Creative Families: Gender and Technologies of Everyday Life (Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference) 3030708020, 9783030708023

Table of contents :
Contents
Notes on Contributors
1 Introduction: Creative Families: Gender and Technologies of Everyday Life
Creativity of Family Life and Kinship Relations
Changing and Newly Emerging Family Forms
New Media and Technologies in Family Lives
Becoming Family
Being and Doing Family
References
Part I Becoming Family
2 Creatively Becoming a Family in the Fertility Clinic? Matching Donors with Non-heterosexual and Single Recipients in Commercial Care
Queer Families, Heteronormativity and Assisted Reproduction
The Situation in Finland
Ethnography of Everyday Fertility Care Practices
Children with Two Biological Mothers, Children Without Genetic Ties to Their Biological Parents
Children Fitting and not Fitting the ‘Environment’
Room to Creatively Make Kin and Family
Conclusion: Hetero-, Couple- and Homonormativity in Belonging to Family and Nation
Funding
References
3 Confronting Monomaternalism in Italy: Non-heterosexual Mothers Accessing ARTs
Monomaternalism
Research Design
Method
Recruitment Strategies
Participants
Data Analysis
‘A Lesbian Can’t Be a Mother’: Heteronormativity and Monomaternalism at Work
Creative Strategies to Get Around Institutional Homophobia
Lesbian and Bisexual Women Dealing with Class
Concluding Thoughts
References
4 Images of Parenthood, Family Life and Reproductive Strategies Among Gay Men in the Czech Republic
Gay Fatherhood in International Scholarship
Gay Fatherhood in the Czech Republic
Parental Desires and Family Trajectories of Czech Gay Men
Moral Dilemmas of Gay Fatherhood
Reproductive Strategies and Family Constellations
Conclusion
References
5 ‘What Family Actually Means’: Re-Articulations of ‘Family’ in and Around Netflix’s Sense8
‘What Family Actually Means’: ‘Family’ as a Leitmotif in Sense8
‘Fan-Mily’: ‘Family’ as Affective Force in (Queer) Fandom Culture
Conclusion
References
Part II Being and Doing Family
6 ‘Doing’ and ‘Displaying’ Family in Polymediatic Environments: Conceptual Tools for the Analysis of Teenagers’ Digital Practices
Polymedia
‘Doing Family’ and Co-presence in Polymediatic Environments
Moving Beyond Physical Co-presence
ICTs and the Construction of ‘Self’ During the Adolescence
ICTs as a New Source of Identity Construction?
Displaying Family Online
Conclusion
References
7 Creative Forms of Family Intimacy: Managing Family Bonds Across Distances
Family Intimacy in a Digitalized World
Method
Doing Intimate Family Work
Spatiotemporal Distances
Generational Distances
Embodied Distances
Concluding Thoughts: Family Bonds and ICTs
References
8 ‘She’s Nice Company and a Good Friend’: Thinking with Haraway to Reconceptualise Children’s Playful Interactions with Alexa in the Family Home
Digital Play in the Family Home
Conversational Agents in Personal Life
Play and Playfulness with Conversational Agents
Posthuman Theorizing: Haraway’s Concepts of ‘the Cyborg’ and ‘Making Kin’
Study Design
Personification and Sociability
Digital Fluency and Parental Mediation/intermediation
Embedded Commercial Objectives
Conclusion
References
9 Being Creative: Fluid Boundaries of Everyday Family Life and Creative Home-Based Online Work
Atypical Work, Creativity, and Gender
Home-Based Work, Technology, and Family Life
Methods
Shifting and Blurring Boundaries Between Creative Work and Family Life
Mumpreneurship: Blogging Professionally at Home About Personal Interests and Family Life
The Live-With Workhome: Multiple Spatiotemporal Interrelation of Family Life and Paid Work
Making Is Connecting: Doing Family While Doing Work
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN MEDIATING KINSHIP, REPRESENTATION, AND DIFFERENCE

Creative Families Gender and Technologies of Everyday Life Edited by Jana Mikats · Susanne Kink-Hampersberger Libora Oates-Indruchová

Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference

Series Editors May Friedman, School of Social Work, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada Silvia Schultermandl, Department of American Studies, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

This book series brings together analyses of familial and kin relationships with emerging and new technologies which allow for the creation, maintenance and expansion of family. We use the term “family” as a working truth with a wide range of meanings in an attempt to address the feelings of family belonging across all aspects of social location: ability, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, body size, social class and beyond. This book series aims to explore phenomena located at the intersection of technologies including those which allow for family creation, migration, communication, reunion and the family as a site of difference. The individual volumes in this series will offer insightful analyses of the representations of these phenomena in media, social media, literature, popular culture and corporeal settings.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15789

Jana Mikats · Susanne Kink-Hampersberger · Libora Oates-Indruchová Editors

Creative Families Gender and Technologies of Everyday Life

Editors Jana Mikats Department of Sociology University of Graz Graz, Austria

Susanne Kink-Hampersberger Institute of Education Research & Teacher Education University of Graz Graz, Austria

Libora Oates-Indruchová Department of Sociology University of Graz Graz, Austria

Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference ISBN 978-3-030-70802-3 ISBN 978-3-030-70803-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Jennifer Kosig, Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

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Introduction: Creative Families: Gender and Technologies of Everyday Life Jana Mikats, Susanne Kink-Hampersberger, and Libora Oates-Indruchová

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Part I Becoming Family 2

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Creatively Becoming a Family in the Fertility Clinic? Matching Donors with Non-heterosexual and Single Recipients in Commercial Care Riikka Homanen

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Confronting Monomaternalism in Italy: Non-heterosexual Mothers Accessing ARTs Beatrice Gusmano

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Images of Parenthood, Family Life and Reproductive Strategies Among Gay Men in the Czech Republic Vˇera Sokolová

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‘What Family Actually Means’: Re-Articulations of ‘Family’ in and Around Netflix’s Sense8 Nadine Dannenberg

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Part II Being and Doing Family 6

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‘Doing’ and ‘Displaying’ Family in Polymediatic Environments: Conceptual Tools for the Analysis of Teenagers’ Digital Practices Laura Merla and Kristina Papanikolaou Creative Forms of Family Intimacy: Managing Family Bonds Across Distances Helga Sadowski and Lina Eklund ‘She’s Nice Company and a Good Friend’: Thinking with Haraway to Reconceptualise Children’s Playful Interactions with Alexa in the Family Home Mona Sakr Being Creative: Fluid Boundaries of Everyday Family Life and Creative Home-Based Online Work Jana Mikats

Index

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Notes on Contributors

Nadine Dannenberg has a B.A. in History and Romance Studies from the University of Bonn (Germany), MA in Gender Studies (Joint Degree) from the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany) and the University of Graz (Austria). Since 2017 she is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Media Studies at Braunschweig University of Arts (Germany) with a thesis on ‘Queerness & Surveillance in Post-Network-TV’, supervised by Prof. Heike Klippel. Her main research areas are queer media studies, cultural surveillance studies, feminist film theory and asexuality studies. Recent publications include ‘Queer Surveillance Studies: Überlegungen zu den Schnittstellen von Queer Theory und Surveillance Studies’ [‘Queer Surveillance Studies: Thoughts on the Intersections of Queer Theory and Surveillance Studies’], GENDER: Journal for Gender, Culture and Society 2019, 3: 27-41; and ‘Is This a Chick Thing Now? The Feminism of Z Nation between Quality and Trash TV’, in Steven Gerrard (Ed.), Gender in Horror TV (Emerald, 2019). Lina Eklund is Lecturer at the Department of Informatics and Media at Uppsala University (Sweden). Eklund received her doctorate in sociology from Stockholm University in 2013. Her thesis focused on the practices and experiences of social digital gaming. Her research uses a mixed-methods approach to investigate social behaviour in relation to digital technologies. Her current work focuses on uses and practices of digital technologies in managing social relationships, such as in families,

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as well as the impact of anonymity on digital sociality. Her areas of interest include social life and gender in relation to digital technologies. Beatrice Gusmano is an activist in feminist and transfeminist contexts, and a sociologist at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy). In both cases, she deals with LGBTQAI issues, consent, friendship and deconstruction of romantic love within a feminist frame. She has dealt with the topics of intimate and sexual citizenship, organizational studies, best practices on LGBTQ issues for local and regional administrations in Italy, intimacy and domestic work. Riikka Homanen is an Academy Research Fellow in Gender Studies at Tampere University (Finland). Her research explores social relations, such as kin, class, gender, sexuality and race/ethnicity in reproduction. More recently, she has inquired into the marketization of reproduction, which is also the topic of Homanen’s Academy Fellow project ‘The Everyday Ethics of Reproductive Outsourcing: Making Good Life in the Era of Biocapitalism’ (Academy of Finland, 2019–2024). She is the Principal Investigator for the Kone Foundation funded project ‘Technology, Ethics and Reproduction: Controversy in the Era of Normalisation’ (2019–2023). The project brings together methods, perspectives and scholars from social sciences and the academic field of bioethics. Together with Mianna Meskus, Homanen is also the co-founder and leader of the Finnish Reproductive Studies Network (FiResNet). The network was awarded a Finnish Cultural Foundation Argumenta funding for Reproductive futures project (2019–2021) that aims to increase research on and diversify public discussion about reproduction and the paradoxes of reproductive futures. Susanne Kink-Hampersberger is Lecturer at the Institute of Education Research and Teacher Education at the University of Graz (Austria) and researcher in the project ‘Habitus.Macht.Bildung—Transformation through Reflection’. She specializes in sociology of gender, education and technology, feminist and queer Science and Technology Studies, as well as qualitative methods. She is also a doctoral candidate at the TU Darmstadt in the field of sociology of gender. She is member of the working group Queer STS and an Executive Committee member of the Austrian Association for Gender Research. She has published in the field of Queer/Feminist STS, higher education research and sociology of gender.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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Laura Merla is Professor of Sociology at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain, Belgium). She conducts her research at the Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Families and Sexualities (CIRFASE), which she directed from September 2012 to August 2018. She is also Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia (UWA). Her research is currently focusing on the transformation of family relationships in a context of mobility and geographical distance, with a particular interest for transnational families on the one hand, and children’s experience of shared custody arrangements in post-divorce/separation families on the other hand. Recent publications in this last area include Merla, L and Nobels, B. (2019) ‘Children Negotiating their Place through Space in Multi-Local, Joint Physical Custody Arrangement’, in Murray, L. et al. (eds), Families in Motion: Ebbing and Flowing through Space and Time (Emerald) and Merla, L. (2018) ‘Rethinking the Interconnections between Family Socialization and Gender through the Lens of Multi-local, Post-separation Families’, Sociologica, 12 (3). Jana Mikats is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Graz (Austria), working in the research area Sociology of Gender and Gender Studies. She is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Vienna. In her research activities, she has specialized in gender studies, family research and childhood studies, and qualitative methods. In her dissertation project ‘When Home Becomes a Workplace’, she examines everyday practices of families engaged in home-based work in Austrian creative industries. Libora Oates-Indruchová is Professor of Sociology of Gender at the University of Graz (Austria). Her research work on cultural issues during state socialism and the transition period has drawn on discourse theory, qualitative methodologies and gender analysis. She is the author of Censorship in Czech and Hungarian Academic Publishing, 1969–89: Snakes and Ladders (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) and together with Hana Havelková co-editor of The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism: An Expropriated Voice (Routledge 2014) that won the BASEES Women’s Forum Book Prize in 2016. Kristina Papanikolaou holds a Master’s degree in History, Societies, Economies and Civilizations from the University of Louvain (UCLouvain, Belgium). Between 2017 and 2019 she conducted research on digital practices of children growing in shared custody arrangements at

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the UCLouvain, in the context of the ERC Starting Grant ‘MobileKids: Children in Multi-local, Post-separation Families’ led by Laura Merla. Helga Sadowski is Researcher at the Department of Informatics and Media at Uppsala University (Sweden). She received her doctorate in 2016 at Tema Genus, a unit for interdisciplinary gender research at Linköping University. Her dissertation is located in the field of feminist cultural studies of digital media and analyzes the ways in which digital and social media are becoming more intimate and how intimacy, in turn, is remediated within digital contexts. She is currently working on the contributions of digital technologies to the transformation of family communication and on self-tracking apps as a part of reproductive health concerns. Mona Sakr is Senior Lecturer in Education and Early Childhood at Middlesex University (United Kingdom). Her research has explored children’s creativity, play and digital engagement, as well as how creative and digital methods of learning are integrated into Higher Education. Her current research is an exploration of pedagogic leadership for social justice in early childhood education. Vˇera Sokolová is Associate Professor of history and head of the MA programme in Gender Studies at Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic). She specializes in history of gender and sexuality, collective memory and public space, and the study of everyday life during state socialism in Eastern Europe. She is the author of Queer Encounters with Communist Power: Non-heterosexual Lives and the State in Czechoslovakia, 1948–1989 (Karolinum, 2021), Cultural Politics of Ethnicity: Discourses on Roma in Communist Czechoslovakia (ibidem-Verlag 2008) and co-editor of The Courage to Disagree: The Feminist Thought of Hana Havelkova and Its Critical Reflections (FHS UK, 2019) and Gender and Generation (Litteraria Pragensia 2007). Her research appeared in numerous periodicals and collected volumes, among others in the awardwinning The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism (Routledge, 2014).

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Creative Families: Gender and Technologies of Everyday Life Jana Mikats, Susanne Kink-Hampersberger, and Libora Oates-Indruchová

This collective volume brings together two strands of current discussions in gender research through the concept of creativity. First, it addresses the issue of changing and newly emergent family forms and ways of creating and maintaining intimate relationships. Second, it examines the ways in which new media and technologies are entering and shaping everyday

J. Mikats · L. Oates-Indruchová (B) Department of Sociology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria e-mail: [email protected] J. Mikats e-mail: [email protected] S. Kink-Hampersberger Institute of Education Research & Teacher Education, University of Graz, Graz, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Mikats et al. (eds.), Creative Families, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0_1

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family lives. The collection takes a social sciences perspective, exploring creative processes as relational and contextual (Gauntlett 2011).

Creativity of Family Life and Kinship Relations This concept of creativity departs from the traditional, mostly psychological approaches that treat creativity as an abstract product or invention of a singular—usually male—genius (Taylor 2015; Eisler et al. 2016), instead following the strand of discussions that argue ‘for a much more inclusive, “democratic” notion of creativity’ (Buckingham 2009, p. 37). Social perspectives on creativity focus on public and professional, as well as private spheres, for instance, considering family life and day-to-day personal interactions. This collective volume thus investigates creativity, as Riane Eisler, Gabrielle Donnelly, and Alfonso Montuori propose, by shifting ‘the focus from independence, individualism, and abstraction to consider, value and support more relational, interdependent, and contextualized forms of creativity’ (Eisler et al. 2016, p. 15) within the context of family and kinship relations. The ‘gender holistic’ (Eisler and Montuori 2007, p. 495) perspective on creativity employed throughout emphasizes the social, relational, and contextual nature of creative processes in everyday life and the ordinary. Family life and idealized, although often undervalued activities that have commonly been associated with the private sphere and women, such as child rearing and home making, gain acknowledgement as domains of creativity. Creativity is here understood not as just ‘newness or originality’, but as ‘that which supports, nurtures, and actualizes life by increasing the number of choices open to individuals and communities’ (Eisler and Montuori 2007, p. 495). The aim of this book is, therefore, to investigate the social, collaborative, and creative interactions in contemporary family and kin formations in Europe, which are characterized by ambiguity, complexity, and polymorphy. Central to our inquiry are questions of how individuals creatively transform family and kin formations and how they employ new technologies to create, maintain, and represent intimate relationships and their everyday family lives.

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Changing and Newly Emerging Family Forms Social, political, and economic upheavals as well as technological advances that have taken place since the 1970s in Europe have reached deeply into the organization of family structures and day-to-day family practices (Beck-Gernsheim 1998; Gillies 2003; Charles et al. 2008). These developments have expanded the opportunities to move past established constellations of family and gender relations and challenged the norm of the heterosexual nuclear family, represented by a married co-resident couple with their biological children (Lück and Castrén 2018). Women’s and LGBTQ movements have contributed to a broader understanding of kinship relations and family patterns as they promoted the legalization of same-sex marriage, sperm donation, and child adoption by same-sex couples in some European countries.1 These efforts have been accompanied by the increased visibility of a variety of family forms other than the heterosexual nuclear family including rainbow families, co-parenting, and families with two fathers or mothers (for overviews on LGBT families and non-heterosexual family forms see Goldberg and Allen 2012; Peukert et al. 2020). This increased visibility of homosexuality, same-sex parenthood, or trans families challenge and alter the representation of the heterosexual family as being the ideal and the ‘normal’ (Hanssen 2012). Confronted with ‘barriers or pathways to legal and social inclusion’ (Pfeffer 2017), queer families also spearhead the efforts for change in legal and social constraints that exceed the boundaries of gender. It becomes apparent that the changes of legal foundations, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage or adoption rectify also some racial or class inequalities (Patton-Imani 2020). Furthermore, new family forms, e.g. families who pursue donor conception, also question the traditional understanding of kinship and the cultural idiom of blood relation. Investigations pursuing this line of argumentation propose broader and variable understanding of kinship and kin, not limited to humans or blood relation (e.g. Mason and Tipper 2008; Haraway 2016; Riggs and Peel 2016) and foreground the variability and flexibility of kinship by underlying its malleable and mutable character and emphasize the importance of kinship for relations in queer families (Nordqvist 2014). Processes of globalization and migration that were politically and socially accentuated by the financial crisis of 2008 and the migration crisis in Europe and beyond have significantly affected not only family forms

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and constellations, but everyday family life as well. Scholarly discussions have been engaging with these processes already longer. Deborah Fahy Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela, for example, brought together a group of authors investigating the global networking of transnational families and the complexities of everyday life for immigrants and refugees (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002). Others explored the diversity of family-related migration and the family forms that followed from it, as well as the shaping of family-related migration, practices, and lives by the state (Kraler et al. 2011). Family members’ complex spatial and temporal involvements and high mobility, as they alternate between diverse places of work, education, leisure, relationships, and living, have reshaped the everyday life of families. The ‘spatial turn’ also has shed light on the relation between family life and space and has led to new theoretical and empirical perspectives on the spatial elements of families and their implications for everyday life (Halatcheva-Trapp et al. 2019). It has demonstrated that through the spatial and temporal lens, the ‘family’ is always in motion (Murray et al. 2019). This complexity and mobility of contemporary families have been further amplified by the increasing rates of divorce and separation in recent decades and the subsequent legal, political, and societal broadening of extended and multilocal family arrangements, such as step- and blended families (Zartler et al. 2015). Scholarly discussions in family and gender research have followed these developments and began to turn their attention to the everyday life of families: to the becoming, ‘doing’ and ‘displaying’ of family and kin relationships. These concepts take a step away from considering ‘family’ as something (naturally) given and stable to seeing it as an assembly that arises from action and has to be ‘done’, that is, understanding family as a set of activities (Morgan 1996, 2004, 2011). Furthermore, family is not only ‘done’ through these activities, but also ‘displayed’ and seen by others as a way of conveying and confirming that these practices make up family and relations (Finch 2007). Various scholars have emphasized different strands of conceptualizing the shifting boundaries of contemporary family life. The lens of personal life has allowed to conceptualize families and relationships by prioritizing connectedness, relationality, and embeddedness (Smart 2007). Another strand, looking at families as configurations, has foregrounded the interplay among family members and demonstrated that family relationships reach far beyond the nuclear family (Widmer and Jallinoja

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2008). Research on LGBTQA families and its interrogation of the distinction between families of origin and families of choice has shown the heterogeneity of ‘doing family’ and questioned family forms and boundaries (Bertone and Pallotta-Chiarolli 2015). Jennifer Mason (2008, 2018) offered a novel layer to understanding of how family and kinship are imagined and practiced by looking at ‘affinities’, that is, ‘potent connections that rise up and matter’, where ‘a spark or a charge of connection […] makes personal life charismatic, or enchants, or even toxifies it’ (Mason 2018, p. 1). Finally, the new materialist perspective has proposed the focus on the situatedness and interdependencies of material-discursive differentiation processes to define ‘ever-transforming family configurations’ (Schadler 2016). All together, these various perspectives brought into foreground the fluid, relational, and creative nature of family life and intimacy. The studies collected in this book join these discussions and place emphasis on creativity as a constitutive part of family formation, practices, imaginations, and relations, whether in stories about homes, care, or leisure activities.

New Media and Technologies in Family Lives Technological innovations and digitalization have penetrated deep into all areas of family life and the life course (Barbosa Neves and Casimiro 2018). Eisler et al. emphasize that ‘as the concept of the family is undergoing yet more changes due to rapid technological, social and economic change, creative thinking is needed to reconstruct families in creative ways’ (Eisler et al. 2016, p. 18). Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been used for decades for communication between family members. Recent research has made visible the dual effect of ICTs on family life. On the one hand, ICTs shape everyday family life in a positive way by enabling contact across distances, facilitating information access, and optimizing the use of time (Romero-Ruiz et al. 2017). On the other hand, the negative side of ICTs in family life includes less physical interaction, physical distancing of family members, or reduction of shared family spaces (Romero-Ruiz et al. 2017). The use of ICTs also creates closeness while family members are physically separated (Christensen 2009) and ICT-mediated communication helps overcome transnational boundaries by developing new practices of being together (Nedelcu and Wyss 2016). The current COVID-19 public health crisis has provided a new

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impetus for debates about this dual effect of ICT on family arrangements, practices, and intimacy (e.g., Goldschmidt 2020; Iivari et al. 2020; Lebow 2020; Molino et al. 2020). Finally, ICTs have been instrumental in creating new family and kinship relations. Recent advances in fields ranging from reproductive technologies and commercial DNA tests to social media are expanding the possibilities for such relations even further, making feasible, for example, queer forms of motherhood, fatherhood, and childhood and the inclusion of the non-kin and the nonhuman into the understanding of the family unit (Andreassen 2018). The formation and maintenance of these heterogeneous relationships and ways of living, as well as the modes of their perception and representation, often require creative ways of thinking and doing. Web 2.0 has facilitated the cultural representations of these diverse family transformations, not least in media and political discourses (Ticknell 2005; Dermott and Seymour 2011; Poole 2014). Other technological changes and developments, such as home automation, have enabled the creation of new forms of family organization and daily routines across generations and the life course (Barbosa Neves and Casimiro 2018). The use of smartphones and tablets, apps, and social media platforms now mediate long-distance or cyber arrangements, as well as the digital and creative organization and display of daily family life. The possibility constantly to communicate and connect with family members fosters the sense of ‘linked lives’: to maintain close relationships and create intimacy across distances (Wajcman et al. 2009). Consequently, poor digital literacy and limited accessibility to digital devices for the elderly can lead to a ‘generational distance’, which foregrounds the need for digital intimacy across generations within family formations (see Sadowski and Eklund in this volume). Technological transformations and adaptations have not only enabled the creation of new forms of families and ways of family living, but also posed challenges to the established constellations of gender and family arrangements. At the same time, however, those same processes pose the danger of reinforcing the handed-down patterns, leading to new inequalities along the lines of gender, class, or ethnicity (Andreassen 2018). The present volume addresses these issues from multiple perspectives by problematizing the creativity of becoming and ‘doing’ family and kinship in different contexts and exploring the involvement of different

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actors against the background of the increasing fluidity of gender identities, diversity of relationships, and permeation of technology into daily life. We endeavour to add new perspectives on contemporary family life with specific attention to gender and technology to the ongoing debates. The extant literature on queer families and kinships has also asked how family and kin formations might challenge, negotiate, and maintain the norms of gender and sexuality by examining intimate digital communities of donor-conceived children (Andreassen 2018), families with one transgender partner (Pfeffer 2017), or various non-heterosexual family arrangements (Peukert et al. 2020). Our volume offers a broader perspective that includes also the examination of the everyday family life and various family forms and family members. While other scholars have underscored the significance of ICTs for family routines, relationships, intimacy, and privacy (Barbosa Neves and Casimiro 2018), we build on their explorations to include other (new) technologies, such as assisted reproductive techniques, a conversational agent, or family formations beyond the heteronormative family. Approaches to family relations through mobilities (Murray et al. 2019), spatialities (Halatcheva-Trapp et al. 2019), or subjective and cultural conceptions (Lück and Castrén 2018) challenged the idea of the static family. The present volume pursues this line of inquiry further by focusing on gender and ‘creativity’. It aims to investigate how individuals creatively transform family and kin formations and how they employ new technologies to create, maintain, and represent intimate relationships and everyday family life through the concepts of creativity and gender. The book is divided into two parts: the chapters in the first part look at various creative ways of becoming a family; the chapters in the second deal with being a family and with creative processes—doing —in families’ everyday lives.

Becoming Family The chapters in the first part of the book deal with the creation of family and with the creativity needed to maintain intimate or family relations in LGBTQ contexts. As long as the heterosexual nuclear family model is regarded as the norm, LGBTQ families need to exert more effort and come up with more creative solutions to start and become accepted as families. The chapters by Riikka Homanen, Beatrice Gusmano, Vˇera Sokolová, and Nadine Dannenberg examine aspects of becoming a family

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by addressing the questions of how technology (e.g., IVF) and/or legislative contexts influence the creation and display of ‘family’ and provide opportunities for (or necessitate) the development of new and creative—for example, queer—forms of motherhood, fatherhood, and childhood. They draw attention to the role of reproductive technologies in the formation and maintenance of intimate and family relationships in different European countries, explore representations of diverse and queer families in the media—while deconstructing the white, heteronormative, and biological family—and inquire into the potentialities of queer resistance through creative (and also subversive) appropriation. Riikka Homanen’s ‘Creatively Becoming a Family in the Fertility Clinic? Matching Donors with Non-heterosexual and Single Recipients in Commercial Care’ draws upon an ethnography of everyday fertility care practices of Finnish single and lesbian women. Grounded in Laura Mamo’s (2007, 2010, 2013) work on lesbian couples going through assisted reproduction at fertility clinics, Homanen shows how fertility treatment practices are hetero- and couple-normative but also leave room for potentially creative kinship-building beyond those normativities. She reveals how in the case of lesbian couples and single women, the conventional imperative of matching intended parents with donors based on phenotypical resemblance loses strength at the clinics she researched. It seems that the practices of matching provide single women in particular, but also lesbian couples, with room to creatively build kinship in their donor choices. In her chapter ‘Confronting Monomaternalism in Italy: Nonheterosexual Mothers Accessing ARTs’, Beatrice Gusmano focuses on the experience of lesbian and bisexual (LB) Italian women who became mothers through assisted reproductive techniques (ARTs). As Italy continues to strongly uphold the monogamous borders of heterosexual marriage, the aim of Gusmano’s chapter is to show how the daily lives of lesbian and bisexual women (either single or coupled) question the heteronormativity of social and legal institutions through the enactment of a motherhood they were presumed to be excluded from. Applying the theoretical concept of monomaternalism (Park 2013), Gusmano’s chapter is based on in-depth interviews with five able-bodied, white Italian LB ciswomen. She shows how the women creatively reconquer motherhood, escaping their destiny as lesbian or bisexual—and, in some cases, single—women who do not fit into the framework of monomaternalism

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and repronormativity. Finding creative—and also collective and political—solutions seems to be the only viable strategy to address different structures of oppression and discrimination, opening up the space for the recognition of different types of families in Italy. Complementary to the chapters by Homanen and Gusmano, Vˇera Sokolová focuses on gay men in her contribution ‘Images of Parenthood, Family Life and Reproductive Strategies Among Gay Men in the Czech Republic’. She demonstrates that although gay men and gay fathers have been on the margins of scholarly attention to homoparentality, their parental desires and reproductive strategies provide us with an invaluable opportunity to (re)examine and reframe the concept of becoming or ‘creating’ a family. Her chapter presents the results of the first sociological study of attitudes and preferences of Czech men self-identified as gay towards (gay) fatherhood, family, and parenthood. The analysis revolves around the themes of the (overwhelmingly positive) parental desires of the gay men participating in the study, their internalized moral dilemmas connected to gay fatherhood, their reproductive choices and strategies, and the gender stereotypes about family/parenting models and the roles these men occupy. The last chapter in this section takes the subject of ‘becoming a family’ from lived practice to the imaginative representations of queer families. Nadine Dannenberg’s ‘“What Family Actually Means”: Rearticulations of “Family” in and around Netflix’s Sense8’ shows how the series deconstructs the notion of ‘family’ as a complex interplay of (violent) white, heteronormative ideals and (empathy-based) queer interventions. Apart from the characters and their fictional world, she examines the ways in which the show’s followers and fans also serve as parts of the ‘Sense8 family’. The diegetical impulse of rearticulating ‘what family actually means’ (and for whom) has not only a uniting, but also an exploitative effect within the wider context of a media economy that increasingly relies on the (affective, digital) free labour of its consumers. Dannenberg’s narratological analysis of the show and its social media extensions draws on digital fandom and queer affect studies. She discusses ‘family’ as an ambivalent concept in the process of story-based community building and its potential for queer resistance through creative appropriation. The four chapters of Part I, addressing the processes and creative resistances through which a couple or a group may claim the designation ‘family’, together set the stage for the second part of the volume. The four

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chapters of Part II take a dynamic approach to ‘family’: as a continuous activity rather than a set concept.

Being and Doing Family The chapters in the second part of the volume all explore the day-to-day practices and creative negotiations involved in the continuous work of sustaining the assembly designated as ‘family’. The contributions focus on ‘doing’ family and kinship relations in everyday life in the face of the progressive dissolution of segmented time and space due to globalization, migration, and digitalization. The chapters emphasize the need for creative practices to maintain intimate relationships and to create connectedness despite, for example, high mobility and heterogeneous ways of living. They address from different perspectives the question of how ICTs contribute to everyday lives and what this means in terms of family routines, gender relations, intimacy, and privacy. They also discuss adoptions and integrations of new technologies into families— from smartphones to intelligent personal assistants—and their creative potential in organizing and modifying family life within and beyond the borders of gender and generation. Laura Merla and Kristina Papanikolaou connect in their contribution, ‘“Doing” and “Displaying” Family in Polymediatic Environments: Conceptual Tools for the Analysis of Teenagers’ Digital Practices’, discussions and conceptual developments from transnational families and childhood studies, as well as digital studies. They explore how today’s teenagers maintain, create, and represent family relations in polymediatic environments generated by the digital revolution of the twenty-first century. The chapter discusses how teenagers use ICTs creatively to handle periods of physical absence in family life and create a sense of belonging and connectedness beyond physical co-presence. The authors also look at the role of ICTs in the construction and production of the self during adolescence, as teenagers actively display both distancing from and belonging to their family and peers. They offer a variety of conceptual tools—such as ‘doing’ family beyond physical co-presence, ‘displaying’ family online, and understanding ICTs as source of identity construction—for the study of teenagers’ creative digital practices in the family sphere with particular attention to the gendered dimensions of these processes.

