Continued gendered inequalities are particularly apparent in the way childcare continues to be seen primarily as the responsibility of women in western societies, despite the demise of the post-war breadwinner family model (Lewis, 2001). Concepts of responsibility, autonomy, dependency and choice are relevant here. As Fineman (2004) argues, the market and the state depend on the caretaking work of mainly women but women continue to be treated by governments as autonomous individuals, free to enter the labour market unencumbered by caring responsibilities. In terms of intimacy, lone mothers with caring responsibilities cannot be seen purely in terms of autonomous individuals with freedom of choice in terms of how to either enter the labour market or organize their personal lives as both the needs of dependents and economic circumstances are likely to dictate what life choices are available to them. Smart (2000) highlights the structural disadvantages for women who are primarily mothers and carers, arguing that mothers experience a lowered status as citizens in a society which denigrates those who become economically dependent on others (even though in the breadwinner model the male is dependent on the invisible support of his wife). She outlines material difficulties the gendered division of labour can entail for women in the UK. These basic disadvantages and low status, she goes on to argue, can lead post-divorce mothers to experience a loss of identity and self-esteem as well as leaving them economically vulnerable:
‘…he still accrues the benefits of apparent self-sufficiency and self-reliance in the public sphere. He is also likely to regard himself as a citizen with rights. The mother, on the other hand is, by virtue of her position as carer, unlikely readily to avail herself of the cultural capital embedded in this notion of the good citizen. She is unlikely to have a well-paid, secure job; indeed, she may not be in the labour market at all. The organisation of the benefits system, in
combination with low pay for women, may mean that she cannot hope to become a self-sufficient, independent citizen for several years. She will
therefore not enjoy the self-confidence which comes from being regarded as a full citizen nor is she likely to see herself as the holder of rights’. (Smart, 2000,
p.104)
Kittay (1999) questions the negative formulation of ‘dependency’ within theories of equality. She argues that equality is conceptualized as the inclusion of women into an association of equals, thereby accorded the rights and privileges of that group. This conception is seen as masking ‘dependencies that often mark the closest human ties’
43 (Kittay, 1999, p.14), obscuring the needs of dependents and those, usually women, responsible for them. These positions highlight ways in which the liberal conception of autonomous, rational beings have been privileged over relational, connected ways of being and relates to the notion of an ‘ethics of care’. Gilligan (1982) outlines an ‘ethics of care’ stemming from a female personality based on relationality and connectedness and which grounds ethical decision making processes, as opposed to abstract
concepts of justice based on masculine personality traits grounded in autonomy. This approach can be critiqued for its tendency to essentialize female experience and personality traits and assuming women are heterosexual with children. However, Gilligan argues against the separation and over-determination of certain character traits as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ which lead to stereotypes and the privileging of traits typically associated with masculinity, envisaging instead a more balanced model of adult personality which overcomes reductive binary oppositions such as love and work, reason and emotion. She argues instead for more interdependent ways of being
(Gilligan, 1982, p.17).
