Motherhood as a gendered entitlement: intentionality, "othering," and homosociality in the online infertility community.
Whitehead, Krista
MOTHERHOOD IS ONE OF THE most enduring and consequential rites of
passage to adult femininity for women. Indeed "motherhood changes
everything" (Fox 2009; Nelson 2009:3). More than changing
everything, motherhood also has notable and important effects on
identity and the self (Chodorow 1978; de Beauvoir [1949] 1989; McMahon
1995; Rich 1976). Sociological work on the motherhood ideal explains
much about women's pursuit of motherhood by highlighting its
importance to women's sense of self and social identity. As a
feminine imperative, some feminist research argues that mainstream
culture equates motherhood with femininity (Everingham 1994; McMahon
1995; Morell 1994; Rich 1976; Weaver and Ussher 1997). Russo (1976)
refers to this pervasive ideology as the "motherhood mandate."
Thus women's pursuit of motherhood is often--at its core--a pursuit
of a gender ideal, where gender identity is a significant constituent of
the self (Kessler and McKenna 1978; McMahon 1995; West and Zimmerman
1987). However, more than a vehicle enabling the achievement of feminine
subjectivity (and a contested one at that), motherhood also offers women
access to a new cultural space reserved for mothers, often referred to
as "the mommies club" (Nelson 2009:12). In this space women
have access to a cultural world that revolves around their
identification with the social category of mother.
Not all women, however, have access to motherhood. What happens
then when women do not have access to the gender ideal of motherhood or
to the cultural spaces that define it? How do women deal with this
exclusion? In this paper, I answer these two central sociological
questions through an examination of women's blogging (online
journaling, discussed in more detail below) in the online IF community.
(1)
SUBJECTIVITY, GENDER, AND MOTHERHOOD
Motherhood as a long-standing gender norm expectation is well
established in the literature. Various scholars approach an examination
of the norm of motherhood differently, choosing to highlight different
aspects of how the normative expectation operates. Russo (1976), for
example, argues that motherhood is women's "raison
d'etre. It is mandatory" (p. 144), suggesting that "even
if the perfect contraceptive were developed and used... social and
cultural forces that enforce the motherhood mandate would continue"
(p. 145). Russo (1976) emphasizes how the motherhood mandate limits a
woman's ability to see herself as someone other than a mother.
It is important to distinguish arguments in the literature that
characterize motherhood as a gendered expectation that women feel
compelled to live up to from those that suggest women gain subjectivity
via an achievement of a gendered identity. Effectively one thread of
research establishes the pervasiveness of motherhood, illustrating the
variety of mechanisms that allow the norm to persist culturally and
socially (Russo 1976). An offshoot of this thread maintains that
women's biology places them at the mercy of the cultural norm, such
that if they were freed from their ability to reproduce, they would also
be freed from the social perils of motherhood altogether (de Beauvoir
[1949] 1989; Firestone [1970] 2003; Rich 1976). In contrast, the other
thread--starting with the assumption that the pursuit of gender ideals
is related to gender identity as a significant constituent of the self
(Kessler and McKenna 1978; McMahon 1995; West and Zimmerman
1987)--investigates how women go about living up to the norm of
motherhood, and how this contributes to their sense of self, gendered,
or otherwise, such that motherhood is understood as a way to access
womanhood (McMahon 1995). Research on women's experiences with
infertility has been useful in making this point by illustrating that
experiences with infertility affect women's sense of self more
deeply than they do men's (Clarke, Martin-Matthews, and Matthews
2006), which compromises their sense of being a "complete"
woman (Greil 1991; Letherby 1999; Whiteford and Gonzalez 1995).
The difficulty with the first line of inquiry is that it treats
motherhood primarily as a norm that women are programmed to subscribe
to. This perspective gives the most authority to the norm itself, often
characterizing women as cultural dupes caught in the cogs of the social
structural machine. According to this framework, women are overtly and
covertly primed for motherhood; and motherhood--by virtue of placing
women in a subordinate position--ought not to be women's goal for
self-actualization. The second line of inquiry, however, assigns more
agency to women who become mothers, seeking to understand women's
personal motivations for pursuing motherhood, especially in light of the
connection between motherhood and women's sense of self (McMahon
1995). On the far end of this perspective, scholars sometimes
investigate the sacred and unique quality of the mother-child
relationship (Everingham 1994). Unlike the previous thread of analysis,
this one does not start with the assumption that--by
definition--motherhood places women in a subordinate role, which they
blindly subscribe to as a way of living up to normative expectations.
Indeed, as argued by Ruddick (1989), "to suggest that mothers are
principally victims of a kind of crippling work is an egregiously
inaccurate account of women's own experiences as mothers and
daughters" (p. 344). Certainly this type of research does not deny
that motherhood is a normative goal, but it also does not overlook the
fact that, even in the face of women's subscription to mainstream
expectations, women do have agency in pursuing and enjoying motherhood.
Research that investigates nonnormative paths to motherhood (Hequembourg
and Farrell 1999; Nelson 1996, 2009) and that highlights the empowering
features of motherhood (O'Reilly 2004) has been effective in
emphasizing the role of women's agency in becoming and being a
mother.
The debate can be distilled down to two key arguments, which are
continually heralded to explain women's pursuit of motherhood. One
is that women subscribe unequivocally to the norm itself and therefore
become mothers to fulfill that norm. The other is that women access
womanhood through motherhood, which in turn gives them a sense of
personal identity that is self-actualizing. The heatedness of the debate
is undoubtedly related to the argument made by some feminists that
motherhood contributes to gender inequality (Chodorow 1978; Rich 1976).
Unfortunately, the dichotomy presented in the literature has led to
overlooking important analytic and cultural components of contemporary
motherhood. Indeed, my research seeks to fill this analytic and
empirical gap by asking what else motherhood is about apart from only a
gendered expectation and identity achievement. Moreover, much research
that engages with the notion of the motherhood mandate does so by
looking at how women navigate competing identities and/or ideologies
with their often-newfound role as mother. For example, mother and worker
(Blair-Loy 2001; Boris 1994; Christopher 2012; Hagelskamp et al. 2011;
Johnston and Swanson 2006), mother and intensive mothering (Damaske
2013; Elliott, Powell, and Brenton 2015; Romagnoli and Wall 2012),
mother as responsible consumer (Mackendrick 2014), mother and drug user
(Soderstrom 2012; Springer 2010) to name a few. While this type of
research is vital, it still underestimates the significance many women
place on motherhood as an identity separate from other identities in
their lives. Focusing on the nexus of motherhood and other identities
obscures the significance, urgency, and prominence the motherhood
mandate has for many women.