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The chapter ‘Creative Forms of Family Intimacy: Managing Family Bonds across Distances’ by Helga Sadowski and Lina Eklund also examines everyday ICT uses. It studies intimate family communication and the problem of spatial distances between family members and explores how Swedish families draw on communication technologies in order to do intimate family work. The chapter is based on interviews with grandparents, parents, children, and siblings from six three-generational Swedish families whose family members are spread out geographically in either or both Sweden and the US. Relying on Micaela Di Leonardo’s (1987) concept of ‘kinwork’ and Michaela Schier and Karin Jurczyk’s concept of ‘doing family’ (2008), their analysis examines three distances of intimacy—spatiotemporal, generational, and embodied—that affect people’s intimate family relations in the digital space and the various techniques they use to overcome those distances. The chapter shows how people creatively adopt, adapt, and transform the meaning and use of communication technologies for their own needs and contexts. The authors propose that intimate family work in the digital context becomes less gendered than in the predigital era, as each family member is responsible for their individual (family) communication. Mona Sakr’s chapter, ‘“She’s Nice Company and a Good Friend”: Thinking with Haraway to Reconceptualize Children’s Playful Interactions with Alexa in the Family Home’, also addresses the use of new technologies in everyday family life, but from yet another perspective. Sakr explores the ways in which young children conceptualize Alexa—the conversational agent (CA) that inhabits Amazon’s Echo device—and how they creatively engage with it/her in the family context. Donna Haraway’s (1991, 2016) concepts of the ‘cyborg’ and ‘making kin’ that question the dichotomy between humans and nonhumans underlie Sakr’s analysis of observations of and conversations with a seven-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy conducted in a single-family context. She takes play and playfulness to be fundamental forms of creativity and shows how the children actively challenge the human/nonhuman divide by their engagement with and personification of Alexa. At the same time, she points out that children’s playfulness is limited due to parental mediation and Alexa’s ‘unnatural’ interface, which turned out to be far from intuitive for both children. Sakr further probes the risks presented by Alexa’s commercial purposes and agendas and asks how they can be actively unsettled to unleash the creative, subversive possibilities of playing with Alexa and ‘making kin’ with CAs.

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Finally, Jana Mikats explores in ‘Being Creative: Fluid Boundaries of Everyday Family Life and Creative Home-Based Online Work’ the interrelatedness of the creative work and family life of home-based workers and their family members in Austrian creative industries. She draws on extensive fieldwork with Family C, consisting of the online blogger and ‘mumpreuneur’ (Ekinsmyth 2014) Catherine, her husband and their two daughters, to interrogate the interlinking of the three concepts of ‘mumpreneurship’, ‘live-with workhome’ (Holliss 2012), and ‘making is connecting’ (Gauntlett 2011). She juxtaposes Catherine’s story of her life as a home-based digital content creator and the spatiotemporal dimension of the living and working situation to consider the often inventive coordination of paid work and family life and the various ways of ‘doing family’ while doing work. The perspective on the everyday underlines once more the constant and diverse interactions that contribute to the production of creative content and the role of creativity in everyday life and social relationships. By centering their investigations around the concept of creativity, the eight chapters in this volume open new perspectives on the interweavings of family, generation, and gender in the digital age. They argue for new constellations, revisionist reworkings of old concepts, and the development of novel resistant practices afforded by new media and technologies. Above all, they show how creative approaches introduce dynamism into settled notions and structures and thus contribute to the widening of available options for becoming, being, and ‘doing’ family.

Note 1. For an overview of rainbow families and their rights in the EU, see http://nelfa.org/inprogress/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NELFAcrossborder-factsheet11-2019-final.pdf.

References Andreassen, R. (2018) Mediated Kinship: Gender, Race and Sexuality in Donor Families (New York: Routledge). Barbosa Neves, B. and Casimiro, C. (eds) (2018) Connecting Families? Information & Communication Technologies, Generations, and the Life Course (Bristol: Policy Press).

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Beck-Gernsheim, E. (1998) ‘On the Way to a Post-familial Family: From a Community of Need to Elective Affinities’, Theory, Culture & Society, 15 (3), 53–70. Bertone, C. and Pallotta-Chiarolli, M. (eds) (2015) Queerying Families of Origin (Milton Park, NY: Routledge). Bryceson, D.F. and Vuorela, U. (eds) (2002) The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks (Oxford: Berg Press). Buckingham, D. (2009) ‘A Commonplace Art? Understanding Amateur Media Production’ in Buckingham, D. and Willett, R. (eds) Video Cultures: Media Technology and Everyday Creativity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 23–50. Charles, N., Davies. C. A. and Harris, C. (2008) Families in Transition: Social Change, Family Formation and Kinship (Bristol: Policy Press). Christensen, T. H. (2009) ‘“Connected Presence” in Distributed Family Life’, New Media & Society, 11 (3), 433–51. Dermott, E. and Seymour, J. (2011) Displaying Families: A New Concept for the Sociology of Family Life (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Di Leonardo, M. (1987) ‘The Female World of Cards and Holidays: Women, Families, and the Work of Kinship’, Signs, 12 (3), 440–53. Eisler, R. and A. Montuori (2007) ‘Creativity, Society, and the Hidden Subtext of Gender: Toward a New Contextualized Approach’, World Futures (63), 479–99. Eisler, R., Donnelly, G. and Montuori, A. (2016) ‘Creativity, Society, and Gender: Contextualizing and Redefining Creativity’, Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, 3 (2), Article 3. Ekinsmyth, C. (2014) ‘Mothers’ Business, Work/Life and the Politics of “Mumpreneurship”’, Gender, Place & Culture, 21 (10), 1230–48. Finch, J. (2007) ‘Displaying Families’, Sociology, 41(1), 65–81. Gauntlett, D. (2011) Making Is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, from DIY and Knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0 (London: Polity Press). Gillies, V. (2003) Family and Intimate Relationships: A Review of the Sociological Research (Families and Social Capital Research Group, South Bank University). Goldberg, A. E. and Allen, K. R. (eds) (2012) LGBT-parent Families: Innovations in Research and Implications for Practice (New York: Springer). Goldschmidt, Karen (2020) ‘The COVID-19 Pandemic: Technology Use to Support the Wellbeing of Children’, Journal of Pediatric Nursing, 53 (July-August), 88–90. Halatcheva-Trapp, M., Montanari, G. and Schlinzig, T. (eds) (2019) Family and Space: Rethinking Family Theory and Empirical Approaches (London and New York: Routledge).

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Hanssen, J. K. (2012) ‘My Rainbow Family—Discomfort and the Heteronormative Logics’, Young 20 (3), 237–56. Haraway, D. J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books). Haraway, D. J. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press). Holliss, F. (2012) ‘Space, Buildings and the Life Worlds of Home-Based Workers: Towards Better Design’, Sociological Research Online, 17 (2), 1–37. Iivari, N., Sharma, S. and Ventä-Olkkonen, L. (2020) ‘Digital Transformation of Everyday Life–How COVID-19 Pandemic Transformed the Basic Education of the Young Generation and Why Information Management Research Should Care?’, International Journal of Information Management, available online 27 June, 102183. Kraler, A., Kofman, E., Kohli, M. and Schmoll, C. (eds) (2011) Gender, Generations and the Family in International Migration (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press). Lebow, J. L. (2020) ‘Family in the Age of COVID-19’, Family Process, 59 (2), 1–4. Lück, D. and Castrén, A.-M. (eds) (2018) ‘Family Understandings in Contemporary Europe’, European Societies, 20 (5), special issue. Mamo, L. (2007) Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Mamo, L. (2010) ‘Fertility Inc.: Consumption and Subjectification in Lesbian Reproductive Practices’ in Clarke, A. E., Shim, J. K., Mamo, L., Fosket, J. R. and Fishman, J. R. (eds) Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the U.S. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 82–98. Mamo, L. (2013) ‘Queering the Fertility Clinic’, Journal of Medical Humanities 34, 227–39. Mason, J. (2008) ‘Tangible Affinities and the Real Life Fascination of Kinship’, Sociology, 42 (1), 29–45. Mason, J. (2018) Affinities: Potent Connections in Personal Life (Cambridge: Polity Press). Mason, J. and Tipper, B. (2008) ‘Being Related: How Children Define and Create Kinship’, Childhood 15 (4), 441–60. Molino, M., Ingusci, E., Signore, F., Manuti, A., Giancaspro, M. L., Russo, V., Zito, M. and Cortese, C. G. (2020) ‘Wellbeing Costs of Technology Use during Covid-19 Remote Working: An Investigation Using the Italian Translation of the Technostress Creators Scale’, Sustainability, 12 (15), 5911. Morgan, D. (2004) ‘Everyday Life and Family Practices’, in Silva, E. B. and Bennett, T. (eds) Contemporary Culture and Everyday Life (Durham: sociologypress).

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Morgan, D. H. J. (1996) Family Connections: An Introduction to Family Studies (Cambridge: Polity). Morgan, D. H. J. (2011) Rethinking Family Practices (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Murray, L., L. McDonnell, T. Hinton-Smith, N. Ferreira and K. Walsh (eds) (2019) Families in Motion: Ebbing and Flowing through Space and Time (Bingley, UK: Emerald). Nedelcu, M. and Wyss, M. (2016) ‘“Doing Family” through ICT-mediated Ordinary Co-presence: Transnational Communication Practices of Romanian Migrants in Switzerland’, Global Networks, 16 (2), 202–18. Nelfa (2019) Rainbow Families in the EU—Your Fact Sheet, http://nelfa.org/ inprogress/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NELFA-crossborder-factsheet112019-final.pdf. Nordqvist, P. (2014) ‘Bringing Kinship into Being: Connectedness, Donor Conception and Lesbian Parenthood’, Sociology, 48 (2), 263–78. Park, S. M. (2013) Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood: Resisting Monomaternalism in Adoptive, Lesbian, Blended and Polygamous Families (New York: Suny Press). Patton-Imani, S. (2020) Queering Family Trees: Race, Reproductive Justice, and Lesbian Motherhood (New York: NYU Press). Peukert, A., Teschlade, J., Wimbauer, C., Motakef, M. and Holzleithner, E. (2020) Elternschaft und Familie jenseits von Heteronormativität und Zweigeschlechtlichkeit, GENDER—Sonderheft 5. Pfeffer, C. A. (2017) Queering Families: The Postmodern Partnerships of Cisgender Women and Transgender Men (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Poole, J. (2014) ‘Queer Representations of Gay Males and Masculinities in the Media’, Sexuality & Culture, 18 (2), 279–90. Riggs, D. W., and E. Peel (2016) Critical Kinship Studies: An Introduction to the Field (New York: Springer). Romero-Ruiz, K., Echeverri-Sánchez, L., Peña-Plata, J., Vásquez-Giraldo, S., Aguilera-Cardona, M., Herazo-Avendaño, C., Valencia-Arias, A. and BranPiedrahita, L. (2017) ‘Information and Communication Technologies Impact on Family Relationship’, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 237, 30–37. Schadler, C. (2016) ‘How to Define Ever-transforming Family Configurations? A New Materialist Approach’, Journal of Family Theory and Review, 8 (4), 503–14. Schier, M. and Jurczyk, K. (2008) ‘Familie als Herstellungsleistung in Zeiten der Entgrenzung’, Sozialwissenschaftlicher Fachinformationsdienst soFid, 9–18. Smart, C. (2007) Personal Life: New Directions in Sociological Thinking (Cambridge: Polity). Taylor, S. (2015) ‘A New Mystique? Working for Yourself in the Neoliberal Economy’, Sociological Review, 63, 174–87.

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Tincknell, E. (2005) Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation (London: Hodder Arnold). Wajcman, J., Bittman, M. and Brown, J. E. (2009) ‘Intimate Connections: The Impact of the Mobile Phone on Work/Life Boundaries’ in Goggin, G. and Hjorth, L. (eds) Mobile Technologies: From Telecommunications to Media (London: Routledge), pp. 9–22. Widmer, E. and Jallinoja, R. (eds) (2008). Beyond the Nuclear Family: Families in a Configurational Perspective (Bern: Peter Lang). Zartler, U., Heintz-Martin, V. and Becker, O. A. (eds) (2015) ‘Family Dynamics after Separation: A Life Course Perspective on Post-divorce Families’, Zeitschrift für Familienforschung/Journal of Family Research, Special issue 10.

PART I

Becoming Family

CHAPTER 2

Creatively Becoming a Family in the Fertility Clinic? Matching Donors with Non-heterosexual and Single Recipients in Commercial Care Riikka Homanen

Research on assisted reproductive technologies (ART) has shown that kin and family relations can be enacted in unexpected new ways in fertility treatments. Western practices and notions of kinship and family, which prioritize biological connections and genetic relatedness through heterosexual sex and pregnancy, have been contested, reformulated but also reinforced by ART, marketization and reproductive tourism (Franklin 2001, pp. 311–12; Thompson 2005). New and transgressive third-reproductive-party technologies, including donor tissue treatments, bring about new ways not just of perceiving family and kinship, but

R. Homanen (B) Tampere University, Tampere, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Mikats et al. (eds.), Creative Families, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0_2

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also of becoming related—juridically, socially, affectively and biologically (Franklin 2013). Prior research on ART has addressed ‘creativity’1 —albeit without always explicitly using the term—in terms of enhancing parents’ freedom of action, reproductive choice and individualism/autonomy (on terminology, see e.g. Strathern 2005; see also Weeks et al. 2001; Thompson 2005). Regulations concerning ART, treatment practices, public (e)valuations and cultural normativities, however, set limits to the freedoms, choices and autonomy to make babies, children, family and kin. Typically, exclusions are made in terms of sexuality, race and class. This chapter is an experiment in thinking through the room and potential left for creativity in care practices to enable kinship and families. Non-heterosexuality and singlehood open up spaces for creativity in family-building, because homosexual and single people sometimes come under less pressure than their heterosexual or coupled peers to conform to certain family norms. Since the Finnish legislation on ART bans surrogacy, only heterosexual couples, lesbian couples and single women are eligible for fertility treatment. This chapter looks at two groups of intended parents and donor gamete recipients2 who are often excluded nonetheless from fertility treatment practice: single women and lesbian couples. I look at private commercial infertility treatments because until very recently (that is, 2019) public clinics refused to treat anyone other than heterosexual couples, on the basis of a medical needs argument (explained in more detail below). Queer studies have described how gay couples using ART queer both reproduction and the fertility clinic itself. These studies draw attention to the processes by which gay reproductive practices simultaneously alter and maintain dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions of kinship, gender and sexuality (Weeks et al. 2001; Butler 2002; Mamo 2007, 2013). The particular practice of care on which this chapter focuses is that of matching donors with recipients in Finland. As this chapter will show, this practice both maintains and alters hetero- and couple-normative assumptions, potentially enabling queer intended parents to creatively become families. Furthermore, as Chabot and Ames (2004) remind us, one of the most essential aspects of lesbian couples’—and I would add single women’s—reproduction is finding, choosing and determining a future relationship with the gamete donor. In such cases, the donor influences

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not only the genetic origin of the child-to-be, but also future family practices. Depending on the legislation and care systems in the country in question, such donor issues boil down to the matching of donors with recipients, and donor information release systems. The national context also determines how much say recipients have in the matching process. The notion of matching intended parents with gamete donors derives from adoption practices (e.g. Haimes and Timms 1985), and it appears to have been embraced uncritically in fertility treatment practices. The practices and processes of matching donors with recipients have not been extensively studied (however, see Thompson 2009; Andersson 2016; Deomampo 2016; Speier 2016; Homanen 2018). Existing studies show that policies and practices regarding both adoption and donor fertility treatments aim to match intended parents with children/donors on the basis of phenotypical resemblance and/or other personal characteristics (Thompson 2009; Andersson 2016; Deomampo 2016; Speier 2016). Policymakers and medical professionals have even regarded the lack of physical or other personal resemblance as a risk to the attachment between parent and child (Thompson 2009; Andersson 2016; see also Government Bill HE 3/2006, 2006). This risk argument reproduces the ideal of genetic kinship. Indeed, according to Charis Thompson, matching has kept ART ‘as “natural” as possible, and aid[ed] families in domestic decisions about disclosure regarding donor use’ (Thompson 2009, p. 144). My study shows that, paradoxically, the ‘invisibility’ and unrecognizability of single women and lesbian couples’ family forms enables the unravelling of normativities, and potentially results in room for creativity. At the same time, however, (hetero)normativities are reproduced. I focus on this simultaneous unravelling and reproduction of normativity by asking: how is kin queered in practices of matching recipients with donors? What room for—or constraint on—creativity gets opened up for building kin and family in unique ways, outside of hetero- and couple-normativity? The chapter draws on ethnographic fieldwork at three private fertility clinics in three Finnish cities during 2015 and 2017. Before describing my fieldwork in detail, I briefly discuss the conceptual foundations of my study and my own positioning. I also describe the Finnish context.

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Queer Families, Heteronormativity and Assisted Reproduction The relationship between ART and (feminist) studies of reproduction has historically been ambivalent. ART’s potential to free women from reproductive labour has been celebrated in technological utopias (e.g. Firestone 1971). While some authors are moderately hopeful that technologies offer well-being, choice and agency for women and queer families (e.g. Franklin 2001, 2013; Thompson 2005), critical perspectives have always been strong. Such perspectives see ART as part of a pronatalist policy that seeks to confine women in the private sphere of the family; technologies are therefore seen as invading and controlling women’s bodies. This has raised concern, especially in lesbian communities, as many women refuse to be the objects of pronatalist policy or technological invasion (Mamo 2007, 2013). As a result, some lesbians have used low-tech home insemination, outside of medical practices or the market (Mamo 2010; Pidduck 2017, p. 252). Nevertheless, lesbian couples and single women today increasingly turn to high-tech medical care, often in order to safeguard their health and manage the risks linked to sperm donors (Bock 2000; Sullivan 2004; Mamo 2010; Nipuli 2015). In many ways, fertility care practices are built on heteronormativity (Butler 2002; Hirvonen 2007; Kuosmanen 2007; Mamo 2007; Moring 2007; Helosvuori 2012). The default target group for care is the medically infertile heterosexual couple (see Nipuli 2015). The practices can thus be described as not only heteronormative but also couple-normative. In other words, even though care practices in countries such as Finland ostensibly do not discriminate against lesbian (or gay) couples and single people, they often do not recognize or support family forms such as two mothers or lone mothers. Often, lesbian couples and single people need to demonstrate that they are good enough parents. The regulation and practice of ART can thus be seen as encouraging heterosexual couples to reproduce while discouraging fatherless families. But the increasing use of ART has also been seen as concretely enabling reproduction and kinship outside the pronatalist genetic heterosexual couple model—enabling reproduction without heterosexual sex, genetic kinship or partnership (Thompson 2005; Mamo 2007, 2010, 2013). This simultaneous unravelling and reproduction of heteronormativity have been the focus of queer reproductive studies that explore institutions of

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kinship, gender and sexuality (e.g. Butler 2002; Kuosmanen 2007; Mamo 2007, 2010, 2013; Pidduck 2017; Smietana 2017). In my study, heteronormativity—the understanding of heterosexuality as a natural model for sexuality and the production of social relations, such as kin and family relations—is understood as a taken-for-granted assumption built into (care) practices, institutions and perceptions (e.g. Butler 1990; Berlant and Warner 2000). ‘Couple-normativity’ refers similarly to the institutionalized norm, according to which partnership based on romantic love and monogamy is the best basis for a (nuclear) family (e.g. DePaulo and Morris 2005). The concept of homonormativity— which derives from queer theory on heteronormativity—is also relevant here (e.g. Duggan 2002, 2012; Puar 2006; Wiegman and Wilson 2015). Homonormativity invites homosexual people to join some institutions under certain conditions (Duggan 2002, p. 179). Homonormativity is not, however, simply heteronormativity applied to gay people. Rather, the concept describes certain changes in contemporary governance, politics and citizenship whereby some (predominantly cis, conservative, wealthy and white) gay men and lesbians are granted access to the institutions of the family, free market and patriotism (Duggan 2012, pp. 50–51). The reproduction of families through different practices of assisted reproduction has been studied extensively using the ‘critical kinship’ approach (e.g. Franklin 1997, 2013; Franklin and McKinnon 2001; Kroløkke et al. 2016). This approach understands kinship as enacted in practices and processes where biology and sociality, nature and nurture, are connected in specific ways according to historical, cultural, political and economic contexts (e.g. Franklin and McKinnon 2001; Franklin 2013; Kroløkke et al. 2016). These practices involve many actors, both human and non-human—including laws, technologies and gametes. My study is positioned at the intersection of queer reproductive studies and critical kinship studies.

The Situation in Finland Although Finland’s legislation regulating the use of ART (Act on Assisted Fertility Treatments 1237/2006) is not the most restrictive in the world3 (see Eriksson 2017; Homanen 2018), it has been characterized as heteroand couple-normative (for the Angloamerican context see Butler 2002 Mamo 2007; for Finnish context see Malin 2006; Hirvonen 2007; Kuosmanen 2007; Moring 2007). With regard to matching donors and

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recipients, the legislation also states that ‘the attending physician shall select gametes whose donor resembles in appearance the respective parent of the child to be born’ (Act on Assisted Fertility Treatments 1237/2006, Section 5(3)). This way of regulating ART arguably renders the third reproductive party—that is the donor—invisible. It has even been claimed that the practice makes it appear as if no third party is involved at all, and may lead some intended parents to decide never to disclose their donor use to their subsequent offspring (Thompson 2005; Hirvonen 2007). Further, the legislation entirely disregards social mothers by not recognizing samesex couples, although curiously, a sperm donor can be confirmed as a legal father. Overall, as Helena Hirvonen (2007) notes, the Finnish legislation and its wording on the use of donor gametes encourages the mimicking of biological kinship reproduced through heterosexual sex (see also Mamo 2007). Finnish law forces donor treatment participants to attend donor counselling with a psychologist in the clinic (Act on Assisted Fertility Treatments 1237/2006, Section 9). As prior studies have shown, single women and lesbian couples often experience this counselling as stigmatizing and discriminatory (Kuosmanen 2007; Nipuli 2015). This section of the law is motivated by concern about relationships between family members, which are seen as threatened by the lack of genetic ties (see also Malin 2006). The situation of single women and lesbians is quite different from that of heterosexual couples, however. The concern does not apply to single women at all if their own eggs are used in the treatment (Nipuli 2015, pp. 14–15). The concern, then, seems to be about how fatherless families will manage family life. The same applies to lesbian couples: why would a female couple need special protection, support and evaluation to manage everyday life as a two-parent family (see Kuosmanen 2007, pp. 48–49; Moring 2007, 2013)?

Ethnography of Everyday Fertility Care Practices This chapter is part of a bigger research project on the constitution of social relations such as sexuality, kin, class, gender and race/ethnicity in reproductive healthcare practices in the context of healthcare marketization. To take a closer look at care processes and practices in fertility clinics, I used ethnographic methods such as observation and video recording (Harbers et al. 2002). After obtaining formal permission from the Ethics

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Committee for the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tampere, and consent from healthcare personnel in the clinics, I conducted fieldwork between late spring 2015 and spring 2017 in three different clinics. By choosing three different clinics,4 I sought to capture a wide range of care practices that could not be explained away by factors such as individual clinics’ or professionals’ styles. Depending on the clinics’ wishes, my fieldwork lasted between a few days and two weeks at a time. Consent to participate was also obtained from all the intended parents. The material comprises video recordings5 of appointments (63 videos) and procedures (42). These included four appointments and procedures with lesbian couples, and 14 with single women (and accompanying doctors, nurses or embryologists). Appointments with doctors include initial interviews, planning of the care cycle and ultrasound screenings to determine the development of the endometrium and/or ovarian follicles. Nurses and embryologists also meet the intended parents: nurses give instructions on taking medication and preparing for procedures, and embryologists discuss embryo development and selection. The egg donation treatment coordinator—usually one of the most experienced nurses—is primarily in charge of egg donor/recipient matching, correspondence with recipients and treatment contracts. One of the embryologists is responsible for the sperm bank, takes care of sperm donor/recipient matching and orders sperm from Denmark for storage. During my fieldwork, eggs were not ordered from abroad, as there were enough donors locally. A great deal of Finnish donor eggs go to crossborder reproductive travellers who have come to Finland for treatment, mainly from other Nordic countries (Homanen 2018). To acquire a comprehensive overview of activities in the clinics, observations were also made in meeting rooms, common areas, and the in vitro fertilization (IVF) laboratory where the reproductive cells were stored, oocytes fertilized and embryos cultured.6 Moreover, I collected data from interviews with 18 healthcare professionals in the clinics, including doctors, nurses, embryologists and coordinators, to cover their experience-based knowledge of fertility treatments. Intended parents were not interviewed, because of time restrictions—an obvious shortcoming of the study. Their voices, however, can be ‘heard’ in fieldnotes from my chats with them, and in video recordings of their appointments. I also collected the handouts distributed to intended parents, and local

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and national care guideline materials, which the professionals identified as useful documents in their work. The videos and interviews were fully transcribed. To account for nonverbal activities, I also took field notes on the video recordings. As is common in ethnographic enquiries, analysis of the material involved ongoing reframing through the knowledge produced collaboratively with the participants (Holmes and Marcus 2008). Now I move on to the results of my enquiry.

Children with Two Biological Mothers, Children Without Genetic Ties to Their Biological Parents Finnish legislation directs medical professionals to match donors with recipients on the basis of appearance (Act on Assisted Fertility Treatments 1237/2006, Section 9). The law also stipulates the physical characteristics and ethnic background information that can be collected (Section 22). These are the only characteristics that can be requested by recipients and shared by medical professionals. All gamete and embryo donors must be legally registered. After turning 18, children born from donor ART can receive information about the identity of the donor on request, but intended parents are not entitled to this information at any point. This is the legal framework within which medical professionals operate. According to my observations, the legal framework leaves room for decision-making that involves deliberation over the ethics of matching. It appears that psychological arguments and expertise have a stronghold over these deliberations. In all the clinics where I conducted research, the psychologists were sceptical about ‘full donation’ (that is, the use of both a donor egg and donor sperm in the same treatment). In other words, they were sceptical about arrangements where the recipient family would be genetically unrelated to the child born from the treatment. The psychologists—and other medical staff that agreed with them—justified their scepticism on the grounds that a lack of genetic kinship was risky. I was told that full donation might be too psychologically ‘complicated’ for the intended parents and children, and would ‘cause a higher risk of emotional conflict in the family’ (phrases used by professionals, recorded in field notes). Because medical professionals generally consider it their task to make treatment decisions ‘in the best interests of the child’ (which is also inscribed in the Act on Assisted Fertility Treatments 1237/2006, Section 8, in terms of the child’s ‘health’ and ‘balanced development’),

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we can conclude that the absence of genetic kinship per se is seen as a risk to the well-being of the child-to-be (see also Thompson 2005). When I asked professionals about risks and problems in family relationships, they especially mentioned divorce, separation and multi-parenting arrangements. When I directed the discussion to problems resulting specifically from full donation, one nurse responded: I cannot say if there have been problems, I cannot answer this, but I have the idea and feeling from my personal friendship group that this child would not have a genetic connection to the mother in any way. Is that meaningful when one is 20 years old? I cannot say. A five-year-old does not care. She is the mother […]. I just personally think that it can matter, […] I do think it matters. An adopted child is different because they always do not have same genetics, even if it was a single mother who adopted, but there is a possibility to find the [genetic parent], it is possible to find [the genetic parent] when it [the child] is made here [refers to all donors being on a state register with an information release system]. (Clinic C, nurse 1, interview)7

As this extract shows, kinship is equated with genetic ‘connection’. This connection is presumed to be significant for the child, at least when they are older. Furthermore, at the end of the extract, the nurse compares the situation of donor-conceived children with that of adopted children, and speculates that the situation of donor-conceived children might be better: because of the donor register, as adults they will be able (more easily than adoptees, at least) to find their genetic parent. The nurse reads the life of a donor-conceived child through cultural narratives about adopted children: finding the genetic parent is seen as essential for a child’s identity, and the absence of genetic ties is deemed a risk to the child–parent relationship or ‘connection’ (on adoption practices see e.g. Andersson 2016; Myong 2016). Full-donation IVF was not recommended to anyone during my fieldwork, even though it was performed in some clinics and increased towards the end of my fieldwork. Clients who had been attending the clinic for some time were especially considered to be eligible. I was told that because of the long-term client-professional relationship, the professionals felt that they knew these clients well enough to be sure they could cope with a genetically unrelated child. Hence, in principle, single women whose eggs could not be used for one reason or another could have

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their own biological—but genetically unrelated—children through donor conception. An interesting case of full donation from the perspective of lesbian parenthood is where one of the intended parents in a lesbian couple donates an egg for fertilization with donor sperm, and then her partner becomes the birth mother. Some clinics refuse this arrangement, using the same argumentation as in cases of full donation, even though in this case there is genetic relatedness. In contrast, clinics in some Anglo-American countries prefer this practice. They argue that the genetic tie will assure attachment and ‘relatedness’ (Thompson 2005; Mamo 2007). It seems that a family with two biological mothers (one birth and one genetic) is still too socially confusing for some Finnish clinics. Although some Finnish clinics refuse full donation, others do permit families with two biological mothers, and therefore seem to tolerate families with biological but not fully genetic kin relations between parents and children. This questions hetero- and couple-normativity in kinship in a very concrete way, because the hetero- and couple-normative model prefers genetic relationships between parents and children. Next, I move on to further explore (hetero and couple) normativities in matching practices, their links to adoption matching practices, and the potential room for creativity for non-normative intended parents.

