Researching Young Men and Family Formation: Two Stories

Abstract

Young men are underrepresented in Australian research on family formation, especially young men who are nonmarital fathers, and are not university educated. In this pilot project, an interdisciplinary research team (demography, sociology, and gender studies) based in Australia set out to design an approach that would engage this particular group of young men on the topic of family formation. We decided to employ a nontraditional research method (which we call scripts) in order to engage young men indirectly on this sensitive issue. This article does not report on what we found; rather, our focus is on gender dynamics involving the research team’s imaginings of masculinity in the research process. We highlight and interrogate the gendered and heteronormative assumptions we made in the research design, anticipating that our experience can inform future research on masculinity and family formation.

Keywords

reproduction Australia young men family formation sensitive issues nontraditional research methods scripts heteronormativity

Introduction

This paper could be read as an account of how we sought to redress a gap in research that has broadly overlooked young men’s involvement in planning for, talking about, and expressing desires about partnering and having children. Yet this paper is more than this, and therefore it needs to be read as two stories. The first is perhaps a more conventional story. It examines the research process of piloting the development, writing, and use of a script that was intended to be used as a role-play prompt for two small groups of young men recruited as research participants.¹ Our first story details how our role-play script—as a nontraditional research method—acted to overcome what we have characterized as two broad oversights in qualitative research on family formation intentions and desires among young men. The first oversight is substantive, that is, “if the development of fertility is to be understood, we need to study men…as well as possible gender differences in parental and other aspirations” (Puur et al. 2008, 1885). Young men are increasingly becoming the focus of research on family formation, but research in this area has focused less on young men who are not parents, and who are not university educated (Forste 2002). Thompson, Lee, and Adams’ (2013) research addressed young Australian men’s perspectives on fatherhood, but they focused on university students. They argue “A broader understanding of young men’s intended and imagined family roles would require research that explored the views of men from a much wider range of backgrounds” (2013, 162). Part of this oversight occurs through the reproduction of heteronormative ideas in research on family formation (Bartholomaeus and Riggs, 2017), a problem that surfaced in this study design.

The second oversight is methodological. Thompson and Lee, in their research on Australian young men’s reproductive attitudes and preferences, have demonstrated a “misalignment between declining fertility rates and the preferences [for having children] of young men and women” (2011a and 2011b). Thompson and Lee’s work suggests the possible benefits of an approach that doesn’t assume straightforward answers can be proffered by participants on this topic. Researchers are yet to explore how nontraditional methodological approaches and methods may lend themselves to exploring young men as research participants in studies seeking to understand misalignments in family formation desires and outcomes. Such research prompted our consideration of how best to conduct research asking men to articulate their privately held reproductive desires. By aligning our research with the dynamic, transformative, and unpredictable forces as described by affect theory (Stephens 2015), and various nontraditional and arts-based approaches to conducting research (Carroll 2015; Mannay 2012; Park-Fuller 2003), we developed scripts informed by demographic research. In doing so, we attempted to move beyond traditional methods such as interviewing, focus groups, and surveys in order to enable the often amorphous, private, and latent desires of family formation to be better articulated by young men to researchers.

Our first story, therefore, begins with relative certainty, within a typical linear narrative structure of, “this is the gap, this is what we set out to do, and this is what happened, and here are some findings” (Law 2004). The story tells of a team of four Australian researchers² wanting to understand more about young men and family formation in Australia. They drew on demographic data, which is highly heteronormative, to identify overlooked cohorts of research participants, and to inform the production of a research-informed role-play script (hereafter referred to as “the script”), highlighting contemporary trends in Australian family formation as related to the target participant cohort. The team (four women) envisaged the script as a stimulus for data collection in small groups with participants. We turned to young men with expertise in performance and social research to write the script in conversation with the research team, and then perform it. Reflecting the demographic data, these scripts assumed heterosexual family formation. In this first story, we anticipated that the scripts we co-constructed would be employed with our participants, and that the team would reflect on the data produced in relation to the use of the scripts.

