestinely. As of today, ART is only allowed in France under specific circumstances: the female patient must provide evidence of having been in a heterosexual relationship with the same partner for at least two years; she or her partner must suffer from a documented medical condition resulting in infertility; and she and her partner must have been trying unsuccessfully to conceive for at least two years (or six months if the woman is over 35). ART is covered by the French National Health Scheme until a woman’s forty-third birthday and for up to four rounds of IVF and six ‘artificial’ inseminations.3 As a consequence, it is noteworthy that a percentage of

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French women who choose to go to foreign clinics to become mothers are women in a long-term heterosexual partnership who are over fortythree or who have exhausted their possibilities in the French health care system. The surge of protests surrounding the slow but ineluctable legal evolution of the extension of ART to all in France has been fraught with contradictions, as it is not so much the fact that non-heterosexual couples can now become parents that seems to have crystallized the public opinion’s outrage but the figure of the single mother by choice, willingly doing away with the sacred father figure. In this public controversy, one finds echoes of a patriarchal past and of a phallocratic culture that gave rise to Jacques Lacan’s ‘Name-of-the-Father’, for whom the potential disappearance of the omnipotent father figure appears to be the most urgent threat—a reflection of the fear of the independent and self-sufficient woman who would now be able to do away with man even for her reproductive needs. British psychoanalyst and professor Jacqueline Rose, in Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty (2018), argues that motherhood is the place in our culture where the reality of our own conflicts are displaced, which accounts for the public shaming of single mothers in the French public discourse surrounding ART for all. In this respect, Rose reminds us that a single mother also stands as a glaring rebuke to the family ideal. In the US, the number of single mothers has nearly doubled over the past fifty years. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the number of lone, including unmarried, mothers in the UK rose faster than at any other time in history, seemingly unaffected by an increasingly strident Conservative rhetoric of blame. (Rose 2018, 28)

After establishing the controversial potential of single motherhood, as challenging the very foundations of the traditional family institution, Rose points out the following paradoxes: Mothers in the home are expected to manage more or less on their own – one of feminism’s loudest, most persistent and fairest complaints – but the one thing a mother cannot possibly manage by herself is mothering. It is, of course, a predominantly white, middle-class domestic ideal that is being promoted, one which fewer and fewer families can possibly live up to. […] Solidarity among mothers, across class and ethnic boundaries,

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is not something Western cultures seem in any hurry to promote. (Rose 2018, 32–33)

What Rose discusses is very much highlighted in the debate surrounding ART in France, insofar as much of the arguments against ART for all have focused on single women’s supposed inability to properly tend to a child’s emotional and financial well-being. This is a paradoxical argument since, over the past few years, partnered mothers have increasingly denounced the ‘mental load’ of caring for their families and the toll it is taking on their health and careers. Women as mothers are therefore caught in a rhetorical and practical double bind in the eyes of society: when they have children while in a (heterosexual) relationship, they struggle because they still need to carry the burden solo; yet, should they decide to willingly go the solo route, the social opprobrium claims that they are not up to such a challenging task. In this context, the three main arguments upheld by the pro-ART for all in France have been as follows: 1. to guarantee medical safety for all mothers and children (because many women have had to resort to potentially hazardous means to become pregnant, such as engaging in unprotected sex with strangers); 2. to ensure mothers’ and children’s legal safety (for instance, until now, children born abroad through surrogacy remain undocumented in the eyes of the French law); 3. to grant ART an equal legal framework for all. However, these arguments are met with several criticisms, one of them being the controversy over the fact that taxpayers’ money will be used to cover ART for lesbians and single women. Second, it is worth noting that the movement against ART for all is troublingly named ‘manif pour tous’ [the march for all], highlighting their inclusion of men’s and children’s rights, thereby creating an implicit opposition to the pro-ART for all, who are accused of denying children’s and men’s rights. Third, the anti-ART for all movement has voiced arguments that are mainly focused on two aspects: surrogacy and the commodification of women’s bodies on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the threat to

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the traditional nuclear family posed by single mothers by choice and children’s ‘right’ to a father. Their organized marches have drawn protesters from both the left-wing and right-wing, ultra-Catholic parties and their slogans and actions have been very incisive and graphic, resulting in covering Parisian sidewalks with graffiti such as ‘À part d’un père, je ne manque de rien’ [I have everything, except a father], ‘PMA sans père, douleur sans fin’ [ART without a father = endless suffering], ‘PMA sans père, enfant sans repères’ [literally, ART without a father, disorientated child, but the homophony and puns are not translatable into English here], or ‘GPA, porno, prostitution = génocide’ [surrogacy, pornography, prostitution = genocide], putting together a set of different issues. As can be seen from these slogans, ART for all’s doing away with the father figure is of utmost concern to the ART opponents who problematically construct single mothers by choice as depriving children of their right to a father, regardless of the fact that no such right is inscribed in French law and that studies consistently show that children of single mothers by choice tend to do very well. Thus, the right to motherhood is construed through a faulty binary rhetoric upholding women’s rights as detrimental to children’s rights. While surrogacy remains illegal and is not being considered for legalization, for most opponents the legalization of ART for single women is only a stepping-stone towards that of surrogacy. Philosopher Dominique Folscheid, in his essay devoted to the current ART debate and titled Made in Labo (2019), argues that ‘la PMA pour toutes fait le lit de la PMA pour tous’ (Folscheid 2019, 5) [ART for all women will be logically followed by ART for all men] and draws the public’s attention to the dangers of upholding a ‘right’ to procreation and to the commodification of children. So, the other main focus of French fears as far as ART for all is concerned has to do with the ‘fertility industries’ and the ethical debate surrounding the contested notion of ‘choice’ in a neoliberal society. The pro-ART for all argue that, while ART is illegal for single women in France, the reality is currently that the women who have the financial, social and cultural capital to go abroad to become pregnant do so, while those who can’t afford are denied access to motherhood in a safe manner, thereby creating a class gap. While this issue raises highly relevant questions about women’s bodies becoming sites for new forms of purchasing power, their exploitation by the anti-ART for all in the French public discourse has somewhat discredited their validity, as traditional phallocratic French cultural traits

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have re-emerged, with the anti-feminist take on mottos such as ‘Liberté, égalité, paternité’ [Liberty, equality, paternity]. Furthermore, when trying to convey the core of the debate in English, I am faced with a particularity of the French language that permeates the entire culture’s approach to fatherhood and parenthood: namely, there is no exact English translation for the word géniteur, which highlights a specific French perspective on (patriarchal) family and men’s roles. Most of the French public discourse has centred on the géniteur vs. the father, the géniteur being the biological father, who can be either a sperm donor or an absent father. In any case, in French, this type of man does not receive the title of ‘father’ since he does not play any part in the child’s upbringing and daily life. However, in English, this crucial difference is lost in translation, as the phrase ‘biological father’ still contains the term ‘father’. Neither does English have an exact translation for the omnipresent French phrase ‘désir d’enfant’ at the heart of the debate over ART for all. In English, it translates into the periphrase ‘wanting to become a mother’. This terminology is part of the rhetoric supporting the new forms of sexual politics emerging from women’s discussions and writings on reproduction rights in France and taints the ways in which issues related to women’s rights are dealt with. Part of the rhetoric of the anti-ART for all campaign has also been constructed through pseudo-scientific poll results and a manipulation of survey questions and numbers, leading to blatant contradictions. For instance, according to a 2019 survey, 83% of French people believe that a child has a right to a father (IFOP),4 which raises the issue of the framing of the questions asked by the poll conductors. Those may have been influenced by the anti-ART-for-all campaigners problematically setting up children’s rights against women’s rights, through shocking publicity campaigns posted all over Parisian walls. For instance, on the Paris subway, one could see a poster showing, side by side, a picture of a woman saying ‘mon désir, mon droit’ [my wish, my right] and a picture of a sad-looking little boy saying ‘mon manque, ma souffrance’ [my lack, my suffering]. The poll question that prompted an overwhelming majority of surveyed people to answer that children have a right to a father was: ‘Pensez-vous que les enfants nés par PMA ont le droit d’avoir un père et une mère?’ [Do you believe that children conceived through ART have a right to have a father and a mother?]. Meanwhile, 83% of surveyed people also considered that homosexual couples are as capable as heterosexual ones to raise children and, when explicitly asked if they were in favor of the

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legalization of ART for all, 69% of surveyed people answered ‘yes’. One of the pitfalls of the arguments against ART for all seems to lie in the discrepancy between their upholding children’s right to a father while denying citizenship to children born from surrogacy abroad. A recent radio programme titled Un Enfant par WhatsApp: ai-je le droit de faire un enfant sans père? [A Baby through WhatsApp: Do I Have a Right to Have a Fatherless Child?] broadcast on France Culture, a rather leftist French broadcasting channel, proposed to follow a 43year-old single woman’s journey towards motherhood. However, instead of conveying a clear message in support of ART for all in the context of the impending law motion, as one would expect from France Culture, the series turned into a denunciation of the commodification of children and of women’s bodies, thereby sending mixed messages to the audience and shifting the focus away from the initial issue. Ultimately, what prevents the forty-three-year-old narrator, who is a lawyer, from going through with her dream of becoming a mother through ART abroad is the fear of her mother’s judgement rather than that of breaking the law. She details the various critiques that she has had to face from her relatives (all the more so as she comes from a Muslim family) and friends and the programme makers choose to emphasize the notion that having a child on her own is selfish because she is too old and the child will be unhappy without a father. The radio programme emphasizes the disturbing commodification of reproduction technologies and of children in various ways: first, after trying clinics in Greece, Spain and Cyprus, the narrator admits to feeling more ‘comme une vulgaire consommatrice plutôt que hors-la-loi’ [like a disgusting consumer rather than an outlaw]. She crosses Cyprus out of her list when she is offered to pick her child’s gender and to have her doctor’s visits through WhatsApp. The programme then mentions Lisa, a French woman who tried conceiving through a Danish clinic where she was offered ‘le pack 3 FIV’ [a package for 3 IVFs]. When all failed, surrogacy is mentioned through the neologism ‘nounou prénatale’ [prenatal nanny] to refer to the surrogate mother, thereby turning surrogacy and the act of carrying another woman’s child into a banal extension of nannying or another form of childcare, which blurs the line between what is current practice and what could happen in the near future—while also questioning some ethical aspects of the childcare industry.

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Thus, recent debates surrounding the decision of making ART legal for all women in France have polarized public opinion and brought to light a deep-seated resistance within an otherwise seemingly liberal culture. The various campaigns have crystallized the lack of evolution of an intrinsically patriarchal society for whom a single mother by choice embodies the epitome of a threat to the patriarchal edifice. The rhetoric of the opponents to ART for all has attempted to reframe the debate by creating an opposition between women’s right to motherhood and children’s right (to a father).

From the Wish for Motherhood to a New Sexual Politics and Life-Writing In their study of voluntary childlessness in Sweden, Peterson and Engwall state that ‘the new reproductive technologies is a related field that exhorts powerful influence on constructions of motherhood and the gendered body and affects women’s embodied knowledge’ (Peterson and Engwall 2013, 377). This new embodied knowledge is indeed what I would like to focus on in the second part of my study, through an analysis of the French discussion forum Faire un bébé toute seule. Although aimed at both single mothers by choice and lesbian couples, a careful review of the thousands of posts from February 2012 to today has revealed that the typical user profile is that of a single woman in her late thirties or early forties wanting to collect information about the steps she should take in order to access ART. Later, the forum evolved into a support group for these women once they become pregnant, with two new forums emerging from the original one: one devoted to pregnancy and one to life as a single mother by choice. While most of the forum contributors converge in age, their biographical diversity highlights the universalism of this emerging sexual politics: some of them are professors or engineers, while others work in a flower shop or run a farm; their geographic and ethnic diversity spans across North Africa, Vietnam, or Sub-Saharan Africa to France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Réunion island, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana and French Polynesia. A few of these women are in their early twenties. The contributions selected for this study took place over the span of eight years and were selected from the largest French-language online forum devoted to becoming a single mother by choice. The forum and its posts are public, which is why most women use a pseudonym. Their posts can be accessed freely but

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one must be a registered user to be able to contribute to the discussions. Taking into account ethical considerations related to qualitative Internet research, I have followed a two-step process in my approach of this virtual textual material: first, I endeavored to obtain the contributors’ informed consent by joining the forum and presenting my project and asking if some contributors would agree to my using their posts for a publication. The response I received was overwhelmingly positive, since most of these women are eager to find venues to make their struggle public and contribute to the advancement of the legalization of ART for all. Secondly, to preserve anonymity, I chose to modify usernames and to give quotes in English translation that are slightly different from the French original. As far as the Icimamasolo and Graines d’amour blogs are concerned, the authors have been writing them in full awareness that their texts are public and it is actually their voiced hope that these blogs will be used to give more visibility to single women trying to become mothers. Both authors have been very involved in consultations held by the French government through the commission on bioethics working on the ART for all bill. Eva-Sophie, Icimamasolo’s author, has also created, in December 2017, the ‘Groupe Icimamasolos’ [solo moms, with ‘ici’ being a pun meaning both ‘here’ and ‘intra-vaginal insemination’], an organization fighting to raise awareness about the difficult predicaments of women having to undertake illegal ART journeys due to the French ban on ART for single women. Furthermore, all texts in the discussion forum have been treated carefully and sensitive content that would reveal its author’s personal circumstances has been left out. Overall, it is the content of these discussions and blog posts as text and not the authors behind them that are relevant to the present study. All the anonymous posters on the Faire un bébé toute seule forum repeatedly credit the forum for providing an invaluable source of support, since they describe feeling isolated in their choice to break French law to become mothers. Some of them detail the complete secrecy in which they have to carry out their plan, to avoid their relatives’ and friends’ negative moral judgement, along with the series of lies they need to invent for their employers when they have to miss work for their many clandestine trips to foreign clinics. For instance, here is Sabine’s introductory post on 28 July 2018: Hello,

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I am Sabine, aged well over 33 years old, single, and, just like you all, I have a strong desire to become a mom. I’ve had plenty of love stories but none of them has led to a family. I am sure that there are still lots of nice experiences with a good-looking man in my future, I still believe in meeting the one, but, in the meantime, I don’t feel like waiting – especially that I envision myself as a mother of several children. I have been thinking about it for several months and I think that I have really thought it through: I am ready for the ART adventure. I have already brought it up with my OBGYN and she seems quite supportive (to my greatest surprise). So she has already prescribed me a blood test to check my hormone levels, scheduled for Monday morning (it will be Day 4 and not day 3 but, according to the lab, that’s not an issue). I don’t know how long it will take for me to receive the results but I hope they’ll be good! I have lots of questions for you about clinics, about my various options. This forum has already brought me so many answers so thank you so much! I hope to share with you my progress in this ART story and to follow your stories too.