Children Fitting and not Fitting the ‘Environment’ We talk of course, and hope that the donor will not diverge a lot from the environment into which the child is born because… It depends if it is a couple or a single woman. Especially if it is a single woman, then it is surely not in the best interests of the child if it differs a lot from the environment it is born into. […] A single woman is alone with the child, and the child is kind of alone with its mother. So if on top of that there are these differences in physical appearance, for instance, if it is a single woman and like a child with really dark skin tone, then there might be even more pressure targeted at the child. I think like this. It might be that I am wrong, but in the case that it is like this it might be best that the starting point is that the child resembles the family it is born into. (Clinic A, doctor 1, interview)

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In the extract above, the doctor is telling me about things they take into account when they match recipients with donors. Note the norm in this extract, according to which children born as a result of donor IVF should not physically diverge too much from the ‘environment’ into which they are born. ‘Environment’ can be interpreted as referring to the intended parents’ physical characteristics first and foremost, but also to those of the extended (genetic) family—and those characteristics are presumed to be inheritable. Moreover, concern is raised about lack of resemblance as a potential source of problems for the family. This concern is also familiar in adoption practices (see e.g. Andersson 2016; Högbacka 2009; Ruohio 2016). The concern about single women in particular can be interpreted as part of the common psychological concern over fatherless or one-parent households. In this case, one-parent families are seen as particularly vulnerable when confronted with racism. ‘Fitting the environment’ can only refer to physical characteristics, as the legislation directs medical professionals to match donors with recipients based on appearance. The law also specifies the characteristics about which recipients can make requests and medical professionals can share information: skin tone, eye colour, hair colour, height and ethnic origin (Act on Assisted Fertility Treatments 1237/2006, Section 15). These are the five characteristics used for matching, according to the medical professionals in my fieldwork. It is thus built into the legislation that resemblance determines family belonging. This has also been noted in Finnish legislation on adoption (Rastas 2002). In the clinics I observed, the coordinators and embryologists created Excel spreadsheets of donors and recipient women regarding the five characteristics. The spreadsheets often also included a field for additional information, including the number of pregnancies achieved with gametes from the eligible donors, and any restrictions the donors might have set on the use of their gametes. I saw restrictions such as not giving gametes to single women, lesbian couples or non-Finnish residents. Donors, however, very rarely set limits. Recipients’ requests concerning the five characteristics were also recorded on the spreadsheets. In the interviews, coordinators and embryologists told me that matching mostly involved finding donors who resembled the intended recipients as closely as possible. This also appears in the video recordings of appointments where matching was discussed. In the cases of single women and lesbians, hair colour, eye colour and height were

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matched to the (perceived) appearance of the extended family8 and/or ethnic group/nation, rather than being exactly matched to the women themselves. This is evident in the following exchange during the first appointment between an IVF doctor and a single woman: Doctor: And then on the day of ovulation, or the day before, we will perform the insemination if the sperm is available then. Of course if there is not a suitable one [donor] at that particular moment… Woman: As a matter of fact I […] there were these, when I thought about these [characteristics] there isn’t really anything else except that I would like it to be a white Finnish-appearing [donor], so I don’t really have any specific [requirements]. Doctor: Oh, so hair and eye colour does not matter? Woman: Well, no, no. Doctor: And the range of height [of the donor] appears to be quite wide? [Looks at information provided by the woman on a preliminary form brought to the appointment.] Woman: Well, yes, I wrote down that because it is not so precise, because we have a variety of different-height men in my family: my brother and… or my dad is 185 centimetres, so if I think about my own family around me. So that is all that I thought. (Clinic A, first appointment with IVF doctor, single woman, tape 14_9N)

The doctor in this snapshot from an appointment is describing the treatment process for which a ‘suitable’ donor is being sought. A suitable donor is someone who matches the five characteristics specified by the legislation, pleases the recipient and satisfies the doctor. Even before the appointment, the single woman has been pondering her preferences in regard to the five physical characteristics (an item on the preliminary information form). Recipients often have such preferences (which frequently accord with those of medical staff). She is not fussy and explains the wide range of donor heights she is willing to accept in terms of the many different heights in her family.9 A ‘white Finnish-appearing’ child that ‘fits’ the family is sought. Firstly, we might conclude from this that, as in practices of adoption, the ideal match will create a child that will ‘pass’ as genetically related (for an adoption studies comparison, see Modell 1994). Such a child will belong more easily and ‘naturally’ within the family, and within the nation too (for an adoption studies comparison, see Högbacka 2009; Ruohio 2016).

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Secondly, it is interesting what a ‘Finnish-appearing’ donor is presumed to be like in this extract. The donor is expected to be white in skin tone, and to have other ethno-racially associated qualities. Medical professionals and clients in the clinics often treated skin tone as a clear indication of ‘race’ and ethnicity. I sometimes asked the medics whether they ever took account of recipients’ requests to not match their appearance with that of the donor. When discussing skin tone and ethnic origin, the medics emphasized the inheritability of difference: ‘we don’t mix races here’, one coordinator told me, for example (Clinic B, coordinator 1, interview). With regard to height and eye/hair colour, however, the professionals questioned the passing on of such precise physical attributes from donor to offspring. With these attributes, then, they acknowledged the complexity of the inheritability of physical characteristics (see also Homanen 2018). Some clinics refused to match recipients and donors with different ethnic origins or skin tones, but not all. I have written about this elsewhere (Homanen 2018). There was a selective and exclusionary rationale behind matching in the clinics, built around whiteness: matches between donors with dark skin tones and recipients with fair skin tones were rejected, but matches could be made between donors with fair skin and recipients with dark skin. It was acceptable to match darkerskinned intended parents with a white donor because it would create some phenotypic credibility for biological descent, as dark skin tone is believed to be more heritable than light skin tone. This implied that no such credibility would arise with a dark-skinned donor and white intended parents. Thus, although ideally there was flexibility in the matching of skin tones, in practice this flexibility only applied to intended parents who were considered dark-skinned. It was disregarded that the inheritability of ethno-racial(ized) qualities is unpredictable, and that there is a history of lighter-skinned children being born to darker-skinned parents (see e.g. Thompson 2005, 2009). This logic is not new. The notion that ‘one drop’ of non-white blood makes a person ‘of colour’ but not the other way around has a long history (Franklin 1997; Thompson 2006; Deomampo 2016). The exclusionary rationale behind matching is the logic of protecting the ‘purity’ of whiteness but not brownness or blackness (for more detail, see Homanen 2018).

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Room to Creatively Make Kin and Family The professionals acknowledged the legislation’s inherent presumption that donor gametes are provided for heterosexual couples. In my interviews and informal chats with professionals, some indicated that the general guidelines for matching need not apply to single women. It seemed that single women had more room and potential to create their own kind of family through IVF: The characteristics [to be used in matching], height and eyes and so on. Of course it is preferable that [the donor] should resemble as closely as possible the partner [that is, the infertile recipient] if it is a [heterosexual] couple we are talking about. And in a way it is understandable if one wants the donor to be close to one’s own characteristics. But if we are talking about a single woman, then, well, one could of course have met anyone […]. It can be, one can say that the father was this and that. You know. (Clinic A, coordinator, interview) Well, of course it [resemblance] is emphasized if we are talking about a heterosexual couple. And the aim is to match [the appearance] of the man. But as you know, it is not always like that. (Clinic A, embryologist 1, interview)

In both of these extracts, the professionals emphasize that the process of matching applies mainly when the gamete is donated to a heterosexual couple to ‘replace’ the gamete of the infertile intended parent. It does not make sense to apply the same matching rationale to single women. Why would a child not fit in a family where the father could be whatever one claimed? Single women (and lesbian couples) and their future offspring, then, are not always ‘protected’ by matching them with donor men that (are perceived to) resemble the recipients’ ‘environment’ or male (genetic) relatives. In practice, there is room for other choices and logics. It is ethno-racialized resemblance and origin that most concern professionals and recipients alike in matching. Recipient intended parents often seek to ensure the racial stability of their families in an effort to pass as genetic parents of the donor-conceived child (Thompson 2009; Deomampo 2016; Speier 2016; Homanen 2018). We might therefore conclude that the ‘environment’ into which the donor-conceived child is expected to fit is first and foremost the ethno-racialized group to

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which the intended parents are perceived to belong. This interpretation was reinforced by my discussions with medics regarding general matching guidelines: the first things that always came up were skin tone, nationality (for example ‘Finnish-appearing’), ethnocultural (and racialized) geographical regions (for example Nordic) and (outdated) racial classifications (for example Caucasian). In addition to (some) clinic personnel questioning the overall ideal of resemblance-matching in the case of single women, some also specified that this particularly and explicitly related to ethnicity, nationality and skin tone. Single women were also allowed to ‘choose’ donor sperm, as is evident in the following extract from an interview with an embryologist. When I asked about the chances of matching donors with recipient single women, the embryologist replied: Embryologist: It is okay if she [the single woman] wants, yes, but we don’t store it [non-white ethno-racialized sperm] because there is not a real demand for it. So we don’t have it in the sperm bank in the cans [nitrogen tanks], but we will order it. I ordered Indian donor [frozen] sperm for one single woman. Interviewer: Okay, so even though the woman was not herself of Indian origin? Embryologist: Yes. Interviewer: I was under the impression that one needed to get someone [a donor] that would fit in the family, so to speak, and have the same skin tone and ethnic origin. Embryologist: That is the recommendation, I presume, our psychologist recommends that I am sure, too, because of what problems might emerge for the mother and child in the future. They discuss it in the counselling and all that, but it is not anything… Interviewer: Written in the law or any regulations? Embryologist: Yes, that ‘we shall never use’. We just don’t keep it in the cans […] but we will order it from Denmark. (Clinic B, embryologist in charge of sperm orders, interview)

The rationale of protecting the ‘purity’ of whiteness and (implied) Finnishness/Nordic-ness through exclusionary matching seems to apply more to heterosexual couples. It also seems that clinics may enforce resemblance-matching more strictly on lesbian couples than on single women. This is the case even though lesbian couples could have children with the help of a man (outside the clinic) who does not resemble them

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or their genetic relatives in terms of physical characteristics or origin—just like single women. When I asked medical staff about diverging from the overall guidelines, it was always the case of single women that was taken up as an exception.

Conclusion: Hetero-, Coupleand Homonormativity in Belonging to Family and Nation In this chapter, I have provided ethnographic evidence of how treatment practices deemed hetero- and couple-normative both limit but also leave room for potentially creative kinship-building beyond those normativities. Finnish legislation recognizes heterosexual couples and single women, but not lesbian couples. The latter are only granted access contingently: they are not recognized as couples by the law that restricts clinical practice. Thus the social mother is erased to an extent from treatment practices. The law recognizes single women by giving them access to care, but in other respects, it encourages matching practices to mimic the genetic kinship reproduced through heterosexual sex (see also Hirvonen 2007; Mamo 2007). This is inequitable. Single women and lesbian couples are (sometimes) refused donor egg treatments, and they are subjected to different kinds of ‘protection measures’, such as recommendations to accept a donor who resembles their ‘environment’—that is, genetically related men in their extended family, or their own (perceived) ethnonational appearance and belonging. We must also remember, however, that women themselves also wish for donors like these, as if such donors might be better suited to the (hoped-for) family. The practices of matching donors and recipients in IVF are attuned to the practices of matching in adoption (Haimes and Timms 1985; Högbacka 2009; Deomampo 2016; Ruohio 2016; Speier 2016; Homanen 2018). In both types of practice for enacting kinship, intended parents are matched with donors who resemble their phenotypic appearance and other qualities as closely as possible. The lack of physical resemblance or similar personal characteristics has also been regarded as a risk to successful attachment between parents andchildren, and to coping in everyday family life (Thompson 2009; Andersson 2016; see also Government Bill HE 3/2006, 2006). In this chapter, I have shown that this concern can be coupled with the concern

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over the lack of genetic relatedness. With full donation, professional psychological concern over the absence of genetic relatedness seems to be so strong that it overrides the requirement of resemblance. Mimicking genetic kinship is not enough. The default subject of care, then, is a couple where one intended parent is the genetic parent of the hoped-for child. A lesbian couple where one intended parent is the egg donor and the other the birth mother would constitute such a couple. This kind of arrangement, however, is not always allowed in Finland. This is justified using the same arguments that are used against full donation. Why would child-parent relations be at risk in a family with two biological mothers? The psychological logic does not hold: indeed, Anglo-American research shows that this arrangement is even preferred (e.g. Thompson 2005; Momo 2007). I have explored the ideal of resemblance in matching practices in detail in this chapter. This ideal is akin to the adoption ideal of children that ‘fit’ families (e.g. Högbacka 2009; Ruohio 2016). In the cases of single women and lesbian couples, this is framed as fitting the ‘environment’ or extended family/kin. Single women and lesbian couples are not ‘recipients’ within the literal meaning of the Finnish legislation that urges professionals to match recipients with a resembling donor. Thus the clinics, and women themselves, have adopted the logic of choosing donors that resemble their genetic relatives or country(wo)men. Finnish nationals are viewed as white, Nordic or Scandinavian kin nationals. The biology of (perceived) ‘race’ and ethnicity is mixed with ethnocultural geographical region and shared history (see also Thompson 2006; Whitmarsh and Jones 2010). Ethno-racialized characteristics are deemed to be more heritable than other characteristics. Skin tone seems to be the most salient, and to imply non-Finnish ethnic origin. Clinics have developed matching practices that protect the ‘purity’ of whiteness but not brownness or blackness. My study shows, however, that the demand for ethno-racially ‘pure’ (white) family mostly applies to heterosexual couples. The rule about resemblance and ‘environment-fitting’ need not apply when matching single women and lesbian couples. In my simultaneous exploration of single women and lesbian couples, I have found that single women may in fact be given more freedom to choose a donor—even from an ethno-racialized group other than that to which they are seen to belong themselves. They have a little more room in their kin-making,

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then. This implies that lesbian couples are offered a homonormative family model, in which certain homosexuals are invited to join particular practices without questioning the heteronormative rules and power relations embedded in them. In prior research on gay couples’ preferences for donors, it has been shown that couples often take up this invitation. The research points out that in healthcare systems that promote intended parent recipients’ choice, such as in the US, this invitation or preference emerges from cultural expectations rather than from the healthcare system itself (Thompson 2005; Mamo 2007; Smietana 2017). Existing research sees homonormative models and practices as endangering the future of queer families of choice (Weston 1991; Weeks et al. 2001; Hayman et al. 2015; Pidduck 2017, p. 525), and as unsupportive of multi-parent families. Despite all the limitations, in Finland, donor-conceived children are born to queer (and fatherless) families with two biological mothers, and to single women to whom they are genetically unrelated. Moreover, these children sometimes resemble no one in their ethno-racialized family environment. In this way, clinics allow these women the potential to defy heterosexual intercourse as the baseline of reproduction and kinship, and to problematize and challenge perceptions portrayed as ‘facts of life’ (Nordqvist 2008, p. 287; see also Butler 2002; Mamo 2007, 2010). IVF itself historically queers kinship and reproduction in many ways. I would also add that single women and lesbian couples are sometimes given more space in clinical practices to creatively become a family through more donor choice. Paradoxically, this space opens up because they are largely ‘invisible’ to the law.

Funding This research was funded by Academy of Finland Project ‘Valuating Lives through Infertility and Dementia: Science, Law and Patient Activism (VALDA)’ (project number 308159) and Academy Research Fellow’s Project ‘Everyday Ethics of Reproductive Outsourcing: Making Good Life in the Era of Biocalpitalism’ (EEROS) (project number 321711).

Notes 1. Terms such as ‘creativity’, ‘creation’ and ‘innovation’ have been linked to notions of intellectual/artistic property, authorship and knowledge-making

2

2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

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(Strathern 2005). Creative products, such as books, have historically been referred to with the vocabulary of kinship (e.g. books as children of their (often male) authors). However, unlike human offspring, creative products or innovations are not considered to embody inheritance and descent. Further, authors may make property claims over their work, but property claims over persons, including children, are not generally possible in Western legislation or cultures (Strathern 2005, pp. 57–61, 82–8, 152– 57). Hence, although ‘procreation’ and ‘creation’ retain echoes of kinship, concepts such as ‘creativity’ and ‘creation’ have not been further theorized in the context of procreation and ART. In this chapter, I use the terms ‘intended parents’ and ‘recipients’ interchangeably, because homosexual and single intended parents are also always donor gamete recipients, since they need a donor gamete to reproduce biologically. However, patients who use their own gametes in fertility treatments are intended parents but not recipients (of donor gametes). There is considerable variance in legal restrictions on ART across the globe. Governments’ regulatory challenges involve the new forms of parenthood and filiation enabled by ART, as well as the extent to which governments should involve themselves in the fertility market and the intimate lives of citizens (see e.g. Engeli and Rothmayr 2017). New forms and ways of producing parenthood, babies and families using ART call into question the predominance of the traditional heterosexual, biologically related family. Some countries, such as Germany and Switzerland, have adopted highly restrictive policies that limit medical autonomy to practice ART, and limit access to treatment to heterosexual couples only. However, some states, such as California and the UK, have adopted permissive approaches, allowing a wide variety of technologies to be used, and granting access to many different family forms. At the time of my fieldwork, 10 private (and nine public) clinics in Finland offered the in vitro fertilization required for egg donation treatments. Through video recording I was able to collect a large amount of dataintensive material relatively quickly. Video recordings were only made during appointments and procedures. The interviews were conducted in Finnish. I have translated them into English. Extended family appearance as reported by the intended parents. She uses two terms in Finnish, perhe and suku. The former translates as ‘family’, while the latter implies extended family or kin.

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Malin, M. (2006) Biovalta, toiseus ja naisten toimijuus hedelmöityshoidoissa [Biopower, Othering and Women’s Agency in Fertility Care] (Helsinki: Stakes). Mamo, L. (2007) Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Mamo, L. (2010) ‘Fertility Inc.: Consumption and Subjectification in Lesbian Reproductive Practices’ in Clarke, A. E., Shim, J. K., Mamo, L., Fosket, J. R. and Fishman, J. R. (eds) Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the U.S (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), pp. 82–98. Mamo, L. (2013) ‘Queering the Fertility Clinic’, Journal of Medical Humanities 34, pp. 227–39. Modell, J. (1994) Kinship with Strangers: Adoption and Interpretations of Kinship in American Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press). Moring, A. (2007) ‘Kolmannen kerroksen vanhempia? Hetero- ja parinormatiivisuuksia Suomen ja Ruotsin hedelmöityshoitolaissa’ [‘Third Class Parents?’ Heteronormativity and Couple Normativity in Finnish and Swedish Law on Assisted Reproductive Technology], SQS 01/07, 15–34. Moring, A. (2013) Oudot perheet: Normeja ja ihanteita 2000-luvun Suomessa [Queer Families; Norms and Ideals in Finland in the 21st Century] (Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto). Myong, L. (2016) ‘I Never Knew: Adoptee Remigration to South Korea’ in Kroløkke, C., Myong, L., Adrian, S. W. and Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, T. (eds) Critical Kinship Studies (London: Rowman and Littlefield International), pp. 271–88. Nipuli, S. (2015) ‘Itselliset naiset hedelmöityshoidoissa: Taistelua asemasta heteronormatiivisissa rakenteissa’ [Single Women in Fertility Care: Struggle over Status in Heteronormative Structures], Sukupuolentutkimus 28 (1), 5–17. Nordqvist, P. (2008) ‘Feminist Heterosexual Imaginaries of Reproduction: Lesbian Conception in Feminist Studies of Reproductive Technologies’, Feminist Theory 9 (3), 273–92. Pidduck, J. (2017) ‘Lesbian Kinship and ARTs in American Popular Culture: The L Word and The Kids Are All Right ’ In Lie, M. and Lykke, N. (eds) Assisted Reproduction Across Borders: Feminist Perspectives on Normalizations (New York: Routledge), pp. 251–62. Puar, J. K. (2006) ‘Mapping US Homonormativities’, Gender, Place & Culture 13 (1), 67–88. Rastas, A. (2002) ‘Katseilla merkityt, silminnähden erilaiset. Lasten ja nuorten kokemuksia rodullistavista katseista’ [Marked by Looks, Different by Sight: Experiences of Children and Teens of Racializing Gaze], Nuorisotutkimus, 20 (3), 3–17.

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Ruohio, H. (2016) Suomalaiset kansainvälisesti adoptoidut: Perheeseen ja kansaan kuuluminen [Finnish Transnational Adoptees: Belonging to Family and Nation] (Helsinki: Nuorisotutkimusverkosto). Smietana, M. (2017) ‘”Families Like We’d Always Known”? Spanish Gay Fathers’ Normalization Narratives in Transnational Surrogacy’ In Lie, M. and Lykke, N. (eds) Assisted Reproduction Across Borders: Feminist Perspectives on Normalizations, Disruptions and Transmissions (New York: Routledge), pp. 49–60. Speier, A. (2016) Fertility Holidays: IVF Tourism and the Reproduction of Whiteness (New York: New York University Press). Strathern, M. (2005) Kinship, Law, and the Unexpected: Relatives Are Always a Surprise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sullivan, M. (2004) The Family of Women: Lesbian Mothers, Their Children, and the Undoing of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press). Thompson, C. (2005) Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Thompson, C. (2006) ‘Race Science’, Theory, Culture & Society, 23 (2–3), 547– 9. Thompson, C. (2009) ‘Skin Tone and the Persistence of Biological Race in Egg Donation for Assisted Reproduction’ in Glenn, E. N. (ed) Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters (Stanford: Stanford University Press), pp. 131–47. Weeks, J., Heaphy, B. and Donovan, C. (2001) Same-Sex Intimacies: Families of Choice and Other Life Experiments (London: Routledge). Weston, K. (1991) Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship (New York: Columbia University Press). Whitmarsh, I. and Jones, D. S. (eds) (2010) What’s the Use of Race? Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Wiegman, R. and Wilson, E. A. (2015) ‘Introduction: Antinormativity’s Queer Conventions’, differences, 26 (1), 1–25.

CHAPTER 3

Confronting Monomaternalism in Italy: Non-heterosexual Mothers Accessing ARTs Beatrice Gusmano

In writing this chapter, I’d like to acknowledge the support received within two European Research Council projects: Intimate – Citizenship, Care and Choice: The Micropolitics of Intimacy in Southern Europe (www.ces.uc.pt/intimate), funded under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (ERC Grant Agreement nº 338452) and based at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra (Portugal); and DomEQUAL: A Global Approach to Paid Domestic Work and Global Inequalities (https://domequal.eu/), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (ERC Grant agreement n° 678783) and based at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy). B. Gusmano (B) Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Mikats et al. (eds.), Creative Families, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0_3

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Since the majority of research concerning lesbian motherhood comes from North America (Taylor 2009), I would like to present the experience of lesbian and bisexual (LB) women who became mothers through Assisted Reproductive Techniques (ARTs) abroad while being Italians living in Italy. In fact, Italy does not recognize at all parenting outside the monogamous borders of heterosexual marriage. Therefore, lesbian and bisexual women, coupled or single, are forced to go abroad and creatively overcome these heteronormative legal boundaries which constrain their reproductive health and desire. I use the term creativity to refer to the act of imagining ways to do things differently in a socio-legal context in which lesbian and bisexual motherhood is not even considered as a possibility.1 Moreover, I read creativity not only as an individual skill in doing things differently, but also as a practical output of ‘how desires and possibilities are constrained and enabled by material circumstances, social supports and institutional regulations’ (Taylor 2009, p. 91). Framing creativity in this way helps unveil the dark side of choice, namely the neoliberal understanding of choice as a free-floating notion depending only on personal will, disregarding material conditions, social support and power relations. In order to unpack the ‘interlocking systems of oppression’ (Klesse 2007, p. 72) that trammels non-heterosexual women from becoming mothers and being recognized as such, in the following sections I will focus on these structural constraints: namely, heteronormativity and monomaternalism, institutional homophobia and class.

Monomaternalism The first time I presented this article at the ‘Queering Parenting’ conference,2 I decided to read the system of oppressions that is imposed on lesbian and bisexual mothers through the lens of what I called monomotherhood. In that labelling I was inspired by Brigitte Vassallo (2016), when she states that monogamy is not a practice but a way of thinking: the monogamous thought, based on exclusivity and exclusion, is a way of organizing relational and private life. According to the monogamous paradigm and drawing on the Italian saying ‘di mamma ce n’è una sola’ [mother, we only get one], I defined mono-motherhood as the regime inscribed in heteronormativity that acknowledges just one mother, and just one way of being an appropriate mother. After the conference, though, I realized that the contents of monomotherhood were already the topic of a book written in 2013 by Shelley

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Park, who coined the term monomaternalism. Therefore, I will now highlight her thoughts and other references in order to frame LB parenting within this system of oppression. Following the concept of repronormativity coined by Katherine Franke (2001), Park defines the ideology of monomaternalism as demanding a child to have just one and only one mother: Monomaternalism, as an ideological doctrine, resides at the intersection of patriarchy (with its insistence that women bear responsibility for biological and social reproduction), heteronormativity (with its insistence that a woman must pair with a man, rather than other women, in order to raise children successfully), capitalism (in its conception of children as private property), and Eurocentrism (in its erasure of polymaternalism in other cultures and historical periods). (Park 2013, p. 7)

Therefore, biological dictates blend with the socially normative dichotomy of the good/bad mother, failing to acknowledge privileges and oppressions linked with ableism, ageism, racism, sexism, capitalism, transphobia, mononormativity3 and heteronormativity.4 Anna Weissman focuses on the symbiosis that repronormativity has with the State: I use the concept of repronormativity to refer to a paradigm that is limited to legitimized, state-sanctioned heteronormative acts of reproduction specifically through the patriarchal heteronormative family, and service to this reproduction of the heteropatriarchal nation-state. (Weissman 2016, p. 279)

She highlights that repronormativity aims at regulating not only reproduction, but (female) sexuality and kinship, suggesting that nonnormative parenting may be the key to break these patriarchal and nationalistic frameworks. Tracing the history of reproductive mandates in the USA, Elaine May was the first to talk about reproductive misfits (1995), referring both to childless women and to women considered unfit for motherhood due to their sexual behaviour (they became pregnant during adolescence, or were considered by the male-dominated medical profession as too sexualized or frigid), or their non-conformity with gender roles (tomboys or lesbian women). Cheshire Calhoun (1997) does the same historical review talking about gay and lesbian people as family outlaws, a social construction aimed at preserving the private space of family and marriage for heterosexuality. Through the identification

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of other subjects that endanger the institution of kinship, ‘the cultural construction of the lesbian was thus, from the outset, the construction of a kind of being who was an outsider to marriage, family, and motherhood’ (Calhoun 1997, p. 186). Notwithstanding this structural ban, lesbian, bisexual and single women have built families and have gone through motherhood, moments in which ‘you become divested from your life and you become a piece to a procedure in which we become an accident’ (De Cordova 2014, p. 10). Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to show how the daily life of lesbian and bisexual women (either single or coupled) questions the heteronormativity of social and legal institutions through their unexpected motherhood. Considering the Italian context, heteronormativity and monomaternalism are granted by Law 40/2004 on medically assisted reproduction and by Law 76/2016 on civil unions for homosexual couples. According to law 40/2004, only married or cohabiting heterosexual couples with certified sterility or infertility can access ARTs in Italy. Regarding Law 76/2016, after thirty years of discussion on different bills that never passed, in May 2016 Italy recognized civil unions for homosexual couples. What was left outside, though, is the recognition of same-sex parenting, since this legislative examination generated a homophobic debate (Lasio and Serri 2019) in which many right-wing Catholic politicians and essentialist feminists feared that the bill would have encouraged gay male couples to seek to have children through surrogacy abroad, an illegal practice in Italy (Guerzoni and Motterle 2018). Therefore, to ensure passage in the Senate, the original version of the law was watered down by excluding a clause that would have allowed parts of same-sex civil unions to adopt their partners’ children (Gusmano and Motterle 2019)—the so-called stepchild-adoption. Hence, the only way to coadopt a partner’s child is through a case-by-case sentence by tribunals that usually appeal to the law on special adoption, since adoption is allowed only for spouses married for at least three years or relatives up to the sixth degree. Conforming to the law on adoption in special cases, a minor can be adopted by a person that does not meet the above-mentioned requirements in the case that they already have an intimate bond that would damage the minor if it were broken. As a result of this heteronormative legal framework, non-heterosexual and single women go abroad, facing many limits on social and legal recognition once the child is born, since this lack of recognition weakens the parenting bond. Certainly, parenting is not defined only by law

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and morality, but from the concrete practices of care and negotiations of responsibility in family interactions (Neirinck et al. 2012). Therefore, the social recognition coming from the relational network becomes fundamental (Ferrari 2015). In the following sections, I will show how interviewed mothers cope with different systems of oppression, struggling for both legal and social recognition of: a. Their lesbian or bisexual identity, b. their intimate relationship or single relational status, c. the filiation bond between the social mother and the child, and d. their family as a whole. In the empirical sections below, I will highlight how these systems of oppression shape their identity as mothers and as citizens, and how their economic, cultural and social capitals help them to cope with heteronormativity, monomaternalism, institutional homophobia and class.

Research Design This article stems from the five-year research project INTIMATE – Citizenship, Care and Choice: The Micropolitics of Intimacy in Southern Europe. The comparative and qualitative study was designed to explore lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer (LGBTQ) experiences of partnering (namely lesbian coupledom and polyamory), parenting (mothers and fathers through medically assisted reproduction) and friendship (transgender networks of care and living with friends in adult life) in three Southern European countries: Italy, Portugal and Spain. In order to contextualize how intimacy was experienced in each country, we referred to secondary source data to complete countryspecific legal and social policy analysis. Overall, we gathered 90 in-depth interviews with LGBTQ participants, and 60 semi-structured interviews with experts in the fields of law, politics, activism, academia and health. For the present article, I will take into consideration the Italian sample on motherhood through ARTs, focusing on the five interviews gathered in Rome with self-defined lesbian and bisexual women.

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Method In-depth interviews were carried out using the Biographical Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) (Wengraf 2001) which encourages the interviewee to speak freely in response to a single initial open question. In contrast to a traditional semi-structured interview, this method allows for much greater space for spontaneous links and associations given by the interviewee. Concerning the study on motherhood, the question was: ‘As you know, I’m interested in the study on assisted reproduction. Can you tell me your life story, the events and experiences that are important to you? Begin wherever you like. I won’t interrupt. I’ll just take some notes and ask you more questions at the end’. After the response to the initial question (which varied in length between 24 and 102 minutes), the interviewer seeks further details about the events and experiences that have been mentioned in the first part of the interview. Interviews lasted between two and five hours, with a mean length of two hours and ten minutes. Recruitment Strategies The sample was selected using a snowball method as well as a call for interviewees on websites of LGBTQ associations, LGBTQ parents’ groups, institutions and social networks. Moreover, the Italian team (Tatiana Motterle and myself), was put in contact with the association Famiglie Arcobaleno (Rainbow Families), which was established in 2005, gathering homosexual couples or single parents who have fulfilled their parenting project, or who aspire to do so.5 The inclusion criteria for the study on LB motherhood through ARTs required participants to (1) be between the ages of 25 and 50 (this is the age group when people in Southern Europe are culturally expected to be living independently, becoming pregnant or starting a family), (2) live in the capital city, (3) self-identify as either lesbian, bisexual, queer or trans, (4) have successfully experienced ARTs. Interviewees were not required to be in a relationship but, in that case, we interviewed just one partner.