We detail how the script was intended to be used in this research (Story One) and how it was actually used (Story Two). We recognize that it is not possible to entirely separate these accounts; they are clearly entangled. This first story imagines the script-as-method at the periphery and focuses on the substantive topic involving young men’s family formation desires. Story One outlines our research agenda, including the development of a mixed-methods approach to research. Here we also consider existing research on the sensitive topic of young men and family formation; this was also intrinsic to the development of the script. We also indicate how we utilized quantitative data to inform the development of the research process. It is important to convey the process of developing the script, and what we envisaged because this helps us to highlight just how far the research diverged from our original intentions.

Story Two positions the script at the center of our analytic focus.³ Once our script was written and later presented by the researcher assistants to participants, it took on a path of its own. Thus, Story Two traces the contribution of this script in our research, and could only be crafted after the research assistants (RAs) performed their role-play in front of small groups of participants. The script created a space, and place, for young men to articulate their future desires surrounding reproduction and family formation, just as we required of it and envisaged it might. Our second story traces the ways in which the script morphed as it passed between the different groups involved in the research: four women researchers (“the team”), four young men “RAs,” two groups of young carpentry students as research participants, and a nontraditional methodology in the form of a research-informed script.

Our second story attends to how the nontraditional method itself played a role in our research: the script united sociological and demographic knowledge so that it becomes a cross-disciplinary product of inquiry; the script became a tool to open up affective flow and discussion between disparate groups on a sensitive topic. For the young male RAs, the script became preparatory material to comfortably facilitate an audience of carpentry students, and an object and subject of a focus group session/prompt. Then, in this article, it becomes an entry point into a broader methodological discussion on what we see as productive tensions in interdisciplinary qualitative research on young men and family formation.

Story One

Young Men and Family Formation: Using Quantitative Data to Understand Behavior, Desires, and Intentions

Our desire to understand family formation from the perspective of young men arises from the realization that reproductive research is continuously reproducing past patterns via its association of reproduction with female embodiment. This focus on women in relation to family formation reflects the fact that it is women who dominate the domestic sphere–particularly childbearing and rearing. In Australia, we therefore know much more about young women’s desires and intentions regarding fertility and childbearing than we do about the desires and intentions of young men (Keygan 2017). While a considerable amount of research on family planning and formation has been undertaken from the perspective of women, mothers, and children over the last several decades, the perspective of men and fathers has been greatly overlooked in comparison, particularly in qualitative research (Bartholomaeus and Riggs 2017; Forste 2002). Research on family formation is also overwhelmingly heteronormative. Researchers working on family formation need to examine embedded heteronormativity regardless of the participants being recruited, and because relations in research involving human interactions inevitably ties us together as intimate subjects in ways we cannot foresee at the outset (Detamore 2016).

We set out to study young men and family formation, working with demographic data; we were drawing on a discipline that often affirms heteronormative assumptions because of its reliance on large-scale surveys, which too often erase queer⁴ experience, implicitly or explicitly. We note there has been a recent focus on the impact of education on family-formation behavior (Sassler, Roy, and Stasny 2014). This research provides evidence of how education and socioeconomic context influences men’s decision-making. We know that in Australia, men with lower levels of formal education are less likely to get married, and more likely to have children outside marriage and to have children across multiple partnerships (Heard 2011; Thomson et al. 2014). Australian research also demonstrates the need to better understand the societal influences impacting young men and those more likely to become teenage fathers (Lam et al. 2015).

In the most comprehensive analysis of men’s fertility intentions in Australia to date, Keygan (2017) finds that men’s fertility intentions are different to those of Australian women, highlighting the need to fully understand men’s desires in order to understand women’s fertility decisions. Research on family planning in the United Kingdom shows that, while men do want to be more “involved” and to be more knowledgeable, societal expectations make services and programs inaccessible to many young men (Osborn 2006). While there is reason to be concerned about the lack of engagement by researchers with young men on the topic of family formation, Helmer (1996) cautions against discourses unproblematically celebrating a call for “male involvement” in family formation because of the potential to reinscribe or worsen existing patterns of dominance by having men take more active control of women’s decisions regarding family formation.

This literature review attends to how young men are perceived prior to and during research, and in the policies and service responses that result from it (Osborn, 2006). Research on young men and family formation also needs to consider the perspective of men along with the perspective of their partners; this can inform a more holistic understanding of how family formation is influenced by gender dynamics between couples (Helmer 1996; Lindberg and Kost 2014). Important knowledge could also be gained from understanding fertility awareness and desire for family building of men (Vassard et al. 2016).