This post is representative and echoes many others. Most posts, like Sabine’s, start out by giving a brief justification for their plan to become a single mother by choice, which usually involves not having met the right male partner yet and worrying that their biological clock is ticking. Not knowing where to start their motherhood journey, since trying to conceive on one’s own remains illegal and taboo, they express immense relief at discovering this discussion forum and suddenly feel like they are part of a community instead of struggling on their own with the disconnect between their longing to become a mother and their status as single women. However, sometimes, situations are more complex than Sabine’s. For instance, Myriam explains how her two closest girlfriends turned a cold shoulder on her when she confided in them about her motherhood project.5 Several participants in the forum report negative moral judgement and hostile reactions from their parents, siblings and friends, increasing their feelings of isolation. The forum’s welcome page details the steps and procedures to follow in order to go around the French legal ban on ART for single women in a humorous and practical manner: I WANT TO TRY TO BECOME A MOTHER. WHAT DO I DO, HOW, WHERE? Welcome to ART wonderland!

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1. Finding an OBGYN who will be willing to help you. That’s the first step and one of the trickiest ones, since it is illegal in France. That’s why many doctors will refuse to help you. When you call the doctor’s office to schedule an appointment, don’t hesitate to ask the secretary if the doctor would consider helping you, so that you avoid going there for nothing and you protect yourself against potentially harsh criticism. The OBGYN must also accept to rewrite the foreign clinics’ prescriptions for you and, above all, he should not write ‘not covered’ on your prescriptions. Medications for the ovulation stimulations are quite pricey so it is a very important point. You should know that foreign prescriptions are accepted in France but they are never covered by the national health care system. Some GPs are willing to re-prescribe for you but some pharmacies can turn those prescriptions down and those are rarely reimbursed (stims usually require a specialist’s prescription).

One of the first challenges of becoming a single mother by choice is therefore to find a gynecologist willing to break the law—which bears obvious similarities with women trying to get an abortion in 1960s France. The welcome pages of the discussion group open with a glossary of the hermetic vocabulary and numerous acronyms used by all posters: IAD: Insémination Artificielle avec Donneur [Donor Sperm Artificial Insemination] IAC: Insémination Artificielle avec Conjoint [Male Partner Sperm Insemination] IA: Insémination Artisanale [Handmade Insemination] FIV : Fécondation In Vitro [IVF] FIV DO: Fécondation In Vitro avec Don d’Ovocytes [Egg Donor IVF] FIV DD: Fécondation In Vitro Double Don: don d’Ovocytes + don de sperme [egg and sperm donor IVF] TEC: Transfert d’embryons congelés [frozen embryo transfer] PMA: Procréation médicalement assistée [ART] AMP: Assistance Médicale à la Procréation [Medically Assisted Reproduction] DPA: Date Prévue d’Accouchement [Due Date] PPA: Période Probable d’Accouchement [Likely Due Period] DPO: Day Post Ovulation (nombre de jours après l’ovulation)

This long list stands in stark contrast with the forum participants’ emotional dilemmas, the complexity of their personal experiences and

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their all-consuming desire to become mothers. The enumeration of acronyms creates a disembodied feeling, echoed by the nearly dehumanized experience of having to travel to a foreign clinic to fulfil one’s dream of having a child. To this long list can be added many more abbreviations and code words, such as ‘J1, pds, ovitrelle, fofo, gygy’, that women new to the world of ART struggle to understand, turning these forum pages into a kind of exacerbated ‘mommy blog’ and a form of esoteric society focusing on the woman’s reproductive functions. Here is one of Nanou71130’s posts, on 21 April 2019, on Faire un bébé toute seule: OK, there are many things I don’t quite understand about my hormonal results. I just think that it doesn’t look too bad except for estradiol, whose level seems low: < 25 ng/L < 92 pmol/L. otherwise FSH 5.6, L.H 4.7, prolactin 214, T4L 14 and TSH 1.3. I did that blood test on D4. What do you think?

The hyper-technicality of many posts exemplifies the embodied experience mentioned by Peterson and Engwall (2013), while also creating a complicated subtext to the narrative of emancipation upheld by most of these women, who end up being trapped into the very physicality of their hormone levels, reducing their life-writing to their reproductive functions and numbers and conveying an ambivalent impression of freedom and dependence. Ten pages of the forum are then devoted to potential questions from various French health care providers and how to answer them without lying too blatantly but without revealing that one is a single woman. Below is a sample of those: Q : Why are you doing these tests? A: I need to check my fertility status prior to becoming pregnant. No need to go into details and the upside of this answer is that… you’re sticking to the truth! Q : What about your partner? Is he being tested or has he been tested too? A: Yes and his results are all good. There, you’re only telling a half-lie: while it’s not exactly your partner, donors are systematically tested, otherwise their sperm would not be accepted into a sperm bank. Finally, the question I dread the most: Q : How long have you been trying to conceive for?

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A: One year… + dejected look on my face so the person understands that I don’t feel like talking about this issue.

This script for a fictional dialogue that even gives props for body language and facial expression provides a comic relief in the forum while staging the journey to conceiving as a single mother in France as an embodied battle and an impersonation (that of the miserable infertile woman in a heterosexual partnership). It also echoes the kind of answers that members of the French underground movement had to memorize in case they were caught by the Gestapo during WWII and the Nazi Occupation of France, which casts these single women as procreation warriors on a resistance journey to a patriarchal system. This aspect is extremely important, since helping a single woman to become a mother is still considered a serious offense for a French healthcare provider. In this respect, a manifesto, written by famous French professor of gynecology René Frydman and signed by 130 healthcare providers, entitled ‘Nous médecins, biologistes, reconnaissons avoir aidé, accompagné certains couples ou femmes célibataires dans leur projet d’enfant dont la réalisation n’est pas possible en France’ [We, doctors, biologists, acknowledge that we have helped some couples or single women achieve their goals to become mothers, which currently cannot be done in France], was published on 18 March 2016 in the left-wing newspaper Le Monde, echoing the rhetoric of the 1971 pro-abortion ‘Manifeste des 343 salopes’, a manifesto in which 343 famous and anonymous French women stated that they had undergone an abortion. Frydman was the instigator of the first in vitro fertilization in France in 1982. The manifesto, by echoing the pro-abortion discourse, has granted visibility to this discrepancy in the French legal framework and helped frame the problem of single and lesbian motherhood as just a logical continuation of the path to gender equality started 45 years ago with the struggle for women’s right to choose motherhood. Thus, a close reading reveals that another theme runs throughout these posts, as well as through the two blogs mentioned previously (Icimamasolo and Graines d’amour): it is the notion of a struggle, through the many recurring words denoting these women’s views of themselves as fighters: ‘parcours’ [challenging journey], ‘combat’ [fight], ‘lutte’ [struggle], ‘aventure’ [adventure], ‘courage’, ‘persévérance’. This is particularly salient in some of the posters’ entries, such as Barbara (a contributor to Faire un bébé toute seule), who has been through multiple rounds of failed IVFs, an ectopic pregnancy, and now a disappearing egg

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count as her fertility is declining. She describes herself as a ‘warrior’, using the English word for an added feminist twist. To a French readership, the term ‘warrior’ crystallizes several cultural notions: the more radical feminist movements of the Anglophone world, the possibility to do away with gender provided by the English language (the French ‘guerrière’ would have to be feminine) and, finally, it casts the traditionally passive mother-to-be figure in an empowered position. The two blogs also emphasize the notion of breaking new ground and present single French women’s difficult road to motherhood as an unrelenting struggle. For instance, Eva-Sophie, Icimamasolo’s author, who started her reproduction journey at the age of 39, in 2015, but has still not been able to become a mother, subtitles her autobiographical blog: ‘mon histoire, ma bataille’ [my story, my fight], ironically paraphrasing the title of a famous French song by Daniel Balavoine, Mon fils, ma bataille [my son, my fight], about a divorced father’s legal battle for custody. In September 2018, four of the most active contributors of the Faire un bébé toute seule discussion forum (Anne-Sophie, Isabelle, Laure and Marie) founded the Mam’enSolo Association [Single Moms Association], whose motto is ‘égalité, sororité’ [equality, sisterhood]. Beyond the legalization of ART for all in France, the organization fights for parental equality among women, in a push back against the current hierarchization of families according to the mother’s status (whether they are married or in a heterosexual partnership, single, or in a same-sex partnership). Mam’enSolo’s agenda is that it is not enough for the law to be modified and to render ART for all legal, but they also advocate for a radical evolution of French people’s minds towards an improved perception of single mothers—especially single mothers by choice. They also shift the discourse to place children’s rights and interests at the core of their programme, thereby countering ART opponents’ rhetoric pitching single mothers’ rights against children’s rights. The introductory page of the organization reads as follows: Mam’ensolo’s main goal is to educate, influence and act for the improvement of the condition of single women undergoing ART and of solo motherhood after ART, through … advocating for children’s interests by facilitating their acceptance by society and their legal recognition. Ultimately, Mam’ensolo wishes to contribute to developing single-parents-bychoice’s rights and support by offering support networks and pedagogical tools for these families.

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Most forum posts and blog entries emphasize the tremendous amount of choices that these single women have to make and the overwhelming number of options with which they are faced in their journeys, with their dizzying list of potential consequences: Finding a clinic: You thought that, after finding an OBGYN willing to help you, you had overcome the biggest obstacles? You were wrong! There are dozens of clinics in various countries. Choosing one only depends on you and your criteria. – What kind of donor do you want? Do you want an anonymous one or not, a standard profile or an extended profile? Do you want to choose the donor yourself or let the clinic choose for you? – Transportation to get to the clinic: don’t forget that you will only know when to go to the clinic for the insemination about 36 h ahead of time. You should therefore pick a clinic that you can easily access without spending 30 h in transportation. Cost: we rarely enjoy unlimited financial means. Prices and fees are extremely important in your choice of a clinic.6

The list goes on for four more pages, with tips on how to choose a clinic and an OBGYN and details about the various clinics, the packages they offer and the choice of sperm donors. This echoes Icimamasolo, whose author’s latest entry has a dark tone, since she explains that she is about to give up after spending almost 30,000 euros and suffering from terrible side-effects from various treatments over the past four years. Her quest for motherhood has also resulted in the loss of her job as a consequence of her many absences linked to her trips to foreign clinics required by her journey towards single motherhood by choice. The financial aspect of the journey echoes the opponents’ arguments and discussions around the ‘fertility industries’ and women’s bodies as sites for new forms of purchasing power and exploitation, while also serving as the only limitation to the absolute and dizzying freedom experienced by these French single mothers-to-be—a freedom which many of them describe as anxietyproducing, while some herald it as the ultimate women’s liberation and empowerment.

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Conclusion Ultimately, the debate over legalizing assisted reproduction technologies for all women in France has been cast as highlighting the tensions between the feminist agenda and children’s rights. The immediate future of these seemingly conflicting claims will lie in the reconciliation of both views of procreation/reproduction. However, a close reading of these numerous blog posts and discussion groups around ART for single women reveals that it is a false predicament, since children’s rights and well-being are usually at the centre of these future single mothers’ concerns. Namely, these women often need to undergo careful psychological scrutiny before their project is approved—whereas typical mothers are never assessed for their potentiality to be ‘good’ mothers—and the journey to becoming a single mother by choice requires breaking French law and a lot of determination. Through these posts, I have highlighted the emergence of a new, complicated sexual politics, that constitutes a form of resistance to the prejudice faced by these women, and a new form of life-writing through the reproductive functions of the female body. Moreover, these blogs and forums underline the birth of a new feminism, sweeping across ethnicities, classes and nations, whereby the single mother by choice becomes the ultimate victory of feminism instead of the scapegoat that single mothers have been for centuries. The female posters in Faire un bébé toute seule come from very diverse ethnical, geographical, social and cultural backgrounds. Several of them chronicle their feelings of unprecedented freedom and empowerment when they choose their sperm donor from a catalog, as the epitome of the woman’s liberation movement that started 45 years ago in France. On 23 November 2019, 49,000 women marched in France in a historic protest against feminicide and gender-based violence in general. Some of their signs, such as ‘ni papa, ni mari, ni état’ [no daddy, no hubby, no state], strangely echoed some of the proponents of ART for all’s claims and rhetoric. The debate surrounding the legalization of ART for all may be paving the way to a new society where the figure of the single mother will be rehabilitated and will cease to be viewed as society’s ultimate scapegoat. However, does the visibility of single mothers by choice not run the risk of obscuring from public discourse the ‘other’ single mothers as victims and will it not reinforce society’s prejudice against single mothers as responsible for their ‘poor’ life choices?

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Notes 1. Le Monde, 12 September 2019. 2. The law will grant access to assisted reproductive technologies to single women and to women in same-sex couples. However, some articles have been left out, including insemination with a deceased partner’s sperm, postmortem embryo transfer and access to ART for transgender men. 3. Interestingly, ‘insémination artificielle’ is the systematic phrase used in French to refer to insemination with either donor sperm or partner’s sperm. No distinction is made between the two; the emphasis is on the distinction with ‘natural’ insemination during intercourse. 4. IFOP (Institut Français d’Opinion Publique—French Institute for Public Opinion) survey, 26 June 2019: ‘50 ans après Stonewall: Le regard des Fran¸cais sur l’homosexualit´e et la place des LGBT dans la soci´eté’ [50 years after Stonewall: French People’s Perceptions of Homosexuality and the Position on LGBT People in Society]. 5. Mireille, 16 June 2017, Faire un bébé toute seule. 6. Faire un bébé toute seule, http://unbebetouteseule.forumactif.com/t3-inf ormations-generales-sur-les-cliniques.