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Table 3.1 Italian sample—Lesbian and bisexual Parenting through ARTs Name

Age

Sexual orientation

Partnering status

Nº of unsuccessful tries

Children (years) and ART

Rebecca

40–44

Bisexual

Married abroad

Claudia

40–44

Lesbian

Single

Eliana

40–44

Lesbian

Chiara

45–49

Lesbian

Federica

45–49

Lesbian

Civil union register (before Law 76/2016) Divorced, 1 IVF Spain 2 IVF Spain: now coupled Carlo (7) & Tommaso (4) Single 3 IUI 1 IVF Spain: Denmark Diego (1) + 2 DIY

4 IUI Denmark

1 IVF Spain: Valentino (2) 0 1 IUI Spain: Alba & Sofia (twins, 6) 1 IUI Spain 1 ICSI + 2 ICSI Spain: Spain Martina (1)

Housing

Rented flat

House with mortgage House with mortgage

Rented flat

Own flat

Legend IUI = Intra-Uterine Insemination IVF = In Vitro Fertilisation ICSI = Intra-Cyto-Plasmatic Sperm Injection DIY = Do-It-Yourself techniques

Participants This research comprised narratives shared by five able-bodied, white Italian LG ciswomen (aged 40–49) who had undergone medically assisted reproduction (Table 3.1). Data Analysis All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim6 and, to protect participants’ privacy, anonymized. Afterwards, they were analysed with the help of NVivo software, whose nodes were organized around 20 macrothemes chosen by the research team as linked with sociological literature on intimate citizenship, care, choice, parenting, partnering and friendship. Although I acknowledge some of the privileges held by all the women I interviewed (they had a job and, when coupled, both of

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them were employed; they could count on a wide social network; they were able-bodied; they were all white and Italian), we will see in the following sections how they faced different systems of oppression, namely heteronormativity and monomaternalism, institutional homophobia and class.

‘A Lesbian Can’t Be a Mother’: Heteronormativity and Monomaternalism at Work The first common topic within interviewees’ experiences is the heteronormative assumption according to which a lesbian cannot be a mother, a stereotype that reinforces monomaternalism way before the moment in which a woman decides to become mother. In the beginning of this section, I will give some examples regarding how heteronormativity constrained lesbian and bisexual interviewees in lesbian relationships outside the realm of motherhood: I used to think that a pure lesbian couldn’t have children […]. I didn’t want to go to Rainbow Families meetings because I didn’t feel at ease: […] it was /a little bit of internalized homophobia/(laughing), you know. (Chiara)

In the quotation, Chiara talks about internalized homophobia, defined by literature as ‘the gay person’s direction of negative social attitudes toward the self, leading to a devaluation of the self and resultant internal conflicts and poor self-regard’ (Meyer and Dean 1998, p. 161). Some of the reasons for this internalized homophobia are linked with the socially widespread stereotypes concerning homosexuality, especially considering the fact of being raised within non-supportive families of origin and homophobic Catholicism, the only social alternative that was available in the small town where Claudia grew up: Catholicism takes root where there is nothing: the alternative choice is Catholicism, or boredom. […] For me, being gay and Catholic was devastating […] You didn’t even think about motherhood because… (long pause) when you’re in the throes because you do not accept yourself, because you’re afraid that the family will never look at you anymore […]:

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in the 1970s in Italy […] it was already an achievement to accept homosexuality. Accepting motherhood within homosexuality was just… /the discovery of America!/ (laughing). (Claudia)

Coming from this context, the support of dissident people working within the Christian Church proved fundamental. For Claudia, conciliating faith and sexual identity was possible thanks to her encounter with a wellknown priest who was dismissed from his clerical status due to dissent with the Catholic Church (he admitted second marriage, argued against celibacy for priests and blessed same-sex marriages): I was lucky enough to know Don Franco Barbero, who is an extraordinary person. And, I must say, meeting Franco was… ‘but you’re so beautiful! /But what’s wrong with who you are?/ (laughing)’, he told me. It was really… do you know inner freedom? (Long pause). Feeling loved for who you are, in your uniqueness. (Claudia)

The two Catholic mothers interviewed found another exit strategy thanks to the existence of LGBT groups dealing with faith in order to reconcile their faith with their sexual identity: First of all, I looked for Christian groups, of Christian homosexuals, to realize that finding alternative paths to combine faith and homosexuality was possible. […] So it was an encounter, you know, just one of those crucial days in life. (Chiara)

Notwithstanding the ban on homosexuality placed by the Catholic Church, an institution that in Italy still represents a gateway to social recognition, in these encounters Catholic lesbian mothers identify a safe harbour for their sexual identity and their desire for motherhood. Other women mention that they had a long process of reflection concerning the fact of being a mother in a lesbian relationship due to the fear of raising a child in a homophobic world that does not give any recognition to same-sex parenting: I was really worried about giving birth to a child who would be living in this society, in a country that had no /recognition/ (emphatically) either for their family or for them. As a matter of fact, not having legal protection… frightened me so much: for me it was like a /deadlock/ (emphatically) for years. (Rebecca)

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The quotations illustrate how the lack of social and legal recognition reinforces internalized homophobia and, consequently, heteronormativity and monomaternalism: many women think it is impossible to be a lesbian woman/in a lesbian relationship and a mother at the same time, since there is ‘a sense of precarity, the very precarity that comes from the fact of not being recognized’ (Rebecca). In order to overcome heteronormativity and monomaternalism, some interviewees were empowered by Rainbow Families’ meetings: To see these couples, these women… some [people] of the Rainbow Families are the first, first, first in Italy doing artificial insemination, and now their children are teenagers, and some are almost eighteen. (Chiara)

This collective experience provides ‘community knowledges that can supply both an alternative (more positive) construction of nonheterosexuality and the resources to support non-heterosexual parenting’ (Weeks et al. 2001, p. 161). The same applies to the experience of seeing other homosexual couples parenting, as it happened to Federica who said: ‘Knowing other women who had done it helped me a lot to say, “/you can do it!/” (Emphatically)’, or to Claudia: I approached homosexual parenting at a time when I was in Spain, where I lived in a homosexual commune, and there I met two women, Laia and Paula, [with] Lucio [their son], and I remember the first time I saw the three of them […]. That opened me a world that was clearly also made of fear […] In Italy, this type of reality was little-known, so I must say that they were two people who aroused this sort of… of curiosity. (Claudia)

Eventually, when the couple or the single woman decides to face all the consequences of heteronormativity, and opt for accessing the long path of medically assisted reproduction, they face other kinds of legal and social delegitimation linked more with monomaternalism; namely, the failure of recognition of: the social mother as such; the lesbian or bisexual identity for the biological mother; having two mothers for the child; and the family as a whole. Different stereotypes apply to the concept of monomaternalism, a delegitimation that affects the women’s identity. On the one hand, motherhood is still framed as a biological destiny for a woman whose identity seems to be defined only by parenting. On the other, lesbian mothers,

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and bisexual women in a lesbian relationship, are confronted with the resilience of heteronormativity that resides in the importance of blood ties, meaning that only the biological mother is seen as the real mother, downsizing all other possible kinship from the partner’s side: ‘I remember a sad thing: [my partner’s] sister called me and told me… […] that this child was not her sister’s child, but it was just my child, because they had nothing of their blood’ (Eliana). As recalled by Rebecca talking about her partner, the social context returns a clear feedback regarding the fact that there can be just one mother, and an older woman is not recognized as the mother: Debora experiences yet another problem related to her being a woman, not only in terms of being the second parent – that is usually a man’s role – but also because she can hardly be seen as the biological mother, given that visually, clearly […] when Valentino was born, Deb was 48 years old […]. So, in severe cases, she became the grandmother, in less serious cases, the aunt. (Rebecca)

The monomaternalism regime entails a long list of delegitimations (based on heteronormativity, the supposed biological clock and blood imperatives) towards the social mother that compromises her identity as a parent: ‘this lack [of recognition] radicalizes the asymmetry based on the biological bond, translating it in the complete unrecognition of the parenting relationship on the legal level’ (Ferrari 2015, p. 68). Moreover, a defensive strategy linked with the fear of being discriminated against involves invisibility practices that could lead to a conflict within the couple (Taylor 2009; Ferrari 2015), as happened to Rebecca when Debora found herself not able to say to a woman she met in the park that she was Valentino’s mother: [Deb] told me: ‘for the first time, I felt that I could not say that I was his mother, because I thought they would have not believed me […], and because I felt I was judged, I felt… unrecognised, I felt that […] since I am nothing to the State, then also [I am nothing] to the people on the street.’ […] Deb went into crisis [:] I am sure that, if there had been a recognition from the State, this thing would never have happened. (Rebecca)

As shown by the quote, Debora found herself so delegitimized by the social and legal environment that she preferred to deny her identity as an old and lesbian woman who did not biologically give birth to her child.

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Therefore, she performed a defensive strategy that pushed her back into monomaternalism in order not to be discriminated against. This invisibilization caused a conflict within the couple, since Rebecca clearly stated how this silencing would have brought to a denial of their family, of their love relationship, and of Debora’s bond with Valentino as his social mother. As suggested by LGBTQ family associations, parents should be out with everyone in any aspect of their life (at work, with their children’s teachers and educators, within the family, with friends and health professionals) in order to be able to cope with possible discriminations, showing proudly how families can fall outside the normative constellation of mother, father and child. Through long discussions, they were able to bring negotiation regarding visibility back to a shared level, but it is undeniable that ‘[t]he institutional and political recognition of samesex families can alleviate the personal plan of individual households from the burden of being guarantors of themselves and their (good) functioning’ (De Cordova 2014, p. 11). Since this recognition does not exist in Italy, in the following section, interviewees will speak about what it means to cope daily with institutional homophobia after the decision to get pregnant through ARTs.

Creative Strategies to Get Around Institutional Homophobia Given the fact that lesbian and bisexual identity are still invisibilized and delegitimized, ‘institutional homophobia refers to the many ways in which government, businesses, churches, and other institutions and organizations discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation’ (Thompson and Zoloth 1996). This reality is aggravated by monomaternalism promoted by ‘institutions [that] continue to shape and regulate choice about routes to parenting’ (Taylor 2009, p. 22). As a consequence, non-heterosexual people face ‘compulsory invisibility’,7 meaning that they are pushed back into heterosexuality notwithstanding their coming out (Gusmano 2008, 2018): [Deb] said: ‘Mom, Rebecca and I are together.’ I’ve spent eight summers at Debora’s mother’s: ‘Ah, but aren’t you friends?’, ‘Mom, but I am a homosexual’, ‘Since when?’, ‘Since I was 16 years old.’ She’s 50 now! (Rebecca)

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Notwithstanding cohabitation and vacations spent at Debora’s mother’s house, Rebecca struggled to be recognized as Debora’s partner, a clear example of compulsory invisibility despite coming out. This same invisibilization of lesbian identity is exacerbated for lesbian single mothers who experience compulsory invisibility for two reasons: being lesbian and being single. Claudia, a single lesbian mother, broke that invisibility with the support of her mother. She recalls in great detail, showing the importance of that moment, when she was pregnant and attended the patron saint’s procession next to her mother in the town where she grew up: I put my arm on the shoulder of my mother, and then all those two thousand inhabitants passed alongside, seeing us, and I […] / I felt / (emphatically) the strength of my mother in saying: ‘my daughter is like that and I am proud’. […] It wasn’t that thing of shame that happens in small towns, when people pass and you withdraw inside the house: no, no. Looking at all the people who pass by with the pride and joy of having a pregnant daughter next to her with two little twins inside. And, I have to say, that was just… an image… a very strong moment, very emotional, linked to my pregnancy, together with my mother. (Claudia)

In the Italian Catholic context of Southern Europe, single motherhood is not recognized as a legitimate path. Moreover, Claudia’s case is exacerbated by the rumours concerning her lesbian identity, a choice that falls outside monomaternalism and heteronormativity. On a public occasion such as a pious procession in a small town, the support enacted by Claudia’s mother shows how coming out with the family of origin could be a source of both empowerment and self-esteem. Going back to women who decided to become parents within a lesbian relationship, interviewees read that choice as a shared project made possible just because of the existence of a couple relationship: ‘I really think of her [my ex wife] as the person with whom I built this project. The two of us wanted them [our children]: we wanted them as a couple’ (Chiara). Desiring to become mothers as a lesbian couple in a heteronormative country means confronting monomaternalism without any legal legitimation, a choice that makes possible something that would have been unimaginable if interviewees had stuck to laws and cultural constraints:

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He was expected in that picture there, see that picture? It’s me and Debora in 2006: it was the day when we talked about him for the first time. […] This child exists because it was me and Debora […]. Not only was he present: Valentino would have not been born without her, because I would probably not have had a child by myself. (Rebecca)

The desire of lesbian couples to parent is described as something so deep that interviewees were able to challenge the heteronormativity of the law through creative solutions that will be described below. Hoping for a change that did not happen, Rebecca recalls the day on which same-sex civil unions were approved without the recognition of stepchild adoption: They came together: the sweetness of Valentino and the harshness of the law […]. The fact that civil unions were approved without stepchild [adoption] was a drama at home […]. Valentino would have been born anyhow. It is not that if you recognize it [i.e. stepchild adoption] or not, it changes nothing for you, the State. To us, /it changes the world/ (emphatically). (Rebecca)

That day, institutional homophobia was violently reaffirmed: homosexual parents faced the total absence of recognition concerning their relational rights, those on which they base their daily choice. Therefore, even if they were able to go to other countries in order to get married or to have children, that day they were pushed back into invisibility and the fear of never being recognized as legitimate parents. In fact, one of the major worries after the child’s birth is the relation with public institutions, where this lack of recognition for the family is evident: visibility becomes the creative instrument through which homosexual families create a welcoming environment for children, and for themselves as lesbian and bisexual mothers. Actually, it is not just visibility: it is a struggle that these women face daily in order to change the level of inclusivity of institutions, policies and habits little by little. Rebecca narrates the day at the hospital, right after Valentino’s birth: At one point [the nurse] said: ‘We have to close’, Deborah told her: ‘Yes, but here I see that fathers stay’, and she said, ‘fathers only’, and Deborah replied: ‘Consider me as a father.’ (Rebecca)

Instead of being pushed back again into compulsory invisibility, Debora inscribes herself into the only structure that the nurse was able to accept:

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the position of a father. This is only one of the creative examples that interviewees employed in order to reaffirm their parental and partnering projects, coming to terms with heteronormativity and monomaternalism, resignifying a language that dictates the existence of a father. In other situations, interviewees refused to accept that heteronormative language. A very practical example presents a clash with the Italian Social Security Service (INPS) that usually grants child benefit to families and single mothers. Given the patriarchal Italian legal framework, women have to declare that they are either married, widowed, divorced or abandoned by the husband: choosing to be a single or lesbian mother is not considered as a possible option. For many interviewees this is a sad moment, as Rebecca defines it since, in order to be granted child benefit, women need to invisibilize their lesbian identity. Accordingly, Eliana refused to check the boxes of ‘abandoned child’ and ‘dead father’, and tried successfully to put down in black and white that her child had only one parent, a compromise that would at least acknowledge that the child was not abandoned: I also argued with the INPS employer because it was written that I had to put “abandoned son” for family allowances […]. So I called, and in the end I practically do not check that box: I make a self-declaration saying that this child has not been abandoned, that is, she does not have a father: she has only one parent. Just because I dug my heels in. (Eliana)

It could appear as a tiny success, but the choice of denying the existence of a father to get access to benefits is a way to stretch the heteronormative boundaries of the welfare a bit further, in order to force it to recognize children born outside heterosexual reproduction: ‘the emergence of such family configurations is based on a self-definition, on the subjective decision to make themselves visible to the world by challenging the spaces made available by norm and culture’ (De Cordova and Sità 2014, p. 397). In the absence of this space of recognition for the social mother, interviewees need to collect evidence of the existence of a family, because as Avvocatura per i diritti LGBTI 8 declares, ‘the life of homosexual parents is scattered with legal preventive measures’ (Cafasso 2014, p. 53). One creative strategy necessitated by these legal preventive measures includes keeping evidence of the parental project, such as flight tickets and hotel reservations bought during the travels to countries where ARTs are also allowed for lesbian and single women. After the child is born, parents

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stipulate private contracts with a notary in order to keep record of the existence of a shared parental project, paying for something that is granted to heterosexual parents: Basically it is [a summary] of the story of Sandra and me, we have been living together for 12 years […]. We brought our contracts […], the rental payment receipts, everything [:] we have everything recorded. Then we have an account with the mortgage, [and] we pay the day care expenses from our joint account so they see that Sandra participates in Martina’s life. And we do so every time: we pay online, so we keep track of all the shared expenses, including medical ones. (Eliana)

Keeping a record of a shared life project is one of the creative ways to protect the bond between the social mother and the child, in case something happened to the biological mother, thus safeguarding the family as a whole. But not all couples can afford the material costs of stipulating private contracts, and not all couples are aware of this possibility. Hence, the lack of legal recognition affects and depends on the economic and social capital of lesbian and bisexual mothers who are not granted any parental rights. Therefore, ‘family practices, choices and institutional (dis)engagements are mediated and shaped by classed dimensions’ (Taylor 2009, pp. vii–viii). In the next section, I will show how mothers came to terms with the expensive path of medically assisted reproduction, showing different intersections with the class dimension.

Lesbian and Bisexual Women Dealing with Class The fact of not being legally recognized entails an exacerbation of class material conditions: far from wanting to define class, I will refer to the deployment of various capitals that produces classed practices (Bourdieu 1984). Economic capital was one of the first topics taken into consideration by interviewees before accomplishing the desire of becoming parents, followed by social capital (which is the help received by networks) and cultural capital (in the sense of the expertise to find and enact ways to do things differently). Concerning lesbian and gay parenting, the dominant narrative has been the one of choice, sometimes hiding the class conditions that allow for the mobilizations of resources to access ARTs (Taylor 2009). Here, I will focus precisely on how interviewees creatively cope with those conditions that organize their classed practices: employment;

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access to the internet and to reproductive techniques; travelling costs, check-ups and medicines; and networks activated by social and cultural capitals. Given the heteronormative framework of Law 40/2004, all interviewees admit that their work conditions allowed them to access ARTs abroad, thanks to different reasons: Eliana and Rebecca could count on their flexible working hours to manage their fixed-term contracts that were based on their work on specific projects, allowing them to go back and forth to clinics; Chiara and Federica were self-employed, owning their workplace that had already reached a stable economic condition; Claudia could rely on her full-time job in the public sector, an employment condition that allowed for benefits regarding her timetable. Moreover, access to information on ARTs is sometimes difficult in Italy. All the women interviewed admit that access to the internet was key in obtaining sources of information. They use it to find reviews of the chosen clinic abroad, to consult with other mothers, to keep in contact with Italy while abroad, to exchange medical results between Italy and the chosen country of insemination. Even though it might seem anachronistic, access to the internet is not uniform across Italy,9 especially in small towns that already lack LGBTQ associations, which contributes even more to isolating people who decide to travel the road of ARTs. Moreover, as referred to by the interviewees, the internet is fundamental after childbirth: to keep in contact with people who were supportive during pregnancy abroad, to create a relationship with the family of origin living far away, to track common costs borne for children or to exchange experiences with other parents attending Rainbow Families. In addition to access to information, economic and emotional factors have to be pondered concerning the maximum number of tries with ARTs, a topic that covers desire, sacrifice, and the emotional costs of failure for lesbian, bisexual and single women: ‘the decision to parent is by necessity a more deliberative and less socially prescripted process’ (Dalton and Bielby 2000, p. 59). Every woman interviewed decided beforehand how many tries she would have gone through, given both the high degree of reflexivity and intentionality due to biological constraints (Taylor 2009) and the material costs of ARTs for single, lesbian or bisexual women: It was not an impulsive decision: to have a child through ARTs, it is clear that you need to plan everything [:] ‘Ok, it’s my desire. How can I

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achieve my desire? Do I have the money to achieve it?’ […]. What makes it manageable is the desire. (Claudia)

Moreover, interviewees refer to other material costs associated with ARTs: flights, hotel reservations, check-ups, monitoring, unexpected journeys depending on the development of eggs and ovulation. Finally, given the heteronormative bias of law 40/2004 that denies access to ARTs to single or lesbian mothers, the women interviewed took into consideration the cost of visits and medicines that are granted only to heterosexual couples certified with sterility and fertility. Chiara solved the issue drawing on wholesalers’ prices thanks to her work in the health sector, while Federica could count on her social capital to buy medicines in Spain where they were cheaper. Both highlight the discrimination inherent in the access to medicines: In Italy they can be prescribed by the National Health System for [heterosexual married] couples, but not for single women, you understand? So, four-five hundred euros per syringe is not cheap, eh! You spend at least five-six thousand euros on medicines, in short, to do IVF. (Chiara) So even from an economic point of view, here I say: /this is a thing for rich people/ (with emphasis) [:] someone who earns one thousand euros a month and has a mortgage to pay, I assure you that they don’t do it. Thus, I find this an absurd discrimination. (Federica)

In creative ways, interviewees could count on their social capital, with a wide network of friends and work colleagues who helped them, hosting them while abroad, supporting their desire to parent and babysitting in tough moments. Moreover, they sought enlightened health professionals who were willing to mediate with the health system’s discriminations, giving a ‘parainstitutional recognition’ (Ferrari 2015, p. 56) to the family project for lesbian couples or single women, for example giving them medicine for free or at a lower cost, or offering discounts on check-ups. Rebecca recalls how her gynaecologist suggested many times that she got pregnant, and wrote her an infertility therapeutic plan in order to access health benefits given by the welfare state to heterosexual married couples: I’ll be thankful forever because it was not about money [:] it was a matter of principle […]. I was there, and she was there […]. At that point, I said:

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‘I’m tired of being a second-class citizen. I want a fertility treatment, as well.’ (Rebecca)

All the aforementioned quotes emphasize the interviewees’ active approach to finding creative strategies to overcome the heteronormative framework and the classed dimension of assisted reproductive techniques in Italy. A process that is made possible through the activation of their networks and their active participation in LGBTQ family associations whose work aims precisely at spreading the creative solutions found by their members.

Concluding Thoughts In a country where heteronormativity still defines the legitimate relational and parental bonds, the mothers interviewed show how they creatively reconquer motherhood, escaping their doomed destiny as lesbian, bisexual or single women who do not fit into the framework of monomaternalism and repronormativity. What is at stake is a matter of overcoming the normative picture of only one kind of family built around the heteronormative constellation of mother, father and child in order to acknowledge different kinds of families that already exist but are not recognized by heteronormative laws. The interviewees show how they succeed in reconciling their identity as women who were supposed to be mothers with that of lesbian or bisexual women that were supposed not to parent. Despite the heteronormative legal framework, these ‘subjects embody their state of abjection and build strategies of resistance or accommodation towards it’ (Pieri 2016, p. 112). Given the lack of formal rights concerning homosexual parenting, becoming a lesbian and bisexual mother in Italy is a creative process built day by day through the active pursuit of symbolic recognition, the support of networks and professional help. Recognition happens on the basis of what is legitimized, from a social and legal point of view: instead of referring to the resilience of biology, we should talk about the resilience of heteronormativity with the bans it imposes through institutional homophobia. Due to the lack of parenting rights for single, lesbian and bisexual women, the mothers interviewed try over and over to overcome compulsory invisibility (Gusmano 2008, 2018), ‘embody[ing] a resistance to the politics of monomaternalism’ (Park 2013, p. 30). They do so by reaffirming different kinds of bonds: their intimate relationship with their partner; their lesbian or

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bisexual identity as single mothers; the filiation bond between the social mother and the child; and their family as a whole. Such resistance is made possible thanks to the support of economic, cultural and social capitals that affect how people cope with different systems of oppression, such as heteronormativity, monomaternalism, institutional homophobia and classism. Therefore, concerning class and narratives of choice, choice has been read as the output of economic capital and social networks, avoiding to reconduct interviewees’ strategies into a dichotomy between assimilation and transgression: they ‘are not choices available to individuals, easily practiced and achieved; rather they are complexly inhabited and refused, structured and reproduced’ (Taylor 2009, p. 16). The interviewed women present themselves as active agents in their search for recognition: they try to conform to norms when that is the only available option and, at the same time, they struggle together with their networks (friends, colleagues, LGBTQ associations, health and legal professionals) in order to reaffirm their identity as single, bisexual or lesbian mothers; to reaffirm their existence as a family; to grant their partners the same legitimate bond with their children. Framing their narratives within monomaternalism helps unveil the institutional and homophobic condition regarding families in Italy, showing different forms of resistance. Hence, in a context in which there is an ongoing delegitimization of non-heterosexual existence, finding creative—thus collective and political—solutions seems to be the only viable strategy to address different structures of oppression and discrimination, opening up the space for the recognition of different types of families.

Notes 1. For a confrontation of the legal constraints with gay men’s desires for fatherhood in another European country, see Sokolova in this volume. 2. The ‘Queering Parenting’ conference was the second international event to be organized in Coimbra (Portugal) within the scope of the Intimate project. It took place on March 2–3, 2017. 3. The term mononormativity was coined by Marianne Pieper and Robin Bauer (2005) to refer to normative assumptions about monogamy as the only acceptable and true form of love.

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4. Heteronormativity was first proposed by Michael Warner (1991) as the norm, sustained by institutions and social legitimation, that posits heterosexuality and the couple imperative at the centre of any positive sexual identity. 5. http://www.famigliearcobaleno.org. 6. In order to transmit ‘the word-to-word reproduction of verbal data’ (Poland 1995), verbatim transcriptions included demonstrative expressions. Therefore, sentences that were pronounced with emphasis, laughing or crying are enclosed between slashes, followed by the tone used to pronounce them. For example: /That’s enough!/(laughing). 7. With this expression, I refer to people who attempt to come out and be considered as non-heterosexual without this being acknowledged by others, who continue to consider them as heterosexual. 8. Avvocatura per i diritti LGBTI (Advocacy for LGBTI rights) is an association of lawyers, advocates and practitioners established in 2007 to develop and spread the culture and respect for the rights of LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex) people in Italy. 9. According to the Italian National Institution for Statistics (ISTAT), only 70% of people in Italy have regular access to the internet, and the digital divide depends on age, education and employment (ISTAT and Fondazione Ugo Bordoni 2018).

References Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge). Cafasso, S. (2014) Figli dell’arcobaleno: madri lesbiche, padri gay, diritti negati in Italia (Roma: Donzelli Editore). Calhoun, C. (1997) ‘Family Outlaws’, Philosophical Studies, 85 (2/3), 181–93. De Cordova, F. (2014) ‘Madri (in)concepibili? Inedite figure del materno’, in Di Bella, R. and Pistone, R. (eds.) Donne + Donne. Libertà e diritti oltre il pride (Qanat. Palermo), pp. n.a. De Cordova, F. and Sità, C. (2014) ‘In ricchezza e povertà, in salute e malattia. Famiglie omogenitoriali e diritti in Italia in una prospettiva psicosociale’, in Casonato, C. and Schuster, A. (eds.) Rights On The Move –Rainbow Families in Europe. Proceedings of the Conference (Trento: University of Trento), pp. 397–407. Dalton, S. and Bielby, D. (2000) ‘That’s Our Kind of Constellation: Lesbian Mothers Negotiate Institutionalized Understandings of Gender within the Family’, Gender and Society, 14 (1), 36–61. Ferrari, F. (2015) La famiglia inattesa: i genitori omosessuali e i loro figli (Milano: Mimesis).

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Franke, K. M. (2001) ‘Theorizing Yes: An Essay on Feminism, Law, and Desire’, Columbia Law Review, 101 (18), 181–208. Guerzoni, C. and Motterle, T. (2018) ‘Sul corpo delle surrogate. Analisi del discorso pubblico italiano sulla gestazione per altri’, gender/sexuality/italy, 5, 160–80. Gusmano, B. (2008) ‘Coming Out or Not? How Nonheterosexual People Manage their Sexual Identity at Work’, Journal of Workplace Rights, 13 (4), 473–96. Gusmano, B. (2018) ‘Coming Out through an Intersectional Perspective: Narratives of Bisexuality and Polyamory in Italy’, Journal of Bisexuality, 18 (1), 15–34. Gusmano, B. and Motterle, T. (2019) ‘The Micropolitics of Choice in Italy: How the Law Affects Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Daily Life’, in Dwyer, A. and Rundle, O. (eds), Journal of Lesbian Studies 23 (3), 336–56. ISTAT and Fondazione Ugo Bordoni (2018) Internet@Italia 2018: Domanda e offerta di servizi online e scenari di digitalizzazione (Rome: Fondazione Ugo Bordoni), https://www.istat.it/it/files//2018/06/[email protected], date accessed 29 March 2019. Klesse, C. (2007) ‘Gender, Sexuality and Race in Post/Modernisation Theories on the Intimate’, in Cervantes-Carson, A. and Rumsfeld, N. (eds) The Sexual Politics of Desire and Belonging: Interdisciplinary Readings of Sex and Sexuality (Tijnmuiden: Rodopi), pp. 59–79. Lasio, D. and Serri, F. (2019) ‘The Italian Public Debate on Same-Sex Civil Unions and Gay and Lesbian Parenting’, Sexualities, 22 (4), 691–709; first published online on December, 11 2017. May, E. T. (1995) Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness (New York: BasicBooks). Meyer, I. H. and Dean, L. (1998) ‘Internalized Homophobia, Intimacy, and Sexual Behavior among Gay and Bisexual Men’, in Herek, G. M. (ed) Stigma and Sexual Orientation: Understanding Prejudice against Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals (Thousand Oaks: Sage), pp. 160–86. Neirinck, C., Bruel, A. and Faget, J.-P. (2012) De la Parenté à la Parentalité (Toulouse: ERES). Park, S. M. (2013) Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood: Resisting Monomaternalism in Adoptive, Lesbian, Blended and Polygamous Families (New York: Suny Press). Pieper, M. and Bauer, R. (2005) ‘Polyamory und Mono-Normativität’, in Méritt, L., Bührmann, T. and N. Schefzig (eds) Mehr als eine Liebe: Polyamouröse Beziehungen (Berlin: Orlanda), pp. 59–69. Pieri, M. (2016) ‘Undoing Citizenship: Undocumented Queer Activism and Practices of Rights’, REMHU , XXIV (48), 105–20.

