(Poly-)Parenthood between project logic and gender identity

Parenthood as affirmation of a heterosexual relationship

In her essay, the Polarization of Sexual Stereotypes in the 19th Century, historian Karin Hausen (1981) shows how, in 18th century Europe, the idea of two oppositely constructed types of human beings emerged: Analyzing human science writings of the time, she reconstructs the construction of gender-coded pairs of opposites such as inside–outside, passivity–activity, weakness–energy, being–doing, emotionality–rationality, and grace–dignity. Hausen interprets the simultaneously ongoing transformation of gender differentiation in everyday life in the context of social change towards modernity and the associated process of the separation of two spheres: The public sphere, in which politics and commodity production takes place, and the private sphere for the reproduction of labor. In the medical discourse, this separation was accompanied by the modern, essentialist conceptualization of sexuality (Laqueur, 1990). This is ideally realized in the heterosexual couple, which Stefan Hirschauer (2013: 44, translation: mr) aptly calls “the perpetuum mobile of gender distinctions”. Although reproductive technologies have long since made other arrangements possible (Peukert et al., 2020), the terms male and female are still widely considered synonymous with, “‘sperm carrier’ and egg carrier”.(Kessler and McKenna, 2006: 180). Therefore, heterosexual parenthood can be considered the completion of the process of becoming an intelligible (necessarily gendered) subject.

It is thus not a coincidence that the emergence of the modern form of female subjectivation is accompanied with the social construction of childhood as well as with the mother role as the idea of a natural disposition of all women towards motherhood, first realized in the European bourgeoisie of the 18th century (Duden and Bock, 1977: 134). In the bourgeois family, motherhood was considered a woman’s main task, purpose of life, and vocation and the essence of femininity (Lenz, 2011: 165), whereas children were seen as an expression and the ultimate completion of the romantic love between the parents (Wimbauer, 2021: 21). The corresponding way of life – marriage “on the basis of a division of labor between a primary breadwinner (male) and a primary childbearer (female)” (Barrett and McIntosh, 1994: 7) – was never feasible for the majority of parents, not even in the 1950s in the global north (Winker, 2007: 22). It was rather an ideal of what family life should look like (Williams, 2004: 18) and a guiding principle for social, matrimonial, and tax legislation (Notz, 2014) that lead in reverse to a “lack of legal recognition of poly families” (Klesse, 2019: 635). Despite that and despite all social change, motherhood is still the hegemonic ideal of female subjectivity in the global north today. Motherhood still promises to fulfill a woman’s “deepest desire for the highest fulfillment of femininity” (Diehl, 2014: 9, translation here and following: mr) and the main task for women seems to be “to bring children into the world” (Diehl, 2014: 10). Thus, an “equation of motherhood and femininity and the socially prescribed model of family (mother–father–child) as a way of life prevails” (Diehl, 2014: 11). In a broader sense, children “as a symbol of the future” remain “the permanent horizon of every acknowledged politics, the phantasmic beneficiary of every political intervention”. (Edelman, 2007: 3). Lewis (2019: 29) sums up the discourse as a “regime of quasi-compulsory, ‘motherhood’”—at least as long as healthy, white, middle-class and heterosexual parents (and children) are concerned (Lewis, 2019; Riggs, 2010). ¹

Compared to this very persistent (sexist, racist, ableist, hetero- and mono-normative) regime of motherhood, the father role remains quite vague apart from sperm donation and financial provision. Accordingly, parenthood and sexuality outside the monogamous frame is much less stigmatizing for men than for women. A discussion on caring masculinities (Heilmann and Scholz, 2017) has just begun; it is obvious that the discourses about fatherhood are far less authoritative than the myth of motherhood.

For all families that do not consist of exactly two oppositely constructed subjects mutually confirming their opposing gendered identities through a shared child – for example, trans-parents, same-gender-families, poly-families – it remains unclear how to fit into the hegemonic intelligible and legal frame for parenthood. In this article, I will discuss how non-monogamous parents deal with this ambiguity.

Before that, I will discuss another currently emerging aspect of parenthood: the increasing spread of perceiving parenthood as a project.