In contrast, this study aims to explore women's engagement
with the motherhood mandate separately from other identities they
embody. In doing so, my research of women online in the infertility
community indicates that motherhood is more than a pursuit of a gender
identity; it is a life-course event that women feel is owed to them as a
by-product of being a, middle-class, heterosexual, married, and socially
stable woman. Moreover, women's expressions of desire to become
mothers are made in direct relation to, and in comparison with, the
women around them who are on their way to becoming mothers (i.e.,
pregnant) or have already become mothers. The pursuit of motherhood, I
argue, is aptly described and understood as a gendered entitlement as
well as an achievement. Women claim this entitlement by characterizing
their circumstances as unjust, and by challenging the intentionality of
other mothers around them, which have particular implications for our
understanding of gender identity achievement and women's
homosociality more broadly. I conceptualize homosociality with respect
to how men and women relate to one another in environments that are
exclusively single-gender by choice or circumstance. In the context of
online blogging, I am therefore interested in women's
homosociality. Surprisingly, not much work has been done trying to
understand men's and women's sociality in single-gender
environments, the consequences of which I discuss in more detail in the
analysis and conclusion.
CASE, METHODS, AND METHODOLOGY
The data used for this case study is derived from a collection of
29 online blogs authored by women in the online infertility community.
All the data gathered for the present case study is--or was at the time
of the study--publicly available on the Internet. I did not announce my
presence to any of the authors of the blogs. I sought to capture the
community in its "natural habitat" and announcing my presence
may have affected their habitual sharing and routines, and also
undermined the interpretive framework that guides this study. I only
analyzed information that was publicly available online and was not
under any expectation of privacy. (2)
What constitutes a culture or community is capricious, and the
methodological approaches for studying cultural spaces are frequently
debated. Certainly virtual communities find themselves in contested
terrain when disputes about sociological cultures arise, and in many
cases they are used as foils for "the real world."
Nevertheless, many argue that developments online have provided new
field sites for social inquiry (Escobar 1996). Repeatedly researchers
reiterate the validity of online communications as useful illustrations
of cultural spaces and see them as legitimate data sources for exploring
cultural reproduction (Hine 2000). The dichotomy between online cultural
spaces and "real world" ones is analytically and empirically
unhelpful. People who express themselves online do not see a distinction
between their online lives and their "real world" ones;
"people experience cyberspace as they experience real life--it is
not that profoundly different" (Markham 1998:87). Online lives are
real lives; they do not exist separately or incongruently but rather
they each inform the other.
My analysis of the online infertility culture and community follows
Fine's (1979) version of "idioculture" wherein an
examination of groups of people is grounded in the observation of
interaction and communication between members. Indeed by focusing on
interaction Fine (1979) argues "that every group has to some extent
a culture of its own" an idioculture, which, consists of a system
of knowledge, beliefs, behaviours, and customs shared by members of an
interacting group to which members can refer and employ as the basis of
further interaction. Members recognize that they share experiences in
common and these experience can be referred to with the expectation that
they will be understood by other members, and further employed to
construct a social reality. (p. 734)
In the online infertility community, blogs are demarcated by an
interactive component where there is an expectation among members that
their blog will be read by others. Members create personal blogs, or Web
pages that feature regular posts and often link to other blogs and/or
enable other members to comment upon the material that is posted.
In October 2010, I began informally searching online for discussion
between women struggling with fertility issues. While reading these
blogs an often-cited blog surfaced (Stirrup Queen (3)) citing 166 other
blogs, each addressing their personal struggles with infertility. From
this list I generated a sample of 30 blogs that form the basis of my
analysis. I limited my analysis of the blogs to a specific period of
time (January 2010 to October 2010). In coding the data, I used a
grounded theory approach to narrative analysis for identification and
analysis of themes (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1998).
Narrative analysis as I've employed it here involved an
adherence to the view of human subjects outlined by Ken Plummer (2001)
in Documents of Life 2. According to Plummer (2001), individuals'
agency must be considered at all points in the research process. My
research subjects are inherently agentic as a result of their choice to
blog, yet they are also at the mercy of misfortune, the social structure
of which is often unknown and undefined. Thus, the choice of narrative
analysis, in the spirit it is championed by Plummer, was a suitable
choice of method. Most importantly, narrative analysis is best performed
with data that comes from what Plummer (2001) terms "the documents
of life." These documents can include but are not limited to
diaries, photos, journals, agendas, paintings, resumes, and so on. Since
blogs are no doubt a form of diary, this approach was fitting.
Preserving the narrative continuity of the women's lives meant that
grounded theory, as a method, was employed in specific ways that are
congruent with various tenets of grounded theory as outlined by Charmaz
(2008). My coding of the data adhered to the spirit of inductive
thinking that embodies grounded theory wherein initial coding of the
data informs future coding of the data, through the use of memo writing
and middle-range theory construction (Charmaz 2008).
My sample is composed primarily of white, middle/upper-class, and
heterosexual women living in North America or Australia. My description
of the sample relies on using education/occupation as proxy for class.
Given that I did not announce my presence in the community so as not to
interfere with the "natural habitat" of the culture, I was
unable to determine all demographic markers of the members of the
community. Those that were unidentifiable are specified as
"unclear" in Table 1.
INFERTILITY AS UNJUST
One of the most central findings of my exploration of the
infertility community is how women in the community characterize their
experience as unfair and unjust. They express anger, incredulity,
despair, and disbelief toward their situations. In the online
infertility community, women discuss, grieve, and support each other in
their struggles to conceive, struggles that become--for most of the
women--an all-consuming endeavor. In this section, I detail the
rationales that women in the online infertility community provide, which
characterize their situations as unjust. These rationales fall into two
main groupings: factual and relational. The first category of
narrative--factual rationales--has two interrelated components: frequent
reference to statistics and chances that play a role in becoming
pregnant, and the monetary costs of infertility treatments. These
accounts are referred to as factual because they are practices and
occurrences that women in the online infertility community see as
required to produce pregnancy and children, thus factually unavoidable.
The second category of accounts is what I refer to as relational. This
category is information that women in the infertility community draw on,
which deals directly with how offensive other women's pregnant
bodies are to them, how challenging it is for them to attend baby
showers, and how easy it is for other women to become pregnant. I refer
to these narratives as relational because they set up other women as
points of comparison toward which women in the online infertility
community vent their anger. Consistently, members of the infertility
community use what other women have (pregnancies, babies, and families)
as a measure of what they believe they ought to have. I argue that
highlighting the injustice of their circumstances is the beginning of a
process that allows women in the online infertility to lay claim to
motherhood as a gendered entitlement.
Women in the online infertility community refer to medical
statistics (or general statistical probability) as proof of the
unfairness of their infertility. For example, the following woman writes
of asking her doctor about probability of having several miscarriages in
a row:
I started to ask the head embryologist how often this many blasts
(medical treatment of embryos) come back all abnormal, but then I
stopped myself. The answer is that it doesn't matter how often.
Even if he said that it rarely happens, having five miscarriages in a
row rarely happens, but we've accomplished it. (Life and Love in
the Petri Dish)
Attempting to make sense of their bad luck and poor chances with
statistics is a response to a situation that they find completely unfair
and unjust. Indeed, the following woman points to how close she and her
husband were to conceiving in exact measurements (inches), describing
her feelings while examining an ultrasound photo demonstrating an
unviable ectopic pregnancy:
There it was--the most simultaneously depressing and angering sight
in the world--a pregnancy right next to my ovary in the tube. Well F***
me. The embryo lands 3 inches to the right and we could be in a world of
joy right now. It's so f*ing senseless and unfair. (Little Blog
about the Big Infertility)
Chances of conceiving are often measured in the passing of
menstrual cycles, as the following woman writes:
So another month gone. He said my chances for another ectopic is
high but not high enough to not do another IUI (Intrauterine
Insemination) ... I hate this rollercoaster--how do I get off????