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Poland, B. D. (1995) ‘Transcription Quality as an Aspect of Rigor in Qualitative Research’, Qualitative Inquiry, 1 (3), 290–310. Taylor, Y. (2009) Lesbian and Gay Parenting: Securing Social and Educational Capital (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Thompson, C. and Zoloth, B. (1996) Homophobia, https://www.lesbianinfor mationservice.org/hombook.htm, date accessed 21 July 2020. Vassallo, B. (2016) ‘Abrir amores, ¿cerrar fronteras?’, PikaraMagazine, http:// www.pikaramagazine.com/2016/02/abrir-amores-cerrar-fronteras/, date accessed July 21, 2020. Warner, M. (1991) ‘Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet’, Social Text, 29, 3–17. Weeks, J., Heaphy, B. and Donovan, C. (2001) Same Sex Intimacies: Families of Choice and Other Life Experiments (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis). Weissman, A. L. (2016) ‘Repronormativity and the Reproduction of the NationState: The State and Sexuality Collide’, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 13 (3), 277–305. Wengraf, T. (2001) Qualitative Research Interviewing (Thousand Oaks: Sage).

CHAPTER 4

Images of Parenthood, Family Life and Reproductive Strategies Among Gay Men in the Czech Republic Vˇera Sokolová

Over the past several decades, legislative advances in same-sex marriage and civil union laws across the EU have reflected the successful struggle of gays and lesbians for the recognition of their civil rights. Despite these legal improvements, however, homoparentality remains a controversial topic in many EU countries, indicating a divide between policy and public opinion. Studies have shown that non-heterosexual families face a lack of respect and recognition, have unequal access to resources, from social services and health care to education, and both non-heterosexual parents and their children often experience various forms of discrimination and denial of their basic rights. In recent years, international scholarship on non-heterosexual parenthood, especially in the United States and Western

V. Sokolová (B) Department of Gender Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague, Pátkova 2137/5, 182 00 Praha 8, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Mikats et al. (eds.), Creative Families, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0_4

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Europe, has significantly broadened its scope to include the experiences of gay men (Ziv and Freund-Eschar 2015; Tornello and Patterson 2015; Erez and Shenkman 2016; Carneiro et al. 2017; Carroll 2018; Tsfati and Ben-Ari 2019). In contrast, social science research in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe has primarily focused on the situation of lesbian families, documenting life stories and struggles of lesbian women and the hurdles they face to become mothers (Kutálková 2015, 2018; Zhabenko 2019). While these studies offer a sharp critique of neoliberalism, transnational parenthood and reproductive tourism (Speier 2016), gay men and gay fathers have remained on the margins of scholarly attention to homoparentality in East Central Europe. And yet, as Smietana (2018) argued in the American context, the procreative consciousness of gay men and their understandings of their own reproductive aspirations and opportunities have changed profoundly over time. This is undoubtedly true about Czech gay men as well. Their parental desires and reproductive strategies provide us with insight and opportunity to (re)examine and reframe the concept of becoming or ‘creating’ a family. Gay men’s stories also provide a sobering counterpart to the technological optimism of lesbian reproductive narratives. This chapter contributes to the discussion on ‘creative families’ by analysing the attitudes and preferences of Czech men who identify as gay, towards (gay) fatherhood, family and parenthood. To begin with, the chapter maps out the current state of research on gay fatherhood and locates gay parental desires and reproductive strategies in the prevailing discourse on homoparentality. The analytical part of the chapter examines the findings of first-of-its-kind research, based on in-depth semistructured interviews with thirty men identifying as gay from across the Czech Republic. The main arguments of the study evolve around the themes of parental desires and family fantasies of the participating gay men; their moral dilemmas connected to gay fatherhood; their reproductive strategies and frustrations with their perceived lack of reproductive choices; and gender stereotypes about family/parenting models and roles these men hold. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the creative ways gay men imagine overcoming obstacles and fulfilling their dreams of becoming fathers and creating their own families.

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Gay Fatherhood in International Scholarship Sociological research examining gay parenthood emerged already in the late 1970s. This literature, however, referred primarily to gay men who had become fathers in previous heterosexual relationships; research questions typically focused on how they communicated their ‘homosexual orientation’ to their children. This budding scholarship did not conceptualize gay fatherhood as a deliberate choice or as part of an open gay identity, but rather as a (planned or unplanned) consequence of heterosexual relationships (Voeller and Walters 1978; Miller 1979; and namely Bozett 1993). The 1990s saw the first great boom of academic literature on gay fatherhood. This reflected the fact that gay parenthood was becoming an increasingly visible part of Western European and American society. According to Terry Boggis, the director of the New York Center for Abandoned Children, the US gay fatherhood boom at the end of the 1980s related to the coming of age of a new generation of gay men who wanted to form families and become openly gay fathers, and the crisis in custody care in which the number of unwanted children in children’s homes and institutions grew, due to the presence of alcohol or drug addictions, HIV status or other medical conditions. Boggis argued that, initially, gay men in the United States believed that the path to fatherhood leads through adopting the ‘unwanted’ children with fundamental health problems. Only gradually did they start to assert their rights to adopt healthy children as well. According to Boggis, societal change in beliefs about the nature and definition of a family played an important role in this transformation of gay fathers’ consciousness (Boggis, quoted in Mallon 2003, p. 27). The scholarship on homoparentality that emerged in the 1990s was characterized by a dual approach to the topic. One stream, uniting primarily the opponents of gay and lesbian parental rights, argued that the children of homosexual parents are exposed to higher risks of various negative consequences (Popenoe 1993; Blankenhorn 1995; Whitehead 1993; Cameron and Cameron 1996; Wardle 1997). The second stream of mainly psychological studies argued that there are essentially no differences in developmental consequences between children from the families of heterosexual and homosexual parents (Patterson 1992; Golombok and Tasker 1994; Allen and Demo 1995). Both approaches saw gay and

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lesbian parenthood exclusively through the lens of the family environment’s impact on children, not through the viewpoints of gay or lesbian parents themselves. This research duality produced a defensive conceptual framework in both streams, which hindered research on gay and lesbian parenthood for many years to come (Stacey and Biblarz 2001; Farr 2017). This research in the 1990s also found support in autobiographical stories of men who became fathers as openly gay (Sbordone 1993; Morgen 1995; Shernoff 1996). The 2000s witnessed a continued increase in scholarly attention to gay parenthood (Barret and Robinson 2000; Johnson and O’Connor 2002; Mallon 2003; McGarry 2003; Strah and Margolis 2003; Ziegler 2004; Schacher et al. 2005; Menichiello 2006; Sember 2006; Stacey 2006). Counselling publications dominated popular literature, providing emotional, legal and psychological advice to gay men and couples striving to adopt a child (Lewin 2009). This trend was accompanied by the remarkable visibility of gay fathers in children’s literature as well (Valentine 2004; de Haan and Nijland 2003). Scholarship also started to pay greater attention to surrogacy or alternative approaches to becoming fathers. Dorothy Greenfeld notably argued that ‘gay male couples seeking fatherhood through assisted reproduction deserve the same attention to care that other couples, lesbian and heterosexual, receive at fertility centers throughout the country’ (Greenfeld 2007, p. 19). In the past decade, the production of scholarship on gay fatherhood has increased enormously in both thematically focused journals (for example Journal of Homosexuality) to general interest journals (American Sociological Review). Several new academic journals focusing on LGBTQ+ parenthood have been established, such as the Journal of GLBT Family Studies. Many recent international studies on gay fatherhood provide ethnographic accounts of gay men’s parental desires and reproductive strategies in the context of general transformation of intimacy, global citizenship, transnational surrogacy and intersectionality (Tornello and Patterson 2015; Ziv and Freund-Eschar 2015; Erez and Shenkman 2016; Eydal and Rostgaard 2016; Carneiro et al. 2017; Carroll 2018; Smietana 2018; Stacey 2018; Tsfati and Ben-Ari 2019; Shenkman et al. 2020). In the Central European political context, the possibilities and limitations of gay and lesbian parenthood are constrained by popular discourses on the so-called ‘traditional family’ and fears of destroying Western civilization’s ‘fundamental values’. Many studies on homoparentality and reproductive rights of non-heterosexuals in post-Communist countries

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still form parts of larger and more general studies, primarily analysing the legal frameworks of same-sex partnerships, value orientations of and social attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people (Kuhar 2003; Švab and Kuhar 2005; Fábry 2007; Kuhar and Takács 2007; Takács et al. 2016; Zhabenko 2019; Aavik 2020). There are two noteworthy surveys carried out in Hungary and Slovenia that analysed gay fatherhood in post-Communist context and provided a basic starting point for my own original research of gay fatherhood in the Czech Republic. Judit Takács’ (2007) quantitative survey on the value preferences of Hungarian gays indicated that there is no difference between men identified or not identified as gay, in self-respect, responsibility and many other attitudes and orientations. These results, Takács argued, showed that societal norms are shared independently of sexual orientation or gay self-identification. On the other hand, Takács found significant differences in value preferences relating to family and family security, with Hungarian self-identified gay men placing less importance on family issues compared to men who did not identify as gay. Takács argued that these significantly lower preferences could be interpreted in two ways. First, gay men’s family environment reflected the Hungarian society’s negative perception of homosexuality, which led gay men to giving less importance to family life. Second, the narrow definition of ‘family’ as a traditionally heterosexual nuclear unit prevented gay men from perceiving ‘family security’ or family happiness as values that were possible and desirable to achieve. On the other hand, gay men held ‘true love’ and ‘true friendship’ as much more important than men who did not identify as gay. Takács interpreted this difference as a logical consequence and substitute for ‘family security’, which was institutionally denied to gays (Takács 2007, p. 188). Alenka Švab (2007), in the context of Slovenia, also analysed the reproductive preferences of lesbian women and gay men on the basis of a large-scale sociological survey of Slovene gays and lesbians. Whereas Takács compared the attitudes and preferences of gay and heterosexual men, Švab focused on comparing the opinions and attitudes of gay men and lesbian women. Her study showed that there was no substantial difference in parental desires of lesbian women and gay men (in both groups, about 40% respondents wanted to have children, approximately the same proportion did not want to have them, the rest was undecided), the desire for a child only differed based on respondents’

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age. Švab concluded that the absence of socially recognized reproductive models for same-sex couples would paradoxically enable gay men and lesbian women to be much more creative in reproductive choices than their heterosexual counterparts (Švab 2007, p. 219). Her research also suggested that despite these possibilities and the growing number of gays and lesbians living in alternative family models, traditional biological parenthood models still prevailed and social parenthood and adoption were perceived more as a last resort in the preferences of most gays and lesbians in Slovenia (Švab 2007, pp. 222–3).

Gay Fatherhood in the Czech Republic Recent academic work in the Czech Republic on ‘new manhood’ and ‘new fatherhood’ has focused almost exclusively on heterosexual men (Dudová and Hastrmanová 2007; Maˇríková and Vohlídalová 2007; Šmídová 2007). Even though the titles of the most recent works on non-heterosexual parenthood in the Czech Republic suggest an inclusive approach covering gay fathers as well, this is not the case. While both Duhové rodiny ve stínu státu: situace homoparentálních rodin s malými dˇetmi (Rainbow Families in the Shadow of the State: Situation of Homoparental Families with Small Children, Kutálková 2015) and Sešívané rodiny: nový život zevnitˇr i zvenku (Patchwork Families: New Life from the Inside Out, Kutálková 2018) promise to focus on the life situations of ‘gay, lesbian and transgender parents’, the overwhelming scholarly focus is given to lesbian mothers. Instead of broadening the thematic scope of existing sociological research devoted to lesbian motherhood in the Czech Republic (Jójárt 2000; Polášková 2009; Nedbálková 2012), they reiterate it, leaving gay fathers once again on the margins of research. Interestingly, however, a significant number of student works devoted to the topic of gay fatherhood has been uploaded into the registry of master’s dissertations and doctoral theses in Czech universities in the last five years, indicating that the youngest generation of Czech scholars finds the issue relevant and worthy of attention. This chapter draws on the first ever study about gay fatherhood carried out in the Czech Republic. The following qualitative textual analysis is based on more than fifty recorded hours and over 400 transcribed pages of interviews with thirty gay men between 18 and 50 years of age from

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across the Czech Republic. Their responses were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Its contours are similar to grounded theory, making it an ideal instrument for qualitative text analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews because it focuses on individual respondents’ individual thinking and perceptions of certain phenomena (Smith 1995; Smith and Osborn 2008; Smith et al. 2009). IPA is also highly suitable for this specific research because it emphasizes detailed and thorough reading of motivations and manners in which individuals create meanings of the world around them, and construe their identities (Flowers and Buston 2001), and plan their decisions (Touroni and Coyle 2002; Polášková 2009). It also combines elements of discursive and narrative analysis, which simultaneously uncover important mechanisms of marginalization and power dynamics in which the respondents live (Kuhar 2003). The themes structuring the following analysis link the structure of the research questions with the categories that emerged from the respondents’ answers. The quotes appearing in the chapter have been selected from these interviews using IPA principles to cover two important dimensions: to capture respondents’ typical articulations and views on the given question, on the one hand, and to embrace the range of expressed opinions and arguments, on the other. The conceptual framework of the research, which formed the argumentative skeleton of the project’s questions, was structured around four main axes: (1) gay men’s parental desires and imaginations in the context of the Czech society’s reserved attitudes towards gay and lesbian parenthood; (2) gay men’s procreative consciousness and reproductive strategies; (3) gender stereotypes connected to reproduction; and (4) creative dimensions and innovative constructions of ‘family’ life. Responses generated in these interviews revealed additional topics not initially articulated in the research design. Prominent themes covered in this chapter included the internalized moral dilemmas of gay fatherhood, which dominated most respondents’ thinking about this topic; the role of coming out in the transformation of parental ambitions and desires; and the double stigma of gay fathers in Czech society. Although respondents were not preselected based on their fatherhood status or their desire to have children, none of the respondents participating in the research project happened to be a father in the end. Quite significantly, most of them actually joined the research project (gay men who agreed to talk about gay fatherhood and their parental desires and family strategies) in the hope of learning more about or even acquiring

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the possibility to become fathers. This unplanned element provided even greater opportunity to study the creativity, imagination and innovative thinking of the respondents. That is, respondents reflected on the theoretical possibilities and strategies, and as a result were willing to share their visions of imagined families and fantasies of ‘being a dad’.

Parental Desires and Family Trajectories of Czech Gay Men Most respondents agreed that the issue of gay parenthood is invisible in Czech society and that ‘Czech people are convinced that gay men are not interested in children and do not want to have them’ (Filip, 20).1 One of the most important findings of these interviews, however, is that a substantial majority of all respondents (26 out of 30) declared outright that they would like to have and raise a child and that becoming father is one of their life goals. There were only two respondents who explicitly rejected both the desire and the possibility of becoming fathers; one because of his age (he was fifty years old, which is quite interesting given that many heterosexual men become fathers much later in their lives) and the other because he did not want to ‘give up his career’, which he believed necessary if he were to become a father. He argued that he would have to ‘brutally limit myself, in everything, especially in career, and I just don’t want that. I also do not want to deal with the discussion of who would stay at home’. Their lives with his partner were set up so that ‘neither of us would want what women sacrifice themselves to, with great respect to them. Our own children are simply not a priority for us’ (David, 27). Respondents’ overwhelmingly shared desire to become fathers is remarkable not only because their average age was just 27.5 years, but also because these answers do not correspond to the common stereotype that ‘gays do not want to have children’ and if so, then only later in their lives, when they ‘mature’ or get tired of the bar scene and night-club life style (Doležal 2006; Junek 2006). Rachel Riskin and Charlotte Patterson argued similarly in their survey study of parenting intentions and desires among childless people in the United States. They found that gay men and lesbian women in the United States were less likely than heterosexual men and women to express a desire for parenthood. Moreover, Riskin and Patterson distinguished between desire and intention and in this regard, they found significant differences among gay men and lesbian women.

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Gay men, who expressed the desire to be parents were, according to them, much less likely to actually express the intention to become fathers compared to lesbian women for whom parenting desires and intentions matched (Riskin and Paterson 2010). Czech gay men hold quite different views: Talking to people around me, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to bring up children. From among the gays, I mean. … It’s always somehow clear from the conversation. … Some guys are too young or have too much work. But they always say: I would like to have children one day. Well, and how do you want to do that? I don’t know yet. … In my view, the idea [that gays do not want children] is completely made up, because it does not apply. (Dalimil, 25) It is a completely taboo topic [gay fatherhood]. Because nobody speaks or writes about it, gays don’t talk about it much either because they can’t easily act on it … and suddenly, what came out of it was that everyone thinks that gays do not want children. … I think that many of us want to have children, just there are obstacles that are difficult to remove but otherwise the desire to have a child is there among the guys for sure. (Vítek, 23) My personal opinion is that many gays do not think about having children because it is not in line with a certain gay mainstream. And I think than many heterosexual people have children because it just happens. But because gays do not have biological reproductive capabilities, it does not just happen and they are not expected to fulfil some social pattern through children. (Aleš, 27)

These responses, expressing the parenting desires among Czech gay men, indicate a number of anxieties with both the public discourse on gay fatherhood and the reproductive abilities of gay men and invoke Michael Menichiello’s concept of ‘intended fathers’ (Menichiello 2006) and Ramona Oswald’s ‘intentional parenthood’ (Oswald 2002). Most respondents rejected views that gay men did not want to have children and located such opinions as reflections and consequences of uninformed public discourse and heteronormative societal expectations. These normative values include not only expectations of childless gays but also internalized stereotypes and moral judgements about alleged gay promiscuity, which is not seen as compatible with the idea of parenting.

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Vítek went even further, consciously separating desire from structural and material obstacles. Aleš’s insight about the childless parameters of ‘gay mainstream’ indicates not only that gay men are aware of the social production of desire, which has a disciplinary effect and influences how gay men are able to think about their identities, but also that gay parenthood must first materialize in the realm of imagination before it can proceed further. At the same time, conceptualizing heterosexual parenthood as ‘just happening’ reveals frustration over his own reproductive limitations while ignoring the sense of social obligation accompanying parenting desires of heterosexual people. As Dalimil mentioned, it is not clear how gays can proceed practically on their way to fatherhood but it is crucial to first formulate the desire and assert the idea as legitimate. The ability and willingness of gay men to articulate their parental desires explicitly and materialize them in the discursive practice as a commonly shared and desirable vision of a legitimate gay identity forms an important moment of challenging the status quo. As Jonathan Katz and Michael Warner argued in the 1990s, to live one’s sexual autonomy to the full, the opportunity of choice and advances in legislation are not sufficient. Access to information and symbolic space, where our ideas of what is thinkable and admissible are formed, is equally important (Katz 1990; Warner 2000). Imaging gay family requires active resistance not only to the heteronormative social order but to the heteronormative imaginary as well, which respondents were aware of: No desires or ideas are a given. They emerge based on what you absorb in the course of your life. For many [gay] people the idea of having children does not exist at all, so they do not articulate it in any way. Mainstream society does not include any model for gay parenthood. It does not include it in its values, images and meanings. So if you want it, you have to invent it yourself. (Aleš, 27)

It is significant that Aleš talks about the need to actively invent a (presumably new) model for gay parenthood. Framing it this way suggests that Aleš realizes that it is not possible or enough to hang ideas of gay fatherhood and family life on the heteronormative family model but it is important or even necessary to think about gay fatherhood in innovative and creative ways. In her study of parenting desires of gay men in Los Angeles, Judith Stacey noted that as the contemporary (heterosexual) pursuit of parenthood has evinced a shift from obligation to desire and

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from economic to emotional calculus, gay men have become the pioneers in the process of transforming parental intimacy. Stacey argued that gay men’s successful pursuit of fatherhood against enormous odds ‘represents the decline of paternity as we knew it’. At the same time, she continued, far from demise of male paternity, gay fatherhood exposes the creative, if controversial, reconfiguration of male paternity (Stacey 2006, p. 27). A part of this creativity is the need to first reconfigure their internalized perceptions of ‘inevitable childlessness’. As many respondents pointed out, as children and young boys, growing up with their own fathers, they did not imagine a childless future for themselves. To the contrary, without even thinking about it directly, they expected one day to become fathers as well. According to their own testimonies, this envisioned parental trajectory changed sharply with their coming out. The disciplining effect of the society-wide perception of gay identity as childless left a negative imprint in gay men’s self-perception of their own reproductive capabilities and opportunities. Even though coming out has nothing to do with gay men’s fertility, for respondents this moment represented an important turning point in their thinking about parenthood, a moment, which transformed their biological reproductive capacity into a social reproductive incapacity: Before [coming out], I imagined I would simply find a nice girl, we would get married and have children. But after coming out it was clear that this wouldn’t work and that I would have to deal with it some other way. Looking for a surrogate mother seemed so terribly complex, terribly artificial, full of so many pitfalls, problems and questions that I simply admitted to myself that I couldn’t have kids. (Slávek, 27)

Slávek’s rhetorical choice of speaking about ‘admitting’ to himself of his ‘inability’ to have children demonstrates the mental distortion in his conceptualization of parental possibilities and also evokes the discursive practice of confessing to one’s weakness. The idea of surrogacy came to his mind as the first casual reproductive option even though the practice of paid surrogacy is illegal in the Czech Republic. Vladimír shared that he ‘reprogrammed’ himself from ‘actually wanting to have children to not wanting to’. As he explained, it was not because he ‘had never wanted children. Rather not to suffer, to spare [myself] the pain, [I] convinced myself that I don’t want them’ (Vladimír, 36). Responses of both Slávek and Vladimír reveal the emotional burden connected to their process of suppressing parental desires.

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Not all respondents were willing to give up and repress their parental desires deep in their minds. In order to think creatively about their reproductive paths to fatherhood, they first had to overcome the rationalization of gay parental desire and what Vítek termed ‘the nonsense of automatic suppression of imagining being a dad’ (Vítek, 23). After coming out, as open gays, all respondents felt actively discouraged and prohibited from continuing fantasizing about parenthood and family life, both from heteronormative social pressure and from inside of their own families. Vítek, however, refused to cave into the images of a childless future and actively challenged his family assumptions: My mom always talked about grandchildren and what she would do with them and what she wanted to show them. And now [after my coming out], when, for instance, I don’t want to throw away my favourite toy saying that once my child might have it, they just laugh at me that I won’t have any children anyway. I always answer that I am not infertile so why couldn’t I have a child, and they just laugh that I talk nonsense. (Vítek, 23)

The clear and explicit connection between the respondents’ coming out and the immediate assumption of inevitable childlessness on the part of their surroundings is remarkable. The ‘reprogramming’ to a seemingly inevitable childless future only after one’s coming out can have far reaching, but potentially also creative, consequences. As part of their coming out, gay men are often forced to fundamentally rethink their subjectivity from potential fathers into childless men, which is an emotionally difficult and painful process. When they rethink their parenting and family ambitions again, they usually do so when they feel empowered and can think about these questions in fundamentally different ways, contributing, as Stacey argued, to the creative reconfigurations of male paternity (Stacey 2006).

Moral Dilemmas of Gay Fatherhood Another striking research finding from these interviews was the degree of inner conviction, shared by most respondents, that as gay men they would not be ‘the right parents’. Their anxiety over the legitimacy of their claim to parenthood rested primarily in the respondents’ surprising

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arguments about the ‘moral questionability of potential parents’ homosexuality’ (Martin, 39), supported by gender stereotypes about ‘women’s [heterosexual or lesbian] greater natural disposition to be a parent’ (František, 28). Most often, the respondents recalled as the main mental barrier to gay fatherhood their concern for the undisturbed childhood of their potential children, sharing a belief that ‘children of gay [and lesbian] parents would be harassed and ostracized because of their parents’ homosexuality’ (Petr, 24). At the same time, most respondents were aware and convinced that the main obstacle for their potential fatherhood lies on the part of society, both in legal barriers and public opinion. Nevertheless, two-thirds of respondents internalized the social rejection of gay fathers so deeply as their own moral inadequacy that it negatively shaped their own thinking about the legitimacy and acceptability of their own parental desires: It occurs to me sometimes that I am selfish. By satisfying my need, my desire for a child, I might actually harm the child given how negatively the society views homosexual parents. (Martin, 39) If two men were raising a child, that would be the worst. Society can take two women, but not men. Children of gay parents would be really miserable in school if it got revealed. And that usually surfaces immediately, of course. I would think a lot whether to have a child in such an environment. Whether I would adopt or bring [the child] to the world, I would burden it with my own life and I would not want anyone innocent to suffer because of me. To take care of a child is a great responsibility. You need courage for that. (Toník, 50)

In Toník’s testimony, ‘taking care of a child’ was described as something exceptional, very demanding and not self-evident, moreover requiring great courage. This construction shows a significantly different way of thinking about parenthood from the ideas of younger respondents, especially when referring to heterosexual parenting as ‘just happening’. Respondents’ concerns about society’s reactions to their fatherhood revealed that parental desires of Czech gay men are intertwined with the moral ‘soundness’ of those wishes. The degree of internalized homophobia and feelings of guilt occasionally went beyond the framework of the interview’s focus on gay parenthood. On the condition of anonymity, one respondent mentioned that his friend, who also participated in this research project and expressed a desire to become a father, voluntarily

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quit his highly regarded position of a Scout unit leader because ‘he was convinced that [his homosexual orientation] was something harmful to the children. … But he missed the interaction with kids a lot and really regretted this decision and reproached himself for it’. However, moral dilemmas connected to fatherhood and contact with children are not specific to the Czech context. For instance, A Gay Couple’s Journey Through Surrogacy: Intended Fathers, which maps a gay couple’s process of becoming fathers in the form of diary entries, begins in a similar way: We kept asking ourselves if it was fair to the child to have two gay dads. Could he or she have a normal life? Would his or her life be a living hell filled with endless taunting and teasing? Would the child resent us somewhere down the line and wish we hadn’t been so selfish as to bring him or her into such a mess? Was I cut out to be a parent? Would I ever stop asking myself questions? (Menichiello 2006, pp. 1–2)

Such moral questioning should not stop gay men from desiring and having children and indeed, a great majority of counselling publications on this topic encourage gay men and advise them on how to cope with and overcome such anxieties. Despite the moral self-doubts connected to their potential fatherhood, all respondents in the Czech research study also reflected a conscious perception of the need to have a positive gay self-identity as a necessary precondition for a healthy parenthood. At the same time, they often assumed a personal responsibility for a societal lack of acceptance of gays as fathers: Of course, if I keep my orientation secret, hide out and live a double life, this would influence how my surroundings perceive me, too. Because if they don’t see that I am ok with it, then, I think, it’s understandable that it’s difficult for them to accept the idea that I should have children as well. (Marosh, 30)

Czech respondents’ self-perception as politically aware and engaged citizens was fairly indicative of their attitudes towards rationalizing and coping with the societal rejection of gay parenthood. Respondents who were active in or aware of queer organizations and networks also considered themselves fully equal to heterosexual men and women (lesbian or heterosexual) in parental competences and moral acceptability. These respondents refused to accept social stigma, feel guilty or apologetic or to question the legitimacy of their parental desires. On the other hand, men

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who said they were ‘not engaged’ in queer politics displayed a tendency to share the negative perception of gay fatherhood. These differences in attitudes did not reflect their level of achieved education or age but were tied to their civic engagement with a variety of gay and queer initiatives. This clear division can be interpreted as an evidence of the importance of an organized gay/queer community as a supporting social structure for thinking about gay parenthood. At the same time, the connection may also be much more pragmatic: people who are politically and socially engaged in gay politics may also have much better access to information and current trends in thinking about gay parenthood (Goffman 1963; Warner 2000; Sokolová 2004; Takács 2007). Respondents’ approach to dealing with harassment of their potential child was also tied to their attitudes to political activism. While all respondents (except for one) were very concerned about bullying and homophobic attacks their potential offspring would face, they differed in their strategies how to address it. Civically engaged respondents proposed fighting homophobia through a loving family environment, which strengthens character, and proudly faces the adversity outside of their home: I absorbed from my parents that they loved each other. I was very touched by this and they gave me the faith for the rest of my life that a long partnership lasting for decades is possible, that it’s not a utopia. … I understand [homophobic societal pressures] as a challenge for myself and my partner, that we should be able to explain it to our child appropriately for his or her age. This would definitely not be a reason not to have a child. As a child, I also often felt not accepted by my surroundings for various reasons and I always somehow coped with it and I would say that it strengthened me rather than weakened. (Vladimír, 36)

Most respondents who did not care much for gay politics, either because they were busy in their careers or wanted to remain apolitical, suggested (to my surprise) emigration as their primary strategy for escaping homophobic attacks on their potential children in the Czech Republic. Importantly, tied to this strategy was a plan to gain easier access to reproductive services abroad. These two concerns and solutions went hand in hand. When elaborating their options, the respondents always suggested staying in Europe. None proposed any other non-European destination:

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Definitely. [Bullying and rejection by society] is an argument for not adopting a child. This is not the only argument for having or not having it but it is fairly strong at a point when you know that the child would suffer from the terrible bullying. … I think that it would have a great support at home from us and would be brought up to be strong, at ease, able to cope with it but the child would suffer outside. I think it would be much better, if we have a child, to leave the Czech Republic, and move for example to Germany, England, Sweden, Spain… where it’s also much easier to become a father. (Dalimil, 25)

Dalimil connected countries with equal gay and lesbian partnership legislation, including adoption opportunities, with a more tolerant public attitude to homosexual parenthood, even though no such direct correlation exists. Several other respondents explicitly mentioned moving abroad as one of their potential reproductive strategies, noting destinations with not only legal adoptions but also legal surrogacy and more favourable legal framework of assisted reproduction: I plan to move to Norway probably, which institutionalized registered partnership as early as 1993, so the conditions [for parenthood] there are much better than here. (Filip, 20) [With my partner] we were thinking about moving to countries where it is possible to adopt or find a surrogate mother, maybe Belgium or Netherlands. (Martin, 39)

The moral anxieties of gay fatherhood reveal many contradictions of thinking about paternity among Czech gay men. While all respondents considered the topic of gay fatherhood to be perceived by Czech society as taboo or unacceptable, almost none of them felt discriminated against in the Czech Republic on the basis of sexual orientation. To the contrary, many actively denied that they would have ever encountered any discriminatory practices: ‘I don’t think gays are discriminated against here, definitely not. I have never encountered such a problem in my life’ (David, 29). At the same time, they expressed a desire to move away from the Czech Republic because of homophobic harassment of their potential children. Puzzlingly, most of them also approved of the prohibition of adoption and assisted reproduction for gay men and lesbian women incorporated into the 2006 Registered Partnership Act as a ‘necessity’ and

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‘effective political strategy’, not viewing it as an expression of discrimination or denial of reproductive and parental rights based on sexual orientation: ‘Maybe the right time has not come yet to put this discussion [about children] on the table, the Act would [otherwise] never have passed’ (Ivo, 26). These contradictions uncover a disquieting degree to which Czech gay men themselves perceive the explicit and legally sanctioned discrimination of gay and lesbian parents as understandable, acceptable and not contradicting the societal self-assurances of ‘Czech tolerance to homosexuality’ (Fojtová and Sokolová 2013).