Parenthood as a project

In the 1990s, the heteronormative matrix was openly discussed and criticized as the primary framework for modes of subjectivation in contemporary society. The since increasing visibility of queer lifestyles and non-monogamous relationships proves that in the meantime, an expansion of viable modes of subjectivation has taken place. Nevertheless, this development has been criticized as “rhetorical modernization” (Wetterer, 2003), a change on the level of self-perceptions and discourses that has had little effect on the actions of the subjects and, moreover, only occurs during certain phases of life. According to Wetterer (2003) two life changes in particular lead to the re-emergence of cis- and heteronormative modes of subjectivation, one being the beginning of working life, the other being the birth of the first child. Accordingly, the current trend with regard to parenthood is not that the gender-differentiating social meaning of parenthood is decreasing. Rather, parenthood is transforming into a project that can (and should) be planned and that is subject to optimization processes. This transformation leads both to an adaption of economic principles in intimate relationships and to an increasing exploitation of clinical labor (Waldby and Cooper, 2008). According to Waldby and Cooper (2008: 58), since the 2000s the neoliberalisation of life, both in the sense of the everyday life of citizens, and the biological life of populations leads to deregulation, devaluation of workforce and an increasing cost of reproduction. In the context of global social inequality, medically assisted reproduction has become a huge global business (ibid.), making children strictly speaking a commodity (Lewis, 2019). And as Boltanski (2007) stated in an essay, neoliberalism turns everything – therefore also intimate relationships in general and parenthood in particular – into a project. The acceptance of a project logic and commodification in the field of intimate relationships seems to have been increasing in the past years. Apparently, a decade ago, the desire for a process diagram to plan and understand personal relationships (Connell, 2012) or an advertisement in which a businessman is looking for a woman to provide support at social gatherings in exchange for payment (Hochschild, 2004) was considered a sign of depersonalisation (Hochschild, 2004: 40) and disturbing (Hochschild, 2004: 41). In 2018, the German scientific publishing house Springer published a book named “Optimized Baby-Management. Perfecting Everyday Parenting with Business Methods” (Sarstedt, 2018). Although few people consciously want babies to be commodities (Lewis, 2019: 15), it is not totally considered inappropriate anymore to be writing about baby-management as an issue that can and should be optimized and treated like a business management issue.

Is seems the commodity frontier (Hochschild, 2004) is still eroding. Empiric research in Germany shows that parenthood is increasingly taken on as a project as societal demands continue to increase: The demand to become a good parent and thus to care for the future well-being of a child is generalized (Jergus et al., 2018). Children are addressed as a human resource and parents are advised to invest extensively in their education in order to ensure their own economic benefit (Oelkers, 2018). In discourses of educational science, parenthood is also increasingly addressed as something that should continuously be optimized (Roch and Ott, 2018: 168). In 2021, it is quite common to be thinking about parenthood within a framework of self-direction and in a way that guides action towards constant optimization.

Poly-parenthood as a project?

While there is a contradiction between non-monogamous relationships and parenthood as the ultimate confirmation of a heterosexual relationship, non-monogamies fit well with the emerging project-logic of parenthood. Polyamory, in particular, is described in parts of the community as a planned project of personal development—in which parenting, especially the emergence of a poster-child mentality (Pallotta-Chiarolli et al., 2013: 122) can have a specific role in legitimating the associated relationship.

Many of my interviewees emphasize the possibility of more self-determination through planned development and active shaping of their relationships. Thus, a certain correspondence with the omnipresent claim for a flexibilization of subjectivities (Trumann, 2002: 159) cannot be dismissed – which makes a neoliberal appropriation of non-monogamous life projects seem quite possible (Mayer, 2011: 35, Schadler and Villa, 2016: 25). Although the results of my research give no reason to assume that poly-relationships are more neoliberal than monogamous relationships, ² the question remains whether parenthood is lived more strongly as a project in relationships that are already considered a project by those involved.

The existing research on non-monogamous parenthood does not provide a clear answer, because the main topics so far are (a) parenting practices, (b) social and legal discrimination, and (c) parental response to stigmatization (Klesse, 2019: 625). I do not doubt that non-monogamous parents are being discriminated against and stigmatized, as existing research clearly shows (Pallotta-Chiarolli et al., 2013; Sheff, 2016). One of the reasons of that stigma might be the beforementioned ambiguity when it comes to parental modes of subjectivation: the stigma may well be a result of there being no other intelligible type of parent besides consisting of one mom and one dad.