(Alex's Adventures)
Pointing to the recurrence of bad luck and improbable circumstances
corroborates the injustice that permeates women's experiences, and
thus warrants their expressions of anger and indignation. Expressions of
frustration and resentment are prevalent and accepted among women in the
community, as the following woman writes:
I also can't bear to only put back 1 embryo. I'm turning
35 in less than a month, I'm tired of all this waiting, I'm
tired of putting my life on hold, I'm tired of taking meds,
I'm tired of having a weird, medicinal sex life, I'm tired of
my RE looking at my vagina, I'm pissed that my file is getting so
damn thick, and I hate that the office staff knows my number when I
call. (Venting Vagina)
In light of their experiences that are unlike most women's
experiences in becoming mothers, women in the online infertility
community express anger about their struggles and feel their anger is
warranted.
To further illustrate the injustice of their situation women in the
community claim that occurrences that should be happy for women
struggling with infertility, such as positive pregnancy tests, are in
fact still unfair and painful. As the following woman writes:
It's all unfair for infertiles. Even our BFPs (big fat
positives--pregnancy test) are unfair. Recently one of the lovely women,
who is a part of the forum thread people with my diagnosis participate
in, got the news that should make her so utterly happy, but it sounds
like she's reacting to her BFP like I reacted to mine. It's
hard to believe, it's hard to be anything but anxious, it's
hard to understand it might be permanent. Which is just so unfair.
(Riding the IVF Roller Coaster)
Most women in the online infertility community approach their
positive pregnancy tests with trepidation in that they are often worried
about the viability of the pregnancy, since miscarriages and ectopic
pregnancies are common among women struggling with infertility. Their
circumstances are unjust in their eyes because unlike how all other
women achieve motherhood, their quests are littered with disappointment,
persistence, effort, struggle, and uncertainty.
One of the most consistent sources of evidence marshaled by women
in the infertility community to expose their circumstances as unjust is
pointing out other women's pregnancies and children. Since
motherhood is an embodied project for most women, it is not surprising
that women in the online infertility community compare themselves, and
indeed evaluate themselves as inadequate compared to the pregnant women
they are surrounded by. For them, their inability to become pregnant is
equated with an inability to be a mother, but as indicated by the
following passage, women in the online infertility community long for
pregnancy as much as for the child itself:
I just want to be pregnant with a healthy, happy baby in my belly.
I want to talk about due dates, and nursery colors, and baby names, and
wonder whose nose our baby will have and whose eyes. And I want to feel
a baby inside of me more than I could ever have imagined wanting to....
And I WANT IT NOW!!! (As Fast as my Baby Can)
Given the centrality of pregnancy and birthing stories among
mothers themselves as the rites of passage to motherhood, it is expected
that these also become extremely important and coveted experiences for
women struggling with infertility. The majority of women's posts
online are purposeful in mentioning women around them--whom have easily
become pregnant--and the pain it causes them to observe pregnant women
and their bellies. One woman writes:
I am dealing with some extreme issues regarding women who can
conceive naturally. I have turned into this monster who stomps around
wanting to scream, "it isn't fair!!" (The Deep Breath
before the Plunge)
Ostensibly, for women struggling to conceive, other women getting
pregnant around them is a reminder of what they cannot do, and therefore
a source of unfairness for them. The relational aspect of the process
cannot be ignored, as is acknowledged by the woman in the following
post:
Two pregnancy announcements of friends sent me briefly reeling this
week. It is frustrating that I sometimes can't separate my own
situation better from those of others. I strive to be happy for
others' joys, even as I struggle to accept our losses and continue
hope for the future. But sometimes it seems that everyone, EVERYONE is
getting pregnant, having more than one child even, while we are still
waiting.... (Life and Love in the Petri Dish)
Although they know that other women's pregnancies do not
diminish their chances of becoming pregnant, they discuss other
women's pregnancies as personal injuries. The relational
assessments of these women suggest that at the core of many women's
struggles with infertility is a deep desire to be included. Indeed, as
the following woman states, "I long to join the mommy club. I feel
so left out" (Little Blog about the Big Infertility).
Women in the online infertility community also frequently make
analogies to how hearing about other women's pregnancies, and the
rituals that surround them (due dates, ultrasounds, baby showers, and
nurseries), is like being wounded. The following woman writes:
I was happy to see everyone, but then it all turned to pregnancies
and babies. Two pregnant friends are in that group and I've only
managed to tell one of them about our situation. So it was all about
ultrasounds and due dates and such. It's really wonderful for them.
And it hits me like a punch in the chest every time. (All in One Basket)
Celebrating other women's successes at becoming pregnant is
also called upon as evidence exposing the injustice of infertility. One
woman describes the pain that goes along with attending baby showers:
Like many women with IF, I have made it my personal rule NOT to
attend baby showers. I'm sorry, but I just can't do that. Baby
showers are like this: Open wound. Pour salt. Repeat. That's what
they feel like. (Life in the Waiting Womb)
This women is not alone in making the decision not to attend baby
showers, and it is taken for granted among women in the community, their
fellow "if-ers" (4) will understand why they are so painful.
The relational component of women's understanding of motherhood is
especially poignant when receiving news about other women's
pregnancies that are accidental, as the following woman writes:
One of my closest two best friends just told me tonight she is
pregnant. It was QUITE a big shock. It was unplanned, unexpected,
accidental. She started dating her boyfriend around Thanksgiving. (I
don't say this to judge, just as background.) And it just happened.
(Little Blog about the Big Infertility)
Similarly the following woman discusses the injustice associated
with finding out a coworker is pregnant who was taking specific measures
to prevent conception:
Also, just found out this morning that a woman from work, who had
her tubes tied after her second child, is now pregnant. Talk about an
accident! [... ] She's pissed that she's pregnant, and I just
stared at her while she was telling me her story, wanting to kill her a
little ... Not really, but seriously??? Why the fuck is she
pregnant--clearly she didn't want this baby--and I'm not???
(Alex's Adventures)
What we learn from these blog posts is that the quest toward
motherhood is impelled by the desire of women in the online infertility
community to have and achieve what other women around them have and
accomplish. To characterize their circumstances as unfair indicates that
women in the online infertility community believe that they are unequal
in their capacity to achieve motherhood and have been denied access to a
particular gender identity that they feel entitled to. Finding out about
accidental pregnancies proves the most difficult because their
accidental nature epitomizes the injustice of their circumstances since
they clearly do not reward intentionality. That is, accidental
pregnancies do not reward purposeful action, which for women in the
infertility community are carried out and strictly adhered to in order
to produce a child--healthy living, having means to provide for a child,
being in a stable relationship--all discussed in more detail below.