Reproductive Strategies and Family Constellations If there is one common trend in respondents’ attitudes to reproduction and parenthood, it would be their conviction that ‘women and motherhood is somehow closer to one another than men and fatherhood’ (Marosh, 30). Respondents collectively held the opinion that women are biologically better built for parenthood than men and their maternal role is ‘natural’: ‘Woman is the one down to earth, she takes care of the household … She is better suited for it’ (Patrik, 26). ‘The girl has these genes inside, after all… you can see it in her eyes that she would want the child, whereas this is rarely visible in guys’ (Marcel, 32).

The respondents did not reject male desire for a child either but often perceived it as essentially different: not as femininely ‘biological’ but as socially ‘materialist’: It is a certain male vanity. A man is led by a certain possessive desire to leave some offspring. (Ivo, 26) I do not have a biological need to have a child but I definitely want to have it … It is a social desire because I want to leave something behind. (František, 28)

These opinions uncover deep-rooted gender stereotypes related to reproduction. Apart from moral dilemmas connected to gay fatherhood,

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respondents also reflected on the societal mistrust of men as worthy and competent parents, a trend well-documented in scholarship on family patterns in post-Communist societies (Maˇríková and Vohlídalová 2007): ‘Fatherhood is not viewed as a primary part of manhood in our society’ (Aleš, 27). Respondents’ observations of this social practice, however, were inseparable from their beliefs in biological essentialism and expressions of deep-seated gender stereotypes about women’s propensity to be ‘naturally’ better parents: I think that the father is still perceived as someone incapable of looking after a child, incapable of raising the child on his own. The more so a gay man, who is moreover not a natural father. (František, 28) I think that everybody believes that a woman is better equipped to raise a child than a man. So even when she is a lesbian she is still simply more of a mother and more of a better parent that a gay father. (Vítek, 23)

These responses reflect a stereotype of parental incompetence of gay men based on their sexual orientation and their gender incapability of being equally good parents based on their male sex. This double stigmatization affects (potential) gay fathers both via the stigma of sexual orientation and the stigma of men as the biologically less competent parent. Some respondents also observed that if a man did not raise a child on his own, as a presumably heterosexual single father, but explicitly in a gay couple, the stigmatization of ‘incompetent manhood’ multiplied. David was even convinced that whereas the stigmatization of incompetent manhood and fatherhood doubled in gay men, the social preference of motherhood coupled with biological determinism negated the stigmatization of homosexuality in lesbian women and actually worked in their favour: I think that this is given by the deep-seated role of the woman as the natural parent, which is so deeply rooted here. This also relates to divorces and granting custody. This is very slowly changing but always there will be the perception that the mother, even if she were a one-legged, halfbodied alcoholic, is always going to be a better parent than the father. For this reason, when there are two women, it can only be better because the positive mother role is doubled. But with gay men, the mother is missing so they are left with nothing. (David, 29)

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These views further support Stacey’s argument that gay fatherhood should be studied not only within the framework of homoparentality and in relation to lesbian motherhood, but also in the framework of transformations of male paternity (Stacey 2006). As soon as the discussion moved from the biological essence of reproduction to the functioning of a family and parental roles in gay and lesbian relationships, the respondents evaluated the child-rearing capabilities of gay men and lesbian women as virtually the same. In other words, even though according to them women are ‘naturally’ better predisposed for reproduction, as soon as gays or lesbians have children, they become equally competent parents. The overwhelming majority of respondents were also convinced that gays and lesbians were equally competent parents as heterosexuals and their families were equally valuable and suitable contexts for upbringing of children: ‘I have always said, if two heterosexuals can bring up a great homosexual then why couldn’t it work the other way round, right?’ (Šimon, 25). In most cases, however, respondents did not perceive their responses to gender dimensions of reproduction as contradictory and did not connect them with societal perceptions of homoparentality. While respondents were perceptive to the limitations, obstacles and double stigma they faced as (potential) gay fathers, they did not see them as fundamentally connected to the gender stereotypes and biases they themselves held about women’s reproduction and ‘naturalness’ of motherhood. The reproductive, legislative as well as societal conditions for lesbian women who desire to have a child are incomparably easier in the Czech Republic (which is, of course, the reason why there are more lesbian mothers than gay fathers in the Czech Republic, not because gay men desire children less than lesbian women). Studies and life stories of gay men-fathers from other countries document that despite the physiological and structural obstacles, gay men are increasingly convinced that to have children is normal and one just needs to find the right strategy. Czech respondents, to the contrary, insist that even if they want a child very much ‘it is not possible’, mentioning the ‘biological impossibility’ of having a child through having sex with a woman and the impossibility of having it by ‘legal’, ‘acceptable’ or ‘common’ means: To have [a child] is not possible by common means so we [with my partner] discussed it at a rather theoretical level and basically we agreed that if it was not illegal then we would want a child. For example, we would be willing to take a child that does not have parents. (Martin, 39)

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This idea of mine [that I cannot have a child even though I would want it] is not at all dependent on the legislation, it is a direct consequence of me not being able to have sex with a woman. Adoption is not an option for me. If I cannot conceive a child in a way natural to me, then I cannot have it. (Vladimír, 36)

Some respondents had ‘creative’ scenarios of how to become a father and build family. One respondent knew his vision could not be taken seriously and laughed nervously as he elaborated on his unrealistic plans. His visions, however, expressed painful realizations and frustrations, along with his inability to think beyond the prohibitive institutional framework currently governing gay fatherhood in the Czech Republic: I have to admit that the only possibility I see, illegal, is to simply have a child with some woman and then make the court grant custody of the child to me in some way. For example, if the woman would be an unreliable person, for instance an alcoholic. But then, it is fairly risky to look for someone like that and to have a child with her and, moreover, I know, it’s simply impossible. So that’s the only possibility, I think, and it is very hard to access, nevertheless … Or it would suffice if she was sick, cancer, for instance. The doctors would say, maximum two years of life, then it would be a nice opportunity for me [nervous laughter]. But that’s awful. (Petr, 24) Gays are influenced by not having the vision of getting children in any normal, uncomplicated, acceptable way. Many young guys I have spoken to about this consider fatherhood as something completely unreal and requiring doing something crazy. (Filip, 20)

Petr’s and Filip’s opinions reflect the frustration with obstacles to gay men’s biological parenthood. Most respondents perceived these as limitations lesbian women do not have to deal with: ‘Lesbian women can always get the child somehow. It is easier. It is not easy, but it’s easier’ (Dalimil, 25). On the other hand, a few respondents insisted that institutional and legal obstacles could not stop gay men from becoming fathers if they were determined: ‘If they really want it, they will manage somehow … and they won’t care what they will have to do to get it’ (Patrik, 26). Alternative family models, consisting of a single lesbian mother or a lesbian couple raising together a child with a biological gay father, either single or in a gay couple, of course already exist in the Czech Republic.

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Very few gays and lesbians living in these creative family models, however, are willing to medialize their family situations. Their ‘voluntary invisibility’ and careful guarding of their privacy and anonymity can have several different reasons. Often, at least some aspect of their family constellation is not compatible with current law and so mothers and fathers sharing this family framework are reluctant to speak about it. In other cases, gay and lesbian parents find the scholarly or media attention intrusive or voyeuristic and refuse to participate in what they view as pathologizing their families and parenthood. Several respondents themselves mentioned other gay fathers they personally knew living in alternative family set ups, arguing either that it is not a viable option for everyone but a chance for a brave few or not finding such family constellations as attractive: I know a few guys who live like this [are raising a child following an agreement with a lesbian couple], it’s all a matter of inventiveness. I think that it is still the privilege of the bravest ones and the experimenters; [gay fatherhood] is not considered normal here and that, I think, is the main problem. (Patrik, 26) No, that does not attract me at all. I know a few guys living this way but the idea that I am just a weekend father is almost unacceptable for me. If that should be case, I would rather remain in total anonymity, just as a donor. Let the two lesbian partners have the child that arose from me, but let them be the parents then. (Vladimír, 36)

Unlike in research studies in the United States, Israel or other countries, Czech respondents rarely mentioned surrogacy as a viable or desirable option to gay fatherhood. Even though Vladimir explicitly rejected this possibility, most respondents viewed as an ideal family scenario a family agreement with a lesbian couple, or even better a single lesbian mother, in which the child would be in the formal custody of the mother and would spend substantial amount of time with the father(s).

Conclusion The Slovene survey mentioned earlier in the chapter suggested that about forty per cent of all interviewed gay men and lesbian women in Slovenia did not want to have children. Švab interpreted these results as

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a certain indicator of the suppression of their own desires to have children in a society, which is not well disposed towards alternative family models (Švab 2007, p. 218). The research into Czech gay men’s attitudes towards fatherhood did not support this ‘rationalization of desire’. In fact, most respondents wanted to have children and actively fantasized during interviews about possible reproductive strategies and family models they might invent. At the same time, their fantasies were not necessarily realistic or joyful, but rather provided a bleak and sobering counterpart to scholarship stressing the optimistic visions of lesbian parenthood. Respondents’ views were internally contradictory in many respects, often even logically incompatible with arguments used in other parts of the same interview. This is not to say, however, that the respondents’ thinking about these questions is illogical or superficial. As Patrik (26) observed: ‘It is not our fault, it’s not that we wouldn’t be open-minded or ready. But we can’t influence what we grew up in, the environment that we come from. Willingly and unwillingly, we have absorbed and accepted many [negative] opinions’. These ‘absorbed opinions’ include fundamental moral dilemmas attached to gay fatherhood, deep-seated gender stereotypes of ‘instinctive motherhood’, ambivalent relationships to the role of fathers in society, and rather conservative thinking about political and civic engagement. The responses offer very little emancipatory potential for the near future. Considering that most respondents expressed a desire to have a child, their ideas about how to reach this goal were very timid, disciplined and rather theoretical. Despite their own desires, most of them agreed with only a gradual change of legislation, accepting the discriminatory institutional parameters of gay fatherhood and suppressing their own ideas and rights. The research study showed that in the Czech Republic, often even among gay men themselves, a serious discussion of gay men’s reproductive and fatherhood rights, possibilities and strategies is not yet on the agenda. Unlike countries, such as the United States, Israel and Australia, where new reproductive technologies and transnational surrogacy is a viable and legal option for gay men seeking paths to fatherhood, in the Czech Republic these debates are still in the realm of theorizing and fantasy rather than a theme for serious discussion, a relevant reason for political and social mobilization and, last but not least, a subject of academic interest. Unlike the visible societal debates about assisted reproduction, foster care and adoption for heterosexual couples, and its considerably diminished and less visible form pertaining to lesbian

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women, these discussions still circumvent the positions, interests and needs of gay men.

Note 1. All the names of the respondents used in the chapter are nicknames of choice, which the respondents themselves selected at the beginning of the interview.

References Aavik, K. (2020) ‘Negotiating Uncertainty: Sexual Citizenship and State Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerships in Estonia’, In: Buyantueva R., Shevtsova M. (eds) LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Allen, K. and Demo, D. (1995) ‘The Families of Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Frontier in Family Research’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57 (1), 111–27. Barret, R. L. and Robinson, B. E. (2000) Gay Fathers: Encouraging the Hearts of Gay Dads and Their Families (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass). Blankenhorn, D. (1995) Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem (New York: Basic Books). Bozett, F. W. (1993) ‘Gay Fathers: A Review of the Literature’, in Garnets, L. and Kimmel, D. (eds) Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Male Experiences (New York: Columbia University Press). Cameron, P. and Cameron, K. (1996) ‘Homosexual Parents’, Adolescence, 31 (124), 757–776. Carneiro, F. A., Tasker, F., Salinas-Quiroz, F., Leal, I. and Costa, P. A. (2017) ‘Are the Fathers Alright? A Systematic and Critical Review of Studies on Gay and Bisexual Fatherhood’, Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1636. Carroll, M. (2018) ‘Gay Fathers on the Margins: Race, Class, Marital Status, and Pathway to Parenthood’, Family Relations, 67, 104–17. Doleˇzal, J. X. (2006) ‘Kdyˇz revolucion´arˇi zvi´t eˇ z´i’ [When Revolutionaries Win], Reflex, 17 (13), 6–10. Dudová, R. and Hastrmanová, Š. (2007) Otcové, matky a porozvodová péˇce o dˇeti [Fathers, Mothers, and Post-divorce Care for Children], Sociologické studie, 07 ˇ (7) (Praha: SoÚ AV CR). Erez, C. and Shenkman, G. (2016) ‘Gay Dads Are Happier: Subjective WellBeing Among Gay and Heterosexual Fathers’, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 12, 451–67.

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Eydal, G. B. and Rostgaard, T. (2016) Fatherhood in the Nordic Welfare States: Comparing Care Policies and Practice (Bristol and Chicago: Policy Press). Farr, R. H. (2017) ‘Does Parental Sexual Orientation Matter? A Longitudinal Follow-up of Adoptive Families with School-Age Children’, Developmental Psychology, 53 (2), 252–264. Flowers, P. and Buston, K. (2001) ‘“I Was Terrified of Being Different”: Exploring Gay Men’s Accounts of Growing-Up in a Heterosexist Society’, Journal of Adolescence, 24, 51–65. Fojtová, S. and Sokolová, V. (2013) ‘Strategies of Inclusion and Shifting Attitudes Towards Visibility in the Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Discourse in the Czech Republic After 1989’, in Fejes, N. and Balogh, A. P. (eds) Queer Visibility in Post-socialist Cultures (Chicago and Bristol: Intellect Books). Goffman, E. (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York, London: Simon & Schuster, Inc.). Golombok, S. and Tasker, F. L. (1994) ‘Children in Lesbian and Gay Families: Theories and Evidence’, Annual Review of Sex Research, 5, 73–100. Greenfeld, D. A. (2007) ‘Gay Male Couples and Assisted Reproduction: Should We Assist?’, Fertility and Sterility, 88 (1), 18–20. Haan, de L. and Nijland, S. (2003) King and King (London: Tricycle Press). Johnson, S. and O’Connor, E. (2002) The Gay Baby Boom: The Psychology of Gay Parenthood (New York: New York University Press). Jójárt, P. (2000) ‘Lesbické ženy a gejovia v role rodiˇcov’ [‘Lesbian Women and Gays in Parental Roles’], Unpublished MA dissertation (Bratislava: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Komenského). Junek, A. (2006) ‘Utajeni´ homosexu´alov´e v cˇ esk´e politice’ [Secret Homosexuals in the Czech Politics], aktualne.cz [on-line] 17. 3. 2006 [cit. 13. 1. 2009]. Katz, J. (1990) ‘The Invention of Heterosexuality’, Socialist Review, 20, 6–30. Kuhar, R. (2003) Media Representations of Homosexuality: An Analysis of the Print Media in Slovenia, 1970–2000 (Ljublana: Mirovni inštitut). Kuhar, R. and Takács, J. (eds) (2007) Beyond the Pink Curtain: Everyday Life of LGBT People in Eastern Europe (Ljubljana: Mirovni Inštitut). Kutálková, P. (2015) Duhové rodiny ve stínu státu: situace homoparentálních rodin s malými dˇetmi [Rainbow Families in the Shadow of the State: Situation of Homoparental Families with Small Children] (Praha: Prague Pride). Kutálková, P. (2018) Sešívané rodiny: nový život zevnitˇr i zvenku [Patchwork Families: New Life from the Inside Out ] (Praha: PROUD). Lewin, E. (2009) Gay Fatherhood: Narratives of Family and Citizenship in America (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press). Mallon, G. (2003) Gay Men Choosing Parenthood (New York: Columbia University Press).

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Maˇríková, H. and Vohlídalová, M. (eds) (2007) Trvalá nebo doˇcasná zmˇena? Uspoˇrádání genderových rolí v rodinách s peˇcujícími otci [Permanent or Temporary Change? Arrangement of Gender Roles in Families with Caring Fathers ], ˇ Sociologické studie 07, (11) (Praha: SoÚ AV CR). McGarry, K. (2003) Fatherhood for Gay Men: An Emotional and Practical Guide to Becoming a Gay Dad (New York: Routledge). Menichiello, M. (2006) A Gay Couple’s Journey Through Surrogacy: Intended Fathers (New York: Routledge). Miller, B. (1979) ‘Gay Fathers and Their Children’, The Family Coordinator: Men’s Roles in the Family, 28 (4), 544–52. Morgen, K. B. (1995) Getting Simon: Two Gay Doctors’ Journey to Fatherhood (Bramble Books). Nedbálková, K. (2012) Matky kuráže: lesbické rodiny v pozdnˇe moderní spoleˇcnosti [Mothers Courage: Lesbian Families in Late Modern Society] (Praha: SLON). Oswald, R. F. (2002) ‘Resilience within the Family Networks of Lesbians and Gay Men: Intentionality and Redefinition’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 64 (2), 374–83. Patterson, C. (1992) ‘Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents’, Child Development, 63 (5), 1025–42. Polášková, E. (2009) Plánovaná lesbická rodina: klíˇcové aspekty pˇrechodu k rodiˇcovství [Planned Lesbian Family: Key Aspects of Transformation to Parenthood] (Brno: Masaryk University Press). Popenoe, D. (1993) ‘American Family Decline, 1960–1990: A Review and Appraisal’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 55 (3), 527–542. Riskin, R. G. and Paterson, C. J. (2010) ‘Parenting Intentions and Desire Among Childless Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Individuals’, Journal of Family Psychology 24 (1), 78–81. Sbordone, A. (1993) ‘Gay Men Choosing Fatherhood’, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation (New York: City University New York). Schacher, S., Auerbach, C. and Silverstein, L. (2005) ‘Gay Fathers Expanding the Possibilities for Us All’, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 1 (3), 31–52. Sember, B. M. (2006) Gay & Lesbian Parenting Choices: From Adopting or Using a Surrogate to Choosing the Perfect Father (Brighton, M.A.: Career Press). Shenkman, G., Siboni, O., Tasker, F. and Costa, P. A. (2020) ‘Pathways to Fatherhood: Psychological Well-Being Among Israeli Gay Fathers Through Surrogacy, Gay Fathers Through Previous Heterosexual Relationships, and Heterosexual Fathers’, Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 91. Shernoff, M. (1996) ‘Gay Men Choosing to be Fathers’, in Shernoff, M. (ed) Human Services for Gay People: Clinical and Community Practice (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press). Šmídová, I. (2007) ‘Peˇcovatelské otcovství: rodinné strategie pro skloubení linií životní dráhy’ [‘Caring Fatherhood: Family Strategies for Streamlining of Life

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Trajectories’] in Heczková, L. (ed.) Vztahy, jazyky, tˇela [Relations, Languages, Bodies ] (Praha: FHS UK). Smietana, M. (2018) ‘Procreative Consciousness in a Global Market: Gay Men’s Paths to Surrogacy in the USA’, Reproductive BioMedicine and Society Online, 7, 101–11. Smith, J. A. (1995) ‘Semi Structured Interviewing & Qualitative Analysis’, in Smith, J. A., Harré, R. and Langenhove, L. V. (eds) Rethinking Methods in Psychology (London: Sage). Smith, J. A., Larkin, M. and Flowers, P. (2009) Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Understanding Method & Application (London: Sage). Smith, J. A. and Osborn, M. (2008) ‘Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis’, in Smith, J. A. (ed) Qualitative Psychology: A Practical Guide to Research Methods, 2nd Edn (London: Sage). Sokolová, V. (2004) ‘A co dˇeti?…: Gay a lesbické rodiˇcovství a genderové stereotypy’ [‘And What about Children? …. Gay and Lesbian Parenthood and Gender Stereotypes’], in Formánková, L. and Rytíˇrová, K. (eds) ABC Feminismu [ABC of Feminism] (Brno: Nesehnutí). Speier, A. (2016) Fertility Holidays: IVF Tourism and the Reproduction of Whiteness (New York: NYU Press). Stacey, J. (2006) ‘Gay Parenthood and the Decline of Paternity as We Knew It’, Sexualities, 9 (1), 27–55. Stacey, J. (2018) ‘Queer Reproductive Justice?’, Reproductive BioMedicine and Society Online, 7, 4–7. Stacey, J. and Biblarz, T. J. (2001) ‘(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?’, American Sociological Review, 66 (2), 159–83. Strah, D. and Margolis, S. (2003) Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood (New York: Penguin). Švab, A. (2007) ‘Do They Have a Choice? Reproductive Preferences Among Lesbians and Gays in Slovenia’, in Kuhar, R. and Takács, J. (eds) Beyond the Pink Curtain: Everyday Life of LGBT People in Eastern Europe (Ljubljana: Mirovni Inštitut). Švab, A. and Kuhar, R. (2005) The Unbearable Comfort of Privacy: The Everyday Life of Gays and Lesbians in Slovenia (Ljubljana: Mirovni Inštitut). Takács, J. (2007) ‘“It Is Only Extra Information…”: Social Representation and Value Preferences of Hungarian Gay Men’, in Kuhar, R. and Takács, J. (eds) Beyond the Pink Curtain: Everyday Life of LGBT People in Eastern Europe (Ljubljana: Mirovni Inštitut). Takács, J., Szalma, I. and Bartus, T. (2016) ‘Social Attitudes Toward Adoption by Same-Sex Couples in Europe’, Archives of Sexual Behaviour, 45 (7), 1787–98. Tornello, S. L. and Patterson, C. J. (2015) ‘Timing of Parenthood and Experiences of Gay Fathers: A Life Course Perspective’, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 11 (1), 35–56.

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Touroni, E. and Coyle, A. (2002) ‘Decision-Making in Planned Lesbian Parenting: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis’, Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 12 (3), 194–209. Tsfati, M. and Ben-Ari, A. (2019) ‘Between the Social and the Personal: Israeli Male Gay Parents, Surrogacy and Socio-Political Concepts of Parenthood and Gender’, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 15 (1), 42–57. Valentine, J. (2004) One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads (New York: Alyson Books). Voeller, B. and J. Walters (1978) ‘Gay Fathers’, The Family Coordinator, 27 (2), 149–57. Wardle, L. D. (1997) ‘The Potential Impact of Homosexual Parenting on Children’, University of Illinois Law Review , 3, 833–919. Warner, M. (2000) The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (New York: Free Press). Whitehead, B. D. (1993) ‘Dan Quayle Was Right’, The Atlantic Monthly, 271 (4), 47–84. Zhabenko, A. (2019) ‘Russian Lesbian Mothers: Between “Traditional Values” and Human Rights’, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 23 (3), 321–35. Ziegler, S. (2004) Pathways to Parenthood: The Ultimate Guide to Surrogacy (New York: Brown Walker Press). Ziv, I. and Freund-Eschar, Y. (2015) ‘The Pregnancy Experience of Gay Couples Expecting a Child Through Overseas Surrogacy’, The Family Journal, 23 (2), 158–66.

CHAPTER 5

‘What Family Actually Means’: Re-Articulations of ‘Family’ in and Around Netflix’s Sense8 Nadine Dannenberg

The Netflix show Sense8 (2015–18) is a Streaming-TV series that has been highly praised by critics, fans, and academics for its sensitive handling of ‘queerness’ (Pelters 2015; Keegan 2016; Allen 2017; McFarlane 2017; Smith 2017; Fernández 2018).1 This queerness refers on the one hand to the show’s politics of representation, as it features an unusually high number of non-straight characters in a range of non-heteronormative relationships, and on the other hand to its narrative focus on processes of affect2 and affinity-based community building. The show repeatedly invokes, questions, and readjusts varying concepts of ‘family’ common to different film genres. Furthermore, the show uses its interrogations of ‘family’ as a leitmotif for reflections on the social and affective conditions

N. Dannenberg (B) Institute for Media Studies, University of Arts Brunswick (Germany), Düppelstrasse 47, 44789 Bochum, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Mikats et al. (eds.), Creative Families, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0_5

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of its own media economy defined by a shift in the producer–user interaction brought about by the participatory nature of social media. Sense8 thereby makes an interesting case for a study of contemporary transmedia storytelling, following the definition of Henry Jenkins: ‘Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience’ (Jenkins 2007). As the following case study will show, this kind of transmedia storytelling now equally serves as entertainment for a niche audience and helps to activate a cheap digital workforce. It goes beyond the traditional stimulus of business-oriented marketing campaigns that encourage the consumption of media products, encouraging audience members to become producers of a sort, as well. I will expound this proposition in two steps. First, I will outline the series’ synopsis as a background for wider transmedial storytelling, providing a detailed analysis of two key scenes that highlight ‘family’ as a leitmotif. I will then look at this storytelling from the perspective of digital fandom studies, with a focus on its affective dimensions, and consider its economic function beyond the fictional realm.

‘What Family Actually Means’: ‘Family’ as a Leitmotif in Sense8 Met with ambivalent critical acclaim, torn between ‘utterly confusing […] one big silly mess’ (Goodman 2017) and ‘a queer masterpiece’ (Levesley 2015), the Netflix-production Sense8 (2015–18) was created in 2015 by the Wachowskis, the creators of cult movies like the Matrix Trilogy (US/AUS, 1999–2003), Cloud Atlas (US/GER, 2012), and Jupiter Ascending (US/AUS, 2015), and J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5, US, PTEN/TNT, 1993–98). Over two seasons, each twelve episodes long, it tells the story of eight individuals of varying genders and sexualities from eight different ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds: Kala, a pharmacist in Mumbai; Riley, a DJ from Iceland who lives in London; Will, a Chicago-based cop; Nomi, a hacktivist situated in San Francisco; Lito, an action-movie actor in Mexico City; Capheus, a bus driver in Nairobi; Sun, a business executive in Seoul; and Wolfgang, a thief based in Berlin. Together, they form a so-called ‘cluster’ of ‘sensates’, which means they are mentally and emotionally linked, and can sense, feel, and help each other with their respective knowledge and skills, especially in

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times of high affective intensity (such as periods of great stress, anger, pain, or joy). Over the course of the series, they recognize similarities in their individual life experiences, which helps to form a powerful bond between them: all eight are sensitive beings dealing with traumas caused by emotional or physical violence, loss, or discrimination. Over the course of the series, they each have to confront their demons in one way or another, confrontations accompanied by intense emotional outbursts. On the one hand, their sensitivity opens a space for an empathy-based connection between the protagonists. On the other hand, however, it threatens their individual and shared existence by exposing them to the tracking and surveillance techniques of an antagonistic biomedical institution—the Biological Preservation Organization, or BPO—that intends to capture these sensates for human subject research. In this setting, moments of sensual (emotional and sexual) intimacy are repeatedly invoked as a therapeutic device and a binding force between the characters, as well as between the audience and the characters, and—as I will demonstrate later—also between the consumers and the producers. Through eight micro-narratives,3 each centred around one protagonist and employing the aesthetics of a specific movie genre (as Roxanne Samer points out in Bailey et al. 2017, p. 80), the show manages equally to construct family as the leitmotif of its own storytelling and to deconstruct the seeming ubiquity of family in the storytelling traditions of the Hollywood imaginary. Wolfgang, the Berlin thief, gets caught up in a Goodfellas-like mob drama, whose plot depends on his severe anger issues with paternal authority. The same goes for the Chicago-based cop Will, who lives out his very own buddy cop action movie in the tradition of Bad Boys (US, 1995, Michael Bay) and Lethal Weapon (US, 1987, Richard Donner), which positions his highly emotional sensibility against the emotional unavailability of his father. In Nairobi, hardworking Capheus is caught up in an environmental political family drama, in which his sick mother acts as the guiding force. The transgender hacker Nomi in San Francisco is at the centre of her own hacktivist thriller and—following the familiar trope of tragedy surrounding queerness in the Hollywood imaginary (Rigney 2003, p. 4 and passim; Piontek 2012, p. 128)—is on poor terms with her upper-class birth family. Kala from Mumbai finds herself caught up in the conventional Bollywood dilemma of having to choose between her religious Indian family and the desires of her own heart. In Mexico City, the closeted gay actor Lito similarly experiences his very own, unapologetically overacted telenovela (with the expected love

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triangle, but with an unexpected twist). Sun in Seoul lives in a martial arts movie where she has to seek revenge on her brother for killing their father. Finally, Icelandic mother-figure Riley is stuck in a melodrama and spends most of her time mourning lost family members (her mother, husband, and child, the latter having died in a car accident). Through this focus on affective intensity, shared by all eight of the individual stories, Sense8 manages to bring diverse genres into contact with each other, and demonstrates their narrative similarities: in each of the micro-narratives, the birth family is overtly present as the motivating, but also trauma-inducing, force for the given protagonist. The show knowingly draws its storylines from the Hollywood imaginary and thereby manages to deconstruct the ideological and affective tenets of ‘family’. As the film scholar Murray Pomerance writes: Whether it is played for sentiment or for catharsis, for laughter or for mystification, the [US] screen family is inevitably drawn as […] an image to which we [the audience] can in some way aspire. [Its depiction is] relentlessly pedagogical, teaching us how to pose, think, behave, acquire, imagine, remember, fear and anticipate as members of families in real life. (Pomerance 2008, p. 8)

This understanding of televisual representations as pedagogical tools for the education of the masses goes hand in hand with John Fiske and John Hartley’s thesis of television as a transmitter of cultural and ideological values. Fictional shows like Sense8, just as much as every other televisual format (e.g., news magazines, talk and reality shows), represent, reflect, and circulate cultural values and norms at any given moment in history to reaffirm, but also to question the existing order of a society (Fiske and Hartley 2003, p. 64 and passim).4 In a heteronormative society, like the US, these negotiations are limited, due to culturally conventional and also formal restrictions that position a co-constitutive gender binary at the centre stage.5 As queer and feminist scholars have shown, the seemingly ‘natural’ ideal of two (and only two!) parental figures representing two sides of the gender binary who raise children in a committed, monogamous relationship was a complex creation of diverse discourses, institutions, and—as of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—capitalist and industrial affordances.6 This kind of community arrangement (the so-called ‘nuclear family’) still features in the social imaginary of most

