Prelims

Half Title Page

VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY CHILDLESSNESS

Title Page

VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY CHILDLESSNESS: THE JOYS OF OTHERHOOD?

EDITED BY

NATALIE SAPPLETON

Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2018

Copyright © 2018 Natalie Sappleton. Published under exclusive licence.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78754-362-1 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78754-361-4 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78754-363-8 (Epub)

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants, both the parents and the childfree, for sharing their stories and experiences with us.

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Contributors

Laura Carroll is an expert and leading voice on the intentionally childless choice. She is the author of Families of Two: Interviews with Happily Married Couples without Children by Choice (2000), which received international recognition. Since its publication, Laura (MS Psychology) has continued to conduct qualitative research on the intentionally childless, and is currently conducting a longitudinal study on intentionally childless women. Laura is also the author of The Baby Matrix: Why Freeing Our Minds from Outmoded Thinking about Parenthood & Reproduction Will Create a Better World (2012), which examines and challenges long-held social and cultural assumptions about parenthood and reproduction.

Megumi Fieldsend is a PhD student in Psychology at Birkbeck University of London, UK, working with Professor Jonathan A. Smith. She is currently conducting her research using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), exploring the experience of women living with involuntary childlessness. She is particularly interested in the dynamics of experiential adult development, meaning reconstruction, self and identity and the psychological impact on people living without the children they hoped for.

Anna Gotlib was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States with her family. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA. Before joining the faculty at Brooklyn College, she was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University (SUNY). Previous to her academic career, she was employed as an Attorney, specialising in International Law and Labor Law, working in the United States and abroad. Her recent research has appeared in the International Journal for Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Humana Mente and several volumes and collections. She is the Editor of The Moral Psychology of Sadness as well as The Moral Psychology of Regret (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017, 2018).

Melissa Graham is an Associate Professor in the College of Science, Health and Engineering at LaTrobe University, Australia. She supervises honours, master’s and PhD research students in the area of women’s health. She is the Deputy Director, Centre for Health through Action on Social Exclusion (CHASE), a multi-disciplinary research centre which works collaboratively to promote social inclusion, in the School of Health and Social Development, Faculty of Health at Deakin University. Her research focuses on the exploration of the lives of women who do not have children, the role of policy on reproductive health, reproductive decision-making and the experiences of social in/exclusion. These research areas are interconnected and each consider and draw attention to the implications for health and well-being.

Nazli Kazanoglu is a third-year PhD student in the School of Social Policy at Ulster University, UK. Her current thesis is ‘Europeanization Patterns of Gender Equality within Work and Family Life Reconciliation Policies in Germany and Turkey’. She received her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Middle East Technical University, her master’s degree in Sociology of Mass Media and Communication Systems from Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey and did her replacement in UC Berkeley, USA. Her research interests lie in the area of Europeanisation studies, comparative welfare regime analysis, new-institutionalism theory, gender equality, women’s employment and reconciliation of work and family life.

Deborah Lowry is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Montevallo, USA, where she teaches courses on social problems, ageing, environment, China and social change. Her research interests lie in rural sociology, East Asia, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Lowry was an NIH (National Institutions of Health) Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center. She holds a BA degree from Grand Valley State University, an MA from Western Michigan University and a PhD from the Michigan State University.

Ingrid Lynch is a Senior Research Specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), in the Human and Social Development programme. She is also an Honorary Research Associate in the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme at Rhodes University, South Africa. Her research interests include critical feminist approaches to genders and sexualities; queer family-making and social belonging; and sexual and reproductive justice. She is editor of the forthcoming book, Queer Kinship: Perspectives on Sexualities, Families, and Reproduction in South Africa, along with Tracy Morison and Vasu Reddy, funded by the DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development.