When their bodies do not cooperate with them, these women read
desire and intentionality as a defining requirement of pregnancy and
child rearing rather than the biological mechanics that allow it to
happen. In turn women in the online infertility community focus on the
social components of their lives (economic stability, employment
stability, and relationship stability) alongside their intentions to
have children that in their eyes ought to dictate their access to
motherhood. By focusing on intentionality women in the online
infertility community begin laying claim to motherhood.
CLAIMING AN ENTITLEMENT TO MOTHERHOOD: INTENTIONALITY AND
DESERVEDNESS
Women in the online infertility community observe and evaluate the
way in which women around them treat their bodies when they are
pregnant, as well as how they treat their children when they are
mothers. The evaluations of other women's treatment of their
bodies' and children serve as a measure of the level of their
responsibility such that those who do not treat their bodies with
exceptional care, or their children as blessings are not responsible
enough to have children. Specific actions that stand out as deplorable
to women online include smoking, drinking, taking drugs, having previous
abortions, poor diet, and inadequate exercise.
General level of responsibility is continuously discussed by
members of the online infertility culture as a necessary requirement for
good mothering, or as an indication of being properly prepared for
impending motherhood. For example, the following woman writes:
To top it off, being a youth worker helping adolescents didn't
help either. There was always that 15 year old excitedly telling me she
was pregnant after a night out of booze and drugs. "My baby's
daddy is a loser and doesn't want me to keep it, what should I
do?" (Maybe Baby or Maybe the Loony Bin)
Similarly, the following woman admits her resentment toward
pregnant women who are young, and seemingly irresponsible in the
treatment of their bodies during pregnancy. She writes:
"I do resent and loath every smoking, under-age pregnant bogan
I see, but not 'normal' people." (Riding the IVF Roller
Coaster)
The stigmatization of pregnant teens and mothers is not unusual in
mainstream contemporary discourse. Particularly, discourses of welfare
dependency and social exclusion pervade assumptions about teenage
motherhood, especially in North America. The normative path to
motherhood involves obtaining a higher education, establishing a career,
and then starting a family. These actions translate into an intention to
become a mother, thus it is not surprising that women in the online
infertility community draw on these actions as proof of deservedness of
the mothering role. One woman writes:
You feel like, "How the hell can all those crack-whores get
pregnant so often and so easily, while I, healthy, unaddicted, stable
income earner who has a nice roof over my head and is in a loving
partnership be barren? What the fuck? How is this even fair? WORLD., do
you hear me??? ITS NOT FAIR!!!!!!!" (As Fast as my Baby Can)
It is common for women in the community to connect the actions of
women who are neglectful of their bodies--in general and during
pregnancy--to women who then, in their estimation, also turn out to be
neglectful mothers. Neglectful mothers are usually women on welfare with
little or no means to take care of their children. For example, the
following woman writes:
I hear and see all the stories of people who don't want to be
parents and don't know how to be parents popping out yet another
child the state will have to raise. It makes you a bit bitter when
infertility is ripping your heart out daily, when you know how loved and
cared for your own child would be. (Riding the IVF Roller Coaster)
Women in the community also express feeling injured by the choices
other women make with respect to their bodies, as the following woman
writes:
This pregnant woman told me she's taking pain medication
without her doctor's knowledge, that she eats sushi on a regular
basis, that she has no idea where her baby's daddy is and that
she's hoping by the time the baby is born, she'll have either
a job, insurance or a man in her life. She's due next month and has
had a problem-free pregnancy ... of course. The women I know are scared
to even vacuum or eat a hot dog for fear of jeopardizing their
pregnancies and yet, it's this F3 who takes Vicodin with her tuna
rolls that will go full term. (The Two Week Wait)
Acting uncaring, unsafe, or dangerous toward your body does not, in
the eyes of women in the community, demonstrate the intentionality of
someone who wants to be a mother. Indeed, irresponsibility challenges
women's intentions for motherhood, which in turn challenges
women's level of deservedness for motherhood. Another woman writes
of a relationship she terminated between herself and a friend as a
result of her friend's past "irresponsible" behavior:
I have cut my contact with another girl that was in my same circle
of friends in high school that has had 2 abortions in the past 5 years
(...) Now my conversations with her about her abortions boil my blood.
I'm so angry and hurt and sad that she was given the gift of
pregnancy only to throw it away not once but twice. (The Deep Breath
before the Plunge)
Not becoming a mother when the opportunity arises is, according to
women in the community, the wasting of an opportunity that they are
working so diligently toward. Underlining other women's actions is
a way in which women in the infertility community aim to illustrate that
these actions are incompatible with motherhood, unlike the actions they
engage in (discussed in detail below). In contrast to the mothers that
they deem unfit, their lifestyles ought to be rewarded with motherhood.
The following woman writes:
It's just so painfully unfair ... I can't stop asking why
people like us who are so prepared to become parents and so badly want
to aren't able while I see so many people on a daily basis who can
easily conceive & yet don't take care of the multiple children
they have. (The Road Less Traveled)
Another woman writes:
I have a girlfriend with a little baby. And it is awful to say, but
i HATE her. and really i used to like her a lot. [...] there are many
little things that have caused me to have utter disgust for her.
a. got pregnant the first time she tried.
b. a month before she got preggers, she told me they weren't
having kids because she was way too selfish to care for any children.
c. she got pregnant to make her husband happy (not a fact, but
something that many people believe to be true, not just me).
d. while she was preggers, she always complained about gaining
weight, and how inconvenient it was.
e. i took her out to lunch, because i had missed her baby shower
due to a meltdown in the shower while getting ready..... at that lunch
she made two completely horrendous comments to me. the first was that
she was afraid she would never sleep again, and would take advantage of
every minute in the hospital by keeping the baby in the nursery so she
could sleep, the second was about coming home from the hospital... she
had said that she would have her mother bring the baby home that day so
that she and her husband could go and eat sushi and have a beer, after
that, i had decided she was a crazy lunatic.
f. the newest and most upsetting to me. she went on vacation for 12
days, and left her 13 week old child at home. (All I Ever Wished For)
In judging the way in which pregnant women treat their bodies and
how they care for their children, women in the community are implying
that taking on the motherhood role requires deliberate and calculated
actions that in turn measure your worthiness of motherhood. Finding the
actions of other women and mothers deplorable says something unambiguous
about what women in the online infertility community construct as good
mothering: being prepared, responsible, and intentional.
The above examples, taken alone, do not speak directly to
women's evaluation of the intentionality of the mothers being
scrutinized. However, when the examples provided are contrasted with how
women in the community discuss their own approach to becoming mothers,
the issue of intentionality becomes apparent, because it illustrates a
direct comparison of actions between two groups of people who end up or
desire to end up at the same end point: motherhood. It is precisely the
process of comparison that proves analytically interesting both with
respect to how women in the community see their own intentions, as well
as how the act of blogging becomes about homosociality (discussed in
more detail below).