Class
Skeggs (2004) argues that in theories of individualisation, class is rendered invisible. Once the individual is seen as the unit of reproduction, detached from societal structures, class and experiences of classed identities and lives are depicted as outdated and irrelevant in a modern world: ‘By showing how individuals reflexively
construct their biographies and identities, Beck and Giddens suggest an erosion of class identities in ‘late modernity’. They see class not as a modern identity, but a traditional ascriptive one, which has no place in a dynamic, reflexive and globalized world’ (Skeggs, 2004, p.52). She draws on Savage (2000) who argues that what these
theorists interpreted as the decline of class cultures and the rise of individualisation would be better understood as shift from working-class to middle-class modes of being, as touched on earlier in this chapter. Critiquing the work of Giddens, Skeggs argues that the self is seen as a neutral concept which is not classed, raced or gendered. Individuals are seen as constructing individualised biographies in a separate sphere to the material world, regardless of their access to resources. This means that power relations which privilege some (middle-class) groups and marginalise and exclude others are hidden and inequalities reproduced. Ultimately such theories support the interests of the powerful and privileged, a group to which the theorists themselves belong:
44
‘The self appears in Giddens as a neutral concept available to all, rather than an inscription, a position of personhood produced to retain the interests of a privileged few, requiring for its constitution the exclusion of others. The
method of constructing a biography is seen to be a neutral method, something that one just does rather than something dependent upon access to discourse and resources. Like Beck, Giddens relies completely on everybody having equal access to the resources by which the self can be known, assessed and narrated… their sociology can be viewed as part of a symbolic struggle for the
authorization of their experience and perspectives’. (Skeggs, 2004, p.53)
Skeggs emphasises the danger of portraying the middle-class self as normal, universal and inevitable, especially given the high profile and influence of Giddens’ ‘The Third Way’ (1998) which shaped neo-liberal policies of the Clinton and Blair administrations. Those who fail to live up to the middle-class ideal of autonomous individuality and mobility are categorized as excluded outcasts, epitomized, in her view, by the New Labour agenda on social exclusion26. Rather than addressing underlying structural inequalities and material need, disadvantage is seen as a ‘personal development’ issue, a failure which can be overcome if ‘the excluded’ adopt the right sort of selfhood. This model of ‘the individual’ is located in discourses of Enlightenment rationality, which created an exclusive, politically privileged and essentially male category, defined in opposition to women who are seen as lacking in rational self-control (Skeggs, 2004,
p.56).
Gillies (2007), in her study of working-class mothers, traces the realities of personal and material effects on working-class lives of policies based on individualisation theories. These rationalize material inequality and seek to regulate those who do not conform to the dominant value system. In this way, the New Labour government’s concept of exclusion shared similarities with New Right ‘underclass’ discourse. Even though the word ‘class’ was not overtly used, judgements were made about those who were materially disadvantaged with the effect of stigmatising lives:
‘A prevailing silence on class as a social and structural phenomena leads to a personalization of poverty and pejorative judgments against the poor, who are more likely to avoid public recognition of their identity. Unlike other social categories, class is bound up with shame and stigma and operates underneath
the surface of social life producing and shaping lives.’ (Gillies, 2007, p.25)
26 See Kenway, P. and Palmer, G. (2006) Social exclusion: Some possible broader areas of concern, New Policy Institute, Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
45 In this milieu, Gillies argues, parents are expected to raise middle-class children in order to maintain the security and stability of society. Those working-class parents who do not conform to this standard are pathologised as a threat to society. As childcare is still overwhelmingly seen as the responsibility of women, working class women in particular become a target of negative representations and scapegoating:
‘Over the last few decades, attention and concern has focused on a particular sort of mother. She is portrayed as irresponsible, immature, immoral and a potential threat to the security and stability of society as a whole. While this type of mother is accused of bad parenting, it is her status as poor and marginalized that sees her located at the centre of society’s ills. From New Right to New Labour, tabloids to the broadsheets and daytime television to documentaries, working-class mothers who do not conform to the standards grounded in
middle-class privilege are vilified and blamed.’ (Gillies, 2007, p.1)
Gillies and Skeggs locate the origins of the pathologising of the working-classes which cast them as deviant and threatening within nineteenth century ideologies. Skeggs traces how they have consistently been classified as ‘dangerous, polluting, threatening,
revolutionary, pathological and without respect’ (Skeggs, 1997, p.3). Concepts of
‘respectability’ are seen as key mechanisms by which some groups became
pathologised and through which the concept ‘class’ emerges. To be without respect means to be lacking in social value or legitimacy; the negative representation of single mothers in UK political and media spheres is a prime example of ongoing
reproductions of classed identities which Skeggs identifies. Middle-class identities are defined in opposition to working-class identities, seen as ‘other’ and lacking in
respectability. For Skeggs, it is primarily women who have been observed and judged in terms of their sexual respectability (Skeggs, 1997, p.121).