Catriona Ida Macleod is a Professor of Psychology and SARChI Chair of the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme at Rhodes University, South Africa. Her major scholastic contributions have been in two main areas: sexual and reproductive health, and feminist theory in psychology. She has written extensively in national and international journals in relation to teenage pregnancy, abortion, sexuality education, pregnancy support, feminist psychology and postcolonialist and poststructural theory. She is author of the multi award-winning book ‘Adolescence’, Pregnancy and Abortion: Constructing a Threat of Degeneration (Routledge, 2011) and co-author (with Tracy Morison) of the book Men’s Pathways to Parenthood: Silence and Heterosexual Gendered Norms (HSRC Press, 2015). She is Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Feminism & Psychology. She oversaw the formation of the Sexual Violence Task Team that was set up in response to the #RUReferenceList protests in South Africa. She is on the steering committee of the Sexual and Reproductive Justice Coalition and is an Executive Committee Member of the International Society of Critical Health Psychology and the International Society of Theoretical Psychology. She is the recipient of the VC’s Distinguished Senior Research Award (2015) and the VC’s Community Engagement Award (2015).

Hayley McKenzie is a Lecturer in the School of Health and Social Development, Faculty of Health at Deakin University, Australia. Dr McKenzie’s research focuses on family and social policy, and exploring the inequities experienced by particular social groups who are reliant on social and institutional policies, including a specific focus on women’s health and well-being. Dr McKenzie teaches at the undergraduate and postgraduate level and has supervised honours and master’s students exploring social policy and the impacts on women’s health and well-being.

Kate de Medeiros is an Associate Professor of Gerontology at Miami University, Ohio, USA. Her research includes narrative approaches to understanding later life; friendships among people with dementia; flourishing, suffering, precarity and frailty; and humanistic approaches to studying old age.

Jenny Mercer is a Principal Lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK. She is a Social Psychologist, with a strong interest in qualitative research methods. Her work to date involves a range of qualitative approaches to understanding human experience in applied settings (e.g. thematic analysis, grounded theory, phenomenology and participatory designs). These have often been used to address unconventional areas such as coming to terms with death, the impact of having a traumatic childbirth experience and women who choose not to have children. It is hoped that such research is one way of raising awareness of topics which are not always widely discussed.

Magdalena Mijas is a psychologist specializing in the fields of Sexology and LGBTQ Psychology. She is currently pursuing her PhD in the field of health sciences from Jagiellonian University Medical College. Her research focuses on stigma and health disparities among LGBTQ populations. She is also involved in LGBTQ rights activism in Poland. She is the lead author of ‘Language, Media, HIV: The Picture of Infection and Seropositive People in Newspaper Articles’ (Mijas, Dora, Brodzikowska, & Žoładek, 2016) and co-author of ‘Introduction to LGB Psychology’ (Iniewicz, Mijas, & Grabski, 2012) and ‘Human Sexuality: Selected Issues’ (Iniewicz & Mijas, 2011).

Tracy Morison is a Social and Health Psychology Lecturer in the School of Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand, and an Honorary Research Associate in the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme at Rhodes University, South Africa. Tracy’s research focus falls within the broad area of sexual and reproductive health, with a particular interest in reproductive ‘choice’, stigma and marginalised identities. She works with critical feminist theories and qualitative methodologies. She is the co-author of Men’s Pathways to Parenthood: Silence and Heterosexual Gendered Norms (Morison & Macleod, 2015, HSRC Press).

Alyssa Mullins is a PhD Graduate and Data Analyst at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida, USA. Her research interests include relationships, family life, public health and policy initiatives and community programmes. Her current research focuses on experiences of voluntary childlessness in social arenas.

Rose O’Driscoll is a former Senior Lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK. Her main areas of teaching were sociology, social care and mental health. She also worked as an Associate Lecturer with the Open University. Prior to this, she worked with people with learning disabilities, homeless women, older people and mental health service users in Ireland, England and Wales. Her sociological research on why women choose not to have children was undertaken for her PhD. She continues to explore lesser-known areas of women’s lives on a freelance basis.

Helen Peterson is Associate Professor in Sociology and Senior Lecturer in Work Science at the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her pioneering research on voluntary childlessness, funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, was the first sociological study on the subject in Sweden. She co-authored the first anthology about voluntary childlessness in the Nordic countries, published in 2010 (written in Swedish). Since its publication, her research has earned international recognition and has been published in several distinguished journals, such as Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Women’s Studies International Forum, the European Journal of Women’s Studies, and Feminist Media Studies.