Based on this literature review, and drawing on demographic data, we considered how Australian family formation patterns of men might inform scenarios in the qualitative component of our research. We did this because we wanted to develop a research prompt for use with participants that could reflect, and encourage participant reflection on, current family formation trends. For this purpose, we used the 2015 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. We analyzed data for men in three age groups, 20–29 (n = 1,657), 30–39 (n = 1,345), and 40–49 (n = 1,303), to gain information about the experiences of young men, but also the men around them, brothers, friends, workmates, supervisors, and fathers.

Using the HILDA data, we are able to provide an overview of the Australian population, but we do not have direct estimates for our study site, a regional town with a population of just over 20,000 people. The 2012 HILDA survey asked a limited question “Which of the following describes how you think about yourself?”, with response options “Heterosexual or Straight,” “Gay or Lesbian,” “Bisexual,” “Other,” “Prefer not to say,” and “Unsure or Don’t know.” In 2012, 1.4% responded as Gay or Lesbian. The research team was conscious that young men who identify as sex or gender diverse may be unlikely to come out in this small pilot study on family formation. While our design did not preclude this possibility, nor did it explicitly encourage such participation.

HILDA data reveals that men in a trades occupation⁵ start having children around two—three years earlier than men in white collar occupations. They also have more children than men in white collar occupations. Of those tradesmen in partnerships, most are married, but they are more likely to cohabit than white collar workers. With regard to their sociodemographic backgrounds, many more tradesmen grew up in sole parent families, or with a mother and stepfather present, than those in a white-collar job. Around half in their twenties owned or are buying their own home. Overall, our analysis of HILDA survey data showed men in a trade held much more traditional values than men in a white-collar occupation, particularly in the area of gender roles. This survey data, which reproduces heteronormative ideas of Australian masculinity and family life, clearly shaped the methods we adopted, affirming a heteronormative bias for the purposes of recruitment and analysis.⁶

Our review of the existing literature and the HILDA data indicates that young men working in trades will have more children, and that more of these children will grow up in nontraditional arrangements.⁷ We were interested to know more about what might be behind these trends. In order to recruit participants, we decided to target an educational institution that delivered training programs for the construction industry, reasoning that this would be a logical place to recruit young men working in trades. We approached two different institutions and selected a site in a regional farming area. Our next challenge was to work out how best to explore the sensitive topic of family formation with the participants.

Researching with Men on Sensitive Topics

Of the research available from the perspective of men and fathers, most is quantitative in design. Several of the quantitative studies call for more qualitative analysis to gain deeper insight into the sociodemographic influences guiding men in their decisions and attitudes around family formation and building. Most of the qualitative research is produced via analysis of focus group and interview data. When young men are engaged in conversation, they have been shown to demonstrate an opinion about contraceptive choice, and a willingness to discuss reproductive health and contraceptive options (Forste 2002; Bartholomaeus and Riggs 2017).

Research undertaken via focus groups with young men aged 19–26 years, in San Francisco (Raine et al. 2010), discusses the difficulties in engaging men in contraceptive decision-making. Through discussions with these young men about forms of relationships, the researchers gain a deeper understanding of young men’s experiences, attitudes, and values that current quantitative studies have not been able to gauge. However, it is noted that these focus groups could have played to the men’s (hyper)masculinities, leading to exaggeration and competition, and may also explain the explicitly contemptuous and derogatory language used by many of the men involved.

The potential for competitive (hyper-)masculinities in the interactions between young men in focus groups to produce distorted or hyperbolic data is addressed by Allen (2005):

The nature of focus group interaction offers young men opportunities to fashion their masculinity…enabl[ing] us to study masculinities in the making. From this perspective lewd remarks or boasting about sexual conquests are not behaviours which hinder the collection of “good” data, but offer insights into how male sexuality is constituted. (2005, 53)

Allen attends to how forms of masculinity are performed, maintained, and policed by young men and those around them through the research process, but she cautions against too easy suggestions regarding how gender influences the process of data collection. She posits that it is not the gender of the facilitator that determines the outcomes and responses of participants, but the way in which facilitators engage in the process and with the focus group (Allen 2005, 50). Sallee and Harris’ (2011) research, which compares the different interview responses given by men to female and male facilitators, suggests that while male facilitators can more easily gain rapport with male participants, information gathered from both a female and a male researcher is of importance to furthering our understanding of how male identities are performed.