References Anonymous (‘mère célibataire’). ‘Je suis devenue maman solo par choix.’ https://www.mere-celibataire.fr/2017/07/08/temoignage-suis-devenuemaman-solo-choix-2/. Accessed 5 October 2019. Folscheid, Dominique. 2019. Made in Labo. Paris: éditions du Cerf. Graines d’amour. https://sites.google.com/site/grainesdamour2/home. Accessed 22 September 2019. Icimamasolo. http://icimamasolo.over-blog.com/. Last accessed 1 December 2019. Knittel, Olivia. 2019. PMA pour mon amour: j’ai fait un bébé toute seule. Paris: Cherche-Midi. Kronlund, Sonia. ‘Un Enfant par WhatsApp: Ai-je le droit de faire un enfant sans père?’ France Culture, 5 September 2018. https://www.franceculture. fr/emissions/les-pieds-sur-terre/pma-hors-la-loi-16-un-enfant-par-whatsappai-je-le-droit-de-faire-un-enfant-sans-pere. Last accessed 27 March 2020. Le Monde avec Agence France Presse. ‘La PMA pour toutes les femmes franchit un premier obstacle à l’Assemblée’ https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/ 2019/09/12/la-pma-pour-toutes-les-femmes-franchit-un-premier-obstaclea-l-assemblee_5509321_3224.html?fbclid=IwAR2dP5K0gZtQmviU6tlMF1 pIp1-TMjUfzTm99xFbvGRe8y0ZLMxaxqjnAFI. Last accessed 2 November 2019. Leclair, Agnès. ‘Bioéthique: la loi qui va bouleverser la filiation’. Le Figaro. 24 July 2019. https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/pma-les-craintes-d-unerevolution-de-la-procreation-20190723. Last accessed 31 August 2019.

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Leclair, Agnès. ‘Les Craintes d’une révolution de la procréation’. Le Figaro. 24 July 2019. Mam’ Ensolo Association. https://mamensolo.fr/qui-sommes-nous/. Last accessed 30 November 2020. Michel, Caroline. 2016. 89 Mois. Toronto: Préludes. Pernotte, Anne-Lise. ‘A 39 ans j’ai fait un bébé toute seule.’ https://avoir-unenfant-a-40-ans.fr/un-bebe-toute-seule-a-39-ans-2492. Peterson, Helen, and Kristina Engwall. 2013. ‘Silent Bodies: Childfree Women’s Gendered and Embodied Experiences.’ European Journal of Women’s Studies 20 (4): 376–389. Rose, Jacqueline. 2018. Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Un bébé toute seule. http://unbebetouteseule.forumactif.com/t66p325-gro ssesse-1ers-pas-et-nouvelles-des-mamans-et-bebes-tome-2. Last accessed 1 December 2019.

CHAPTER 11

Reluctantly Solo? Representations of Single Mothers via Donor Procedure, Insemination and IVF in Swedish Newspapers Helena Wahlström Henriksson and Disa Bergnehr Introduction In the past few decades, new or modified forms of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have opened up new possibilities for singles to become parents. While ARTs as such have been much debated, this is also true for the legal and political reforms that regulate their use and accessibility. One example is the legal reform in 2016 that extended access to ARTs via the Swedish public health care system—specifically insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF) with donor sperm—to single women. This

The original version of this chapter was revised: This chapter was previously published as non-open access, which has now been changed. The corrections to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_13 H. Wahlström Henriksson (B) Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] D. Bergnehr Department of Pedagogy and Learning, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2022 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_11

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chapter explores representations in Swedish newspapers of solo mothers, that is, single mothers who achieve motherhood via ARTs. It focuses on how these women figure in the daily news press in the period 2014–2018, the years around the inauguration of the new law. Research on solo mothers via ARTs has grown concurrently with the phenomenon as such.1 Many studies are based on interviews with middleto upper class mothers in the UK (Graham 2018), the US (Bock 2000; Hertz 2006; Layne 2015; Mannis 1999) or Canada (Kelly 2012); they focus on the women’s ambivalence about ‘going solo’ upon realizing that they would not achieve pregnancy as part of a conventional heterosexual couple, as well as on issues of legitimacy and responsibility linked to single motherhood. Hertz (2006) also explores the kinds of family-making that these women engage in with new partners and/or co-carers. Other studies specifically explore representations of these mothers. A study of newspaper representations of solo mothers via ARTs in the UK finds that they stand out as deviants from the maternal norm, and predominantly come across as negatively charged and heavily ‘othered’ (Zadeh and Foster 2016).2 To date, in the Swedish context, whereas there exists a body of sociological work on single mothers (Alsarve et al. 2017; Björnberg 1997), there is little humanities research on representations of single parents—mothers or fathers. However, a recent study demonstrates that in Swedish newspapers single mothers figure in diverse ways, and that solo motherhood specifically is represented not as a first-hand choice but rather a plan B (Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020).

Solo Mothers in Sweden An estimated 1–2% of all mothers in Sweden become solo mothers via the ART of donor procedure and insemination/in vitro fertilization (IVF).3 In Sweden, the first IVF-conceived child was born (to a married couple) in 1982. Three years later, in 1985, sperm donation became legal for married heterosexual couples. It took close to 20 years for further ART reform to be passed. In 2003, egg donation became legal for heterosexual couples. In 2005, sperm donation and egg donation/IVF for lesbian women in couples (cohabiting or married) was legalized, and in 2019, embryo donation was legalized. Swedish legislation regulates donor anonymity: the donor is anonymous to the parents, but not to the child (at age 18, children can find their donor, if they wish).4 Mothers via ARTs are a small but probably growing minority among single parents. In the beginning of the period in focus of the present study

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(2014–2018), insemination and IVF treatment were available through the public health care system to heterosexual and lesbian couples but not to single women. A 2014 governmental report (SOU 2014: 29) suggested that the law be changed to allow single women equal access to insemination and IVF. The report speculated that approximately 1500–2000 single women annually would seek such treatment; the prognosis for the number of treatments per year was that it would go up by 3700–5000 (with each woman needing on average two to three attempts to achieve pregnancy), and hence there would be a need for an additional 250–350 sperm donors to meet the greater demand for donor sperm.5 In 2016, the new law was inaugurated, and single women gained legal access to ARTs. Before this legal change, but also after—due partly to a shortage of sperm donors in Sweden and an inability of the health care system to accommodate the demand from single women for treatment—women have travelled from Sweden to other countries, predominantly Denmark, to achieve pregnancy ‘on their own’. ‘Going to Denmark’ has in fact become shorthand for ‘going solo’ as a mother in Sweden (Andreassen 2018).6 Solo mothers are symbolically and gender-politically interesting for several reasons. First, they stand as an example of ‘families we choose’ that seemingly subverts the hegemony of the nuclear family ideal, the ideal of coupledom and the ‘natural’ link between sexuality and procreation. Second, in the particular context of Sweden, women parenting on their own go against both the Swedish political ideal of dual-earner, dualcarer couples, and against the societal ideal of involved fathers (Bergman and Hobson 2002; Wells and Bergnehr 2014; Wahlström Henriksson 2016). These women, who in previous research have been termed single mothers ‘by choice’ (Hertz 2006; Layne 2015; Volgsten and Schmidt 2019), activate pertinent questions concerning (socially stratified access to) reproductive practices, but also concerning family formation and familial lives. This chapter investigates how solo mothers in Sweden were represented and debated in the major daily newspapers during the years around the passing of the new law. Focusing on representations of solo mothers, we are interested in the constitutive power of symbols and language, and hence in the double meanings of ‘representation’ as such, for an ‘image’ of something also signals what/who is, or can be, that ‘something’—in this case, a solo mother—and is always linked to power (Hall 1997; Spivak 2010). Representations of solo mothers in news media build upon and

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contribute to culture-specific understandings of single motherhood, and therefore, studying such representations is one inroad to understanding how meanings of motherhood circulate in a given society. How, then, is the solo mother, and mothering ‘on one’s own’ described, discussed, and charged with meanings and values in the sample?

Material and Method The data was collected from the four major daily newspapers in Sweden in their paper editions during the years 2014–2018 (search date October 10, 2019). Two are morning papers: Dagens Nyheter (DN ; liberal) and Svenska Dagbladet (SvD; conservative), and two are evening papers/tabloids: Aftonbladet (social-democratic) and Expressen (liberal).7 Newspapers are still a dominant form of news dissemination in Sweden, even in times of steadily increasing online news media. The selected dailies have wide national circulations in paper copy and online versions; they are central in setting the national news agenda, and hence contribute to a ‘national imaginary’ (Anderson 1983; Appadurai 1996). As such, they may affect as well as reflect lived lives, subjectivities, political decision-making, knowledge production and power relations (Hall 1997). Although traditional news media consumption has decreased since the mid-1990s, newspaper readership continues to be quite substantive. Close to 50% of the Swedish population read an evening paper several times a week, and almost 50% subscribe to a morning paper (Martinsson and Andersson 2019). Consequently, it is relevant to study newspapers as a major news genre that mediates representations of solo mothers. Searches via the digital archive Mediearkivet were based on variations on ‘lone mother’ (Sw. ensamstående mamma/mor/moder, ensam mamma/mor/moder, singelmamma, solomamma) in singular and plural forms, as well as ‘assisted reproduction’, ‘insemination’, ‘donor’ and variants thereof. Only hits referring to Sweden were saved. In the major newspapers, solo mothers figure in a small number of articles during the five years (62 in total).8 The data is rich and varied: it includes political statements (editorial pages, debate articles, political commentary, essays), news items and book reviews. There is a logical peak in numbers in 2016, when there are also more lengthy articles with substantial, indepth reportage, often based on interviews with, and sometimes written by, solo mothers. In 2014 and 2015, many articles focus on the government report and the (suggested) new law, and offer stories about women

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who have ‘gone to Denmark’; in 2017 and 2018, numbers of texts drop considerably, and content focuses on difficulties around conception and access to treatment. We categorized the text sample according to text genre and text length (from minor news notice to multi-page reportage) and whether the solo mother speaks in her own voice, or is spoken about by others. Through repeated reading of the sample, during and after coding, we identified two major themes. In the following, we present a brief overview of the solo mothers in the sample, and then discuss the major themes: first, the link between temporalities and choice in these women’s lives, and second, the place of men in single women’s reproduction, and in the life of the (future) child. We investigate these themes through the critical lenses of respectability and intensive mothering. Drawing upon the crucial work of Beverly Skeggs on respectability (1997), we explore how middle-class-ness and heterosexual femininity and whiteness are central to these representations of solo mothers as respectable. The representations also signal that the maternal respectability of solo mothers builds upon demonstrating particular forms of intensive mothering (Hays 1996). In this text, we use ‘solo mother’ to reference single women who achieve motherhood via ARTs. However, the women in the sample do not use the term ‘solo’. Although the term solo mother exists in English, and occurs in the research literature and other texts, it is non-existent in this sample. By far the most common term to refer to mothers in one-parent households in the sample is ensamstående mamma (appr. lone mom; actually ‘mother who stands alone’). Ensamstående mamma does not, however, have the same negative connotations as ‘lone mother’ has in, for example, the UK and the US (Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020). Singelmamma (single mom), which also figures in the sample, although much less frequently, has connotations of dating and romantic availability. While translation is always difficult between languages and cultures, we use ‘single mother’ here as the overarching term for mothers in one-parent households, while using ‘solo mother’ to reference the single mothers via ARTs at the center of this chapter. This choice is partly motivated by the ways that these mothers distance themselves from the connotations of ensamstående (Sw. ensam means alone; lonely) in relation to their own situation, which, they often stress, is marked by well-functioning and broad social and familial networks.

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Who Are the Solo Mothers? How Do They Figure in the Sample? The demographic profile of solo mothers is as relatively affluent women in their thirties and forties. All mothers who appear in the sample are urban, white and middle-class, they are often presented as having professional careers and substantial supportive social networks. In other words, they are economically and socially privileged women, carriers of ‘respectability’ as defined by Beverly Skeggs in her classic study of femininity and class (1997).9 Since many of them have achieved pregnancy before 2016, they have typically ‘gone to Denmark’ and paid large sums of money for treatment. Although the category of women who are represented in the sample are middle class and affluent, in the texts their financial status largely goes unmentioned. Financial issues appear explicitly only in texts that specify the expenses linked to treatment in clinics abroad (30,000 SEK per attempt; 50,000 SEK in total), costs which the new law will eliminate. In one case the new law is described as ‘democratic’ since it extends the right to become a mother via a sperm donor to all single women, not just those who can afford treatment abroad (‘Barnlängtande väljer Danmark’ SvD, 16 January 2016). This category of lone mothers—well-off, well-educated professionals—offers a ‘counter-image’ to common understandings of lone mothers as materially and otherwise deprived, vulnerable and struggling (Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020). At the same time, as middle-class, white, urban and predominantly heterosexual women they correspond to the kind of subject that is generally most visible in Swedish news media (Jakobsson and Stiernstedt 2018).10 Solo mothers, when compared to single mothers by divorce/separation (cf. Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020) are given relatively large amounts of space. The mothers’ own voices and perspectives on motherhood feature in long interviews and in-depth pieces. Some of them write articles about life as a solo mother, thereby demonstrating reflexivity as well as media literacy. One of the most vocal, and most mediatized, solo mothers is a journalist, Josefin Olevik, who has published an autobiographical book about her experience, and who becomes a strong representative for the phenomenon, especially in 2016. Hence, a minority phenomenon gains quite high visibility in terms of focus, text length and inclusion of the mother’s voice. The solo mothers’ narratives have in

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common that they focus on timing and possibility, as well as on the situation of lone parenting vs. co-parenting. Many also raise issues around the situation of the child of a solo mother, and a few texts include a child’s voice on the situation. The following sections will focus on these central themes in the data: first, temporalities and (im)possibilities of choosing to become a mother (on one’s own), and, second, the place of a man as a co-parent/father to the (future) child vs. parenting on one’s own.