Robert L. Rubinstein is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), USA. He has carried out research on Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, assisted living and many other topics related to ageing and old age.

Natalie Sappleton is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Her research interests are in the intersections between social networks, gender segregation and gender stereotyping in the context of entrepreneurship. Her research programmes have included Women Audio Visual Engineers (WAVE), Women in North West Engineering and numerous investigations into sex discrimination at the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Natalie received her MA (Hons.) in Economics and Politics at the University of Glasgow and her master’s in Research from Manchester Metropolitan University. Her PhD thesis investigates the role of gender role (in)congruency on the ability to acquire resources among New York City entrepreneurs.

Simi Seemanthini (PhD) is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist (Registered with the RCI & NZPB). Prior to this she taught in the Department of Psychiatry at Kasturba Medical College, India. She completed her PhD in 2014 at Mangalore University, India.

Ivett Szalma holds a PhD in Sociology from the Corvinus University of Budapest. She is Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (http://www.tk.mta.hu/kutato/szalma-ivett). Previously, she worked at the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS) as Postdoctoral Researcher. Her research topics include childlessness, work-life conflicts, the measurement of homophobia, adoption by same-sex couples and fatherhood practices. She is the Head of the Family Sociology Section of the Hungarian Sociological Association. Her most recent publications have featured in Values and identities in Europe. Evidence from the European Social Survey (2017, Routledge) and Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45(7), (2016).

Judit Takács is a Research Chair at the Institute of Sociology, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and is responsible for leading research teams and conducting independent research on family practices, work-life balance issues and childlessness as well as the social history of homosexuality, social exclusion/inclusion of LGBTQ +  people and HIV/AIDS prevention. Her most recent publications include ‘Trans Citizenship in Post-Socialist Societies’ (in Critical Social Policy; with R. Kuhar and S. Monro, 2018), ‘Social Attitudes toward Adoption by Same-Sex Couples in Europe’ (in the Archives of Sexual Behavior; with I. Szalma and T. Bartus, 2016) and ‘Disciplining Gender and (Homo)Sexuality in State Socialist Hungary in the 1970s’ (published in the European Review of History, 2014). Currently, she works as a seconded National Expert at the ECDC in Stockholm.

Ann Taket is the Director of Centre for Health through Action on Social Exclusion (CHASE), School of Health and Social Development, Faculty of Health at Deakin University, Australia. Professor Taket has over 30 years’ experience in public health-related research. Her research has included studies of a wide variety of issues in health policy, service planning and service evaluation, and health-related education in the UK, Australia and other countries. These studies have involved a wide range of different methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative. She has particular interests in research directed at understanding the complex interactions between social exclusion and health, prevention and intervention in violence and abuse and the value of human rights-based approaches in policy and practice.

Kimiko Tanaka is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the James Madison University, USA. Her research focuses on issues related to family, gender and health in Japan’s past and present. She has authored papers in the area of demography, family and public health. Dr Tanaka was NIA (National Institute on Aging) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, she has taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She holds a BA degree from International Christian University and an MA and PhD in Sociology from the Michigan State University, East Lansing.

Ryan du Toit is a PhD Candidate at Rhodes University, South Africa. His research explores how pre-termination of pregnancy counselling is conducted in the South African context, specifically in the Eastern Cape. Ryan is also registered as an Intern Research Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) and is an Editorial Assistant for Feminism and Psychology. He conducts postgraduate quantitative research seminars and is a Facilitator for the gender and sex project. Ryan’s research interests include pre-termination of pregnancy, discursive psychology, conversation analysis, pornography and media representation of sexuality and the psychology of the internet.

Beth Turnbull is a PhD Candidate in the School of Health and Social Development, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Australia. Her research takes quantitative and qualitative approaches to understand the social connection and exclusion in different areas of life of women and men with no children. Beth’s PhD seeks to explore the extent and quality of women’s and men’s resources and participation in employment based on whether they have children.