Remaking Our Identities

Theoretical Framework

The current research explored the VC experience from a critical phenomenological perspective (Good, 1994) grounded in social constructionist epistemology. Our interpretation of the lifeworlds of six VC adults situates the “webs of significance” (Geertz, 1973) which structure their experiences of voluntary childlessness in the context of political and economic forces and mediating social structures and practices (Good, 1994). The process of choosing voluntary childlessness may unmake the lifeworld, as it constitutes a disruption of the dominant cultural life course that expects parenthood, and narratives are means that individuals use to remake their lifeworld and to reestablish a sense of continuity and legitimacy in their existence. Two narrative strategies may be employed or combined to achieve that goal: cultural realignment (finding a place in the cultural meaning system, wherein the VC status is understandable and acceptable; Good, 1994) and cultural transcendence, entailing a rethinking of cultural expectations and generating alternative categories of normalcy (Becker, 1997). The strategies may be accomplished through world-making or “world-building,” which “always starts from worlds already on hand; the making is a remaking” (Goodman, 1978, p. 6). VC adults and couples may engage in construction of a new world—where their voluntary childlessness fits—by refashioning elements and symbol systems of the existing world(s) so that their chosen non-parenthood will no longer be defined as deviant. Working from cultural webs of significance that do not value the VC, these adults may rearrange and reshape the composition, emphases, and hierarchies of the world(s) in which the choice not to be a parent is marginal to one that transcends ordinary conceptions of family and of the life course.

Method

Twelve audio-recorded life history (open-ended) and semistructured interviews (30–115 min long, 3–8 days apart) were conducted, by the first author (a woman of similar age, partnered, without a child), individually with six women and men, aged 28–42 in three married or common-law heterosexual relationships, in their homes or on a university campus from December 2008 to February 2009. A recruitment announcement was circulated to the first author’s acquaintances and posted on bulletin boards on a university campus. Informed consent was obtained. The life history interviews included questions (designed by the authors) about past, present, and future life experiences of the VC decision: How did it come to be that you decided not to have children? How did this decision change your life and who you are? What is it like to be a VC couple? What is the next chapter in your life to come? What will it be like to be a VC couple as you grow older? The semistructured interviews included 15 questions each with several follow-up questions or probes about: the reasons for choosing childlessness; disclosure of voluntary childlessness; relationships with family, friends, children and acquaintances; growing older and life legacies; and the meaning of self, adulthood, parenthood, woman/manhood, marriage/partnership, family, life course, and social status. The participants were invited to speak of anything else they deemed important at the end of each interview and were given the opportunity to begin the next interview with any new reflections. This research was approved by the institutional research ethics committee. Participants were given pseudonyms.

Merged interview data from verbatim transcripts was examined through inductive and deductive thematic (surface) and theoretical (deep structure) analysis (Rothe, 2000) or the interpretation of the themes constructed from the narratives. The first author read through each transcript to identify themes and reevaluated them as subsequent themes arose in other transcripts. “Eclectic” coding (Saldana, 2013) identified emergent concepts, categories, ideas, and aspects of experience in the transcripts. Review of the codes within and among transcripts revealed themes (larger patterns and hierarchies). The identification of themes was informed by the literature review, conceptual model, and in vivo labels. Themes were organized according to sequences of the narratives and developmental stages. An essential plot was expressed in its rudimentary form by every participant in answer to the researcher’s very first question and then elaborated upon. These patterns were analyzed according to the synthesis of the theoretical framework: How did the narratives represent the preservation of the elements of the commonsense (VC) lifeworld? How did they negotiate the transitions between the lifeworlds they inhabited? How did the narratives represent the mediation of disruption and creation of continuity? How did they serve to protect the individual and couple in a dangerous, liminal, moral world? Participant checking of the analysis and interpretation was not conducted. According to Braun and Clarke (2006), the criteria for “good” thematic analysis include a thorough consideration of all the data, resulting in themes that are “internally coherent, consistent, and distinctive” (p. 98); in addition, the analysis and data should “match each other – the extracts illustrate the analytic claims” (p. 98) and the analysis “tells a convincing and well-organized story about the data” (p. 98). The two authors engaged in a dialogue with each other and the participants’ stories to produce one “good” interpretation (of many possible), “not to display mastery over the story, but rather to expand the listener’s openness to how much the story is saying” (Frank, 2010, p. 88). The authors follow the tradition of an interpretive phenomenology, grounded in hermeneutic and critical theory, and the epistemology of social constructionism (both objectivist and subjectivist; Crotty, 1998). From this perspective:

skilled hermeneutic inquiry has the potential to uncover meanings and intentions that are…hidden in the text. Interpreters may end up with an explicit awareness of meanings, and especially assumptions, that the authors themselves would have been unable to articulate. (Crotty, 1998, p. 91)

Results

The narrative themes demonstrated a simultaneous movement of cultural realignment and transcendence. These six VC adults rejected the position of stigmatized marginality associated to their reproductive choice, moving toward the center of the cultural order and social structure, and then beyond that normative standard toward a transcendent space, where a positive value is attached to their abnormality.

Similar to the findings of previous research, the six men and women spoke of frustrating and disappointing experiences of pronatalist social pressures, including denial, disbelief, questioning, and judgment—by family, friends, colleagues, health professionals, and new acquaintances—of the reality and legitimacy of their decision not to become parents. Such resistances or even accusations by others were countered in various ways, such as asserting their thoughtful process of reproductive decision-making, their belief in the autonomy of children from being a parent’s legacy, and framing childbearing—or not—as a matter of personal choice. Notably, John and David asserted minimal social conflict related to their VC status, which was not central to their identities. Some expressed guilt for not fulfilling their parents’ wishes to become grandparents, which was somewhat relieved by legitimate health concerns and childbearing by siblings. Our findings reveal a number of strategies of identity (re)making in the context of these social circumstances. This descriptive report gives voice to all participants on most topics through direct quotes, demonstrating the proximity and variation of participants’ ideas and expression, suggesting that their abnormality is not constructed purely through idiosyncratic devices, but also collectively, through the recourse to alternative collective discourses.