No Choice but to ‘Go Solo’: On Temporality and (Im)Possibility Several of the articles in the news material describe the solo mother as having had no other options than using ARTs if she was to become a parent at all. A narrative that occurs repeatedly in the data speaks of a woman who has always loved, and always wanted to have children, but for whom the right opportunity—in terms of timing and a partner to co-parent with—did not come. Reasons for women deciding to become solo parents are formulated as running out of reproductive time, and as not having the time to wait for a (new) partner who might be a father to their child, although in most cases, the women state that they would have preferred partnered parenthood. One text explains a woman’s decision to go to Denmark for insemination as follows: ‘She was 34 years of age when she decided to get inseminated. The relationship with the love of her life was over and she went through a crisis: Was the dream about a family forever broken?’ (‘Jag kände mig som en brottsling’ Aftonbladet, March 24, 2016).11 Another states that ‘[h]er choice to become a mother on her own was also a great grief. She had visualised herself having a man by her side, but he did not turn up’ (‘Alla visste hur mycket jag hade längtat efter barn’ Expressen, 3 May 2014), and one woman states that ‘I still want to meet someone to have a child together with (…), but I’m 42 and single’ (‘Maria, 42, har ägg i frysen’ Aftonbladet, 26 February 2015). The women’s ‘choice’ to have a child on their own is here described as a necessity. One solo mother is quoted as saying: ‘I wanted another child but I couldn’t hang around and wait for a new partner, so after thinking it over for a while I decided that I would dare to do it by myself’ (‘Barnlängtande…’ SvD, 16 January 2016). Hence, solo motherhood is represented as a last resort, motivated by the ticking of the ‘biological clock’—the women are becoming older and running out of time if they are to reproduce—and the lack of (time to

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find) an appropriate partner to co-parent with. Often, too, the texts point to a specific age when the woman in question started longing, and planning, to become a mother: ‘When she was 29 years of age, she started to look into the opportunities [to have a child via ARTs]’ (‘Alla visste…’ Expressen, 3 May 2014). When the women see their situation clearly, the decision appears to be easily taken: ‘It was not a hard decision to take…I can no longer wait for meeting Mr. Right’ (‘Singelkvinnor kan få hjälp att bli gravida’ Dagens Nyheter, 17 May 2014). These quotations also stress the women’s ‘“desire to parent”…[as] the ultimate justification for the use and development of ARTs’ (Faircloth and Gürtin 2018, 988). As one mother observes, ‘I had a much stronger longing for a child than for meeting someone to spend my life with’ (‘Alla visste…’ Expressen, 3 May 2014). But ‘going solo’ via ARTs is also justified by statements about which routes to reproduction are morally appropriate. The cited solo mothers in our sample are positioned as honest, and therefore respectable women; they utilise ARTs instead of tricking a man into fatherhood. One woman explains: ‘I had a strong wish for a child but no partner… It didn’t feel OK to trick someone into parenthood’ (‘Splittras av barnfrågan’ Aftonbladet, 17 May 2014). Another woman states that she ‘didn’t want to pick someone up in a bar, and also take the risk of STDs’ (‘Jag blir en bra mamma – även utan en partner’ Aftonbladet, 22 January 2016), signalling a concern for her own health as well as a rejection of an amoral behaviour vis-a-vis an unknown man. Yet another mother comments that ‘I’d rather have a child by myself than with the wrong person’ (‘Ta någon bara, huvudsaken är att det blir en bebis…’ DN , 25 November 2017). As Skeggs points out, ‘[r]espectability contains judgements of class, race, gender and sexuality and different groups have differential access to the mechanisms for generating, resisting and displaying respectability’ (Skeggs 1997, 2). Not getting the ‘wrong person’ involved in co-parenting or in conception (or risking one’s health)—which can be understood as a care for the self and the future child—and refusing to ‘trick’ men into parenthood also contributes to the respectability of these women. Whereas Skeggs explored how working class women aspire to the (unreachable) middle-class ideal of respectable femininity, the solo mothers in this sample are explicitly and firmly positioned as middle- to upper-middle-class women, for whom respectability—following Skeggs— should be a non-issue. Yet, perhaps due to their status as solo parents ‘by choice’, and hence likely to be perceived as more responsible—or ‘at

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fault’—for their situation than those who are widowed or divorced,12 newspaper representations demonstrate a need to affirm the women’s respectability in several ways.13 In the above examples, accountability and responsibility are central components in these representations. As observed by Faircloth and Gürtin ‘[i]n a reproductive landscape that places such importance on parenting, “accountability” might be said to be one of the growing requirements of reproductive agents’ (2018, 989). Not only does the solo mother avoid one-night stands, she is, overall, described as having planned her parenthood carefully. It is not a hasty decision, which is emphasised in several articles, as exemplified in an interview with a single mother who claims: ‘children who are the result of insemination of single mothers are longed-for and planned’ (‘Barnlängtande kvinnor söker sig utomlands’ DN , 16 October 2015). In another article, it is said that conceiving via donor procedure ‘is not an easy decision for the woman; it is very thought-through’ (‘Barnlängtande väljer Danmark’ SvD, 16 January 2016). Solo mothers often juxtapose their own well-reflected decision to become parents with what they perceive as the un-reflected-upon pregnancies of couples, suggesting, as Susanna Graham observes, that ‘the more one has thought about, questioned and accounted for something, the more responsible one is for taking that action’ (Graham 2018, 256). Such ways to refer to solo motherhood as responsible also adds to justifying it, and to making it a socially acceptable, respectable thing to do. However, there are many hindrances and difficulties involved in becoming a solo mother. The much-planned and longed-for child may fail to be conceived, and time pressure may become acute. The news articles from 2017 to 2018, the years after the inauguration of the new law, repeatedly detail the obstacles these women face: long queues to treatment, lack of donor sperm and age restrictions that may cause women to ‘age out’ of eligibility for treatment. The news headings are illustrative: ‘Shortage of sperm all over the country’ (SvD, 8 January 2017), ‘A long wait for insemination for singles’ (DN , 7 August 2017) and ‘4 years of waiting’ (DN , 6 December 2017). Also, once treatment is accessed (either in Sweden, or self-funded commercial treatment elsewhere), successful results may take many cycles of treatment and much time. This becomes clear in three lengthy in-depth articles from 2017 to 2018 that follow women in their endeavours to conceive. These texts describe the treatments as costly and hard, with miscarriages and disappointments before a child was finally conceived, and all three women

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had to go abroad for treatment due to legal restrictions (before 2016) or long queues (after 2016). One of the articles cites the solo mother Linda: ‘It has been overwhelming and hard emotionally as well as financially. At one stage, it felt like I lived two weeks at a time…[Linda] refers to the time around the summer 2016 and onwards, when she went to Copenhagen every month to be inseminated, at 8000 SEK per attempt’ (‘Singelmamman Linda ville ge Villem ett syskon’ Expressen, 20 January 2018). Another article is introduced as follows: ‘After ten attempts to become pregnant via insemination and IVF, single Cilla Holm became pregnant through egg and sperm donation in Russia’ (‘Så fort man blir gravid är man VIP’ DN , 15 June 2018). The articles illuminate the potential challenges of becoming a solo mother, but also offer happy endings in that all three women finally had children. As previous research has shown, solo motherhood is often understood as a ‘last resort’ for women longing for motherhood; a ‘plan Z’ (Bock 2000; see also Layne 2015; Graham 2018; Volgsten and Schmidt 2019). In the data from Swedish newspapers, similarly, because there is no eligible future father around, and, crucially, because time is running out/the biological clock is ticking, the solo mothers in the sample are represented as having had to use ARTs and ‘going to Denmark’ if they are to become parents at all; they are not represented as taking the decision because they prioritised parental solitude or living an alternative family life at the time. However, as we shall see in the next section, in some instances the mothers do verbalize the benefits of parenting alone, and these benefits are predominantly raised in discussions regarding the place of a father in the life of their child, and in their own life as a parent.

Men as Fathers vs. Women Reproducing on Their Own As Graham observes, ‘[t]he use of ARTs opens the decision to become a single parent to scrutiny, not only by women contemplating this family form, but also policy makers, “experts” working in the health and fertility industries, and external others’ (Graham 2018, 250.) In the sample, such scrutiny often centres on the place/role of men as fathers to children, and on solo mothers’ intention to parent without fathers.14 Concerns about men/fathers in relation to solo mothers are raised in editorials, columns and letters to the editor, and opinions differ strongly. One mother calls the donor ‘dad’, when she explains that she has travelled with her toddler

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to meet ‘donor siblings’ in other countries because ‘even if her donor never presents himself, I want to do all I can for her to know there is family on her dad’s side’ (‘Vi hittade sju syskon via nätet’ Aftonbladet, 5 March 2014). Others are clear that a donor is not a ‘dad’ (‘Han är numero uno för mig’ Expressen, 26 July 2015), or completely dismiss the importance of fathers, since ‘[i]n Sweden there are thousands of children who for different reasons have access to only one parent. The notion that having two parents is always best for the child is an outdated idea that requires revision’ (‘Kärleken till barnet är det viktiga – inte antalet föräldrar’ Aftonbladet, 24 March 2016). In the entire sample, there is explicit criticism of solo mothers as such only in two texts. One is a letter to the editor which terms solo mothers ‘aberrant ladies’ (Sw. aparta damer; ‘Farligt vara utan pappa’ Expressen, 24 June 2014); the other a column which criticizes these women for depriving children of fathers (‘Alla måste ha rätt till sitt ursprung’ Aftonbladet, 21 April 2015). A couple of letters to the editor similarly deplore the offspring of solo mothers and emphasize the importance of fathers in the name of children’s sense of identity, hence indirectly criticizing the mothers. Generally, however, the texts that present readers with individual solo mothers and their stories represent them as capable and resourceful individuals who take grounded decisions to become parents. Their decision is also presented as having had happy outcomes: solo mothers enjoy motherhood, and do not miss a male, second parent in their family lives. One mother explains that, instead of a father, her daughter has ‘many other adults around her. Among them a grandfather and a cousin who she really likes spending time with’ (‘Elna vet att hon inte har en pappa’ Aftonbladet, 29 May 2014); another mother states that her child has ‘many people around with whom she feels safe. I don’t know whether there would have been as many near ones if she’d had two parents’ (‘Alla visste…’ Expressen, 3 May 2014). The solo mothers often question the idea that fathers are essential to a child. One mother emphasizes that children need ‘well-balanced adults’ and that ‘[a] parent should be trusting, present, loving…this is more important than having a father, as such’ (‘Jag kände mig som en brottsling’ Aftonbladet, 24 March 2016). A couple of the texts also include statements about the impossibility of missing what one never had, arguing that since children of solo mothers have never had a father, they cannot experience this as a lack in their lives. One letter to the editor states that ‘children who have never had a father run no risk of missing

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him, unlike children who have been born to a couple but where the father takes off’ (‘Barnlängtande kvinnor…’ DN , 16 October 2015). In an interview with a mother and her adult twin sons, one brother recalls being sad as a child because he missed having a father, at which point his twin brother comforted him by asking whether he had forgotten that they had no father, reasoning that ‘you cannot miss a dad who doesn’t exist’ (‘Karin åkte till Danmark och fick tvillingar’ SvD, 29 March 2016). Hence, solo mothers express themselves in ways that downplay the fact that ‘It still takes a man to make a child’ (Hertz 2006, xvii). One solo mother proposes that ‘people are so used to single parents, or there not being a dad in the picture for various reasons, so I don’t think people ask [whether there is a dad] these days’ (‘Elna vet…’ Aftonbladet, 29 May 2014). However, even when reaching the conclusion that fathers are ‘not necessary’, many (prospective) solo mothers reflect at length upon the place of fathers in families and in (their own) children’s lives. This points to a particular ambivalence: the solo mothers are represented as determined that they can be as good parents as anybody else, but also as finding it necessary to verbalize ideas about men, fathers and the twoparent family. This may be an effect of journalists’ interests and questions, or manifestations of the mothers’ own concerns; we can only note that this is a reoccurring feature in the sample. The many, and at times substantial, reflections on missing fathers sets the sample on solo mothers apart from newspaper texts about single mothers by divorce/separation, where fathers are typically not mentioned (Bergnehr and Wahlström Henriksson 2020). The tendency is also in line with findings in Rikke Andreassen’s 2018 study of how solo mothers speak of family in online communities. This element in newspaper texts suggests that solo mothers are subject to others’ as well as their own questioning and critique in particular ways, often linked to the notion of ‘erasure’ of men and fathers. In the words of one solo mother, parenting on one’s own ‘does not mean that you don’t want a father there, it’s just the way life turned out. It’s simply women who have done this because they’ve given up a little on the idea of finding someone to have children with’ (‘Barnlängtande väljer…’ SvD, 16 January 2016). Such statements clearly respond to the criticisms that were voiced against the new law as possibly leading to men/fathers becoming superfluous as women reproduce ‘on their own’. As demonstrated above, in articles focusing on solo mothers, the place of fathers is debated. There is also much reflection about the meanings of

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‘male role models’. All in all, the texts about solo mothers signal a need to temper (men’s and women’s) anxieties regarding the role of men in the contexts of families and parenthood. Such anxieties might be explained by the strong links between paternity and patriarchy—which we take to mean a legitimization of male dominance—a link that is in a sense broken by pregnancies via IVF and (anonymous) donor sperm. Many solo mothers mention the possibility of meeting a male partner in the future, while also pointing out that a new partner does not equal a father/co-parent. This corresponds to findings regarding solo mothers in the US, whose male partners may, or may not be taking on a parental role vis-a-vis their children (Hertz 2006). Asked by a reporter whether she wants to find a man who can be a father to her daughter, one woman responds: ‘I do not want to meet a man in order for her to have a father…If I meet a man I think of him, first, as a person in the family. But I cannot decide about him being a dad or not’ (‘Alla visste…’ Expressen, 3 May 2014). Another woman says that she has ‘not closed the door on a romantic relationship, and if I meet someone I really want to live with I can invite him in to be a bonus dad’ (‘Jag kände mig…’ Aftonbladet, 24 March 2016).15 One mother states that she at first felt sad and awkward as an ‘involuntarily single mother’, but is also firm that ‘it would be unsound to look for a potential father rather than a partner’ (‘Han är numero uno…’ Expressen, 26 July 2015); another states simply that although during pregnancy she had hopes about eventually finding a co-parent, once she had twins ‘there was never even any time for thinking about meeting someone’ (‘Karin åkte till Danmark…’ SvD, 29 March 2016). At the time of being interviewed, no solo mother in the sample is involved with a male partner. Although some solo mothers speak about previous, and possible future, male partners, at the time when the articles are written, there is no such partner in their lives, which are described as fully focused on mothering (and, in some cases, domestic and professional work). In other words, the solo mothers are represented as exclusively focused on the mother–child relation, rather than as prioritizing a heterosexual relationship. Hence, these representations of solo mothers draw upon notions of respectable femininity (Skeggs 1997), also in that their femininity–and their motherhood—is de-sexualized. This is done both by separating parenting and sexuality in the act of conceiving via donor procedure, and by downplaying the place of sexuality/sexual partners in their present lives as parents.