Evaluating the intentionality of pregnant women and mothers is how
women in the online infertility community appraise their own and other
women's deservedness of motherhood. Women in the infertility
community characterize their inability to conceive as unjust, especially
in the face of women whose intention for motherhood is questionable. The
juxtaposition of the injustice of infertility and the unmet standards of
motherhood in the following post are a clear indication of a comparison
of intentions:
Is the message that all of my fellow fertility challenged friends
and I should quit our jobs, become homeless, go into debt and start
taking crack? Is that the moment the person in charge of the universe is
like, "Oh wow! Look at that woman. Her life is falling apart!
Quick! Let's make her responsible for another human being!"
(The Two Week Wait)
According to women in the online infertility community, there is a
"right" way to pursue pregnancy and motherhood and they
believe they have followed it. I now turn to the ways in which women in
the infertility community highlight their own actions, behaviors, and
intentions as indications of being deserving of motherhood.
HARD WORK AND SACRIFICE: INTENTIONALITY
Many of the women in the infertility community evaluate their
purposeful effort, hard work, and sacrifice as primary indications of
their intention to be mothers. They interpret the pain, emotional
turmoil, and the suffering they face as proof of their intentions to be
a mother and therefore of their deservedness. The following woman writes
about being reminded of how much children are worth it in the face of
the struggles she endures with her infertility:
It'll be worth it. They are totally worth it. When you see
your baby sleeping or smiling or giggling. Just wait. I know. You
don't have to remind me. I know that kids are worth it. I
wouldn't do this if I didn't have to or if I didn't think
it was worth it. Lucky for you, you didn't have to spend your
entire life savings to get one. Lucky for you, you didn't have to
puncture yourself with needles every day for weeks on end. I already get
it. In the end, they're worth it. (Raising Cain, Someday)
Commonly, women in the community speak to those who have not had to
"work" for motherhood through the administration of needles
and excessive medical costs. The needles women in the community endure
and the money they invest denote a commitment and deservedness for
motherhood.
Indeed money spent on treatments is often interpreted as being owed
the opportunity to have a child. The following woman, discussing her
odds of becoming pregnant, writes:
And I feel like, damn it, WE ARE OWED one of those other 49 chances
to have a normal baby (at my age). (Eggs Out of Time)
In a similar vein, expressing the need to be compensated for her
and her husband's investments, another woman writes:
But we do have enough blasts that maybe, just maybe, we could have
one--or if the universe is really smiling--maybe even two that are
normal. Please? Couldn't we please? We've paid our dues! (Love
and Life in the Petri Dish)
Repeatedly women in the online infertility community make
references to having put in enough energy, money, and sacrifice to
become pregnant. These references, I argue are expressions of their
intentionality for children. Another woman writes:
We've paid our dues, we've paid our money, we've
opened our hearts, we've hoped, we've let go, we've hoped
again. Hope, luck, faith, love. And science. But perhaps this is about
destiny.... (Life in the Waiting Womb)
In the context of having paid, in many cases, a great deal of
money, while also investing time and energy into becoming pregnant in
the absence of pregnancy and children, many women are once again
reminded of the injustice of their circumstances. The following woman
writes:
Where is the justice? Why put us infertiles through this total and
complete bullsh*t? And then, even after many of us work so hard, go
through thousands of dollars, months of stress, and take hormone
altering drugs to get pregnant, why do you punish us by taking our
reward of a newborn away? That does not make for a very satisfied
customer. (The Two Week Wait)
Women in the community prove the injustice of infertility with
reference to the uncertain outcome of their efforts to conceive, which
include time, money, emotions, and drug treatments that often result in
miscarriages. The following woman writes:
Time, energy, MONEY, we let everything else go by the wayside as
the focus was getting pregnant. We found a well-recommended fertility
doctor, we went through 4 IUI cycles, we prayed, I ate right, exercised,
didn't drink coffee or wine, tried not to get stressed and did
everything the doctor told us. It didn't work. (Musings from a
Hormonal Egg Basket)
In referring to the effort, hard work, and sacrifice that have been
a part of their journeys toward motherhood, the implication is that
those who work hard enough and forfeit many of life's pleasures
(caffeine and alcohol in this case) and intend to become mothers deserve
to reach their desired goal. Women in the online infertility culture
also express resentment for their sacrifices and hard work, which do not
always lead to the desired outcome of pregnancy. The following woman
writes:
Feelings of defeat? I think I am resentful of it for some reason,
because I think it's tied into the infertility somehow. Or I feel
like maybe I have sacrificed so much already, it doesn't feel fair
to have to do this too. (Little Blog about the Big Infertility)
The contrast between their efforts and the absence of targeted
efforts among other women who become easily pregnant is a direct
reflection of how women in the community measure intention, which is
then provided as proof of their worth as mothers. Hard work and
sacrifice are called upon as badges of honor in the journey toward
motherhood, and also marshaled as evidence of the quality of mother a
woman will be once she has a child. Most women in the community maintain
that they will be better mothers as a result of the difficulties
they've encountered while trying to conceive. The following woman
states:
There are women that become mothers without effort, without
thought, without patience or loss and though they are good mothers and
love their children, I know that I will be better. I will be better not
because of genetics, or money or that I have read more books, but
because I have struggled and toiled for this child. (Random Thoughts
from Angie)
The goal of motherhood, which sometimes seems unreachable for many
of the women online, is perhaps made more attainable through the work,
sacrifice, and effort they invest in becoming pregnant, as illustrated
by the following statement:
I mean, things happen, but to spend YEARS and THOUSANDS, not to
mention all the blood, sweat, and tears, trying to have a baby, and then
have to deal with some sort of totally random illness or abnormality?!?
(Life by the Day)
The exorbitant cost of infertility treatments is used as evidence
to proclaim how unjust their circumstances are, wherein they have very
little choice but to pay these costs and move on toward becoming
pregnant. The following woman writes:
And damn it I want to conceive a baby for free like so many people
in this world are able to do! I realize that having a child will cost
money, but I always imagined we would be able to make it financially
with a child that we conceived for free instead of having their life
start with us being in debt from making him/her. (The Deep Breath before
the Plunge)
The inevitability of paying for infertility treatments as though
there are no other options is evident in the following post:
I want to go overseas on a holiday with my husband, buy nice
clothes and go out without feeling like I should be saving money or
spending it trying to get pregnant. (Maybe Baby or Maybe the Loony Bin)
In making assessments about their own and other women's
intentions for pursuing motherhood, women in the infertility community
suggest that they see themselves as more deserving of something that
every other women else has unimpeded access to. Women in the online
infertility community contrast their hard work and sacrifice with the
lack of intentionality among already existing mothers to illustrate how
their lifestyles--as characterized by their actions, decisions, and
intentions--make them better suited to motherhood. By highlighting their
own intentions then, women in the online infertility community present
themselves as more appropriate, deserving, and worthy of motherhood.
Judging other women's actions as mothers allows them to claim
motherhood as a role that they deserve, even over and above some women
who have already achieved it.
ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION: MATERNAL IDEATION, "OTHERING"
MOTHERS, ENTITLEMENT, AND HOMOSOCIALITY
When women do not have access to the gender ideal of motherhood,
they turn to the virtual world of personal blogging to chronicle their
exclusion. The content of this personal blogging, taken together, is a
form of what I term maternal ideation. That is, women in the online
infertility community characterize their experience as unjust and
evaluate who deserves to be a mother. These adjudications, alongside the
work that women in the online infertility community do to become
pregnant, stimulates self-assurance in their opportunity for success and
in their future parenting abilities, which translates into a process of
maternal ideation for women in the infertility community. Through this
maternal ideation these women have the opportunity to conceive of
themselves as successful mothers, thereby allowing them to lay claim to
the gendered role of mother.
Not all women with fertility struggle, however, find solace online.
Indeed, as this sample indicates it is white, middle-class,
heterosexual, partnered women who turn to the virtual world to process
their exclusion from motherhood. As offered by the combination of
narratives herein and the demographics of the sample, a middle-class
sensibility guides the way in which these women react to the costs
associated with infertility. They have ordered their lives in such a way
that, up until now, they worked hard and paid for the majority of things
that they desire in their lives (i.e., material objects such as an
education, property, clothing, etc.). Much like how a middle-class
sensibility affects what people believe they ought to have in their
lifetimes at various life-course stages (i.e., purchasing property,
getting married, settling down), the same is true of having a child for
these women. They have done everything "right" up until now,
but suddenly they are being denied access to the next crucial
life-course stage: motherhood.
This finding is not unlike the trend in marriage practices analyzed
by Cherlin (2009). Marriage among the middle-class, he suggests, is now
reserved for after individuals have acquired education, jobs/careers,
and a stable income. In analyzing women's reactions to their
inability to conceive, similarly, having children is a practice, at
least among the middle-class, which is saved for when people perceive
their life circumstances to be stable and secure. Women's
expressions of indignation at their fertility struggles are therefore
understandable because in their eyes they have ordered their lives in
such a way that presumes having children after other life-course
accomplishments. In short, they express an entitlement toward motherhood
as they expected it was a role they could claim with little to no
problems.
By typifying their circumstances as an injustice, women in the
online infertility community deepen their claim to the motherhood role.
Characterizing infertility as unjust serves as evidence to suggest that
they not only want to achieve the gendered norm of motherhood, but also
see themselves as having an entitlement to motherhood. Pointing to other
women's pregnancies and pregnant bodies as coveted prize
achievements further illustrates how they understand the norm of
motherhood in relational and comparative terms. Women in the online
infertility community further solidify how the quest for motherhood as a
gender identity is one that occurs relationally by evaluating who
deserves to be a mother in comparison to themselves.
While is not a surprising finding, it is an interesting one with
respect to what it can tell us about feminine gender norms, identity
achievement, motherhood, and women's relationality. Indeed the
comparative and relational facet of the blogs, alongside the
characterization of infertility as an injustice leads me make specific
claim about how we understand the ideal of motherhood. Rather than
conceptualize motherhood as only a gender identity achievement, we need
to look at it as a path through which women have the opportunity for
women to relate to one another. I am suggesting, therefore, that
motherhood is not just about gender identity achievement but also about
women's relationality.
Nelson (2009) argues that membership in the cultural space of the
"mommies club" revolves largely around pregnancy and
childbirth. Pregnancy and especially the pregnant belly (alongside other
physical signs of pregnancy) often become symbols of cultural membership
in the club of mothers, wherein women immediately and sometimes silently
identify with other women around them as being a mom. Thus, it is not
only a child that will allow women with infertility struggles to become
a mother, but also the corporeal experiences of pregnancy and childbirth
that will allow them to make claim to this title.
Pregnancy is symbolic of women's path to motherhood, thus it
is understandable that women in the infertility community would focus on
other women's pregnancies as concrete evidence of their injustice.
Much like women who are pregnant who have not struggled with
infertility, their primary focus is on the pregnancy and childbirth and
not necessarily the child that will result. Their lack of forward
thinking is commonplace, as it has been illustrated that many women do
not feel like mothers while they are pregnant, and some not until much
time has passed after the birth of their child (Fox 2009). Similarly,
women facing fertility challenges do not see much beyond the pregnancy,
they are working so diligently to conceive. Thus, pregnancies and
pregnant bellies become a source of a great deal of agony and pain in
that they are constant reminders of what they feel they have been
denied.
Further, women in the online infertility community understand their
proximity to motherhood in a relational way, by comparing what they do
not have relative to what other women do. Conceivably, if infertile
women were not surrounded by "normal" women who were getting
pregnant and having children regularly, it is possible that their deep
desire to have a biological child would be less strong. They are
effectively cheated out of a meaningful, life-course event that, to
them, everyone else seems to be enjoying. It might be assumed that they
have done everything in their lives that their friends have done (i.e.,
went to college/university/postsecondary, found a partner [more
specifically a husband], bought property, and acquired a pet), but
suddenly they are prevented from reaching the next life-course stage:
parenting.
Women struggling with infertility are thus denied access to a rite
of passage that will forever prevent them from becoming what women often
imagine they would become: a mother (Fox 2009). While the presence of
children is problematic for some women, children are less triggering (or
less often discussed as triggers) than women who are pregnant. How do we
make sense of other women as the target of women's sense of
injustice about motherhood?
Gender identity development is central to this process of
comparison. Women in the online infertility community are attempting to
access a feminine gender identity that, at times, appears to be out of
their reach. In comparison to the peer group that they surround
themselves with, they are, in their eyes, "behind." The
middle-class women involved in the identity project discussed herein
have likely compared themselves to the norm along many dimensions of
identity and life-course progression for a long time (educational
attainment and property purchase to name two). This practice is not
unusual, as it is commonplace for individuals to compare themselves to
the norm along most life-course stage markers. As social beings, we see
ourselves relative to those around us. This process of comparison only
becomes glaringly obvious when we are not able to measure up, as is the
case with women in the online infertility community. Other women's
pregnancies become concrete illustrations of how far away women with
fertility challenges feel from becoming a mother and perhaps how unable
they are to relate to other women around them. Another woman getting
pregnant and having a child injures women with fertility struggles in a
personal way that elicits expressions of anger, jealousy, and
resentment, and in some cases leads these women to lose hope in their
ability to become mothers. Pointing to the process of comparison
elucidates how motherhood is also about women's relationality in
that they are not directly discussing their failure to achieve a gender
norm, but they are lamenting the fact that they are not a part of the
way in which women easily relate to one another via motherhood.
As previously discussed, many feminist sociologists argue that the
permanence of the motherhood ideal is directly related to women's
desire to become "real" women and live up to social
expectations (Russo 1976). While I do not deny that this is the case, I
am also suggesting that over and above their desires to live up to
social expectations of womanhood, they also want to be able to relate to
other women in the way that so many women around them do. Beyond having
been socialized into the motherhood role, women also express a desire
for the right to mother. Observing other women pregnant and interacting
with their children seems to reinforce women's expressions of
entitlement to motherhood. Indeed women in the online infertility
community are feeling extreme exclusion from membership to the
"mommie's club" (Nelson 2009).