However, in this article, I would like to stress the agency of non-monogamous parents, who (like all other parents) also participate in an active construction of family (families that are not limited to a household, biological, or legal relationship, Schadler, 2016: 505). Simulated parenthood in twos and co-parenting (Schadler, 2019: 82) are, according to Sheff (2016: 863), the most frequent types of non-monogamous parenthood. This could be an active decision to draw boundaries between parenthood and relationships between adults. However, Sheff also observes that co-parenting is often described as being monogamists with good friends (Sheff, 2016: 864). This could be a sign that boundaries between romantic and friendship-centered lifestyles (Kruppa, 2020) become increasingly blurred. It remains unclear whether these new boundaries are being consciously drawn as a project for optimization. Before I discuss possible answers, I will briefly outline the methodology of the conducted study.

Strong self-identification with the autonomous subject

One way of not subjecting oneself to the exclusive effect of mythologically charged social norms on parenthood is to renounce parenthood altogether. Especially among men, I could observe a self-perception as an autonomous subject, aiming to be absolutely independent. For example, Dietmar Habel ⁶ pursues a distinct project of personal development, the goal of which he describes with the sequence: to be as independent as possible of how others are – a perfect example of a neoliberal mode of thinking. Poly (as he calls his way of life) offers him the ideal framework for this, because it enables him to reflect himself in many people, which helps him with solving personal issues. Dietmar Habel appreciates adventure, an alternative lifestyle, projects and self-responsible, creative work. Children, career and a straight biography are less important to him than giving life a meaning. ⁷ This characterization includes a reference to children: they seem to represent the opposite of a self-determined life, which is quite correct if self-determination is considered minimizing socially imposed constraints as far as possible. Several women in Dietmar Habels rather large network of relationships have children. They bear the main part of the care obligations as well as (partly together with the biological fathers) the child-raising responsibility, other network members stand by them without taking on a parental role.

This pattern – relating to children in the network without a parental role, combined with a self-image as the most autonomous subject possible – also comes up in other interviews. For example, one interviewee, Cordula Buechner – who also pursues a distinct life project of personal development – usually looks after her boyfriend’s child once a week. She has “a kind of godmother function”. In further interviews, additional supportive references to parents and children are named: as an adult caregiver for the child, as a contact person for wishes that parents cannot fulfill, as an everyday helper when there is time stress, or as someone who contributes a mediating perspective in charged parent-child conflicts. It is particularly the combination of closeness and non-parental status that is viewed positively, as the following quote from Cordua Buechner shows: “The pleasantly free thing about my role in relation to the children is how non-parentally it works”.

This sums up one possible way of dealing with the mythologically charged social norm of parenthood: the relation to children can be pleasantly free if one does not take on the role of the parent. However, this arrangement only works when others take parental responsibility and do most of the necessary care work. Moreover, the idea of an autonomous, self-sufficient subject, who may value other people but is not existentially dependent on them, has traditionally been open primarily to men (Benhabib, 1992), while the myths surrounding parenthood primarily affect women. This corresponds with the observation that this approach is much more prevalent among men. Here, the “poly project” does not match the “child project”, both are realized in different spheres: Whereas mainly men realize their subjectivation primarily aligned to the idea of independence, women mainly take care of and carry responsibility for the children.

Another interview shows the problems that arise when women reject this arrangement. The interviewee, Marie Yildiz lives with two men with the knowledge and consent of all involved. She currently has no children, although she would like to. Talking about the issue she states:

I believe that privileged heterosexual men […] are VERY much influenced by this social conception, only MY CHILDREN are important to me. […] I strongly suspect that perhaps it also has something to do with the legal situation, with which fatherhood is very strongly associated. […] Very, very, very strongly. And that is then the crucial question. Whether I care or not. Am I financially responsible for the child or NOT? Yes? … And I think that’s … crass. (h) … I think that’s really sad. ⁸