What We Thought a Script Could Do in Researching Men and Family Formation

Based on the literature on researching young men’s fertility and family formation desires, we suspected that the young men we were approaching in our study may not have discussed fertility and relationship dynamics with peers; this assumption was later affirmed by the participants’ self-reporting. We felt that in order to facilitate the conversation between the researchers and the participants we needed some sort of stimulus for the participants to respond to rather than simply being asked a direct question. Therefore, we decided to use a script to guide a role-play by the RAs to elicit responses from participants in a small group setting. In telling this story, we are aware the relationships between the authors of the paper are caught up in relations of power. Echoing Huckaby we argue “not so much that relations of power reversed themselves at times, but that power and vulnerability were held concurrently within our relations at all times” (Huckaby 2011). We hope that the shifting relations of power within and between the RAs and the research team are apparent in the ways in which our analysis explicitly situates different perspectives—not with the hope of providing resolution, but rather to highlight how relations of power were reinforced and disrupted within the research team.

Below we speculate on what we hoped the script might do with regard to opening up a space for young men to articulate and then discuss their family formation desires. The research team reflects on how we first became enthralled with scripts via research that draws upon nontraditional texts, affect, and performance to liberate the dissemination of research from academic conventions, build connections with audiences, and provoke reflexivity, reflection, and social change (Park-Fuller 2003).

First, we drew on Carroll (2015) and Mannay’s (2013) experiences in translating their research data on donor breastmilk (Carroll) and domestic violence (Mannay) into the epistolary and poetry forms, respectively. Their approaches conveyed the deeply held, private emotional sentiments to a more diverse readership beyond academia, or those familiar with social science discourse (Carroll 2015), and connected “cognitively and emotionally” with audiences to “exploit reflection” and work toward social change (Mannay 2013, 131). Nontraditional written forms in research such as epistolary and poetry forms that themselves drew upon research evidence as their basis methodologically informed the development of our script.

Second, we drew on a body of collaborative and performance work that positions participant engagement and affect as critical resources and point of departure for gaining traction with groups of participants actively engaged in reflecting on their complex everyday situations. For example, Video-Reflexive Ethnography brings together researcher and participants as co-analysts of everyday practices through the use of collaborative viewing of video clips depicting the everyday practices of participants (Iedema and Carroll 2015). Meanwhile, Playback Theatre uses actors and performance to place the personal stories of volunteer audience members “center stage”, and then provides the audience with opportunities to hear and see familiar life experiences (Park-Fuller 2003). These collaborative methodologies position research participants and researchers as collectively entangled in the affective momentum and capacities of the group as they view, respond to, and actively engage in changing the way their everyday practices are shaped or experienced. Further inspiration for our idea of what a script could do for understanding young Australian men’s family formation desires was Limmer’s (2016) use of a commissioned research-based drama performed as a monologue to cut a path to discuss highly sensitive issues. At the start of his focus groups with young men the monologue was conceptualized as a:

Safer conduit for discussion of some of the more sensitive issues through a “third person” as well as an opportunity for the researcher to reflect on how different participants positioned themselves in relation to this embodiment at different points in the focus group activity (2016, 131)

For us, the script emerged as a means to engage in role-playing, and affect was a central feature, as it offered potential to engage with, break down, and cut across boundaries in a group setting. Inspired by Carroll (2015), Mannay’s (2013), and Limmer’s (2016) translation of data into creative use, we decided to translate Australian demographic data about the dominant reproductive trends for young men and to turn this into a script that itself would be performed to our participants by young men who are researchers and with expertise in performance. Encouraged by the role of affect in opening up group discussion about everyday practice, and the shattering of silences around sensitive issues as espoused by Playback Theatre⁸ and Limmer, we hoped the performance of the script in a small group setting with participants would encourage participants to articulate feelings on a sensitive, and potentially unfamiliar, topic.