The experience of this inclusion leads women in the online
infertility community engage in a process of "othering"
mothers. The process of "othering" refers to the way in which
a particular social group becomes defined and characterized in contrast
to the dominant social group, usually with hierarchal undertones. Used
in philosophical texts since the 1920s and 1930s, the term
"othering" describes the process through which individuals
attempt to change or distance themselves (Jensen 2011). Spivak (1985)
used the term systematically as it related to race, class, and gender.
Most famously, drawing from Hegel, de Beauvoir ([1949] 1989) argued that
women are "othered" in that their subjectivity is established
only in reference to how men have been defined. The process of
"othering," therefore, most often has hierarchal effects on
the subjectivity of individual groups. Women in the online infertility
community highlight the lack of intentionality among women who are too
young, irresponsible, and unprepared to deal with the accountability
required for motherhood. In contrast to these mothers, they work to
prove themselves to be more capable, responsible, and prepared for the
requirements of motherhood.
Over and above proving the authenticity of their goal,
"othering" mothers also allow women in the online infertility
community to engage in a meaningful therapeutic exercise that shifts
their role from that of victim to that of judge. Doing so restores
control to a situation that they are experiencing as extremely chaotic
and senseless. They manage the chaos of their situations by reordering
the occurrence of events in their lives, such that they refile
themselves in the "normal" pile that they are used to being a
part of. Indeed, there is a moral calculus invoked by women in the
online infertility community that involves an evaluation of
intentionality. Unfortunately for these women, their own experience and
those of many women around them contradict this calculus. Women in the
online infertility community rectify this contradiction by underlining
the way in which their own lives are concurrent with the intentionality
of motherhood, as measured by responsibility and preparation. In
underlining their own intentionality, they in turn construct themselves
as more deserving and therefore more entitled to the motherhood role
than many of the women they observe around them.
With the narratives presented herein, I argue that motherhood as a
norm is so pervasive for women that they conceptualize it as a right
they are entitled to have access to not only an identity they seek to
achieve. While the women in this study do not directly discuss their
pursuit of motherhood as something they require in order to access a
fulfilling gender identity, their disbelief at their infertility would
suggest that they are indeed facing an unanticipated deep existential
crisis. I cannot say for sure that such a crisis would be only about
gender identity achievement, although as previous literature has
established their fervent pursuit is likely connected to a desire to
achieve "real" femininity. My findings illustrate, however,
that that previous research has overstated the conclusion that
motherhood is primarily about the pursuit of a gender norm (Greil 1991;
Letherby 1999; McMahon 1995). Examining how women in the online
infertility community focus on other women's bodies, behaviors, and
choices during their own pursuit of motherhood tells us that motherhood
is also related to women's sociality more generally.
By drawing on mainstream moral evaluations of "good" and
"bad" mother, women in the online infertility community make
arbitrations about their own and other women's worthiness for
motherhood. In the context of their own hard work and sacrifice, women
in the online infertility community "other" mothers around
them, engaging in what I have termed maternal ideation. They fetishize
the role of intentionality in becoming a mother, thereby laying claim to
their entitlement to motherhood. In doing so, other women become the
targets of women's anger, sadness, resentment, and jealousy. Why
would this be so? Why do women turn on other women and mothers when they
are unable to conceive?
First and foremost, I would argue that expression of these emotions
stems from women's exclusion from the "mommies club."
Social exclusion is painful in any context and leads people to be
hyperaware of those around them who have what they want. Quite simply,
the infertility bloggers want access to a world that is composed only of
women, so it makes sense that they focus on other women and mothers.
Other women and mothers are the most visible targets of their
incredulity, sadness, and frustration. So-called bad mothers are
immediately available and in the purview of women in the online
infertility community, and are therefore frequently the topics of
discussion.
It would be facile to think that women in the online infertility
community work so fervently for motherhood only because they so badly
want to be a part of all of the moms around them. Certainly their
actions are related to wanting to become a member of the "mommies
club," which corroborates Nelson's (2009) findings. However,
their pursuit of connection with other women via motherhood also relates
to common ideologies of how women should bond in homosocial settings.
Common tropes of female bonding involve activities that revolve around
caring and domestic responsibilities (knitting clubs, sewing clubs,
recipes clubs) and beauty rituals (facials, manicures, pedicures). It is
also in these settings where the majority of women talk about
"girl" things like their menstrual periods, finding
boyfriends, and getting married. Thus, mutual understandings of
women's homosociality rely heavily on gender stereotypes about
acceptable womanhood, which may also be a contributing factor to these
women's focus on other women. For lack of a better term, motherhood
is the "natural" way women come together as women, and so
women pursue these means of coming together.
The significance of women's homosociality might help explain
why other scholars have observed an exclusion of nonbiological mothers
in motherhood settings. Doucet (2006) found that men who are the primary
caretakers for their children also encounter exclusion when trying to
integrate themselves into motherhood networks:
... with few exceptions, every stay-at-home father described an
uncomfortable or downright painful experience in playgroups or, more
generally, in the parenting community. Some fathers glanced into the
windows of culture and quickly made the decision to avoid
mother-dominated settings .... (p. 139)
Similarly, Nelson (1996) found that nonbiological mothers (lesbian
mothers and adoptive mothers) were not as readily accepted into the fold
of motherhood circles as biological mothers were. She argues that this
is primarily related to their inability to share birthing stories, which
were indeed a defining feature of entrance into the club. Relatedly,
highlighting the importance of social support during the postpartum
period, Fox (2009) observes in her study of couples becoming parents
that "the women in the study need social support in its broadest
sense ... Far more than anyone else except their partners, the mothers
(and sometimes mothers-in-law) of these women were the people who gave
them this kind of support (Ribbens 1994)" (p. 92). The way in which
women rely on their own mothers (and sometimes their mothers-in-law)
adds wider context to the significance of homosociality through
motherhood.
In examining women's homosociality in the online infertility
community, I have demonstrated that women in this context covet
particular things (pregnancy, a family, the ability to fit in with their
friends who are parents) while pursuing motherhood. In acknowledging
these items, it's fair to conclude that women want not only to be
mothers as an intrinsically valuable experience for themselves, but also
to be recognized as mothers by other people, especially other women.
Indeed in her study of lesbian mothers, Nelson (1996) argues that,
"'mother' is not merely a role or a label. It is a state
of being, a perspective, an emotional connection and a set of
activities. It is a status whose achievement depends on validation by
others that one is a mother" (p. 135). This may also explain why
women struggling with fertility issues go online in the first place.
Their blogging is what allows them to publicly chronicle the components
of their life, their qualities as women, as couples, alongside their
abilities, and intentions that make them so close to being a mother
already. They are able to publicly illustrate the maternal ideation they
engage in on a regular basis.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence supporting my assertion that
women's desire to become mothers is intimately connected to
women's homosociality is the absence of similar infertility blogs
written by men. In my extensive search for infertility blogs, I found
only one or two authored by men.