The passage is meant to illustrate the problems the interviewee sees, especially with the male mode of subjectivation already discussed. She almost expects parenting in the group to fail – because she does not trust heterosexual men to take on responsibility for the care of a child if they are not legally obligated to do so, as they would be in a hegemonic, monogamous relationship. ⁹ She trusts herself to take care of a non-birth child, because: “I am a very caring type of person”. The interview highlights potential issues when female and male modes of subjectivity clash: the social conception of fatherhood is one in which responsibility is only assumed if it is legally codified and linked to financial responsibility. This again corresponds to the fact that parental care was for a long time filled with meaning primarily through a mythologically exaggerated image of the mother, while notions of caring fatherhood – like caring masculinities in general – are just recently emerging. If very caring women meet with men who only take care when they are legally obliged to do so, everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle: heteronormative norms, modes of subjectivation and practices mutually reinforce each other. This has consequences: Because Marie Yildiz expects and perceives a strong imprint of “social conceptions” (including legally fixed obligations) about fatherhood to apply to her partners as well, she refrains from parenthood. Non-monogamous parenthood fails here – because the social norm of parenthood assumes a primarily responsible mother who is supported by a father, primarily financially, which is safeguarded by the legal system. A constellation in which several fathers take care of one child is not only not provided for legally, but also does not make sense for the hegemonic idea of fatherhood and is not practicable for the men in the example – at least according to Marie Yildize’s assessment. The fact that parenthood and consensual non-monogamy do not go well together is thus dealt with in a way that refers both to separate spheres. In contrast to the constellations already mentioned in which children are primarily raised by their mothers, Marie Yildiz refuses this role – and therefore renounces having a child.

So this mode of subjectivation consists of an excessive accentuation of the idea of autonomy, traditionally connected to male subjectivity (Benhabib, 1992) and not suitable for parenthood.

Deconstructing fatherhood while reproducing motherhood

Another way of dealing with the conflict between parenthood and a non-monogamous lifestyle is presented by Arno Fehre. He, like Marcel, is one of two fathers of Britta’s child. All three belong to a left-wing alternative milieu, live together in an apartment and have decided to raise and care for their child together. Arno Fehre is critical of biological reasoning contexts and gender constructions; when (openly) asked about his gender, he answers: “You’re asking me to categorize myself? Well … my passport says male.” When asked with what pronouns he likes to be referred to, he states “he”. His skeptical attitude towards biological justifications for different parental roles also partly shows in the following statement:

When we talked about having children before the baby came, Britta said in the discussion: First of all, this is my child (h) … but don’t worry: You will still have enough to do with it (h).” … And that is something that I have somehow always acknowledged.’

As can be seen: His advocacy for social fatherhood – biological fatherhood is not mentioned throughout the interview – is accompanied by an acceptance of the special role of the mother, who, in Arno Fehre’s recollection, had already emphasized her lead role during pregnancy while at the same time hinting at drawing on the fathers' help when needed. ¹⁰ This framing also corresponds to the account of the distribution of care practices in the network. Arno and Marcel, the two fathers, support the mother within the scope of their possibilities. Although Arno sees this critically – he wonders to what extent the gender relations of his relationship network differ at all from the classic nuclear family model – he describes the role of the fathers more as a supportive one. Even if this means that the birth mother bears the brunt of the work, a re-interpretation of fatherhood seems to succeed in as far as it is disconnected from biology and extended to two persons. The detailed analysis of the interview does not find any trace suggesting that Arno Fehre or Marcel assume a privileged role above the other. This result corresponds with the networks ideas about motherhood and fatherhood already mentioned above: According to the interview analysis, all three parents are determined not to attach any importance to biological fatherhood, while according to Arno Fehre, Britta’s special responsibility was already articulated during her pregnancy. The central role of the biological mother is thus reinforced by both the social construction of motherhood made by the parents and the lack of legal representation of social fatherhood: Both fathers fail to find adequate institutional representation for their parenthood due to the mono-normative legal system, that is, both cannot apply for parental benefits or claim parental leave. ¹¹ This, and the need to earn money through wage labor that is also implicit in the interview, has a backlash effect on social relations, legitimizes a gender-differentiated division of tasks, and makes the desired life model of an egalitarian division of tasks difficult to live. The interview reconstruction shows the negative consequences of the chosen strategy of achieving egalitarianism for fathers through their legal non-representation. What remains on the level of parental modes of gendered subjectivation is a single mother supported by two social fathers. Although this shows a way to integrate parenthood and non-monogamy, two supplementary features of hegemonic gendered modes of subjectivation are systematically reinforced here too: that women are primarily responsible for children, while men take on a supporting role.