To assist the RAs to develop the script that we envisaged, that they would then go on to use in their role-play during data collection, the research team devised prompts (e.g., “Does marriage matter when imagining decision making about children?” and “Who do you imagine is the key decision maker about when to start a family?”), in relation to the literature review and the demographic data. The list of prompts was provided to the RAs, who then wrote the script. Here are two brief excerpts from the script:

My partner and I are thinking of having a child, despite the fact that we’re not married, and don’t currently live together, but Rohan believes it’s important to marry and live together before seriously considering having children…

(Does marriage matter when imagining decision making about children?), and another:

My job is very stable, but my wife works for herself and has less reliable income, but we still think it’s alright to have kids. Do you think you should be in a certain level or position of employment before you should consider having kids? (Are there things that should “be in place” before having children?)

We envisaged the script as a stimulus for the research events and hoped the young men participants would be prompted by the scripts to share their own thoughts about the dynamics of family formation. We ran three separate events.⁹ The first being a pilot conducted with peers of the RAs, the second was with first year carpentry students who averaged 20 years of age. The second was with later year students (who also averaged 20 years of age). The events were facilitated by three of our RAs who were only slightly older than the participants. We also hoped that this similar age range would facilitate the process of data collection because our participants would feel more comfortable discussing family formation with other young men. The facilitators’ role was to “act out” the script and to facilitate reactions and discussion from the participants.

In sum, Story One has detailed how we turned to experimental writing and role-play as a method to cross boundaries of disciplines (sociology; gender studies; demography; and carpentry), gender and age (women researchers in permanent academic positions, young men research participants, and young men RAs who are primarily postgraduate students), life stage (stable monogamous cohabitation, single, living with partner, and living with partner and their family), and roles (researcher, role-player/RA, and audience/research participants) in order to create a space and place for young men to articulate their future desires surrounding reproduction and family formation¹⁰. Below, in Story Two we ask, “What did the script do?”

Story Two

What Can a Script Do?

In Story Two, we make visible the flows between the different agents involved in the research: four senior women researchers, four young men as RAs, two groups of young men carpentry students as research participants, and a nontraditional methodology in the form of a research-informed script. As a result, our analysis turns away from the linear narrative structure of Story One’s research questions about masculinity and family formation, instead attending to the part the script played in the affective momentum of the entire research process. But losing traditional framings of methodological rigor is no easy feat—like Taguchi (2013)—we found we lapsed into “habitual ways of thinking and practicing” repeatedly throughout the research process (2013, 715). To examine this further, we now turn to the accounts provided by Todd and Copland, two of the RAs on the project, as they reflect on the script in relation to the role-play event¹¹ with the research participants (carpentry students).¹² Through their accounts, we reflect on the many shifts (see Mauthner and Doucet 2008; Taguchi 2013) in the utilization of the script (and therefore of method), and consider how deep entanglements of gender and method shaped the project design and data construction. By explicitly separating out the accounts provided by the RAs, we recognize their capacity to exercise power within the research process, but also the potential for concurrent vulnerability as a result of “analysing from below” (Huckaby 2011) in this “dual-role space” (Råhem et al. 2016).

What follows are snapshots from Todd and Copland’s reflexive accounts on how they felt the scripts became an imposition or obstacle in terms of building rapport with participants:

When Jamahl and I first collaborated on the script, we opted for a format that consisted of a series of “acts.” Following the first session, it became clear that strictly adhering to the script gave an artificial quality to the interactions. Obeying the script closely also risked imposing a structure on the exchanges that was not always conducive to the flows and rhythms that the conversations took. (Todd, Research Assistant)

We used the script in both the pilot and in the first session, but sort of abandoned it in the second session. This was following discussions about how the starting point of the script potentially narrowed conversation. (Copland, Research Assistant)

In the eyes of the research team, it appears that the affective potential of using a research-based script “failed” at engaging both the RAs and the participants in discussing the participants imagined reproductive futures. Instead of presenting the role-play in a point–counter-point fashion (what the research team imagined), the RAs offered their own experiences to the participants as a way of eliciting discussion:

Instead of introducing “characters” with contrasting viewpoints, Jamahl and I shifted to sharing our own thoughts on the issue at hand. The format was flexible enough to incorporate this new approach, where recounting our conversation replaced the performance of particular characters. (Todd, Research Assistant)

We developed rapport with the participants and seemed to be able to build trust with them quickly. I think sharing our own stories helped our participants feel comfortable in sharing their own stories and thoughts. (Copland, Research Assistant)