It is possible that we do not often see men go online to discuss
their fertility issues and their aspirations to become a father because
reproduction and babymaking is still the province of women, associated
with the domestic realm and the private sphere. I would argue that this
sphere and the experience that is associated with it are in some
respects coveted and perhaps protected by women to enhance their own
opportunities for homosocial connection. We must then ask ourselves:
what does women's homosociality tell us about the pursuit of a
gendered identity?
While these women do not discuss their pursuit of motherhood in
terms of feminine gender identity, previous research allows us leeway to
assume that women's quest for motherhood is or could be--at least
in part--a gendered identity pursuit (Greil 1991; Letherby 1999;
Whiteford and Gonzalez 1995), among other things. If women in the online
infertility community are pursuing motherhood in order to achieve a
feminine gender identity--or as I have argued in order to claim their
entitlement to the gendered identity of motherhood--the conclusion is
that they do it for people they are like (insiders: other mothers and
potential mothers) rather than for people they are unlike (outsiders:
fathers and brothers, for example).
This argument might seem unrevealing, but it has important
considerations for the way sociology makes sense of gender identity
achievement more broadly. In 1987, West and Zimmerman transformed the
terrain of gender studies with their "doing gender" framework,
arguing that gender is accomplished in repetitive and routine
interaction. According to this theory, individuals are accountable for
their actions based on the normative expectations that are attached to
one's perceived sex category (sex attribution made by outsiders).
With this theory, we moved away from thinking about gender as rooted in
sex differences or sex roles and toward being able to see gender as an
effect of interaction rather than an attribute that precedes
interaction.
Even though accountability is at the core of the "doing
gender" perspective, few scholars focus on it, and as Hollander
(2013) argues, "(m)ost writers note that people 'are held
accountable' to gender expectations--but by whom, how, and with
what consequences are rarely addressed" (p. 6). The concept of
accountability is related to how individuals assume others might
perceive their behaviors as a function of their sex category.
Effectively, people "do gender" because they assume their
behavior will be evaluated with respect to normative gender
expectations, which in turn affects the way they interact and achieve
identity.
My findings with respect to women's homosociality in the
online infertility community indicate that women are accountable to
other women. The blog posts canvassed, which continually reference other
women and mothers, suggest women are preoccupied with how other women
achieve motherhood (a measure of femininity) and that subsequent
individual gender identity achievement occurs in constant comparison to
those around us who are like us. We feel most accountable to people who
are most like us. There is a paucity of research interested in gender
identity (re)production in homosocial settings. Apart from Kimmel
(1994), the research that does consider gender identity (re)production
in homosocial settings does not do enough to focus on what is unique
about homosocial settings, which contributes to gender identity
production. My findings, therefore, are both an illustration of how we
might start looking at accountability structures more directly, and a
call for future research to investigate how accountability structures
operate in homosocial settings. For example, what do women discuss in
all-female environments? How do women discuss feminine beauty in hair
salons, or nail spas, or the change rooms of clothing stores? Do men
discuss masculinity at the gym? How is gender identity achievement
discussed in sororities? Examining these questions also preserves the
ethnomethodological roots of the "doing gender" perspective.
Certainly, relationality--especially in homosocial settings--is
complicated. I have argued herein, women are accountable to other women
when they are attempting to achieve, and claim an entitlement to a
gendered identity such as motherhood, and they also strive to feel
connected to and relate to those very same women. In short, they are
both angry with other women and want to be their friends. This finding
calls upon Simmons's (2003) analysis of what she calls "hidden
aggression" among girls, and her suggestion that "to
understand girls' conflicts, one must also understand girls'
intimacy, because intimacy and anger are often inextricable" (p.
30). Thus we need to ask, what is the connection between intimacy and
hostility for women? Women are both angry with and want to be friends
with the women they focus a great deal of their attention on. Women who
blog about their infertility are angry and feeling excluded. However,
their emotional responses to their circumstances do not lead to broader,
more socially complex understandings of power, inequity, and injustice.
Unlike the gender "reclamations and refutations" Judith Taylor
(2008) identifies in the memoirs of the contemporary feminist movement,
women in the online infertility community rarely assemble corrective
measures to address the structural constraints of their situations. This
is not to say that they ought to engage in these actions, but rather it
is to ask why they do not readily engage? How can we understand their
anger, exclusion, and desire for intimacy in the context of their
seeming lack of orientation to mechanisms of change? A serious focus on
women's homosociality in a variety of settings could help us
explore these questions.
KRISTA WHITEHEAD
Mount Royal University
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(1.) Some women refer to the infertility community as the
"IF" community (Stirrup Queen Web site
http://www.stirrup-queens.com/).
(2.) The public availability of such information and its subsequent
analysis conforms to the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct
for Research Involving Humans which states that "research about a
living individual involved in the public arena, or about an artist based
on publicly available information ... is not required to undergo ethics
review" (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada, 1998, with 2000, 2002 and 2005
amendments).
(3.) The Web site Stirrup Queen--now Stirrup Queens--is currently
active as of October 2015 and continues to link to personal blogs
focusing on infertility.
(4.) While I am conscious of the complicated nature of adopting the
language of the research subjects, I am also hesitant to assign an
identity label that they have not chosen for themselves. For the most
part, women in the community call themselves "infertiles" or
"if-ers." I prefer if-ers as it connotes and active,
action-oriented, component to their activities that is geared to
continuous thoughts about the future.
Table 1 The Sample
Education/ Marital
Blog name Age Race occupation status
Little Blog about the 31 Unclear M.A. in Married
Big Infertility psychology/
counselor
Alex's Adventures 35 White Accountant Married
All in One Basket 36 White Unclear Married
Ready for My Bundle 27 White Intern Unclear
architect/
instructor
The New Life of Nancy 38 White Unclear Married
Life by the Day 28 White In publishing Married
Life in the Waiting Unclear White Unclear Married
Womb
Musings from a 34 Unclear Unclear Married
Hormonal Egg Basket
Riding the IVF Roller 40 White Postgraduate Married
Coaster degree
Maybe Baby or Maybe 28 White Unclear Married
the Loony Bin
The Road Less Traveled 31 White Social worker Married
As Fast as my Baby Can 35 White Actuary for Married
Fortune 500
company
Stolen Fertility 29 Unclear Graduate degree Married
Not a Fertile Myrtle 40 White Biologist Married
Anxious Mummy 20s White Unclear Married
Venting Vagina 36 White Unclear Married
Life and Love in the 39 White Health-care Married
Petri Dish professional
Hearts Joined, Hands 30s Unclear Unclear Married
Fast
The Two Week Wait 36ish White Writer Married
CD 1 Again 33 Unclear Unclear Married
Just Beginning 28 White Unclear Married
Do I Have to be a DINK 34 White B.A. Married
Eggs Out of Time 40 White Unclear Married
Privileged Infertile Late 20s White Unclear Married
Raising Cain, Someday Unclear White M.B.A. Married
The Deep Breath before 30s White Unclear Married
the Plunge
Cradles and Graves 35 White Unclear Married
All I Ever Wished For Unclear White Unclear Married
Random Thoughts from 38 White M.A. Married
Angie