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While there are many instances of mothers reflecting upon the role of men as fathers, and upon their own route towards ‘going solo’, once they are single mothers, they realize the benefits, and find it works really well. In this sense, many solo mothers are portrayed as reformulating their initial ‘Plan B’ into a ‘Plan A’ once parenthood is achieved. One mother states: ‘I am very happy with the life I’m living now, I have the family I always dreamed of. And besides, I can make all the decisions without having to fight over who does what’ (‘Vi pekas ut som sämre föräldrar’ Aftonbladet, 21 April 2015). Another woman points out that since ‘I had been single for so long even before I became a mom – it was no great change to shoulder the responsibility [of twins] on my own…Since I have not had a man I have been able to be 100 percent mom. I haven’t had to be a lover and a discussion partner as well’ (‘Karin åkte till Danmark…’ SvD, 29 March 2016). Many mothers repeat the sentiment that they are happy to not have to argue with a co-parent about child-rearing, and state explicitly that solo motherhood is ‘mostly really nice’ (‘Ny lag…’ DN , 31 March 2016); they reflect that ‘[n]ow that I’m a parent I realize it is just fine [to be a single mother] (‘Alla visste…’ Expressen, 3 May 2014); ‘Everything has worked out just great’ (‘Elna vet…’ Aftonbladet, 29 May 2014), and that ‘it is absolutely fantastic being a mom, it has all gone much more smoothly than I had expected’ (‘Jag kände mig…’ Aftonbladet, 24 March 2016). The representations often also foreground the mother’s honesty in relation to her child. Many solo mother narratives contain passages about how she explains their family life to the child. In these cases, the mothers express the importance of openness and the child knowing the circumstances of its conception. In the words of one woman, ‘I have been completely honest…For me, it has been crucial…I want her to know the truth’ (‘Vi hittade…’ Aftonbladet, 5 March 2014); another woman explains that her child ‘knows she has no dad, because I’ve told her’ (‘Elna vet…’ Aftonbladet, 29 May 2014). A small number of articles include the voice of a child, illustrating how they (at various ages) formulate the experience of being a donor-conceived child of a solo mother. Some children are described as speaking of themselves as ‘made in the baby factory in Denmark’ (‘Barnlängtande kvinnor…’ DN , 16 October 2015), or as coming from the same ‘daddy-seed’ or ‘gift-seed’ [Sw. gåvosäd] as their donor siblings (‘Vi hittade…’ Aftonbladet, 5 March 2014; ‘De har samma okända pappa’ Aftonbladet, 13 July 2014). One mother explains that she has been clear in communicating with her child that there is a donor,

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but no dad, and speculates that her son may be angry with her about this at some future point, but that she will explain to him then that she could not find the right person (‘Han är numero uno…’ Expressen, 26 July 2015). These examples demonstrate the mother’s (future) openness in discussing with her child, which we see as further contributing to maternal respectability, since it is linked to the ideal of honesty as well as to the thorough planning, reflexivity and intensity that marks (good) solo motherhood.

Respectability and Intensive Solo-Mothering Respectability, we argue, is a central component of intensive mothering (Hays 1996), a maternal ideal that is heavily dependent on affluence in terms of wealth as well as time. The ideal is strongly connected to white middle- or upper-class women in the specific cultural setting from which it springs: the US (cf. Taylor 2011), but it is also a distinctive presence in the Swedish twentieth-century context in focus here (Bergnehr 2008; ElvinNowak 1999). The ‘intensity’ of solo mothers is signalled by their strict focus on their child/children. But intensive mothering is also signalled by the drawn-out temporal aspects of mothering. The ‘intensive commitment’ of these women begins even before conception (Graham 2018, 251); they are represented as perceiving themselves as ‘pre-conception parents’ who are ‘expected to account for (and embody) an intensive commitment to parenting before becoming parents’ (Faircloth and Gürtin 2018, 990). Such temporal ‘stretching’ of motherhood, as Faircloth and Gürtin have observed, is typical for how intensive mothering plays out in the realm of ARTs. In part, intensive mothering is an effect of being a solo mother, for parenting alone is likely to be a consuming endeavour. But intensive mothering can also be seen to be represented in the sample in more positive terms, as enabled by solo motherhood. The sample contains several examples of mothers who speak quite contentedly of avoiding the ‘hassle’ linked to co-parenting. Once they have the experience of mothering a child (or children) on their own, they see the benefits of being the only parent and taking all decisions without any need to negotiate with a father as co-parent. Hence, the representations support the centrality of the mother–child dyad, and illustrate the understanding of family noted by Roseanne Hertz: ‘the core of family life is the mother and her children’ (Hertz 2006, xviii). In other words, even while intensive mothering posits an impossible ideal that creates a tremendous burden of responsibility (Hays 1996; cf. DiQuinzio 1999), it can simultaneously be understood as linked to issues of omnipotence and control, which may be perceived

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as positive by the single parent. In the sample, no mother talks about intensive mothering as such, nor does any mother speak of the burden of mothering as overwhelming or even difficult. On the contrary, solo mothers are represented as embracing their motherhood and enjoying it. In this way, newspaper representations suggest that intensive mothering is achieved by these women as a result of their status as solo. Where intensive mothering is an ideal, its achievement can be experienced as a success. This reminds us that intensive mothering, like respectability as such, is double-edged. As Skeggs points out, ‘[r]espectability, domestic ideals and caring all establish constraints on women’s lives, yet they can also be experienced positively. They also reproduce distinctions between women: those who have invested in these constraints can feel superior to those who have not’ (Skeggs 1997, 41). Hence, solo mothers, when represented as heavily invested in their carefully and thoroughly planned parenthood and as reflecting extensively on their life choices— as well as orientated towards maternity and away from sexuality—can be read as activating elements of respectability that serve to distinguish them from coupled mothers, as well as from other single mothers. Such distinction serves to refute the potentially suspect single motherhood of a woman who ‘goes solo’ (May 2001, 48). However, the strong focus on respectability in these representations can also be seen as triggered by an understanding of solo motherhood as more suspect, or ‘at fault’ (May 2001, 48) than other lone motherhoods in the context of any patriarchal society. In the context of Sweden, solo motherhood has to be carefully explained and negotiated in order to deflect suspicion, in part because it negates the centrality of paternity (which in turn is central to patriarchal orders), but also the contemporary ideals of ‘involved fatherhood’ and ‘gender equal parenting’ which are incompatible with the solo mother-family. We have argued that representations of solo mothers are marked by concerns with maternal responsibility, respectability and intensive mothering.16 The representations of solo mothers in the major Swedish dailies are predominantly positive. Very few voices are raised in direct criticism of these mothers in the sample. These findings contrast with comparable studies in the UK, where solo mothers are predominantly negatively portrayed (cf. Zadeh and Foster 2016). Reasons for going solo via ARTs are a lack of appropriate male partner and reproductive time running out. Although represented as ‘Plan B’, outcomes of going solo are invariably happy families, a message strengthened by the imagery that accompanies the texts (smiling mothers, often with children in, or running into, their arms). Solo mothers who speak in their own voice enjoy motherhood once it is achieved, find it easier than anticipated, and have never been directly questioned about their choice. Throughout the material,

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solo mothers demonstrate an orientation towards honesty, good planning and thorough reflection, and they are represented as well-informed and capable parents. This reminds us that the mothers in this category are a select minority of middle- to upper class women, who are relatively resourceful individuals. Also, it reminds us that ‘ARTs predominantly assist the reproduction of privileged groups…class context mediates not only women’s economic resources and access to reproductive care, but also their attitudes towards reproductive planning and control’ (Faircloth and Gürtin 2018, 993). Finally, it is worth remembering that these mothers belong to the segment of the population most often visibilized in the Swedish daily press: the urban, white, heterosexual, middle class.

Notes 1. For overviews of the sociological strand of the research on motherhood via ARTs, see, e.g. Almeling, ‘Reproduction’ (2015); Arendell ‘Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade’s Scholarship’ (2000). 2. However, a Danish study (Andreassen 2018) focuses in part on how Scandinavian solo mothers ‘mediate kinship’ in online fora. 3. 4.3% of births in Sweden are the result of ARTs; this figure includes couples and singles (figures for the year 2017; Q-IVF 2019). From 2020, statistics in this annual report will separate single women from couples. However, statistics do not give the full picture of parenthood achieved via ARTs since some, but not all, solo mothers (as well as couples) go through treatment in national health care. 4. The donor-conceived child has a right to find out who the donor is, while the donor does not have any right to know what child, or children, is conceived using the donated sperm. Whereas a National Board of Health and Welfare directive from 2005 stated that no donor should be used for more than six separate births, this rule was removed in 2010 (‘Svenskar flockas till danska bebisfabriken’ Expressen, 21 May 2015). 5. Worries were immediately voiced regarding the shortage of sperm donors in Sweden, which was already causing problems for hospitals providing treatment for couples; there was also a great shortage of egg donors (“Befruktning av ensamstående mammor kommer att dröja” Aftonbladet, 7 March 2016; “Utlovad hjälp att få barn dröjer” SvD, 31 December 2016). 6. Denmark is a prime provider of donor sperm for international customers, and among international customers at Danish fertility clinics, Swedish women are in majority (Andreassen 2018, 77). 7. While a thorough comparison between representations in morning papers and evening papers, respectively, will have to be the subject of another study, we note that the numbers of texts in evening papers outnumber those in morning papers in 2014 and 2015, but that in 2016, morning

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8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

papers publish on solo mothers more frequently, and at greater length, than evening papers. 2014: 15; 2015: 17; 2016: 20; 2017: 8; 2018: 2 = 62. Skeggs’ study Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable (1997) theorized respectability on the basis of interviews with working class women. According to Skeggs’ analysis, these women could strive to fulfil the ideal of ‘respectability’, but never quite succeed since the ideal as such is a middle-class formation to which these women are denied access. In the entire sample, only one mother describes herself as ‘queer’. The translations of newspaper texts are ours throughout this chapter. Vanessa May observes that ‘There exists also another hierarchy of lone mothers, based on the route into lone motherhood, which operates of the notion of fault: the widow is least to blame for her status, whereas divorced mothers can be blamed at least partly, and single mothers…are alone responsible for their lone motherhood’ (May 2001, 48). Whether this is the need of the mothers in question, or of the journalists, we cannot say. As Graham also discusses, it is the intention to parent alone that raises suspicions about the solo mother. ‘[I]t is the intention of solo mothers to form a single parent family that is called into question by both the women themselves embarking upon this family form, as well as external others, and it is the intention for which they must be accountable. What counts as a “good” or “acceptable” account depends, of course, upon our socio-cultural assumptions, norms and ideologies of right, practical, or permissible conduct’ (Graham 2018, 251–252). ‘bonus dad’ (bonuspappa) is a common phrase in Swedish to refer to a stepfather/extra father. Their respectability, furthermore, aligns them with the good mother-andworker ideal that has been central to the development of the Swedish welfare state, for whom support and security is provided by the state rather than the family.

References Alsarve, Jenny, Åsa Lundqvist, and Christina Roman. 2017. Ensamma Mammor. Dilemman, Resurser, Strategier. Malmö: Gleerups. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Andreassen, Rikke. 2018. Mediated Kinship: Gender, Race and Sexuality in Donor Families. New York: Routledge. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bergnehr, Disa. 2008. Timing Parenthood: Independence, Family and Ideals of Life. Linköping: Linköping University.

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Bergnehr, Disa, and Helena Wahlström Henriksson. 2020. ‘Hardworking Women: Representations of Lone Mothers in the Swedish Daily Press.’ Feminist Media Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2019.1704815. Bergman, Helena, and Barbara Hobson. 2002. ‘Compulsory fatherhood: The coding of fatherhood in the Swedish welfare state.’ In Making Men into Fathers: Men, Masculinities and the Social Politics of Fatherhood, edited by Barbara Hobson‚ 92–124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Björnberg, Ulla. 1997. ‘Single Mothers in Sweden: Supported Workers Who Mother.’ In Single Mothers in International Context: Mothers or Workers, edited by Simon Duncan and Rosalind Edwards, 241–268. London: UCL Press. Bock, Jane. 2000. ‘Doing the Right Thing? Single Mothers by Choice and the Struggle for Legitimacy.’ Gender and Society 14 (1): 62–86. DiQuinzio, Patrice. 1999. The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism, and the Problem of Mothering. New York: Routledge. Elvin-Nowak, Ylva. 1999. Accompanied by Guilt: Modern Motherhood the Swedish Way. Stockholm: Stockholm University (Diss). Faircloth, Charlotte, and Zeynep B. Gürtin. 2018. ‘Fertile Connections: Thinking Across Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Parenting Culture Studies.’ Sociology 52 (5): 983–1000. Graham, Susanna. 2018. ‘Being a ‘Good’ Parent: Single Women Reflecting Upon ‘Selfishness’ and ‘Risk’ When Pursuing Motherhood Through Sperm Donation.’ Anthropology and Medicine 25 (3): 249–264. Hall, Stuart. 1997. Representation. New York: Sage. Hays, Sharon. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hertz, Rosanna. 2006. Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women Are Choosing Parenthood Without Marriage and Creating the New American Family. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jakobsson, Peter, and Fredrik Stiernstedt. 2018. Arbetarklassens symboliska utplåning i medelklassens medier. Stockholm: Katalys. Kelly, Fiona. 2012. ‘Autonomous from the Start: Single Mothers by Choice in the Canadian Legal System.’ Child and Family Law Quarterly 28 (3): 257– 283. Layne, Linda L. 2015. ‘“I Have a Fear of Really Screwing It Up”: The Fears, Doubts, Anxieties, and Judgments of One American Single Mother by Choice.’ Journal of Family Issues 36 (9): 1154–1170. Mannis, Valerie S. 1999. ‘Single Mothers by Choice.’ Family Relations 48 (2): 121–128. Martinsson, Johan, and Ulrika Andersson. 2019. Svenska Trender 1986–2018. Göteborg: SOM-institutet, Göteborgs universitet. May, Vanessa. 2001. Lone Motherhood in Finnish Women’s Life Stories, Creating Meaning in a Narrative Context. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press (Diss). Q-IVF. 2019. Nationellt kvalitetsregister för assisterad befruktning. Fertilitetsbehandlingar i Sverige. Årsrapport 2019.