Yet, despite going “off script” in terms of not only discarding the script altogether and then drawing on one’s own experience as a young male in the facilitator role, ghostly traces of the script remained by informing the topics to be discussed at the “role-play event” and preparing the RAs in advance:

We departed from the script somewhat…however, we did so without abandoning entirely the initial motivation for developing the acts. (Rohan, Research Assistant)

I don’t think we used the script as intended, and the sessions ended up being more guided conversations. The script however was a useful tool for us to develop and think about the topics we wanted to cover. (Copland, Research Assistant)

Here we see the methodological dominance of traditional research forms. In place of a role-play-that was to be guided by research-based point-counter-point orientations to how young Australian men in a lower socioeconomic demographic may envisage their reproductive futures—the encounter lapsed into what can essentially be called a focus group.

We instead asked participants whether they ever had conversations about family planning with their friends, and if not, why not. (Copland, Research Assistant)

After the process of data collection was complete, the research team reflected on the scripts. We all agreed that things had gone, literally, “off script”. Initially there was some apprehension within the team about this—if not surprise.

The research team is aware that what we are reading as going “off script” was likely about building better rapport with participants. It may also relate to discomfort about performing a nontraditional form of research in front of the participants?

I think it could have been possible to use the script more thoroughly, but we would have had to change the pitch of the session to our participants. Instead of being a discussion we would have needed to pitch this more as a bit of a role play in which we would aim to get input.…I am not sure whether that would have resulted in fewer participants as people may have felt weirder in participating in such an activity, but I think it could work if tried. (Copland, Research Assistant)

The RAs actions could be read as recuperative—if they followed the senior researchers' advice to the letter would we have failed to collect any substantive data? Would the young men we recruited likely have felt weird in the scenario we had conjured? Story Two, therefore, places the script as an entry point into a broader methodological discussion of the ways different assumptions about qualitative research permeated the research process. Not surprisingly, given the complexities of gender, embodiment, and affect, the script did not take us where we forecast.

Gender, Embodiment, and Affect: How Scripts Matter

We now turn toward an analysis of our own internal scripts, and of the script itself. Where did the scripts lead the team, the RAs, and our participants? What types of affective encounters did our participants, and us as researchers, have with the data that emerged? We quickly went off script. We ultimately used (or fell into using) focus groups rather than role-play. The script morphed from a focal point or trigger for discussion during data collection to a way for the RAs to prepare for what ultimately became focus group facilitation.

Elisabeth Stephens, in her article Bad Feelings, urges a move away from the study of written texts—or statistics—what she terms “informatics” (a demographer’s bread and butter) and “towards the study of bodily forces, or what we might think of as an energetics” (2015, 275). She focuses on how “affectivity and intellectuality grow together in such a way as to make it difficult to separate reason from the imagination” (Braidotti 2002, 117–118 in Stephens 2015, 276). She focuses on the influence of negative affects on “experience and knowledge formation” (2015, 274), and highlights how affect theory can shift:

The critical focus away from a study of stable objects and subjects, and towards dynamic forces and processes of subjectification…it is most frequently understood as an “intensity that emerges via the ‘in-between’ spaces of embodied encounters”. (Stephens 2015, 275)

Here Stephens is constructing a genealogical tradition of queer theorizing on affect that is focused on affects of the negative sort—a tradition “in which vital and visceral forces are recognised to play a constitutive role in sensation, perception and intellection” (2015, 275). Our analysis of this research might be construed as part of this genealogy, an account of the ways affect can transform research on masculinity and formation. This is recognition of affect as “bodily sensation” and as “site of corporeal and cultural training” (2015, 281). We read the script as constitutive of particular affects that influenced the research process in ways we sometimes did not, and sometimes could not, anticipate. This aligns with Huckaby and Detamont’s theorizing of the instability of ethics and method within the process of doing research.