Discussion

Our interpretation presents a part–whole relationship model relating many topics to the broader trajectory and way of life (Gadamer, [1959] 1988), placing the VC nature, choice, and gendered embodiment within heterosexual couples’ shared life narratives. We argue that the VC identity is not only part of a conception of self but also a lifestyle, a world, an ethical aim and a life plan; all these aspects of existence are components of a global configuration. The experience of the VC individual is more fully understood in the context of the whole life story (Gadamer, [1959] 1988). Collectively, the participants’ narratives constructed a developmental process of discovery of the VC self (in early life and relationships) and the choice to accept it as one’s identity (conceived as an outgrowth of one’s nature) and destiny. The efforts to bring the body in line with that inner self—declaring oneself VC as a couple and seeking permanent contraception—brought about intense resistance and conflicts in their lives. Forgoing ordinary physical parenthood allowed them to take on alternative nurturing roles in the “village.”

In the same way that the social milieu naturalizes reproduction, the participants naturalized their voluntary childlessness, revealing the logic of their adaptation to their otherness and the complex of world, society, family, self, and sexualized body, which serves as a matrix of their understanding of themselves and of the place they occupy in the chain of life. While often characterized as a choice, the participants constructed voluntary childlessness as both innate and chosen: the decision was to accept one’s VC nature. These findings are similar to characterizations of the VC choice and identity as a “fluid journey” (Shaw, 2011, p. 151), a “naturally childfree position based on a non-decision” (Peterson & Engwall, 2013, p. 383), and “deep-rooted,” “necessary, essential and inevitable” (Peterson, 2014, p. 6). In the current study, participants emphasized the VC identity as primary and the choice as secondary. Further research should explore these nuances of choice and nature.

Lee and Zvonkovic (2014) characterized sterilization as an act of “closing the door” (p. 548) in the VC decision process. In this study, sterilization was also described as a significant point of passage and a statement about the irreducible character of the VC identity. For two women, seeking permanent contraception brought about a disruption of their VC lifeworlds (linked to the taboo and associated to self and social harm). Replacing the VC body with a compromised procreative body brought cultural realignment, without challenging the underlying cultural values. This strategy of substituting a less stigmatized or more understandable identity (involuntarily childless) for the stigmatized VC identity was also noted among Park’s (2002) participants. For Mary, it was the questioning of her “tree” by a colleague that brought disruption. At the same time, both Mary and Kate asserted an alternative, metaphorical fertility outside the cultural norms of motherhood. In contrast to these strategies related to the body, Peterson and Engwall’s (2013) participants eschewed female sterilization, preferring to stay “notionally fertile” (p. 383). Such varied and gendered experiences of body and identity are not surprising given the Western notion of “women’s ‘nature’ as sexually reproductive” and thus, “childless women are an oxymoron, defined by something they are not” (Hird & Abshoff, 2000, pp. 347–348) and “fail to conform to the feminine ideal about attachment, connectedness, dependence and concern for others” (Peterson, 2014, p. 8).

This study’s collection of themes suggests cultural realignment and cultural transcendence through narrative, simultaneously reaffirming the ordinary conceptions of parenthood and family and transcending its frontiers. The participants deconstructed the figure of the VC adult imposed on them and remade a new image. The participants agreed with others regarding their otherness but reversed the meaning and value attached to it, from negative to positive. The results resonate with findings that VC adults challenge pronatalist discourses with other cultural values (Park, 2002) and point to generative life activities (Doyle et al., 2012). Similarly, Terry and Braun (2012) found that childfree men who had vasectomies positioned themselves as both selfish (less than) and as unconventional and “beyond the normal or average person” (p. 219). Additional research should explore and clarify normative, parallel, and transcendent VC identities among men, women, and couples.

For two men, their descriptions of a version of parenting in their youth may have been an act of cultural realignment, declaring they had already been a parent, and through this equivalence, reintegrating themselves into the realm of parenthood and normalcy. Like the third man, some of the women in Mollen’s (2006) study reported the influence of “early responsibilities” and “experiences with child care” that were “unappealing” (p. 274) on their decisions. Additional research is needed to support this interpretation and clarify whether the men were saying that they did it in the past and disliked it, so they got rid of any form of parenting, or that they have explored the standard way to parent when they were young and, as a result, they have adopted an alternative form of parenthood; that is, whether they constructed a realignment (through symbolic equivalence) or on the contrary a dissociation from the norms based on past experiences. These gender-specific tales cannot be explained based on the data from this small study but highlights an avenue for future exploration.

It has been recommended that counselors and therapists identify their assumptions about VC adults, and normative development and family forms in order to assist individuals and couples in dealing with experiences of stigma, as well as with reproductive decision-making, identity and role issues, and future goals (Mollen, 2006; Gold & Wilson, 2002; Pelton & Hertlein, 2011). Practitioners should understand the challenges couple relationships face during the process and as an outcome of the decision to be VC (Durham & Braithwaite, 2009). The results of this study expand our knowledge of how some men and women may conceive of and adapt to their VC identity. The harmony of the shared narratives—in content and form—is a result of the couples’ shared lives and jointly constructed, intersubjective discourses, as well as residence in the same local context. The interpretations from this small study require further support. Future research instruments should address issues of the VC nature and choice, the VC body, and caregiving roles in childhood, and consider how shared narratives evolve through time as people grow older and encounter life experiences such as separations and divorce.