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Skeggs, Beverly. 1997. Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable. London: Sage. SOU 2014:29. 2014. Assisterad befruktning för ensamstående kvinnor. Stockholm: Fritzes. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2010. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ In Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, edited by Rosalind C. Morris, 21–80. New York: Columbia University Press. Taylor, Tiffany. 2011. ‘Re-examining Cultural Contradictions: Mothering Ideology and the Intersections of Class, Gender, and Race.’ Sociology Compass 5 (10): 898–907. Volgsten, Helena, and Lone Schmidt. 2019. ‘Motherhood Through Medically Assisted Reproduction: Characteristics and Motivations of Swedish Single Mothers by Choice.’ Human Fertility. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273. 2019.1606457. Wahlström Henriksson, Helena. 2016. ‘Pappahandbooks: Guidebooks for Dads in Twenty-First Century Sweden.’ In Pops in Pop Culture: Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the New Man, edited by Elizabeth Podnieks, 31–50. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wells, Michael‚ and Disa Bergnehr. 2014. ‘Families and family policies in Sweden.’ In Handbook of Family Policies across the Globe, edited by Mihalea Robila, 91–107. New York: Springer. Zadeh, Sophie, and Juliet Foster. 2016. ‘From “Virgin Births” to “Octomom”: Representations of Single Motherhood via Sperm Donation in the UK News.’ Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 26 (6): 551–566.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

CHAPTER 12

Plan B: Single Women, Romantic Love and the Making of Babies in The Back-Up Plan and The Switch Jenny Bonnevier

Introduction Boy and girl meet, fall in love, marry, have children. The plot is familiar. Typically, Hollywood romantic comedies end with step three of this four-step process that is the basis for contemporary American ideals of family-making. In what follows, I will discuss The Back-Up Plan (2010) and The Switch (2010), two movies that change this basic narrative by starting with donor insemination, that is, with having children. As Jennifer Maher notes in ‘Something Else Besides a Father: Reproductive Technology in Recent Hollywood Film’, these films ‘exemplify larger cultural dialogues around gender, sexuality and the family evoked by reproductive technologies such as sperm donation’ (Maher 2014, 854). In general,

J. Bonnevier (B) School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_12

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I agree with Mahler’s conclusion that these films (in addition to the two films I discuss here Mahler also looks at Baby Mama, a 2008 film with a plot involving surrogacy) ‘work to reassure their viewers of the attractiveness of the traditional nuclear family by reinterpreting the very technologies that challenge its dominance’ (Maher 2014, 854). However, I find that a clearer focus on what is often called ‘single mothers by choice’ (see for example Graham 2012; Golombok 2015), rather than reproductive technologies in general, allows a more specific analysis of the discourses mobilized in the narratives concerned. In analyses of cultural texts of different kinds, it is increasingly important to take into account—as has already been done in much of the empirical research in sociology, psychology and related fields—the fact that assisted reproductive technologies now include a wide array of techniques and that different reproductive technologies are made to carry different meanings. From the perspective of the study of cultural narratives, these technologies enter into ideological discourses on family and gender in different ways. In more specific relation to Maher’s claim above, it is also important to note, as I will expand upon below, that ‘reinterpretations’ or, as I would prefer to term it, discursive inscriptions of reproductive technologies are not only a phenomenon of mainstream popular culture. The actors using these technologies, not least the prospective parents themselves are actively constructing and negotiating meaning in relation to dominant discourses. In my reading of The Switch and The Back-Up Plan, I will engage with the two films in relation to these negotiations as we can access them through the stories we find in studies of single mothers by choice. After a brief introductory look at the rom-com genre and ideals of romantic love and marriage, I thus turn to a discussion of these mothers and their stories. The main part of the text then follows the narrative development of (single) motherhood in first The Back-Up Plan and then The Switch.

Hollywood Narratives and Single Mothers As Stephanie Coontz notes in The Way We Never Were (1992), marriage is a highly contingent social institution. While we are often asked to believe that the idea of romantic love as constitutive of marriage is an expression of a natural order, marriage and romantic love have been— and are—conceived of as differently related in different social, cultural and historical contexts. Of particular interest for this text is Coontz’

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argument that contemporary American ideals of marriage involve simultaneously celebrating both the strong romantic love between man and woman as the basis of a happy family and motherhood as all-surpassing selfless love. That single women protagonists in Hollywood movies spend much of their time ‘finding a man’ to marry and have a family with is a phenomenon as old as, well, Hollywood. As Michele Schreiber has shown in American Postfeminist Cinema: Women, Romance and Contemporary Culture (2014), the heterosexual romance remains a powerful narrative, even as Hollywood productions attempt to stay attuned to social change. In addition, in the rom-com world of Hollywood, romantic love is the necessary condition not only for marriage but also for what follows as an expression of that love, namely babies. Marriage is not only self-fulfilment through finding the one, it also entails self-fulfilment through motherhood. However, this development typically takes place after the movie has ended (sometimes while end credits roll or in a final montage) thus allowing the main narrative to focus on woman as desirable partner rather than on woman as mother. Over the last couple of decades, however, this standard narrative has lost some of its dominance. Increasingly, we see variations on the heterosexual romance, variations that recognize a wider array of the social realities of family forms than the genre previously did (see for instance Schreiber 2014; Jenkins 2015). These include not only divorced single mothers (and sometimes fathers) but also situations predicated on the availability of assisted reproductive technologies such as donor insemination and IVF and the possibilities these open up for new ways of making families as well as new or non-traditional family forms. Claire Jenkins uses the term mom-com, to identify a new (sub)genre that has a single mother as the romantic heroine. These mom-com narratives, to some extent, have to deal with the tensions inherent in contemporary ideologies that require a woman to be both loving wife and doting mother in equal (and perfect) measure that the traditional narratives could leave untouched under the sign of the ‘happily ever after’. However, as Jenkins convincingly demonstrates, not only do these narratives end in a reaffirmation of the nuclear family model, they also seem more concerned with assuaging male anxieties than with exploring new possibilities for women (as mothers). Or, as Jenkins puts it, ‘[t]here is also a renewed emphasis placed on patriarchy and paternal experience, that is particularly prevalent in the recent trend of mom-coms, films about motherhood—encompassing those narratives of reproductive assistance—in which paternal anxieties and a need for

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male characters to ‘have it all’ are given precedence over female concerns’ (Jenkins 2015, 149–150). While Jenkins briefly discusses The Switch and The Back-Up Plan as examples of this trend, and Maher discusses the two movies at length as failing to realize the progressive potential of assisted reproductive technologies, neither focuses in a sustained manner on the narratives as engaging with the particular challenges and anxieties activated by the single mother by choice. Doing so, I argue, helps highlight specific ways in which this reproductive choice engages with or challenges dominant discourses of family and love. The ‘new’ family forms increasingly recognized by Hollywood include homosexual ones; the possibilities for having biogenetic offspring that assisted reproductive technologies open up for homosexual individuals is one of the aspects of these technologies that is most often applauded as progressive (or condemned as a threat to ‘family values’). As scholars have pointed out (see for example Golombok 2015, 138), reproductive technologies were initially created to enable infertile married heterosexual couples to have biogenetic offspring. As they have developed, however, they have also come to be used in less ‘traditional’ ways. And while I agree with Robyn Wiegman that ‘…new reproductive technologies bring with them a crisis of signification, pressuring the naturalized assumptions that have enabled the most common of kinship terms—family, mother, father, brother—to operate as if they require no critical attention to their social constitution’ (Wiegman 2002, 862), it is also important to note that this pressure rarely causes these naturalized assumptions to fold or the kinship terms to be radically rejected. In fact, many forms of reproductive technologies are easily inscribed within a traditional discourse of family values. Helena Ragoné (2004) has convincingly shown how the actors involved conceive of surrogacy as ‘employ[ing] nontraditional methods to attain traditional ends’ (346); they ‘highlight those aspects of surrogacy that are most consistent with American kinship ideology, deemphasizing those aspects that are not congruent with this ideology. Thus, although the means of achieving relatedness may have changed, the rigorous emphasis on the family and on the biogenetic basis of American kinship remains essentially unchanged’ (342). As we will see, single mothers by choice who become pregnant through donor insemination mobilize traditional discourses in a similar manner, while negotiating their perceived status as threats to the traditional family.

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Single Mothers by Choice: Good Women or Selfish Threats to the Family? Assisted reproductive technologies such as donor insemination, IVF, and surrogacy all share a basic property; they have been developed to make it possible for women to become mothers. In this sense they are not only amenable to, but also products of, dominant understandings of the importance of motherhood, the family, and, indeed, the centrality of the child as a symbolic figure nor only for the social but for the future.1 They share in a pathologization of childless women in their emphasis on the naturalness of the wish for motherhood. Indeed, single mothers by choice, in spite of the designation, generally do not perceive of resorting to donor insemination as a choice. Since they want a biogenetic child and do not have a partner, they come to see sperm donation as their only option. Donor insemination, then, is not so much a choice as a last resort; as one woman puts it, ‘this is always either Plan B or C, or even Plan Z for most people. For me this is definitely Plan Z’ (Graham 2012, 101; see also Golombok 2015). What I find particularly interesting is that neither Graham nor Golombok problematize this claim. Rather, they appear to share the assessment that these women do not really have a choice. As Golombok puts it, ‘[i]n spite of the way in which they are portrayed, the majority of women who decide to go it alone as mothers do so not from choice, but because they do not have a current partner and feel that time is running out for them to have a child’ (Golombok 2015, 141). This aligns well with the rationale of reproductive technologies as a whole as a necessary form of healthcare for women. As Patrick Steptoe, one of the two men who developed the successful IVF procedures that resulted in the birth of the first ‘test-tube baby’, Louise Brown, in 1978, claimed at a conference in 1987, ‘[i]t is a fact that there is a biological drive to reproduce. Women who deny this drive, or in whom it is frustrated, show disturbances in other ways’ (cited in Raymond 1989, n.p.). While I am not claiming that either Graham or Golombok, or indeed the women included in the empirical studies they refer to, would subscribe to Steptoe’s opinion, the naturalness (even the ‘healthiness’) of wanting a child remains unquestioned in discourses on and of single mothers by choice; indeed, it is the very linchpin of these discourses. Neither, as we will see, is the wish for motherhood questioned in the two movies discussed in this paper. However, the decision to ‘go it alone’ is of course at the heart

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of the contentiousness of single mothers by choice. What, more precisely, appears to be at stake here? To begin with, in an American context, ‘condemnation and denigration by the media of single mother families in general (in that they are often blamed for society’s ills) has been extended to include single mothers by choice’ (Golombok 2015, 140). As Golombok also notes, it is not only the media that have cast single mother households as social problems. Several studies suggest that children who are brought up in this family constellation are more at risk than are children who grow up in two-parent households. However, recently, new studies as well as reviews of previous studies show that factors such as income, social stability, levels of education as well as disruptive processes such as divorce explain these differences rather than single motherhood in itself (see for example Graham 2012; Golombok 2015). Single mothers by choice are generally ‘well-educated, financially secure women in professional occupations who become mothers in their late thirties or early forties’ (Golombok 2015, 141). Thus, many of the disadvantages and much of the stigma associated with ‘traditional’ single motherhood do not seem to apply to this group. Yet becoming a single mother by sperm donation is much more contentious than becoming one through either divorce or through an unplanned pregnancy. The issue appears to be the choice itself. But if research (as it now seems to do) suggests that children are not harmed by this choice in terms of mental health or functioning, why is this choice deemed so problematic? A New York Times article on 13 October 2005 reports that ‘“the most common accusation” single women who choose to get pregnant face is that “they are selfish, because of the widely held belief that two-parent homes are best for children”’ (cited in Golombok 2015, 141). I find a comment by a reader of the the UK newspaper Daily Mail on an article entitled ‘Daddies be damned!’ hitting closer to home as to why their choice is perceived as a selfish one. The reader tells these women to ‘[s]pend their money on another Prada handbag … not a person with feelings and needs’ (cited in Graham and Braverman 2012, 197). The very act of putting one’s own needs, here reduced to selfish wishes for accessories, further tainted by consumerist associations, first is what condemns this choice as morally suspect. Indeed, I would argue that the marriage ideology that holds that romantic (heterosexual) love is the basis of not only the marriage union, but also the family unit—as what makes children possible—means that we are asked to think of children as products

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of selfless love, not of individual choice. In patriarchy, as by happy coincidence, this also means that fathers are essential, not only as providers of sperm, but more importantly as providers of family. The anxieties of selfishness that are explicitly raised are primarily those of depriving the child of a present father. The underlying cultural anxiety, as I will show in the reading below, is that of depriving the father of his child (hence the article’s title ‘Daddies be damned!’). In her empirical study of UK single mothers by choice who make use of donor insemination at a fertility clinic, Graham finds that the perceived psychological need of a father and of an identity formed through family history is an important consideration for these women (Graham 2012). The way they reason about this issue has a bearing both on the kind of donor they choose, as well as on the kind of stories they plan to tell or tell their children. While some want to know as much as possible about their donor to be able to present this person as a father to their child, others do not want the donor to inhabit the role of father in any sense, putting much stronger emphasis on fatherhood as a social role. However, a view that appears to unite these women is that they primarily perceive of single motherhood as a temporary stage; they see themselves as reversing the order of events rather than changing the story. Some women in Graham’s (2012) study even suggested that having a child through donor insemination could make finding the one easier as it took the pressure off the search. Thus, the non-traditional method of reproduction is put in the service of the traditional narrative of romantic love. As Graham argues, ‘…in their pursuit of motherhood they are not outwardly rejecting the nuclear family but instead reworking their ideas about motherhood and relationships in an aim to salvage at least some of the nuclear ideal they had imagined for themselves’ (Graham 2012, 97). So what kind of reworking do we see in The Back-Up Plan and The Switch and what do these say about single mothers by choice in relation to ideologies of family and romantic love?