Working-class women and single mothers in particular in Western culture, it is argued, have long been vilified as embodying unregulated female sexuality with the potential to disrupt the social order. Skeggs observes ways in which working-class women are still represented through their ‘deviant’ sexuality, noting a fashion spread in a UK edition of Marie-Claire entitled ‘council estate slags’. Drawing on Foucault (1979), Skeggs views respectability as a regulatory strategy operating through self-regulation and
surveillance. In her study of a group of working-class women, Skeggs found that the participants were constantly aware of the judgements of real and imagined others especially in terms of their reputation or control over their sexuality:
46
‘Sexuality is still organised through gender, race and class but is far less obviously externally regulated. Self-monitoring and regulation occur through reputation. Proving and maintaining respectability involves taking responsibility for the control of overt sexual display. Producing oneself as respectable becomes the means by which internal regulation and the specific policing of
bodies occurs.’ (Skeggs, 1997, p.130)
Respectability, according to Skeggs, is conferred through marital status and the avoidance of reputational labels. She found that her working class participants were more confident about their caring selves, seen as a respectable, safe identity in
opposition to themselves as single and sexed. Their role as wives, mothers and carers was key to developing positive identities which they observed in themselves and others while conversely to be single or ‘left on the shelf’ was seen as a shame-inducing sign of failure (Skeggs, 1997, p.5), relevant to this study of single mothers who may derive positive identities from mothering while at the same time being cast as irresponsible failures through being single.
Gillies’ (2007) study of the experiences of working-class mothers draws out the discrepancy between lives as represented and as lived. She problematizes the notion of choice within the limited conception of subjectivity posited by individualisation
theories, emphasising how material constraints restrict such women’s choices, shaping their life experiences and day-to-day realities. For example, she found that far from choosing to become single mothers, leaving a violent partner is often pursued as a last resort because of the associated deprivation and stigmatization. Given the choice, her participants would have preferred to parent with a supportive partner but this option was simply not available to them, because of the behaviour or lack of responsibility of their children’s father. Claiming state benefits was often the only option available to them and so they acted responsibly in the interests of their children and the necessity of protecting and supporting them (Gillies, 2007, p.47).
Gillies identified that experiences of working-class women in terms of their intimate lives challenge notions of the individualized self. She observed relational experiences of self in the reciprocal, supportive and interdependent networks operating in the lives of working-class parents in contrast to more individualised, instrumental social
networks of middle-class parents: ‘For these working-class mothers close social
relationships carry enormous significance. Many rely on, and are relied upon, by family members and friends for emotional, practical and financial support. This kind of
47
attachments. Longstanding and much trusted friends are often defined as family, with the word symbolizing mutual commitment and loyalty’ (Gillies, 2007, p.72).
Heterosexuality
Detraditionalization theories tend to implicitly assume the normativity of heterosexual coupledom as an unproblematic category and primary unit for intimate relations. As Jackson (2005) contends, heterosexuality should not be seen in simplistic terms as a sexual category but as social, shaping gendered norms, practices and relations and delimiting what is ‘normal’:
‘Heterosexuality is the key site of intersection between gender and sexuality, and one that reveals the interconnections between sexual and non-sexual aspects of social life. As an institution, heterosexuality includes non-sexual elements implicated in ordering wider gender relations and ordered by them… While heterosexual desires, practices, and relations are socially defined as “normal” and normative, serving to marginalise other sexualities as abnormal and deviant, the coercive power of compulsory heterosexuality derives from its institutionalization as more than merely a sexual relation.’ (Jackson, 2005,
pp.17 - 18)
‘Compulsory heterosexuality,’ a term coined by Rich (1980), is defined as an institution which holds coercive power in reproducing unequal gendered power relations.
Marginalising other sexualities which do not conform to its normative standards, it creates and sustains unequal, hierarchal relationships between men and women. Challenging and resisting heteronormativity is therefore seen as crucial to feminism and this has informed my decision to focus specifically on heterosexual women in this study:
‘To name oneself as heterosexual is to make visible an identity which is generally taken for granted as a normal fact of life. This can be a means of problematizing heterosexuality and challenging its privileged status, but for women being heterosexual is by no means a situation of unproblematic privilege. Heterosexual feminists may benefit from appearing ‘normal’ and unthreatening, but heterosexuality as an institution entails a hierarchical relation between (social) men and (social) women. It is women’s subordination within institutionalized heterosexuality which is the starting point for feminist analysis. It is resistance to this subordination which is the foundation of feminist politics’.