Poly-parenthood as a project of social planning

Ronny Scherf lives in a “symbiotic community” in an apartment with Elisabeth and Frank. Two other women, Tabea, and Maria, are also part of the community but do not live in the same household. Ronny Scherf and Elisabeth are the biological parents of a three-year-old child who lives with them. Ronny Scherf strictly rejects biological bonds: “I see blood relationship very critically, that is, in the context of state, nation, blood-and-soil crap.” he says, strongly distancing himself from biological parenthood. ¹² The quote shows that for Ronny, biological bonds are not supposed to have any social meaning. Biological motherhood is addressed by Ronny Scherf in the context of the practice of breastfeeding, though his narration omits, whether this is causally connected to biological motherhood. His future plans include having more children in his community through different combinations of birth-givers and sperm-donors. ¹³ Here, in fact, detailed plans to strengthen the group identity through parenthood are revealed. The decision for the existing parenthood was planned by Ronny Scherf, with the group in mind. The phrasing suggests that Ronny decided on behalf of all the others, and, indeed, the in-depth analysis of the interview shows that he considers his role to develop strategic decisions for his community. Other children were also planned with this intention at the time of the interview and have since been born – this became apparent in the follow-up discussion of the intermediate results. Parenthood is supposed to have a reinforcing function for the connection of the participants, to strengthen the “we” that Ronny Scherf frequently talks about. Bearing children is considered as a means of forming a shared self-image, a group identity. By this, new modes of parenthood and responsibility that are no longer associated with “blood-and-soil crap” are supposed to emerge. At the time of the interview, the deconstruction of biological rationales had not succeed very far: Because others – not least authorities, but in part also his partners – derive implications from Ronny Scherf’s bodily fatherhood, he currently fulfills the role of making strategic decisions for the future of the child and also for the living community as a whole. At least with regard to the division of tasks, motherhood also plays a major role in the relationship life of the network. Even though Ronny says that the tasks are equally divided, the interview shows that the biological mother Elisabeth does a lot of the care work: She brings the child to bed, goes grocery shopping and does most parts of the laundry. Ronny justifies this division of tasks by saying that everybody is doing what they can do best. Ronny justifies the fact that the child usually sleeps in Elisabeth’s room with the layout of the apartment – she has the quietest room. The layout of the apartment is presented as a given and as an objective reason for a care arrangement where Elisabeth does most of the care work despite the aim for collective parenthood. A look at the relationship time schedule during the interview further confirms that the biggest effort in raising the child lies with the biological mother. A rhetorical modernization (Wetterer, 2003), that is, a disjuncture between discourses and practices is obvious here.

Nevertheless, Ronnys plans seem to pave the way for a correspondence of non-monogamy with parenthood that creates new modes of subjectivation that reject hegemonic hetero- and cis-normative constraints. His notion of “we” including all participants of the relationship network, bound together by children belonging to all grown-ups involved, generates a new type of subjectivity of a poly-parent that is not bound to biology and also overcomes the notion of parenthood as confirming a heterosexual couple. Instead, his strategic planning aims at (a) confirming the legitimacy of his symbiotic community and (b) overcoming the constraint of only two parents being possible. At the time of the interview, at least (b) fails in practice, which Ronny Scherf explains with the rigidity of institutions and internalized self-images, the latter combined with the low willingness of some partners to develop further. One could also note that the expansion of legitimate parental roles to a non-monogamous community is accompanied by the affirmation of normative gender relations, what can be understood as a normalization of non-hegemonic family-models (Warner, 2002).

This example shows, that attempts to reshape hetero- and mono-normative subjectivities within the (mental and legal) frame of current society are contradictory and difficult to achieve. It is unclear whether the attempt will succeed in the long run against the resistance of current society, but, nevertheless, it demonstrates an attempt to transform traditional gendered modes of subjectivation by trying to create new models of parenthood.