The Back-Up Plan The opening credits of The Back-Up Plan roll to a cartoon-style introduction, with the main character Zoe walking through New York, seeing babies everywhere. A couple having a stereotypical ‘romantic dinner for two’ toast as she walks by and their wineglasses turn into baby bottles, clearly referencing the traditional marriage plot as well as the view of

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babies as a (necessary) product of romantic love. After this opening scene, no more couples appear, only men who produce babies in unexpected ways or use products associated with babies such as strollers or pacifiers. Comically activating the stereotype that women only value men as potential fathers, this opening conflates men with babies in a manner that resonates with discourses on men as childish. More importantly, it also puts men and babies in the same narrative category, where one can be substituted for the other. That is, a woman can choose to have a baby not only without a man but instead of a man, thus threatening the hegemony of the romantic love narrative that was initially evoked. Maher refers to Linda Williams’s influential 1984 essay ‘Something Else Besides a Mother’ where Williams in Maher’s words argues that ‘the mother/child dyad threatens the primacy of the heterosexual romance’ and Maher goes on to claim that a dyad made through donor insemination ‘jeopardizes the hetero-romantic social order to an unprecedented degree’ (Maher 2014, 855). In Maher’s reading, then, the reproductive technology and its products carry radically challenging characteristics that both the films I discuss here, and Hollywood in general, reinterpret to reestablish heterosexual normativity. As we have seen above, however, the single mothers by choice themselves do not read their own actions as a rejection of heterosexual romance. While I do not deny that the technology and reproductive procedures associated with them can be inscribed with radical meaning, the way in which they presently function for the main actors in the situation that The Back-Up Plan addresses is already inscribed within a hetero-romantic narrative trajectory. Instead, I would claim, the narrative substitution of babies for men expresses patriarchal anxieties about loss of control of and marginalization in not only reproduction but also family life more generally. This is in line with Jenkin’s observation that mom-coms—whether they include assisted reproductive technologies or not—appear to be more concerned with male anxieties than the challenges facing mothers or would-be mothers. The opening of the movie proper is a shot of Zoe’s foot as she is lying in a gynecologist’s chair. She is looking at her less than perfect toenails and we follow her inner monologue as she reflects that she would never have ‘done this the traditional way’ without first getting a pedicure. As the scene develops, the narrative continues to emphasize the contrast between the on-going insemination procedure and heterosexual intercourse while simultaneously scripting what is happening in terms of traditional conception, thus producing the effect that Zoe’s choice really is plan B, a failure

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rather than a legitimate alternative. What is primarily lacking (except the perfectly painted toenails apparently necessary for heterosexual intercourse) is physical and emotional closeness. As she leaves, Zoe attempts to hug the (male) doctor, since, after all, they ‘have possibly made a baby together’. The doctor does not respond to her gesture, emphasizing again that the situation is characterized by a lack of heterosexual connection. A later scene that shows the first vaginal ultrasound reads as a symbolic repetition of a procedure of assisted reproduction. This time the romantic lead, Stan, is present. He has accepted a future father role and as part of his commitment to Zoe and their family-to-be, he attends the ultrasound. The procedure is presented as one of penetration with Stan reacting to the size of the instrument, and fainting when the doctor brings it out bloodied. Moreover, the instrument is brought out with the information that Zoe is expecting twins. Thus, another baby is made, so to speak, while the would-be father is watching, not only superfluous but floored by the experience. While the scene draws on a long line of representations of fathers fainting when confronted with the physical realities of pregnancy and childbirth, it emphasizes, again, the lack of heterosexual intimacy that should be the prerequisite of babies in a rom-com universe. However, it also brings to the fore donor insemination as a cause of male trauma. As Maher convincingly shows, this trauma is dealt with by the assertion of the importance of the new man, a man who embraces ‘proactive fatherhood’ (Maher 2014, 858) and, the films assure us, is essential to the creation of a family (if perhaps not a baby). For while the opening credits cartoon posits motherhood as the primary motivator, it soon becomes clear that the lack of heterosexual intimacy is the central driving force of the narrative. This is established beyond any doubt when the character Stan is introduced as soon as Zoe leaves the fertility clinic. This scene plays to the hopes expressed by some of the single mothers by choice in Graham’s study. With the pressure to find a potential father against the back-drop of a ticking biological clock gone, these women hope that letting romantic love ‘just happen’ might now be easier. Zoe’s chance encounter with Stan on the very day of the insemination procedure thus functions as a form of instant wish fulfilment. After the appearance of Stan, pregnancy is consistently assigned meaning—positive or negative—only through or in relation to their developing relationship: her pregnancy-related increased sex drive when they first have sex, her pregnancy pillow taking his place in bed, and above all, pregnancy as the means for him to prove himself worthy of her love

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through his commitment to the role of father. If the scenes involving insemination evokes the (frightening) prospect of a pregnancy without heterosexual intimacy, the rest of the movie re-establishes the necessary and primary nature of the heterosexual romance. While Zoe’s desire for motherhood is seen as natural, the choice to ‘go it alone’ comes across not as selfish or privileged as much as pathological in both its root cause and in its possible result.2 As for the possible result, the threat is the all-female world of support groups (a recurring trope in rom-coms) that is completely lacking in both boundaries and common sense. As Maher points out, this is part of the post-feminist ethos of these movies placing feminism in an ‘unfashionable and humorless past when the personal was the political’ (Maher 2014, 856). This environment includes both mannish feminist/lesbian stereotypes and breast-feeding children long past the toddler stage, conveying that these women have chosen both children and each other over men. This is where Zoe could end up, if romantic love cannot save her from that fate. As for the root cause, this turns out to be a fear of abandonment by men, an inability to trust men to stick around after her father left her terminally ill mother when Zoe was a child. While Zoe protests that her decision to have a child simply comes out of a desire to have a family (and thus attempts to inscribe it as normal), the overall narrative clearly shows that her inability to remain in a relationship is ‘abnormal’. The function of motherhood through donor insemination becomes helping her to overcome this obstacle and find true love. After the initial abundance of cartoon babies, real babies or children are a rare thing in the movie. We see older children only twice. The first time is when Zoe’s friend tells her how horrible it is to be a mother, surrounded by screaming, unruly children in a messy home. The second time is when Stan goes to a playground to try to come to terms with the idea of fatherhood, following the traumatic experience with the ultrasound wand and the magically/medically produced twins. At the playground he starts to talk to a father of three who assures him that fatherhood is rewarding, despite financial strains, sleeplessness and so on. As Maher notes, the unusual casting of a black father as ‘caring and nurturing’ (Maher 2014, 860) is important. However, Maher does not discuss the conclusion of that scene. It ends with the man’s youngest child approaching them, holding feces in his hand, offering it as a gift. In addition to again emphasizing the repulsiveness of children, the scene incidentally casts the black father as a figure of fun, rather than one to

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emulate. Zoe’s babies only appear in focus once, and then in the arms of Stan, who lovingly holds them while one of them throws up. Children or babies, then, are not appealing in their own right. Rather than replacing men in the narrative, they clearly function as enablers of romantic love. This is in line with the celebration of a ‘new masculinity’ discussed by Maher and mentioned above. Films such as The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) and Knocked Up (2007) portray immature men whose ‘narcissism … [is] resolved through renewed priorities of heterosexual commitment and parenting’ (Hansen-Miller and Gill 2011, cited in Maher 2014, 858). While, as we will see, the male protagonist in The Switch follows this line of development more clearly than Stan does, Stan, too, has to embrace fatherhood to become a desirable partner for Zoe. The twins thus function as a means through which Stan can prove himself. That Zoe almost immediately rewards the loving man who handles the babies and their bodily fluids without complaining with sex is a less than subtle way of demonstrating this point. To further drive home the babies’ role as meaningful only in relation to heterosexual romance, one of the babies is named Penny, after the coin they flip during their first meeting and which Stan keeps as a memento. The movie ends with a classic rom-com public proposal and while the babies are present, they are not visible, out of view inside the twin push-chair that Stan custom-ordered and the delivery of which made Zoe realize that he really was going to stay around and commit. That the babies are symbolic, functioning as narrative devices that temporarily hinder and ultimately enable romantic heterosexual love, ending in marriage, is thus made almost ridiculously clear. In her analysis of the final scene of the movie, Maher focuses on the fact that the babies red hair is visible in the shot of the family walking home together, reading it as a sign of the babies’ genetic non-connectedness to Stan and thus as enabling a more progressive view of what a family can be (Maher 2014, 863). But, as she also notes, on their way home from the proposal, Zoe is sick in a flower pot on the sidewalk, signalling another pregnancy and thus almost restoring the original order of events: love-marriage-baby, putting the storyline of the donor insemination in narrative parenthesis, together with the all but-invisible twins.

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The Switch The Switch, too, opens with a walk through New York, but here we follow a man, Wally. This is symptomatic of the film’s concerns. Jenkins claims that ‘both The Back-Up Plan and The Switch usurp female/feminist issues (of reproductive freedom) and focus on male concerns … exploring parenthood through its effect on the father’ (Jenkins 2015, 174). As I have argued above, in terms of donor insemination used as a means to become a single mother, this form of ‘reproductive freedom’ raises concerns of paternity for the women involved, too, but I agree that the perspective taken in The Switch in particular is a pronouncedly male one. An ‘eerily prescient homeless man’ (Maher 2014, 858), who is verbally accosting people on a street crossing, repeatedly calls Wally ‘beady eyed little man-boy’ introducing what will be Wally’s major narrative trajectory—growing up from man-boy to worthy partner and father. Or, to again reference Hansen-Miller and Gill, developing from ‘narcissism’ to ‘heterosexual commitment and parenting’. Wally is on his way to meet his friend, and one time girlfriend, Kassie. At the restaurant, she tells him that she has decided to have a baby using donor insemination and in the process makes it clear that she is not interested in Wally’s sperm. It is evident that she rejects Wally not only as potential father, but also as potential partner. In reviewing existing research, Golombok explains that Although single women who wish to become mothers opt for different methods … donor insemination at a clinic appears to be an increasingly popular route to motherhood. … most prefer to use an anonymous or identity-release donor (a donor whose identity can be requested by the child upon reaching adulthood) rather than a known donor, to avoid the potential complications of the donor’s involvement with the family as the child grows up… Many also prefer to attend a fertility clinic… [which] offer[s] women greater legal protection… (Golombok 2015, 139)

Kassie, however, sets out looking for a donor on her own and once she finds him she throws a getting-pregnant-party that the donor, Ronald, attends with his wife. By introducing Ronald into the story, it becomes clear that the narrative focus is not only on fatherhood in general, as in The Back-Up Plan, but specifically on biological fatherhood. Ronald is introduced as a paragon of new masculine ideals—sensitive, emotionally available and smart, as well as good looking and physically fit. Essentially,

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he functions as Wally’s opposite. Wally is also invited to the party. Here, his feelings of inadequacy and un-admitted love for Kassie, together with a combination of some ‘herbal pills’ and excessive amounts of alcohol, lead him to the bathroom where the donor’s contribution is waiting in a jar. He opens the jar, accidentally spills the content and replaces them with his own. Maher notes that ‘[i]nternet discussions of the replacement ejaculation scene have gone back and forth over whether what Wally does should be considered rape’ (Maher 2014, 864). However, as she observes, within the logic of the movie, the fact that drunk Wally ‘in a rather stunning reversal of the usual gendering of date rape claims to have no recollection of the event until his memory is jogged years later after meeting Sebastian [Kassie’s son]’ exonerates him from any guilt (864). Maher also notes that in this particular scene, the movie clearly departs from the 1996 short story The Baster by Jeffrey Eugenides upon which it is based. In the short story, the exchange of the sperm is both quite deliberate and remembered. While this change clearly serves to render the act more forgivable and Wally a more sympathetic character, there are other, even more interesting changes between the short story and the movie that warrant some attention and that Maher does not address. There are two other differences between the short story and the film particularly worth discussing in this context. The first is the fact that in the short story Tomasina (Kassie’s counterpart) has had three abortions. This fact is an important part of the narrative and early in the story we learn about Tomasina’s relationship history as well as the choices she has made in order to have a successful career. The narrative clearly activates discourses on privileged, selfish career women who realize the consequences of their choices too late. However, by including multiple abortions in her life story, The Baster not only makes her an easier target for critique, but also, more importantly, connects the questions of assisted reproduction to abortion and thus brings the issue of reproductive control into focus. As discussed above, single mothers by choice can be read as natural and thus good in that they only want what it is natural for women to want, namely motherhood. However, a single mother by choice who has first actively rejected motherhood through having three abortions is more difficult to fit into that category. We supposedly learn about Tomasina’s life and her abortions from her own point of view; she appears to be the focalizer of the story. The abortions appear to literally haunt her:

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She thought about them, the little children she never had. They were lined at the windows of a ghostly school bus, faces pressed against the glass, huge-eyed, moist-lashed. They looked out, calling, ‘We understand. It wasn’t the right time. We understand. We do.’ (Eugenides 1996, n.p.)

However, the reader soon learns that the narrator of the short story is Wally. It is thus his version of Tomasina’s life choices that are told, and when we learn that Wally was the potential father in one of the abortions, the narrative focus of the story clearly becomes his right to fatherhood and her attempt to deny him that. In the narrative, abortion and donor insemination perform the same function; they rob (some) men of fatherhood. It is in this context that Wally’s deliberate substitution of sperm should be understood. He is asserting his right to fatherhood, seizing reproductive control. While fatherhood is central to the film as well, The Switch defuses the potential conflict and replaces it with the hetero-romantic love story. The second main difference is that The Baster does not conclude with a happily-ever-after. Wally might have won the war over reproductive control, but he does not develop into a mature ‘new man’ in the manner discussed in relation to The Back-Up Plan and the winner is rewarded with neither romantic love nor the role of father. Instead, the short story ends as Wally first sees Tomasina’s child and recognizes his own features: ‘…I looked down into his crib. The potato nose. The buggy eyes. I’d waited ten years to see that face at the school-bus window. Now that I did, I could only wave goodbye’ (Eugenides 1996, n.p.). In a Hollywood romcom, or mom-com, formula, this is an unthinkable ending. The Switch consequently develops a narrative of both fatherhood and romantic love deserved and awarded. After the scene of the sperm switch, Kassie more or less immediately decides to go home to her family to raise the child in a more suitable environment. She is thus conforming to a script of the good mother, prioritizing a small town, family environment rather than her big city career (that led her to the non-traditional manner of conception). The child and his own sperm switch can thus remain unreal to Wally, as can Kassie as mother. Her life as a single mother by choice takes place out of sight, and when she returns it is for the twofold narrative purpose of gaining a husband for herself and a father for Sebastian. Following a classic rom-com script, a rival appears to push the parties to a recognition of true love. This rival is the intended donor, Roland, who has divorced his wife and is now available and willing not only to be a father

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to Sebastian, but also to be a loving husband to Kassie. The existence of both a known donor and an actual unknown donor allows a rivalry that is fought both on the territories of romantic love and on that of fatherhood. One could of course imagine any number of complicated and non-traditional scenarios arising out of this situation, but instead the factors of romantic love, social fatherhood and biological fatherhood all come to align perfectly as the story develops. In terms of love, Roland’s willingness to be a father together with his general attractiveness makes him a tempting choice for Kassie, but there is no evident love or sexual interest. In fact, somewhat unusually for a romcom, there is little suggestion that Kassie is attracted to either Roland or Wally. There are no romantic scenes involving kissing or physical intimacy, or even looks that suggest things to come. Intimations of physical intimacy and sexual attraction appear only after Wally’s paternity and Kassie’s love for him have both been established, in fact, only in the final scene when they are already married, suggesting that Kassie’s role as responsible mother precludes sexuality except in the role of wife. The distinction between biological and social parenthood is widely held to be the one that assisted reproductive technologies in general most insistently bring attention to, for instance raising questions of what can or should be the basis for valid claims of parenthood (see for instance Wiegman 2002; Gunnarsson Payne 2016). As we saw in the discussion of single mothers by choice above, this is also a question that the women who use donor insemination struggle with and understand differently. In The Switch, both aspects conveniently align. Sebastian and Wally bond— exhibiting striking similarities in personality and habits, and Sebastian quickly begins to trust Wally. While Roland expects Sebastian to be physically brave and active, Wally recognizes and embraces his true nature. Wally’s role as social father, then, comes naturally to him—not because he has any specific parenting skills, but because their similarities, apparently based in genetic relatedness, make him singularly fit for the role. Roland, on the other hand, is not only genetically unrelated, he is unable to relate to the child. Biological and social fatherhood are effortlessly and simultaneously conflated and accepted. While the alignment of romantic love, social fatherhood and biological fatherhood makes the matter of who should make up the family completely straightforward, it nevertheless appears to be important that romantic love is not used as a means to achieve fatherhood, but as an end in its own right, as primary. The proposal scene begins with Wally being

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promised ‘access’ to Sebastian, as is the right of the father Kassie now knows he is. Once this is established, the way they have always felt about each other, the primary nature of their love, can be declared when Kassie states: ‘I left Roland because he wasn’t you’. The experience of fatherhood has helped Wally mature and Kassie recognize his value, but only when that love is clearly established as pre-existing parenthood and sealed with a proposal and a kiss does family life become a possibility. The final scene shows them married, more affectionate than at any time before and providing a world for Sebastian where he is allowed to be himself, and where he is safe and connected.