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Western societies as the natural order of things. Consequently, it is aggressively promoted through the media. While there might be patchwork families, single parents, non-white families, or gay and lesbian couples with children in the real world (see, for example, the chapters by Beatrice Gusmano and Vˇera Sokolova in this volume), their existence has only relatively recently been acknowledged and included in the realms of media storytelling. Indeed, Claire Jenkins and others have pointed out that the nuclear family is still depicted as the dominant narrative goal in television shows (Jenkins 2015, pp. 178–9), although it has become a bit more flexible with respect to the inclusion of same-sex parents.7 The writers of Sense8 challenge this still prevalent ideal with a focus on the darker aspects of birth families as sources of autobiographical drama. I will illustrate this in two episodes of Sense8 that emphasize the theme of family: Episode 4 of season 1, titled ‘What’s Going On?’ (2015), and episode 9 of season 2, titled ‘What Family Actually Means’ (2017). ‘What’s Going On?’ marks the point where the individual introductions of the eight protagonists end (the first act, one could say), and the plot of the joint macro-story (the second act) begins. In this episode, the sensates learn for the first time that they can temporarily ‘inhabit’ each other (without actually leaving their current physical position) and combine their respective skills and knowledge to survive life-threatening situations. From this moment on, the protagonists start to interact more directly with each other, which also means that they start to confront their respective heritages and either move away from or back in with their birth families. Over the course of the next sixteen episodes (fifteen of the standard length of about forty-five minutes and a two-hour-long Christmas special) each of the sensates is involved in at least one climactic, life- or existence-threatening experience. These events compel them to help each other, while at the same time necessitating adjustments in their individual lives and of their social circles. The episode orchestrates the sensates’ situations within their birth families around repeated good-and-bad dichotomies: on the one hand, the caring, affectionate, and understanding kind of community that comes with a deep sense of responsibility and dedication; on the other, physically and/or emotionally abusive relationships between family members of unequal power capable of traumatizing some—especially younger ones— for life. In this orchestration, the concept of the birth family is used as a double-layered point of origin for all the micro-narratives as well as

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the overarching one, as the driving force that springs the individual characters into re-action, which either means that they consciously fight for (Capheus, Riley, Will), or against (Wolfgang, Nomi, Sun) their heritage. Fittingly, the first direct (inter-)action, which sets the macro-plot of the sensates’ joint fight against a system of surveillance into motion, takes place when the transgender-hacktivist of the group, Nomi, is threatened with lobotomization in a hospital, after she blacks out at a pride parade, with the approval, even insistence, of her transphobic birth mother (S01E04, 00:47:00–00:51:40). This essentially positions a queer-centric storytelling device as the departing point for the surveillance plot: the threat that needs to be contained is the visibility of queerness and its potential to disturb and disrupt the institutions of heteronormativity. With this depiction of the birth family as an inherently abusive, institutionally legitimized space of physical, mental, and emotional violence that literally threatens the physical well-being of one of its members, the show makes a rather queer point of the necessity of a re-evaluation of ‘what family actually means’. As an alternative, a counter-concept, it promotes the inclusion of friends, lovers, and—in this case—telepathically linked cluster members into an affectionate, care-filled community of accepting and protective people as a kind of ‘chosen family’ that is based more on emotional ties than on material ones. This inherently political stance is then re-evaluated in the next season in the episode ‘What Family Actually Means’. Once again, the plotinducing Nomi acts as the access (in this case, more precisely: closing) point to the birth family theme. The episode starts with attending her genetic sister’s wedding, where—once again much to the chagrin of her mother—she uses a speech to ponder upon her journey of gender confirmation and the eponymous question of the ‘actual meaning’ of family. In this monologue, Nomi reaffirms the aforementioned line between two differentiated concepts of birth and chosen family, but with the former understood more in economic terms as a stronghold of class privileges and agent of a Social Darwinist, survival-of-the-fittest ideology, while the latter is again understood more in emotional terms as a transmitter of social values and human rights. In describing her search for some sort of personal salvation, however, she ultimately appeals to a fusion of the two: [F]or a long time, I related the idea of family to Nietzsche’s ‘That which does not kill you makes you stronger.’ But I don’t think that way about family anymore. And that’s due to my sister Teagan. […] The night before

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I went into the hospital [for genital reassignment surgery] was the longest and the loneliest I’ve ever felt in my life. […] When I woke up, the first thing I felt was Teagan’s hand holding mine. Her smile was the first thing I saw. And her voice singing ‘Happy Birthday’ was the first thing I heard. It was in that moment my sister taught me what ‘family’ actually means. (transcript of S02E09, 00:04:20–00:09:00)

In her monologue, Nomi recalls how her (biological) sister came to acknowledge her gender identity and how the sisters made amends after the successful surgery. Through the simple act of singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her sister, Teagan marked the starting point of Nomi’s life at last in the gender-confirmed body, and thereby indicated a level of understanding and empathetic support that their parents, by contrast, have denied so far. This account of ‘what family actually means’ speaks as much for the character within the fictional realm as for the wider message that is promoted through the show: instead of biological ties, Nomi here strengthens emotional bonds, built through acts of care and celebration. This is underlined in the episode when all the sensates come to some sort of realization concerning their respective heritages, and have to make ultimate decisions on how to deal with their familial traumas and bonds going forward: Sun prepares for the last fight against her brother in order to take him down and visits the grave of her parents to make amends (coming to terms with birth family); Lito gets help from his two lovers to reanimate his by now broken acting career (success of chosen family); Wolfgang prepares his departure from Berlin and says his goodbyes to brother-figure Felix (break with chosen family for protection); Kala realizes that she prefers to be a worker than a mother and housewife (break with traditional birth family’s values); Capheus realizes that his political ambitions will put all those close to him, especially his mother and girlfriend, in danger, but is reaffirmed by both of them that the prospect of political change is worth it (success and fusion of birth and chosen family); at the episode’s conclusion, Nomi is finally accepted as a woman by her father, while Will and Riley learn more about the mystic mother-figure of their cluster and mourn the death of Will’s birth father (in both cases, also fusion of birth and chosen families). This episode consequently marks a preliminary end to all their individual journeys and provides a sense of closure to the respective micro-narratives. From here on, the focus of the storytelling shifts to the macro-story, where the sensates have to work in sync to rescue one of their members (Wolfgang) from the torturing hands

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of their main antagonist. This final act of united action once again helps to underline the caring, protective aspect of their connection. It is exactly this definition of family as a caring, protective, affinity- and action-based community that was taken up and embraced by the marketing of the show, as we will see below, but then used in a way that countered those values. In the next section, I evaluate how the fictional impetus to rearticulate heteronormative concepts of family is used on a more structural level for affect-based economic exploitation.

‘Fan-Mily’: ‘Family’ as Affective Force in (Queer) Fandom Culture Megan Watkins defines affect first and foremost in terms of orientation and recognition; it describes ‘the corporeal instantiation of recognition, the sensations one may feel in being recognized, which accumulate over time, fostering a sense of self-worth’ (Watkins 2010, p. 173). Based on the experiences of her pedagogical studies, she argues that recognition is a productive and necessary process, in which individuals form and gain a sense of their selves through the accumulation of affects in interpersonal encounters, one that can also function as a source for ‘collective energy that initiates and sustains gathering of people and ideas’ (Garde-Hansen and Gorton 2013, p. 33).8 It is exactly this understanding of affect as a self- and simultaneously community-constituting force that is negotiated and promoted as a productive and valuable force in Sense8. In fandom studies, where affect has been a prominent theme, it has been theorized under various other terms, ranging from John Fiske’s concept of ‘shadow cultural economies’ that have little capitalistic, but huge affective value (Fiske 1992, p. 30), to the notion of an economically challenging, but increasingly profitable ‘fannish affect’, as recently articulated by Melanie E. S. Kohnen (2018, p. 339). The difference between the former and the latter is, that over the last two decades, and due to the rise of Web 2.0 as a successful business model (O’Reilly 2012), once largely invisible fan practices like artistic appropriations and transformations (fanart, fanfiction) or the act of gift sharing9 have now become hypervisible and increasingly recognized as profitable (for examples, see Spence 2014). In a short analysis of contemporary modes of transmedia storytelling campaigns, Kohnen emphasizes that fannish affect, understood as ‘emotional investment in media texts’, fuels transmedia engagement and so

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has to be considered a necessary component of transmedia marketing and storytelling (Kohnen 2018, p. 337): Transmedia campaigns call on fans’ emotional investment in two key ways: by promising a deeper insight into the diegesis, and/or by giving fans an experience that invites them to participate in creating the text. Ideally, transmedia pays off in two ways: for fans, it allows a deeper involvement in a beloved text, and for the industry, it delivers quantifiable engagement in the form of clicks, hashtags, etc., and fans’ increased loyalty to a series, film, or brand. (Kohnen 2018, p. 340)

Media sociologist Kylie Jarrett contextualizes these forms of affect-based ‘quantifiable engagement’ in terms of ‘affective (free) labour’ with reference to the heightened significance of (free) immaterial labour in digital economies (Jarrett 2016, p. 116 and passim). The importance of free labour in digital economies is underscored by the Italian activist and Marxist Tiziana Terranova in her short, insightful essay ‘Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy’ (2013 [2000]). Terranova relies heavily on Maurizio Lazzarato’s definition of ‘immaterial labor’, which [I]nvolves a series of activities that are not normally recognized as ‘work’— in other words, the kinds of activities involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and, more strategically, public opinion. (Lazzarato 1996, p. 133)

Terranova applies this definition to contemporary production practices in digital(ized) economies. She argues that certain forms of (originally collective and/or artistic) free labour—such as communication practices via chats, sharing of real-life stories and news reports via blogs, and semi-professional and amateur newsletters—have developed alongside traditional capitalist forms of abstract labour, generating a new precariat of cultural workers who keep the digital sphere, and thereby also a media industry dependent on its infrastructure, afloat, but remain largely unrecognized (culturally and scientifically) (Terranova 2013, p. 38 and passim). In the years since her essay first appeared, this observation has become a focus of interest for media and surveillance scholars alike (see, for example, Fuch and Sevignani 2013; Scholz 2013), as feminist and queer scholars have pointed out its gendered, sexualized, and racialized implications (Gill 2002; Jarrett 2016; van Doorn 2017). But while these

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accounts focus mostly on the state and the structures of contemporary gig and sharing economies (investigating, for example, new forms of house and car sharing, such as Uber and Airbnb) or the process of information creation (via social media), the affective implications of these new digital economies have been relatively underdeveloped so far. Focusing on the undertheorized realms of female-centric content creation (e.g., on Pinterest and Facebook), Jarrett tries to fill that gap, insisting that ‘[i]ntensifying affective states and building affective connections is the essence of the work we do when using social media, which in turn places affect at the core of the digital economy’ (Jarrett 2016, p. 117). According to Jarrett, a seemingly simple act such as hitting a ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ button results fundamentally from an emotional impulse, after the user has been affected in some way by some given content. The social media platform’s algorithmic infrastructure, however, immediately transforms this action into user data with exchange value: the simple ‘Like’ becomes an act that can be captured, stored, commodified, and subsumed into the capitalist valorization processes (Jarrett 2016, p. 135 and passim). As such, affect becomes a commodifiable good in and of itself, a product of the digital workforce, with the individual prosumer as a valuable provider of their time, attention, and art, now also with their data as a kind of surplus. It is fitting, considering Sense8’s narrative awareness of its own production context, that the main theme of the macro-narrative is the surveillance of the sensates by a biomedical corporation intent on capturing them to exploit their sensual connection for non-transparent reasons and turn them into valuable goods to increase its own business profits. It is hard, though, not to regard as cynical the series’ social media-based marketing campaigns. From the beginning of 2017, right on time to promote the second season, consumers of the show were addressed as part of a ‘Sense8-Family’.10 A behind-the-scenes-video titled ‘Sense8 | Featurette: Family’ was posted on Netflix’s official YouTube channel on 19 May 2017, just two weeks after the release of season 2 to further promote the series across social media, and to highlight ‘family’ as a central subject of the show.11 While this could be read as the transmission of a major fictional theme into the realm of the show’s social media extensions, it is also an intentional invocation of a historically meaningful, affect-laden concept within US-centric fandom cultures. Here family assumes a prominent, but ambivalent, ideological role.

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As Camille Bacon-Smith relates in her key work on television fandom and gender (1992), fans tend to describe fandom as a kind of family that differs from hegemonic understandings.12 She explains that the fan-family is described as a realm where people do not feel socially pressured to act or talk in a certain way, where they can spend time among like-minded people, and have the chance to escape reality for a bit; as a ‘safe space’ that nonetheless has to be protected against misunderstanding or intolerant intruders (in this case parents, siblings, peers, or more distant kinds of authorities) (Bacon-Smith 1992, p. 26). These descriptions come very close to the depiction of the idealized family in Sense8: characters who struggle in their physical (fictional) real-life environments seek momentary escape in mentally based interactions with like-minded people and protect the created community against intrusive, antagonistic forces. In this sense, the show’s insistence on the definition of family as empathyand affinity-based picks up on fandom culture, and equally serves and mirrors, but also exploits, its members’ need and desire for it. I now turn to the use of family rhetoric as a marketing technique, and its role in the activation of a valuable fanbase.13 The goal is to examine further how the topic of family relates to media practices under digitalized capitalism. Like most shows these days, Sense8 tries to keep in touch with its fans via social media as much as possible. In contemporary (US-centric) convergence cultures, shaped by an ever-increasing number of products, providers, and media-savvy consumers (the so-called prosumers, who, fulfilling futurist Alvin Toffler’s definition of the term (Toffler 1980, p. 282 and passim), always simultaneously consume and produce), an impactful PR campaign has to include as many platforms as possible to provide and secure the possibilities for constant interaction with its audience. As Henry Jenkins underlines in his influential definition: In the world of media convergence, every important story gets told, every brand gets sold, and every consumer gets courted across multiple media platforms. […] [C]onvergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content. (Jenkins 2006, pp. 2–3)

The storytelling of the show embraced this shift when it applied a culturespecific genre and style to each of its eight micro-narratives and connected them with a somewhat obscure macro-narrative. With these simple narrative and aesthetic techniques, the audience was invited to get in touch,

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connect, and interact with each other (via social media applications) to understand every little detail of the story, and to fill fictional gaps or solve fictional puzzles together. Fans formed their own ‘clusters’ via Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, or Reddit,14 and set up special wikis to collect, organize, and archive detailed information on (movie, genre, or culture-specific) references.15 In 2017 some of these fans managed to successfully organize a digital riot after the show was cancelled by Netflix on June 1. They used their very own affective bond to the show to create online buzz as a form of fan activism aimed at building up digitalized pressure on the streaming service to un-cancel the show. This all happened to coincide with the annual celebrations of queer pride in the US, which takes place in June. In this already heightened atmosphere of queer-centric politicization, Sense8 fans organized a variety of actions to demonstrate their ongoing support for the show.16 A ‘Renew Sense8’ website, for instance, was almost immediately set up; first acting as the home base for a renewal petition, it went on to serve as a coordinating platform for subsequent events like repeated mass tweets to get #RenewSense8 trending; organized mass phone calls to Netflix’s support centre; a ‘Netflix Blackout’ on June 4, in which fans collectively cancelled their Netflix accounts; and #OperationFlipFlop, in which fans sent flip-flops to Netflix and posted corresponding pictures on Twitter.17 In taking these actions aimed at creating awareness and directing opposition towards the streaming service’s decision, the organizers took up the rhetoric and narrative subjects of the series’ fiction, and transformed them into tools of their own action. For example, the phrase ‘They want a war, we’ll give you a war’ from the eleventh—and, at that point, final—episode of season 2 was featured on the ‘Renew Sense8’ website, while the flip-flops are a reference to a scene from season 1, episode 9, in which Lito loses one of his flip-flops amid an alcohol-fuelled delirium. These steps were accompanied by constant interaction between fans and the show’s creative principals via social media: creator and executive producer Lana Wachowski, as well as J. Michael Straczynski and actor Brian J. Smith, took to social media to express their feelings of shock and dismay over the apparently sudden decision to cancel the show, and to assure their followers and fans of the show that they (a) were seeing the fan-activist action and highly approved of it, and (b) had the impression that it was actually helping in negotiations with Netflix concerning a renewal.18 This constant interaction with the fans via social

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media served a dual purpose, transmitting a sense of a shared community spirit encompassing the producers and the consumers as seemingly equal parts of the all-encompassing Sense8 family, while at the same time encouraging the fans to sustain their prosumer-ish labour in support of renewal. This exchange led to a kind of happy ending on June 30, when Lana Wachowski published a letter to the fans on Facebook and Twitter announcing that the show had been granted a feature-length finale by Netflix. In it, she addressed the fans directly as the ‘Sense8 family’, thanking them for their actions, which she credited as a major influence in Netflix’s decision to renew the show: Dear Sense8 Family, […] just as the characters in our show discover that they are not alone, I too have learned that I am not just a me. I am also a we. The passionate letters, the petitions, the collective voice that rose up like the fist of Sun to fight for this show was beyond what anyone was expecting. […] Improbably, unforeseeably, your love has brought Sense8 back to life. […] It is my great pleasure as well as Netflix’s (believe me, they love the show as much as we do but the numbers have always been challenging) to announce that there will be another two-hour special released next year. (Wachowski 2017)19

The way in which these events unfolded could be described as a transmedial narrative (to refer back to Jenkins), in which the constant documentation and distribution of real-life events mingled with fictional subjects from the source material. In the process the term ‘family’ had been called upon again and again to get the fans to continue to generate pressuring buzz—in other words, to get people to do something. Addressing the show’s consumers as part of the ‘Sense8 family’ called their emotional need to feel recognized, to feel included in the project, and to feel part of a community of like-minded people working together to achieve a goal (in this case, to create and preserve a streaming-TV show). Positioning themselves as fans of the show (and as fans of the fans) as well, the producers managed to create a transmedia PR campaign that worked as a broadly inclusive, uniting force in which the line between the fictional and the non-fictional world became increasingly blurry. What we are dealing with, then, could also be described as a performative circle of ‘doing media’ (Seier 2007), where the fiction influences and shapes the very digital cultures and phenomena it stems from and represents. In the process, this kind of transmedia storytelling is reaffirmed as a profitable business model

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in a (social) media landscape, where the political structures of the fictional and non-fictional worlds blur into each other and form yet another kind of and even bigger hypernarrative (Hayles 1997). It is a narrative, however, that depends heavily on a particular type of (queer) audience to invoke the affective needs of a specifically marginalized queer subject in a heteronormative society, a subject that has historically been excluded from the institution of family and is still fighting for equal acceptance and recognition in this regard. Accordingly, the narrative of the show, as well as of its social media extensions, is one of a fight for equal rights (to feeling, to affection, and to representation) that turned out to be a rather archetypical Hollywood success story, in which the globally connected crowd (the sensates and the audience) stood up to the people in power (in case of the fiction, the biomedical corporation BPO, and in case of the real-life struggle, the media corporation Netflix) and rightfully earned (through their hard, rebellious digital activist work) the desired outcome: a renewal of, or at least a proper finale for, their beloved streaming show that holds some sort of happily ever-after for all the central characters involved. In this regard, Sense8 as a product not only mirrors its own media economic structures, it also enacts its guiding business models in and of itself, and in doing so troubles the contemporary digital economy as much as it stabilizes its structures. As it turned out, the show’s initial release in June 2015 preceded by just half a year the streaming service’s expansion to 130 new countries in January 2016. Media theorist John Lessard mused that Netflix’s investment in Sense8 seems to have been motivated by a desire to feature more globally oriented content, both to differentiate its original productions from those of other television providers, and also to court its increasingly globalized audience. (Lessard 2016)

It seems that the narrative structure of the show aimed towards a transformative shift from a localized to a more globalized imaginary, one that could cater to a globally connected community of Netflix subscribers, who are just as much consumers of a product as themselves a part of its productive environment. However, this orientation towards a globalized audience seems bound to the promotion of a traditional US value-system in which ‘the family’ (as an ideological construct and a romanticized ideal) plays a pivotal role. Jo Lampert notes that representations of the white, often Christian, nuclear family unit have once again become more popular

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in the wake of 9/11, as a useful image ‘to restore public faith in order and stability’ (Lampert 2008, p. 46). In this image the (biological) family is associated with privacy, safety, and security which must be protected at all costs against any intruding forces. As I argued earlier, in this ideological rendering family is also the central societal unit of the capitalist re/production cycle; the place where the reproduction of the labour force takes place and where consumerism (necessarily) strives. Sense8 interrogates this ideology and widens the scope of what counts as family in its overall message. Nevertheless, while it accomplishes that to a significant degree, it ultimately undermines its own vision of an alternative ‘meaning’ of ‘family’: in the feature-length finale the story ends with the wedding of the hacktivist Nomi and her girlfriend Amanita on top of the Eiffel Tower. In this symbolic setting, which fuses the materialized embodiment of industrialization with the cheerful celebration of a queer wedding, all the sensates (re)unite their birth families with their friends, lovers, and cluster members. This is a comfortably archetypical happy ending for all parties involved, in which the previously raised challenges to the concept of family are settled through the fusion of tradition and queerness: everybody gets along, the evil corporation is defeated, and there are fireworks over the Eiffel Tower. Ultimately, this fiction bleeds into the written announcement ‘for our fans’.20 What follows is a nearly five-minute-long documentary collage of fan meetings and interactions that once again mirrors common practices of fan culture (mainly vidding21 ), but ‘subversively’ turns the camera from the fictional onto the structural realm of the product. The communal aspect of the show as a collective piece of art is thus underlined, and the unpaid work of the fannish love labourers is acknowledged and hailed as equally valuable as the well-remunerated work of the production team.

Conclusion The invocation of family within this instance of transmedia storytelling is twofold then: on the one hand, the show’s overall message postulates a necessary renegotiation of the concepts of ‘family’ and ‘family values’ from a birth-given right to an empathy-based connection that focuses more on affective affinities than on materialities or identities. On the other hand, the show subverts its own message by instrumentalizing the affective power of the concept of family for the accumulation of quantifiable

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engagement, while simultaneously stabilizing it once again as a (hetero)normative realm of complementary modes of unpaid reproductive (love) labour and financially well-rewarded productive labour. While, as Henry Jenkins has observed, it is true that contemporary convergence cultures help reshape the economic landscape of cultural production to support a more communitarian approach, its the structural and technical foundation of those cultures equally help to strengthen the idea that cultural products have to be earned through some kind of extra, non-financially rewarded (here: fan activist) work, which successfully inserts a crucial element of neoliberal ideology (the fictionally challenged survival-of-thefittest mantra) into fan culture. ‘What family actually means’ in Sense8, then, is still as much an ideological question as an economic one. After all, the family is depicted as a realm of affective intensities that bear extremely unpredictable, but also extremely productive, potentialities, ones that warrant further critical investigation.

Notes 1. This chapter is based on two conference papers, one presented at ‘Intimacies Online – Online Intimacies’ (Roskilde University, Denmark, 31 May–1 June 2018), and the other at ‘Transnational Television Drama’ (Aarhus University, Denmark, 5–9 June 2018). I’d like to thank my co-panelists Prof. Barbara Klinger and Dr. Bärbel Glöbel-Stolz for the inspiring discussions and valuable input. 2. For the purposes of this chapter, I understand affect as the ‘capacity to affect or be affected’ (McGlotten 2013, p. 8), as a ‘pre-subjective or pre-personal “experience of intensity”’ (ibid., p. 64) that ‘involves an orientation toward something’ (Ahmed 2010, p. 32). ‘To be affected by something is to evaluate that thing. […] To give value to things is to shape what is near us’ (ibid., 31). Following these definitions, the term affect is used here to grasp reactions of individual actors (fictional and nonfictional) towards the circulation of objects. As I will evaluate later on in this chapter, this definition also includes a distinctly social dimension in that affect can be considered a motivational force for community building. 3. I use the terms ‘micro-’ and ‘macro-narratives’ to differentiate two interwoven layers of storytelling within Sense8: the individual stories of the eight main characters bound to their respective local (national) environments and the overall story of the emergence of their global community. The individual stories can be seen as character studies; they are focused on the individuals in their local contexts, which corresponds to De Fina’s definition of micro-narrative (De Fina 2008, p. 422). The overall story

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can be considered the story of a global community, which fits De Fina’s definition of a macro-narrative (ibid.). Fiske and Hartley call this the ‘bardic function’ of television (ibid.), referring to the figure of the ‘bard’, who uses all available technologies (language, style, performance, technical tools) to tell entertaining stories about the world and its inhabitants, transmitting its myths, beliefs, and conventions. Here I refer simultaneously to the question of what can be imagined within the dominant (heteronormative) cultural framework and what can be depicted on screen with regard to the historicity of moral restrictions. There have been various industry codes or guidelines throughout the history of US film and television production classifying ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ content, which effectively censored mainly sexual explicitness and homosexual content (for example, the Hays Code, 1930–68; Television Code, 1952–83; Motion Picture Association of America film rating system, 1968–present) (see Dessart 2013 for details). These guidelines affect first and foremost the broadcast networks, whereas cable and streaming networks define themselves by the conscious contradiction of moral codes and produce mostly ‘mature content’ for their subscribers, while simultaneously catering to intergenerational family models. For a comprehensive introduction to these discussions, see Sharma (2016, p. 26f). For queer and feminist critiques of this notion of family, see, for example, Foucault (1976, pp. 43–53) and Hausen (1976). See, for example, The Fosters (Freeform, 2013–18), Modern Family (ABC, 2009–present), Fuller House (Netflix, 2016–present), and Black-ish (ABC, 2014–present). Watkins calls this ‘interaffectivity’; it is theorized in greater depth by Garde-Hansen and Gorton (2013). Fandom scholars have long insisted that fan subcultures function in opposition to the marketplace’s capitalist demands, sharing gifts rather than selling their artistic products. See, for example, (Fiske 1992, p. 44 and passim; Sabotini 1999) or (Hellekson 2009, p. 113 and passim). This has been questioned recently, however, as the advent of the social media era marked a shift in fandom practices and economies. The gift economy and the traditional market economy now seem to exist side by side, with the latter slowly diminishing the meaning of the former (see Hellekson 2018, p. 71 and passim). https://twitter.com/sense8/status/819565964563988480 (accessed 26 January 2019). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey0t2gnmOXI (accessed 26 January 2019).

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12. This observation has been subsequently affirmed by multiple scholars, including Henry Jenkins (1992, 2013), Tom Philipps (2011), Paul Booth and Peter Kelly (2013), and fairly recently by Lynn Zubernis in her extensive observations of the Supernatural fandom (see her publication from 2017, ‘Family Don’t End with Blood’). 13. Mona Sakr in this volume also problematizes the intrusion of corporate interests into family intimacy and family practices in her analysis of Amazon’s conversational agent Alexa. 14. https://www.facebook.com/TheClusterMaker/, http://sense8united. com/, https://twitter.com/Global_Cluster, https://www.reddit.com/r/ Sense8/comments/5n5wog/design_your_own_cluster/ (all accessed 26 January 2019). 15. http://sense8.wikia.com/wiki/Sense8_Wiki (accessed 26 January 2019). 16. The news broke a little after Netflix also cancelled The Get Down (2016– 17), a show about the early years of hip-hop culture. It garnered critical and fannish acclaim comparable to Sense8’s, but was apparently not able to generate the same amount of surplus labour from its fans. This could be another interesting case study, also used for comparative research. 17. https://renewsense8.com/, https://twitter.com/hashtag/renewsense8? lang=en, https://www.change.org/p/netflixlat-netflix-sense8-sense-8-sea son-3-renewal?utm_medium=email&utm_source=notification&utm_cam paign=petition_signer_receipt&share_context=signature_receipt&recrui ter=264899556, https://twitter.com/hashtag/OperationFlipFlop?src= hash (all accessed 27 January 2019). 18. http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1spuiao, https://twitter.com/Bri anJacobSmith/status/880498703295029250, https://twitter.com/sen se8/status/872971089772761089 (all accessed 27 January 2019). 19. https://twitter.com/sense8/status/880495946370568194?lang=en, https://www.facebook.com/Sense8TV/photos/death-doesnt-let-yousay-goodbye-2-hour-finale-episode-in-the-works-tell-your-cl/670625573 130399/. 20. Which was much appreciated by the fans; see, e.g., https://twitter.com/ NeilAnthonyGm/status/1005023959602089991 (accessed 30 January 2019). 21. The practice of creating music videos from the footage of one or more visual media sources.

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Allen, S. (2017) ‘What Makes ‘Sense8’ the Best LGBT TV Show’, TheDailyBeast 5 May 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-makes-sense8-thebest-lgbt-tv-show, date accessed 26 January 2019. Bacon-Smith, C. (1992) Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). Bailey, M., cárdenas, m., Horak, L., Kaimana, L., Keegan, C. M., Newman, G., Samer, G. and Sarkissian, R. (2017) ‘Sense8 Roundtable’, Transgender Media: Spectator, 37 (2), 74–88. Booth, P. and Kelly, P. (2013) ‘The Changing Faces of Doctor Who Fandom: New Fans, New Technologies, Old Practices?’, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 10 (1), 56–72. De Fina, A. (2008) ‘Who Tells Which Story and Why? Micro and Macro Contexts in Narrative’, Special Issue Text and Talk: Narrative Analysis in the Shift from Text to Practices, 28 (3), 421–42. Dessart, G. (2013 [1997]) ‘Standards and Practices’, in Newcomb, H. (ed) Encyclopedia of Television, 2nd Edn (New York, London: Routledge), 2186–88. Fernández, L. (2018) ‘Transnational Queerings and Sense8,’ in Aldama, F.L. (ed) The Routledge Companion to Gender, Sex and Latin American Culture (New York: Routledge), 222–30. Fiske, J. (1992) ‘The Cultural Economy of Fandom’, in Lewis, L.A. (ed) The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media (London: Routledge), 30–49. Fiske, J. and Hartley, J. (2003 [1978]) Reading Television, 2nd Edn (London/New York: Routledge). Foucault, M. (1976) Der Wille zum Wissen: Sexualität und Wahrheit I (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Fuch, C. and Sevignani, S. (2013) ‘What Is Digital Labour? What Is Digital Work? What’s Their Difference? And Why Do These Questions Matter for Understanding Social Media?’, tripleC 11 (2), 237–93. Garde-Hansen, J. and Gorton, K. (2013) Emotion Online: Theorizing Affect on the Internet (London: Palgrave-Macmillan). Gill. R. (2002) ‘Cool, Creative and Egalitarian? Exploring Gender in ProjectBased New Media Work in Europe’, Information, Communication & Society 5 (1), 70–89. Goodman, T. (2017) ‘Sense8’ Season 2: TV Review, The Hollywood Reporter 5/4/2017, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/sense8-review-100 0283, date accessed 22 October 2020. Hausen, K. (1976) ‘Die Polarisierung der Geschlechtscharaktere. Eine Spiegelung der Dissoziation von Erwerbs- und Familienleben‘, in Conze, W. (ed) Sozialgeschichte der Familie in der Neuzeit Europas (Stuttart: Klett), 363–93.