48 As Hockey, Meah and Robinson (2010) argue, heterosexuality has become an
invisible, unproblematic and assumed category which is seldom prioritized in analysis:
‘...the concept of heterosexuality, as an identity category, achieves dominance by virtue of its invisibility and, like whiteness, able-bodiedness and masculinity, is unmarked. It is precisely it’s taken for grantedness which constitutes a barrier to reflexivity on the part of everyday people living out their heterosexual lives’ (Hockey, Meah and Robinson,
2010, p.20). Their cross generational research reveals the pervasiveness of hegemonic heterosexuality as a normative category. It is nonetheless not inevitable but is often resisted: ‘Across the sample, within families and within individual life stories, there are
examples of not only conformity and reproduction, but also resistance and a failure to live up to hegemonic heterosexuality’ (Hockey, Meah and Robinson, 2010, p.21).
However, their participants’ accounts highlighted the idealized ‘imagined world’ of heterosexuality (Ibid, p.40) which shapes understanding, expectations and behaviour. This imagined world can come into conflict with real-life negative experiences of heterosexual relations such as date and marital rape, violence, betrayal, emotional abuse and rejection. This creates discrepancies between expectations and
experiences of hegemonic heterosexuality. Heterosexual single mothers may
experience these discrepancies in their intimate lives, especially as many are likely to have experienced abuse. Negative experiences could well trigger a sense of loss and disappointment, in a cultural milieu which idealises love and romance (Beck and Beck- Gernsheim, 1995; Evans, 2003) and creates an expectation of a life trajectory (intimacy script) involving romance, marriage, children and lifelong partnership.
Hockey et al (2010) discuss how understandings of normative sexual behaviour are culturally and historically specific, having changed over time and across generations, but that they continue to provide a regulatory framework:
‘In spite of these changes, however, it becomes clear from the data provided by our participants that while the institution of heterosexuality may have undergone challenges from feminists and has metamorphosed over the last century, it remains dominant, pervasive and a taken-for-granted residual category within our culture’. (Hockey, Meah and Robinson, 2010, pp.180- 181)
However, this study identified a profound shift for the youngest generation interviewed (born in the late 1980s / 1990s) in terms of sexual freedom and accompanying
heightened risk and choices and an inability to understand what they should be doing in the absence of a ‘metanarrative’ which shaped the normative expectations and experiences of their parents’ generation. This finding fits broadly with speculations of
49 detraditionalization theories, suggesting a shift between generations in the way that heterosexual relations are perceived and experienced and the challenge and risk involved of negotiating choices in terms of intimate practices. It is therefore pertinent when considering participants in my study as their age range covers a broad period (born between 1955 and 1980):
‘These data reveal a sense of dissatisfaction being experienced by young people as they engage in an emotional struggle to reconcile their sexual practices and behaviour with what they feel they ought to be doing. In the absence of a metanarrative around heterosexuality, they appear not to know what to expect, or how they and ‘it’ should be... While participants from the older generation struggled with issues around accessing sexual knowledge and the freedom to practice their sexuality, such freedoms could present problems for young people’. (Ibid, pp.83 – 84)
Van Every (1996) notes the hierarchies within the often taken-for-granted and unproblematized category of heterosexuality, where marriage is the hegemonic form which is privileged accordingly. Therefore while ‘wife’ is seen as an acceptable heterosexual identity, single mothers are cast as deviant. It is also expected within heteronormativity that mothers should be within a heterosexual relationship. Van Every draws on Roseneil and Mann (1994) who link this to concerns about lone mothers, which they argue draw on a distinctly anti-feminist undercurrent:
‘In Western societies the hegemonic construction of ‘natural’ motherhood includes a heterosexual relationship… Roseneil and Mann (1994) have argued that the recent concern about lone mothers could be interpreted as an attempt to reinforce the hegemony of this notion in the face of feminist contestation of it’.
(Van Every, 1996, p.46)
It is relevant to explore how far single mothers recognise, resist or challenge
heteronormative intimacy scripts in terms of relationship expectations and practices, whether they challenge the hegemony of gendered balances of power in heterosexual relationships and whether they resist or reproduce an assumed centrality of coupledom in their lives.