Conclusion Both The Switch and The Back-Up Plan, then, clearly establish heterosexual love as the basis for both marriage and parenthood, and marriage as the ideal setting for parenthood. Moreover, while initially recognizing the difficulties involved in the reproductive choices their female protagonists make, they ultimately come across as more concerned with resolving paternal anxieties than with exploring single motherhood. In fact, single motherhood is a narrative parenthesis, a bump in the road in some ways, but scripted as a facilitator in others, towards the end objective of a reinstated father figure and nuclear family life. In terms of salvaging the nuclear family ideal for single mothers by choice, these Hollywood stories comfortingly tells them that all will soon be well, that singleness is a temporary affliction.

Notes 1. See, for instance, Lee Edelman’s critique of ‘reproductive futurism’ in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. 2. As Maher rightly points out, the movies discussed here embrace a postfeminist, neo-liberal capitalist logic within which privilege or even selfishness are not easily formulated as critique. Rather, the rhetoric of choice is embraced, while the narratives go on to affirm the naturalness of the heterosexual family. Thus, choices not in line with the heterosexual, romantically based nuclear family are pathological/unnatural (rather than coded selfish).

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Correction to: Reluctantly Solo? Representations of Single Mothers via Donor Procedure, Insemination and IVF in Swedish Newspapers Helena Wahlström Henriksson and Disa Bergnehr

Correction to: Chapter 11 in: B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_11 The original version of Chapter 11 was inadvertently published as nonopen access. It has now been changed to open access under a CC BY 4.0 license, and the copyright holder has been updated to ‘The Author(s)’. The correction to the chapter has been updated with the changes.

The updated version of this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_11

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9_13

C1

Index

A abortion, 9, 53, 56, 59, 63, 66, 73, 80, 196, 197, 206, 208, 247, 248 abuse alcohol, 87 drug, 11, 87, 94 mental, 11 physical, 11, 63 sexual, 73 adoption, 8, 13, 14, 113, 115, 118, 122 gay, 117 lesbian, 117 single, 8, 13, 14, 113, 115, 118, 122 agency, 20, 60, 61, 66, 70, 80, 83, 139 aggression, 40 autonomy, 10, 53, 56, 59, 60, 66 autovictimizing, 40, 46

B biogenetic, 238, 239 biology, 97 borderwork, 11, 88, 92 breadwinner, 14, 21, 22, 134, 137, 139, 156, 157

C career, 38, 199, 220, 247, 248 caretaker, 134 childcare, 14, 21, 40, 120, 141, 202 childhood, 16, 39, 46, 145 child support, 98, 101 class, 17, 59, 71, 72, 80, 196, 198, 200, 220, 222, 231 middle-class, 10, 15, 18, 20, 21, 38, 52, 53, 70, 89, 150, 198, 220, 222 working-class, 52, 53, 55, 59, 60, 63, 65, 66 cohabitation, 32, 62, 118, 180 Communism, 37

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Åström and D. Bergnehr (eds.), Single Parents, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71311-9

253

254

INDEX

co-parenting, 105, 221, 222, 229 critical discursive psychology, 159 culture, 6, 8, 12, 20, 35, 40, 52, 54, 70, 76, 81, 97, 98, 100, 114, 119, 133, 134, 136, 137, 152, 198, 199, 201, 203, 218, 219, 236 cross-cultural, 33 popular, 6, 8, 35, 114, 133, 236 transcultural, 34

D deconstruction, 37 dialogic, 35 discipline, 40, 94 discourse, 3, 5, 11, 16, 19, 20, 33, 34, 37, 44, 51, 53, 65, 66, 72, 87, 95, 114, 155, 156, 159, 160, 163, 166–168, 197, 198, 200, 201, 208, 209, 211, 236, 238, 239, 242, 247 discrimination, 61, 180 divorce, 1–3, 7, 14, 19, 21, 32, 34, 84, 99, 113, 115, 118–120, 122, 126, 158, 190, 209, 220, 223, 226, 237, 240, 248 donation egg, 14, 216 embryo, 14, 216 gametes, 178, 187 sperm, 14, 17, 18, 177, 182, 188, 195, 201, 210, 211, 215–217, 220, 223, 224, 227, 235, 239, 240 donor, 177, 178, 181, 182, 184, 187, 188, 192, 201, 210, 211, 216–218, 220, 223–225, 227, 228, 235, 237–239, 241–249

E education, 2, 16, 19, 56, 93, 139, 140, 145, 151, 158, 240 emancipation, 40, 83, 207 empowerment, 69, 210, 211 ethnicity, 4, 5, 19, 90, 105, 159 exclusion, 55, 78, 81, 124, 157, 183, 185, 191, 192

F family LGBT, 34 nonnormative, 36 nuclear, 1, 8–10, 13, 15, 18, 20, 33–35, 37, 38, 40, 43, 45, 55, 64, 70, 119, 123, 157, 158, 165–168, 197, 200, 217, 236, 237, 241, 250 single parent, 98, 114, 115 family values, 238 father absent, 9, 19, 100, 101, 114, 201 biological, 75, 88, 103, 104, 144, 201 single, 3, 4, 6–8, 11–14, 21, 22, 113–124, 134–136, 140, 150, 155, 157–162, 165–169 social, 249 uninvolved, 9, 42, 45 fatherhood biological, 246, 249 involved, 87, 134, 138, 155–158, 166–169, 230 social, 7, 13, 21, 114, 117, 118, 120, 122–124 traditional, 88 fatherless, 87, 93–95, 97 feminism, 17, 82, 136, 137, 146, 198, 211, 244 fertility ART, 195–200, 211

INDEX

clinics, 16, 177–183, 185, 187, 190, 191, 210, 241, 243, 246 industry, 178, 179 insemination, 177, 195, 241 IVF, 181, 195, 208 treatment, 181, 192, 197, 210 fiction, 6, 9, 11, 31, 35, 36, 55, 56, 135 frequency counts, 182

G gender, 3–5, 11, 13, 15, 19, 22, 42, 72, 88, 92, 103, 104, 119, 120, 133, 136, 137, 139, 144, 146, 151, 152, 155, 166, 202, 203, 208, 209, 211, 217, 222, 235, 236, 247 equality, 155, 166, 208 norms, 133, 136 genre, 8, 18, 88, 113, 118, 138, 140, 143, 146, 156, 218, 219, 236, 237 government, 14, 33, 60, 124, 147, 180, 181, 190, 204, 218 grandmother, 41, 43, 44, 144, 145 guilt, 34, 41, 42, 45, 46, 65, 73, 94, 247

H health, 2–5, 16–18, 21, 63, 87, 90, 91, 93–95, 123, 147, 149, 156, 161, 163, 166, 169, 184, 187, 190, 196, 199, 206, 207, 215, 217, 222, 224, 240 heteronormativity, 11, 35, 88 hetero-romantic, 242, 248 heterosexuality, 169 honour, 74, 78–80, 96

255

I identity, 6, 7, 37, 43, 46, 73, 74, 76, 78, 80, 117, 156, 159, 160, 182, 190, 225, 241, 246 ideology, 37, 38, 114, 143, 238 illegitimacy, 43, 71, 73, 74, 81 imaginary, 37, 44, 45, 147, 218 incest, 104, 143, 145, 148, 149, 151 independence, 39, 72, 178 infertility, 16, 20, 116, 117, 178–181, 184, 188, 196, 197 clinical, 179, 181, 185 medical, 179, 181, 184, 196, 197 social, 184 interview, 4–7, 16, 18, 52, 96, 101, 102, 178, 182, 191, 192, 216, 218, 220, 223, 226, 227

J judgement, 41, 42, 58, 205, 222

K kinship, 238

L lesbian, 16, 51, 179–181, 190–192, 195–197, 199, 203, 208, 216, 217, 244 life-writing, 196, 203, 207, 211 liminality, 57

M mainstream, 13, 37, 51, 60, 64, 118, 126, 127, 137, 144, 147, 236 male role model, 95, 103, 227 marriage, 10, 18, 32, 33, 69, 71–73, 75, 78, 80, 81, 84, 90, 101, 118, 126, 133, 236, 237, 240, 241, 245, 250

256

INDEX

heterosexual, 69, 250 ideology, 240 same-sex, 133 masculinity, 11, 13, 22, 43, 95–99, 103, 104, 114, 116, 122, 123, 126, 135, 137, 152, 155, 156, 158, 159, 166–168 caring, 87 hegemonic, 13, 114, 116, 123, 137, 152 toxic, 96 maternal imperative, 39 maternity, 230 Me Too, 133 mother absent, 13, 51, 121, 151 bad, 33, 61, 63–66 dead/deceased, 142, 145 divorced, 3 good, 10, 18, 41, 52, 53, 58, 63–66, 82, 102, 211, 232, 248 lone, 3, 56, 118, 218–220, 230 single, 3–5, 7–11, 14, 15, 18–22, 31–46, 52, 53, 55, 58, 60, 61, 63–66, 70, 72–77, 79, 81–83, 87–90, 93, 98, 99, 102–104, 114, 116, 118, 119, 134, 157, 158, 165–168, 183, 190, 192, 196–198, 200, 203, 205, 206, 208–211, 216, 217, 219, 220, 223, 226–228, 230, 236–243, 246–250 single by choice, 1, 13, 39, 158 solo, 6–8, 14–18, 21, 187, 215–231 teenage, 4 widowed, 37, 120 motherhood hierarchy, 8, 20 non-traditional, 52 single, 7, 8, 10, 15, 17, 18, 32, 33, 36, 39, 41, 45, 46, 53, 56, 65, 69–72, 83, 98, 115, 178, 184,

198, 210, 216, 218, 230, 240, 241, 250 young, 52–55, 57, 59, 61, 63–66 mothering, 6, 18, 22, 37, 38, 46, 53, 70, 100, 102, 136, 178, 198, 218, 219, 227, 229, 230 intensive, 37, 38, 46, 219, 229, 230 N narrative, 5, 7, 9, 13, 15–18, 21, 39, 40, 42, 45, 60, 63–65, 71, 82, 83, 118, 120–122, 136–140, 142, 143, 145, 149, 150, 189, 190, 207, 220, 221, 228, 235–238, 241–248, 250 narrative perspective, 36, 144 neglect, 38, 40–42, 55 normative, 7, 31, 34, 35, 37, 46, 75, 139, 178, 185 norms conservative, 34, 35 descriptive, 34 injunctive, 34, 35, 37, 46 social, 34, 73 P parental leave, 134 maternity, 230 paternity, 117, 134 parenthood, 2–5, 8, 10, 13–20, 22, 33, 115, 116, 118, 139, 158– 160, 165, 167, 201, 221–223, 227, 228, 230, 231, 246, 249, 250 biological, 249 social, 249 paternalism, 138, 140, 145 paternity, 18, 79, 84, 122, 201, 227, 230, 246, 249 patriarchy, 61, 227, 237, 241 postfeminism, 138

INDEX

postmodern, 32 poverty, 2, 3, 19, 55, 69, 81, 91, 94, 101, 190 pregnancy, 32, 59, 60, 71, 72, 75, 76, 81, 84, 99, 117, 125, 183, 197, 203, 208, 216, 217, 220, 227, 240, 243–245 professional, 5, 16, 17, 39, 46, 66, 77, 158, 178, 183, 187, 220, 227, 240 promiscuity, 69 protectionism, 140, 147 psychology, 236 Q qualitative thematic analysis, 182 queer, 190, 232 R rape, 10, 71, 80, 81, 91, 247 rejection, 17, 37, 40, 81, 150, 222, 242 relationship, 4, 14, 18, 22, 33, 35, 42, 54, 58, 62, 73, 78, 82, 114, 120–122, 135, 145, 151, 163–168, 184, 195, 197, 199, 221, 227, 241, 243, 244, 247 religion, 10, 54 renegotiation, 83, 88 representation, 5–7, 9–14, 19–22, 32, 35, 36, 43, 44, 46, 51–56, 64–66, 102, 104, 114–124, 135, 141, 159, 197, 215–219, 223, 227–230, 232, 243 reproductive assistance, 237 autonomy, 53 control, 242, 247, 248 freedom, 70, 246 functions, 207, 211 procedures, 242, 243

257

services, 178, 241 respectability, 219, 220, 222, 223, 229, 230, 232 responsibility, 42, 45, 63, 101, 102, 124, 145, 165, 216, 223, 228, 230 role, 7, 13, 34–36, 41, 58, 59, 75, 82, 83, 87, 88, 95, 96, 102, 103, 113, 114, 116–118, 120–122, 124, 134, 135, 137–139, 141, 146, 152, 156, 201, 224, 227, 228, 241, 243–245, 248, 249 domestic, 58 parenting, 88, 146 social, 241

S school, 2, 33, 38, 55, 62, 63, 87, 91, 93, 94, 100, 101, 104, 144, 145, 147, 151, 157, 248 shame, 65, 69, 71, 76, 78, 79, 96 socioeconomic, 4, 5, 15, 19, 21, 38, 55, 66, 94, 123 stereotype, 4, 9, 19, 21, 40, 44–46, 69, 82, 104, 114, 115, 119, 242, 244 stigma, 51, 53, 61, 65, 240 stigmatisation, 61, 62 strategy, 44, 76 subjectivity, 39, 44, 46 submission, 11, 71, 83 subversion, 82 surrogacy, 14, 113, 115, 122, 125, 195, 199, 200, 202, 236, 238, 239

T transgression, 10, 11, 73, 83 transition, 15, 57, 118, 156 trauma, 76, 79, 81, 150, 243

258

INDEX

trope, 13, 46, 114, 121, 135–137, 139, 141, 142, 145, 151, 244

W

V violence, 11, 72, 82, 91, 211

widower, 12, 13, 21, 120, 121, 123, 135, 140, 141

welfare, 2–4, 8, 15, 16, 19–21, 98, 102, 169, 232