Detamont also asks how “we better understand ourselves, and our sexualities through research.” (2016, 175) The heteronormativity which permeated the research was explicitly noted by Copland, one of the RAs, who said that he actively hid his own homosexuality during the discussions due to anxieties about the response from participants. Copland wondered afterward about how much his own perceptions and prejudices of the young men influenced this decision, and whether revealing his homosexuality in fact may not have been a big deal. This is another aspect of the disciplinary apparatus that constituted gender and sexuality in the scripts; it is also part of the in-between spaces of the embodied encounters to which Stephens refers—part of the way in which affect is trained. This research illustrates how affect and habits of thought subjugate knowledge about positionality, sexuality, and desire, even when that knowledge is something we hold dear. In short, what Detamont terms “the politics of intimacy” in the research process may be indecipherable, in the moment, and, potentially, in the analysis.

In thinking with affect in research on reproduction we are keenly aware of the following:

Affect is also a site of corporeal and cultural training; it is a part of the disciplinary apparatus by which we are constituted as subjects. For this very reason, it is also a force that can be (re)deployed by subjects occupying a wide range of cultural positions. (Stephens 2015, 281)

Inspired by Stephens, we want to attend to the corporeal and cultural trainings that we all continuously receive about gender and to highlight how they have shaped research on family formation and masculinities. We see the power of these corporeal and cultural trainings when we reconsider our earnest attempts to negotiate gender in the research via the deployment of the scripts and in the team’s deliberate choice to recruit young men as RAs to role-play them.

Affect also shapes quantitative research, that is, our demographic data that we so diligently tied ourselves to as we created the role-play scripts. Kath Browne (2008) points to the normativity of categorization inherent in quantitative research on sexuality.¹³ The demographic data fed into the production of heteronormative scripts—where heterosexuality was presumed throughout—until we got to the process of analysis and a preliminary presentation of the results. While we didn’t assume the sexuality of participants in advance, heterosexuality was the default in the research. It was also assumed in the research events.

Why did the team of senior women researchers decide not to conduct the event ourselves with young men carpentry students? We were of the belief that our presence would curtail the conversation, stifling the affective atmosphere and potentially preventing us from gathering the type of data that we imagined might be available only in our absence. As indicated in Story One, we felt that the young men wouldn’t open up about sensitive topics related to negotiation of intimate relationships with older women present. Such a decision reflects normative ways of thinking about gender and embodiment. It also reflects our failure to foresee how “affectivity and intellectuality” (Braidotti 2002, 117–118 in Stephens 2015, 276) are enmeshed in research. These energetics, or “bodily forces” (2015, 275), will have their way; regardless of how events are contrived, affects will surface. “Bodily forces” lack the discipline associated with rigorous research on family formation. They will always play a part; what that part is can’t be scripted. The ways in which we recruited our RAs insinuates that the research team might somehow control for gender and embodiment through the utilization of particular research personnel. As it happened, the nontraditional research event arguably reinscribed heteronormative ways of imagining reproductive futures. Ultimately, we failed to depart from the heteronormative script of much research on family formation, qualitative and quantitative. To be fair, a similar authentication may have occurred if the team had observed the event, or, acted in the script. Imagining that we could control the script is part of the problem that we want to highlight in relation to this interdisciplinary research project on masculinity and family formation.

Conclusion

In our initial imagining, the research process had a particular logic—cross-disciplinary collaboration between sociology, gender studies, and demography that uses demographic data to inform research on sensitive topics (young men and family formation). The demographic data (through interdisciplinary conversations) became prompts for script development, and the RAs developed the scripts based on these prompts in the hope of enhancing the process of data collection. As a result, rich data is collected about young men and family formation—and data analysis is undertaken by the women on the research team who initially conceived and obtained funding for the project. Here the script can also be seen as part of a research assemblage, which we aspired to control, but, of course, could not. The script and affect became other actors in the research.

We recognize that however the research event was configured, relations of gender would structure the research process. There is no way to control this. The team sat together after the event—the unfolding of the script—and endeavored to recall what led us here—one explanation relates to informatics—the demographic data suggested that young men were underrepresented in research on family formation—especially young men who were not tertiary educated. Our attempt to incorporate young men underrepresented in research on reproduction assumed embodied affinities between different members of the research team that were highly dubious on many levels. For us, these tussles have been productive; it is possible to better understand how imaginings of gender and the research process already place particular limits around what a script can do, who it can engage, and how it might be affectively oriented.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

This paper uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). The findings and views reported in this paper, however, are those of the authors and should not be attributed to either DSS or the Melbourne Institute.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by an interschool grant awarded The Australian National University, Research School of Social Sciences.

Notes

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