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Hayles, K. (1997) ‘Introduction: Situating Narrative in an Ecology of New Media’, Modern Fiction Studies 43 (3), 573–76. Hellekson, K. (2009) ‘A Fannish Field of Value: Online Fan Gift Culture’, Cinema Journal 48 (4), 113–18. Hellekson, K. (2018) ‘The Fan Experience’, in Booth, P. (ed) A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies (Oxford: Wiley), 65–76. Jarrett, K. (2016) Feminism, Labour, and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife (London: Routledge). Jenkins, C. (2015) Home Movies: The American Family in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (New York: Tauris). Jenkins, H. (1992) Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge). Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press). Jenkins, H. (2007) Transmedia Storytelling 101, http://henryjenkins.org/blog/ 2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html, date accessed 26 January 2019. Jenkins, H., Ford, S. and J. Green (2013) Spreadable Media. Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York: New York University Press). Keegan, C. M. (2016) ‘Tongues Without Bodies: The Wachowskis’ Sense8’, Transgender Studies Quarterly 3 (3–4), 605–10. Kohnen, M. E. S. (2018) ‘Fannish Affect, “Quality” Fandom, and Transmedia Storytelling Campaigns’, in Click, M. A. and Scotte, S. (eds) The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom (New York: Routledge), 337–46. Lampert, J. (2008) ‘Picturing Whiteness: The Events of 9/11 in Children’s Storybooks’, in Moreton-Robinson, A., Casey, M. and Nicoll, F. (eds) Transnational Whiteness Matters (Lanham: Lexington), 39–56. Lazzarato, M. (1996) ‘Immaterial Labor’ [Transl. P. Colilli, E. Emery], in Hardt, M. and Virno, P. (eds) Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 133–47. Lessard, J. (2016) ‘A Sense of the World: Sense8, Transmedia Storytelling, and the Erotics of Distraction’, Draft/Paper, Presented at the UC Berkeley, Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference, Focus in Distraction (Feb 2016), http://www.academia.edu/22692612/A_Sense_of_the_ World_Sense8_Transmedia_Storytelling_and_the_Erotics_of_Distraction, date accessed 26 January 2019. Levesley, D. (2015) ‘Here’s the Best Queer Scene in Sense8’, Slate June 22, 2015, https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/06/in-sense8-netflix-has-cre ated-a-queer-masterpiece.html, date accessed 22 October 2020. McFarlane, A. (2017) ‘Sense8 (Review)’, Science Fiction Film and Television 10 (1), 149–53. McGlotten, S. (2013) Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality (Albany: Suny Press).

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O’Reilly, T. (2012 [2004]) ‘What Is Web 2.0? Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software’, in Mandiberg, M. (ed) The Social Media Reader (New York/London: New York University Press), 32– 52. Pelters, J. C. (2015) ‘Kein Quotenschwuler, keine “Transe vom Dienst”’, https://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=24379, date accessed 26 January 2019. Philipps, T. (2011) ‘When Film Fans Become Fan Family: Kevin Smith Fandom and Communal Experience’, Participations. Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 8 (2), 478–96. Piontek, T. (2012) ‘Tears for Queers: Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, Hollywood, and American Attitudes Toward Homosexuality’, Journal of American Culture 35 (2), 123–34. Pomerance, M. (2008) ‘Introduction: Family Affairs’, in Pomerance, M. (ed) A Family Affair: Cinema Calls Home (London: Wallflower), 1–12. Rigney, M. (2003) ‘Brandon Goes to Hollywood: Boys Don’t Cry and the Transgender Body in Film’, Film Criticism 28 (2), 4–23. Sabotini, R. (1999) ‘The Fannish Potlatch: Creation of Status Within the Fan Community’, The Fanfic Symposium, http://www.trickster.org/symposium/ symp41.htm, date accessed 27 January 2019. Scholz, T. (ed) (2013) Digital Labor. The Internet as Playground and Factory (New York, London: Routledge). Seier, A. (2007) Remediatisierung. Die Performative Konstitution von Gender und Medien (Münster: Lit). Sharma, R. (2016) ‘The Netflix Effect: Impacts of the Streaming Model on Television Storytelling [B.A.-thesis], Wesleyan University, College of Film and the Moving Image, https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art icle=2591&context=etd_hon_theses, date accessed 27 January 2019. Smith, A. (2017) ‘Sense8 and a Radical Queer Future’, Medium May 6, 2017, https://medium.com/@AdamCommentism/sense8-and-a-radicalqueer-future-ca7f7f4fa1f9, date accessed 26 January 2019. Spence, J. (2014) Labours of Love: Affect, Fan Labour, and the Monetization of Fandom [M.A.-Thesis], University of Western Ontario: Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository, https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=3906&context=etd, date accessed 01 March 2019. Terranova, T. (2013 [2000]) ‘Free Labor’, in Scholz, T. (ed) Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory (New York: Routledge), 33–57. Toffler, A. (1980) The Third Wave: The Classic Study of Tomorrow (New York: Bantam). Van Doorn, N. (2017) ‘Platform Labor: on the Gendered and Racialized Exploitation of Low-Income Service Work in the ‘On-Demand’ Economy’, Information, Communication & Society 20 (6), 898–914.

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Watkins, M. (2010) ‘Desiring Recognition, Accumulating Affect’, in Gregg, M. and Seigworth, G. J. (eds) The Affect Theory Reader (Durham/London: Duke), 285–96. Zubernis, L. S. (2017) Family Don’t End with Blood. Cast and Fans on How Supernatural Has Changed Lives (Dallas: Benbella).

Filmography Sense8 (2015–2018), 2 Seasons, 24 Episodes, including 2 Film-Specials. Written and directed by Lilly Wachowski (S01), Lana Wachowski, J. Michael Straczynski. Distributed via Netflix. S01E04 ‘What’s Going On?’ Writ. by The Wachowskis/J. Michael Straczynski, dir. by Tom Tykwer. S02E09 ‘What Family Actually Means’. Writ. by Lana Wachowski/J. Michael Straczynski, dir. by Lana Wachowski.

PART II

Being and Doing Family

CHAPTER 6

‘Doing’ and ‘Displaying’ Family in Polymediatic Environments: Conceptual Tools for the Analysis of Teenagers’ Digital Practices Laura Merla and Kristina Papanikolaou

The diversification of contemporary family forms is challenging the standard, institutional model of the family, featuring a white, middleclass, heterosexual couple with two children (Morgan 2011), where family members are tied together by physical co-presence and the privately-owned house that contains them (Baldassar and Merla 2014). The recomposed, transnational (Baldassar et al. 2014), and multilocal (Duchêne-Lacroix 2013) family forms that have integrated the scientific and, increasingly, the everyday vocabulary have made particularly visible

L. Merla (B) · K. Papanikolaou Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] L. Merla University of Western Australia (UWA), Crawley, WA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Mikats et al. (eds.), Creative Families, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0_6

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the increased mobility that characterizes contemporary families and wider societies. They have raised awareness about the fact that physical copresence is not necessarily continuous but rather, co-exists with episodes of absence that can be temporary, prolonged or intermittent. Furthermore, as Carol Smart and Bren Neale had already outlined in 1999, some teenagers routinely spend time in ‘separated, yet connected’ households (Smart and Neale 1999, p. 67). In other words, teenagers and their relatives are connected by relationships that are today in large part mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs). ICTs profoundly influence everyday life and social relations (Lupton 2013; Sakr in this volume), by enhancing possibilities of maintaining ‘virtual proximity’ across space and time (Urry 2002; Sadowski and Eklund in this volume). The possibility to be simultaneously ‘here’ and ‘there’ allows for the development of a register of action that goes beyond localization or mobility (Torre 2009). It has been highlighted that ICTs play a key role in the maintenance of social relations across distance and national borders, including among friendships, family and intimate relations (Madianou 2012). More broadly, communication technologies such as the smartphone and the internet, and social networking websites have acquired a central role not only in the maintenance of teens’ family relations, but also in their wider sociability and friendship practices (Ito et al. 2013). Through their appropriation of the affordances created by these technological tools, teenagers navigate within ‘polymediatic’ environments (Madianou and Miller 2013) and they develop creative practices that bring forward their position as social actors that can, to various extents, exercise agency and influence on their own lives as well as on the lives of the people surrounding them, while being constrained by institutions such as the Family or the State (James and Prout 1997). These ‘everyday’ forms of creativity (Richards 2007) encompass the innovative practices developed by social actors in ‘the process of navigating decisions, dilemmas, resource procurement, and relationships in commonly occurring situations’ (Pachucki et al. 2010, p. 125), but happening in the wider context of the transformation and diversification of family forms and modes of functioning. The mobility turn (Urry and Grieco 2012) is intimately connected to the rise of the internet and social media, and these phenomena challenge the way social scientists conceptualize families and require them to redesign their conceptual tools. This chapter aims at contributing to this project by highlighting recent conceptual developments emerging from a

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dialogue between family and digital studies.1 We do this by articulating two important aspects of teenagers’ lives where ICTs play an important role: (1) the everyday management of presence and absence in family life, and the practices that support how family continues to be ‘done’ in this context; and (2) the construction and production of self in a context where family and peer relations are in a large part mediated by digital media. Throughout this chapter, we highlight the creative practices in which teens and their relatives engage in their everyday lives, and pay particular attention to the gendered dimensions of these processes. In order to do so, we first define the polymediatic environment generated by the digital revolution. Then, we discuss how families are ‘done’ in this context and examine the new forms of co-presence that have been identified in the literature by bringing together insights from transnational families and childhood studies. Third, we focus our attention on processes of identity construction in relation with teenagers’ uses of ICTs with their peer groups, and connect this discussion with practices that sustain a sense of family belonging through the concept of ‘displaying family’.2 Here, we approach socialization as operated through daily experiences and practices that represent important means of learning and transmission, and support the construction of social ties (Sirota 2006). Our conceptualization is in line with the work of William Corsaro, who sees socialization as ‘interpretive reproduction’. That is, a process involving the ‘innovative and creative aspects of children’s participation in society’ and their active contribution to cultural reproduction and change, but where children and teenagers are also ‘constrained by existing social structure and societal reproduction’ (Corsaro 2011, pp. 20–1).

Polymedia In this chapter, we define ICTs as the devices and tools ‘used to access, produce, consume, and exchange information in a digital form, especially for supporting social interactions’ in teenagers’ social networks (QuanHaase et al. 2018, p. 60). These include ‘computers (laptops and tablets), the internet (the web, e-mail, social media, social networking sites) and mobile phones’ (Barbosa Neves and Casimiro 2018, p. 7). The explosion, development and variety of these ICTs offer a new ‘polymediatic’ environment of communicative opportunities. The polymedia concept developed by Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller (2013)

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was originally based on ethnographic fieldwork among transnational families of Filipino migrant mothers working in the UK. Both researchers were interested in understanding how these mothers maintained close relationships with their so-called ‘left-behind’ children and close relatives, and found that smartphones played a key role in this regard. In addition, they observed that new ICTs do not simply replace older channels and modes of communication like letters or phone calls, but rather form together an ‘environment of affordances’ (Madianou and Miller 2013, p. 180) where users can choose to exploit each medium differently and in combination. ICTs thus form an environment of polymedia, offering individuals a large range of applications (Skype, WhatsApp, etc.), devices (smartphone, laptop, etc.) and communication modalities (text, audiovisual, voice recording, etc.). People can use these to communicate and share emotions, needs or desires, depending on the specific relation they have with their interlocutor, the location where the communication takes place, or the content they wish to share. This follows the idea that mediated communication should be approached by questioning ‘[w]hat to communicate about as well as the modes of communication and the ways in which different technological devices and infrastructures are appropriated (or not)’ (Jansson 2015, p. 35; original emphasis). Furthermore, smartphones make this integrated environment of affordances particularly salient, as they materialize the convergence of mobile phones and personal computing. They can be seen as a polymedia itself (Madianou 2014). Madianou emphasizes that the fluidity, accessibility and portability of smartphones intensify the practices of switching between media platforms to express emotions or to manage relationships. Smartphones further strengthen what Danah Boyd called an ‘always-on lifestyle’ (Boyd 2014) to describe the constant connection we live in, and which is especially important in the everyday lived experiences of the younger generation. According to the UNICEF (2017), 71% of children worldwide aged 13 to 17 are indeed online. This proportion is higher in countries in the Global North, including the EU where only 4% of children at this age are not online (as compared to 60% of African youth). Several studies further attest to the widespread penetration and use of smartphones among teenagers in the EU and the US. The Net Children Go Mobile survey, conducted in 2013–2014 with approximately 3,500 respondents aged 9 to 16 years in seven European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania and the United Kingdom), put forth that 48% of

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children owned their own smartphone, a proportion ranging from 26% in Romania to 84% in Denmark. No significant gender differences in ownership were observed. On average, 41% said they used their smartphone several times per day or at least every day to go online. The study also showed that the probability of children owning a smartphone increased by 58% with each year of age (Mascheroni and Olafsson 2016).3 In the US in 2013, 88% of teenagers aged 13 to 17 owned or had access to a mobile phone and 91% accessed the internet on mobile phones, tablets and other mobile devices at least occasionally (Lenhart 2015). As we will further discuss in this chapter, the opportunities provided by the polymediatic environment in which teenagers navigate offer them the possibility to actively take part in everyday family practices (‘doing family’). This environment also contributes to shaping a ‘connected presence’, which is, according to Christian Licoppe, the base of the interpersonal relational attachments of our time (Licoppe 2012). Finally, polymedia is also involved in teenagers’ identity construction, which in turn influences the way they enact, experience and display their interpersonal relationships (‘displaying family’).

‘Doing Family’ and Co-presence in Polymediatic Environments By stating that young people are nowadays living in a condition of ‘autonomy without independence’, François de Singly (2006) and Olivier Galland (2011) question the relationships they maintain with significant others who participate in their construction of self and of their world views. Teenagers build their identities in a plurality of ways, through a fragmented puzzle of (sometimes contradictory) norms and references, social ties, educational relations with adults, and through processes that involve sharing and re-interpreting these different experiences within their peer group (Nunes de Almeida 2006). It is in these various contexts of life and through a multitude of roles, skills, knowledge, and perceptions that contemporary teenagers develop meaningful emotional ties (Nunes de Almeida 2006, pp. 120–1). ICTs play an important role in maintaining frequent and/or ritual contacts that create family routines that transcend physical absence and nourish a sense of belonging (Duchêne-Lacroix 2013, p. 20). Richard Ling’s work demonstrates that the microscopic ritualistic exchanges that mobile phones allow to produce, participate in the creation of ‘bounded

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solidarity’ or social cohesion in the intimate sphere (family members and friends) (Ling 2008). These family practices lie at the heart of David Morgan’s (1996, 2004, 2011) seminal concept of ‘doing family’. In his perspective, families are defined by what they do, rather than by what they are. Instead of an institution, family is conceptualized as a facet of social life, characterized by fluidity and diversity, and where the multidimensional practices of family members are intertwined. Thus, the practices that teenagers develop to communicate and stay connected with their parents, (step) siblings, grandparents or others, throughout the different spaces they inhabit, form an integral part of how family is ‘done’. If the desire, need (and obligation) to be connected varies from one person to another, according to their gender, age, occupation, position in the family and the history of their family relations (see for instance Neustaedter et al. 2013), the importance of understanding ‘family connections’ is not just about communication issues between each member of the family. It is also about identifying the creative practices they develop to coordinate and organize family life, to share experiences and feelings of their daily lives, to develop new routines, to negotiate the fact of ‘being together’ or ‘being separated’, and to maintain different degrees of intimacy to feel close to each other. At the same time, virtual contacts can also help to maintain remote links with the extended family, to be aware of major changes in their lives, to share good and bad news, and so on. These concrete, creative ways of ‘dealing with life’s daily rhythms and realities’ (Eisler et al. 2016, p. 17) thus participate in the way family members, including teenagers, adapt to, and coordinate their family lives. Moving Beyond Physical Co-presence Physical co-presence has largely been considered as the bedrock of family relationships (Baldassar and Merla 2014). But what happens when this physical co-presence becomes intermittent? And how do we bring ICTs into this picture? The digital revolution has actually led a number of social science researchers to question and re-visit the notion of co-presence, which was until then mainly conceived as physical and embodied. John Urry played a leading role in this regard. In a paper entitled ‘Mobility and Proximity’ (Urry 2002), he identified four forms of travel that involved various

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forms of co-presence: (1) corporeal travel that involves the movement of bodies and creates physical and immediate co-presence, which can also be occasional and intermittent; (2) the physical movement of objects; (3) imaginative travel which consists of being transported elsewhere through images of places and people and creates imagined forms of co-presence; and (4) virtual travel, a form of travel through the internet that transcends the physical, as well as geographical and social distance, and generates virtual co-presence (Urry 2002, p. 256). He calls for a further investigation of the sociabilities involved in these varied forms of co-presence, and in their articulation. Furthermore, he does not conceive face-to-face corporeal co-presence and virtual co-presence as mutually exclusive but, rather, as complementing each other, particularly in situations of intermittent co-presence, which represent in his view an important part of contemporary sociality. This notion that virtual and physical forms of co-presence combine to create a sense of continuity of relationships that transcend space and time was further supported by Licoppe. He developed the notion of ‘connected relationships’, sustained by communication technologies, where ‘the (physically) absent partly renders himself or herself present by multiplying mediated communication gestures up to the point where co-present interactions and mediated communication seem woven in a seamless web’ (Licoppe 2004, p. 135). Over the past decade, transnational family studies have been particularly critical in providing further elaborations on the identification, specificities and inter-twining of various forms of co-presence (Baldassar et al. 2014; Baldassar et al. 2016). This is largely related to the focus of this body of literature on the practices that sustain the maintenance of familyhood across national borders, and that (increasingly) heavily rely on the use of communication technologies. In her study of care relationships between migrants and their elderly kin ‘back home’, Loretta Baldassar (2008, 2016) identifies four forms of co-presence that largely echo Urry’s seminal work: physical co-presence, virtual co-presence, imagined copresence (also included here are acts that do not rely on the use of ICTs, such as remembering family in prayers), and co-presence by proxy—a form not coined as such by Urry, but that can be associated with the physical movement of objects in his typology of forms of travel. Co-presence by proxy can be attained through the exchange of photos, postcards, gifts, by objects in the home that represent the absent-other (a phone,

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a computer) or by visiting persons who act on behalf of physically distant relatives. These various forms of co-presence are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, in the absence of physical contact, members of transnational families sometimes engage in creative practices that blur the distinction between forms of co-presence. For instance, Zoe Robertson et al. (2016) explain that it has become common practice among young Karen refugees from families dispersed in refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border and in Melbourne, to [T]ake digital images of themselves and their family members and repurpose them to create various imagined scenes and scenarios. These re-posed images are kept as private photographic objects as well as uploaded and circulated among friend and kinship networks via social media platforms such as Facebook. (Robertson et al. 2016, p. 226)

By crafting with image manipulation software, fictive photographs of themselves surrounded by their parents in a room or at key events such as their graduation ceremony; by displaying them in their rooms; and by sharing them with their dispersed relatives, these young people create connected forms of co-presence that are at the same time digital, imagined and embodied in material objects representing the absent others. Virtual co-presence is also multi-faceted. Baldassar indeed later subdivided virtual co-presence into three subtypes: (1) ‘live or real time’, ‘streaming’ and ‘immediate’ virtual co-presence through mediums such as Skype and FaceTime, and which provide a sense of ‘being there all together in the moment’; (2) ‘active’, ‘intermediate’, ‘selective’ or ‘discretionary’ co-presence generated by texting through SMS or WhatsApp, where individuals can decide when they will read and reply to messages and which can ‘provide a strong sense that kin and friends are “there for you”’; and (3) ‘passive’, ‘ambient’ or ‘continuous ‘co-presence, also created by discretionary forms of co-presence, and that create a sense of continuous presence, but in the background (Baldassar 2016, p. 153). ‘Ambient’ forms of co-presence are also pinned down by Madianou, who defines them as ‘the peripheral, yet intense, awareness of distant others made possible through the ubiquity and affordances of polymedia environments’ (Madianou 2016, p. 16). Ambient forms of co-presence provide information on daily activities without necessarily involving a conscious action or acknowledgement by the person herself, as posts

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can be re-posted and viewed by unexpected people. The locative function linked to a user’s status update can provide important cues about a person’s life, as statuses and posts are automatically associated with a specific geographical place (Madianou 2016, p. 6). These various forms of co-presence identified by Baldassar and Madianou can combine in what Michaela Nedelcu and Malika Wyss call ‘omnipresent co-presence’ (Nedelcu and Wyss 2016, p. 210), especially when computers or smartphones are turned on and connected all day, giving people the possibility to interact at any moment. The conjunction of mobile phones and news feeds on social networking sites, in particular, creates an ‘always-on’ lifestyle (Boyd 2012). This becomes an integral part of teens socialization and encourages them to create a repertoire for the daily maintenance of social relationships that relies, among others, on their capacity to navigate between various forms and mediums not only of communication, but also of co-presences. This is done inside a polymediatic environment where the choice of the means of communication is often as meaningful as the message itself. If, as Wellman reminds us, digital media ‘have empowered family members with the ability to go their separate ways while at the same time keeping them more connected’ (Wellman 2018, p. xix), this constant connectivity carries consequences that can be resented by teens, as opportunities for parental surveillance and control increase (Madianou 2016). Little research on ICT-based forms of co-presence has been conducted on teenagers and their own experiences. The transnational families literature has mainly taken adults’ experiences as their main focus, including in studies of transnational mothering (Parreñas 2005; Madianou 2012), intergenerational relations (Wilding 2006; Baldassar 2008); or transnational grandparenting (Nedelcu 2017). In addition, there is a surprising scarcity of gendered analyses of new forms of co-presence in this literature. Although it recognizes the importance of factors such as gender (and also, among others, class, ethnicity, age) in the access and uses of media environments (Baldassar 2016), it has mainly failed so far to apply a gender lens to the dynamics of co-presence, even though this dimension takes an important place in research on transnational family dynamics and long-distance care relationships. Research in this area, however, suggests that ICTs have a transformative potential for the gendered division of roles and tasks in the family. For instance, kin-keeping (or the work of facilitating and maintaining family relations), a task traditionally defined as feminine, tends to be performed mainly by women in transnational

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families (see for instance, Zontini and Reynolds 2007; Merla 2012). But, as Loretta Baldassar, Majella Kilkey, Laura Merla and Raelene Wilding note, Interestingly, new technologies have tended to increase the direct role and engagement of both men and younger generations in transnational family care exchanges in part because of their general tendency to be more familiar and proficient at using them. […] it is not uncommon for fathers and sons, as well as grandchildren and cousins, to be directly involved in setting up the e-mail and Skype systems, coordinating and managing their use, and maintaining their upkeep’. (Baldassar et al. 2014, pp. 166–7)

The topic of teenagers’ experiences of polymediatic environments and new forms of co-presence is only recently emerging in research that combines childhood and digital media studies. In this literature, the focus has not been placed on co-presence itself, but rather on teens’ digital practices in the context of family life, and the active role these young people play in this context. Indeed, as Amanda du Preez (2018) notes, several researchers highlight the active role played by teenagers in managing their online activity. If teenagers often do not dare to refuse invitations to befriend their parents on Facebook because of the power relation that ties them, they creatively engage in a series of activities to manage and control the information available to them. This includes changing their privacy settings (Child and Westermann 2013), using ‘prison code’ or ‘subliminal tweeting or subtweeting’ (Agger 2014 and Boyd 2014, cited by du Preez 2018) to evade parental tracking online. For instance, this translates into the use of acronyms or emoticons that are unfamiliar to adults, or scheduling late-night interactions when parents are offline. Research also highlights that the pre-existing quality of relationships (level of conflicts, stability and strength of ties) plays an important role in determining the extent to which online communication between parents and children can be satisfying and meaningful, and/or experienced as a form of surveillance and control (du Preez 2018, p. 88; Madianou 2016). The work of Mizuko Ito et al. (2013) is also of particular relevance here. In their typology of modes of participation with ‘new’ media, based on ethnographic fieldwork with US teenagers, ‘hanging out’ offers interesting similarities with the new forms of co-presence we have discussed so far. Motivated by the desire to maintain connections with their friends, teenagers mobilize new media (SNS profiles, instant messaging, phone

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conversations, and so on) ‘to construct spaces for co-presence where they can engage in ongoing, lightweight social contact that moves fluidly between online and offline contact’ (Ito et al. 2013, p. 38). This contact can take the form of ‘ambient virtual co-presence’ (checking profile updates) or of ‘sustained and direct conversation’ (by phone call or chat) (Ito et al. 2013, p. 39). A survey conducted in 2018 with 1600 adolescents in Wallonia and Brussels (Belgium)4 reveals that teens also mobilize a large series of platforms to communicate with their family members. Facebook and WhatsApp/Skype/FaceTime5 are the two most popular types of platforms among both boys and girls. But the study shows that Snapchat (a photo and video messaging app), in particular, is more used by girls than boys to communicate with relatives, whereas chat through multi-player online gaming is almost exclusively used by boys. In addition, nearly 50% of all girls indicated that their parents did not allow them to engage in multi-player online gaming or spend time in virtual worlds, whereas this was the case for only nearly 25% of all male respondents. Interestingly, these two environments support different types of virtual co-presences in Baldassar’s typology: rather active, selective and discretionary in the case of Snapchat, and live and immediate in the case of online gaming platforms. As Merla argues elsewhere, these two platforms also participate in the reproduction of stereotypical gender norms and practices (Merla 2018). Snapchat is based on ‘performative showing off’ of one’s face and body, in a creative environment where users customize their pictures and videos with ‘funny’ filters and lenses. This takes place in a context of temporal fastness and ephemerality, and where girls, in particular, are being exposed to a high risk of negative gossiping and judgement based on their physical appearance (Charteris and Gregory 2020; Handyside and Ringrose 2017). On the other hand, online gaming has been consistently described as a site for the reproduction of patriarchal, hegemonic masculinities based on violence and aggression (see for instance Disalvo 2016).6 Yet, online video gaming is an important venue for parent–child interactions in families, especially for fathers who have been shown to invest this type of family time much more than mothers (see for instance Horst 2013). Another study confirms this trend, while emphasizing that mothers and daughters who engage in those activities do it mainly in the presence of males rather than on their own (Siyahhan and Gee 2016).

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When they maintain virtual forms of co-presence with their relatives, teenagers engage with online platforms that also support their construction of self as individuals, as family members and as community members. This brings us to the next section of this chapter, where we discuss in more detail digitally mediated constructions and displays of self in adolescence.

ICTs and the Construction of ‘Self’ During the Adolescence Identity is a paradoxical concept (Dubar 2005): it is defined, on the one hand, by what makes people different from each other (identity is something that we possess and that distinguishes us from others), and on the other hand, it is also based on the definition of similarities with others, and thus implies relationships and feelings of belonging to, families, social groups or broader collectives. Identity is therefore both difference, distancing and common belonging. Anthony Giddens (1991) sees identity as fluid and malleable, and points out the need for modern individuals to be ‘self-reflexive’ about the construction of their own identities: What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity - and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behavior. (Giddens 1991, p. 70)

The self becomes a ‘project’ where people create, explain, stage their ‘biographical narratives’ and choose a ‘lifestyle’ to maintain a sustainable and coherent identity (Giddens 1991). Identity can also be understood as a social process of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ through ongoing individual and collective interactions as well as negotiations with other people. Richard Jenkins sees social identity as a framework of multiple identifications through biological, social, cultural and institutional relationships (Jenkins 2014). Zigmund Bauman also highlights the fluidity of identity in a fragmented world, where identity is an almost infinitely negotiable process (Bauman 2004). In this perspective, adolescence represents a crucial and precarious period for identity formation. Young people experience an ‘identity crisis’ as they are engaged in self-reflection and self-definition as individuals,

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while they also seek recognition by others (Erikson 1994). They experiment different hypothetical identities in a process where social contexts and interpersonal relationships play a central role (Erikson 1994). For teenagers, identity is about achieving a self that makes sense across different social contexts (Berkonzy 2003) in order to provide ‘a basis for making stable, coherent and consistent choices’ (Baumeister 1993, p. 182). Several factors and influences come at play during this period of transition, including parental models, friendships with peers and wider interactions. Before the digital age, family and school environments were considered as the primary spheres for the construction of teenage identities, but this is challenged today by our ‘culture of connectivity’ (Van Dijck 2013). ICTs contribute to an increased diversity of experiences and practices, in a context where social connections are in addition fragmented through time and space (Elliot and Urry 2010). Digital media technologies have indeed created new social contexts where young people interact with each other through multiple systems (see for instance Shifflet-Chila et al. 2016). Several scholars consider that these contexts offer teenagers the possibility to gain ‘relational autonomy’ (Metton-Gayon 2009) and intimacy (Balleys 2017) in a transition phase where they need to distance themselves from their parents. Through ICTs, teenagers access and create new ways of producing and displaying to adults and peers the boundaries that shape their identities, including in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. ICTs as a New Source of Identity Construction? It is largely accepted now that social networking and video-sharing sites, instant messaging platforms, internet and virtual worlds have achieved an expressive dimension that provides young people symbolic resources to construct, and experience their own identities (Buckingham 2008). The smartphone in particular is seen as a tool of ‘identity exploration’ (Allard 2014, p. 141) that accompanies teenagers in their everyday practices and routines. Teenagers tend to develop a strong emotional attachment to the presence of this object because of the amount of intimate materials and memories it contains in the form of pictures, videos, text messages or music (Lachance 2013). Parents and peers do continue to play an influential role in developing young people’s sense of identity (Davis 2013), but online interactions

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also create new relationships outside their family and immediate community. Scholars from media and communication studies tend to maintain that the internet profoundly changes the way that teenagers construct their identity, opening them almost unlimited windows to the world. For David Buckingham, technology creates ‘new styles of communication and interaction’, ‘new means for constructing community’, ‘new forms of literacy’, ‘new ways of forming identity’ and ‘new forms of personhood’ (Buckingham 2008, p. 14). For him, ‘by offering communication with different aspects of the self, it enables young people to relate the world to others in more powerful ways’ (Buckingham 2008, p. 14). According to this vision, the new opportunities offered by digital media lead to new modes of socialization and can expose teenagers to alternative models, due to the enlarged access to a diversity of information, opinions, lifestyles they enable, from anywhere in the world. Digital media therefore seem to become crucial in processes of identity development, individuation and autonomy, to the point that they allow teens to ‘create identities that are much less similar to their families of origin and close community than ever before’ (Shifflet-Chila et al. 2016, p. 367). However, this vision of the impact of ICTs on social relations and socialization needs nuance. Sociological research has shown that teenagers communicate and interact online first and mainly with the people they already know (Livingstone 2008; Balleys 2017). In her longitudinal study of American teenagers, Boyd argues in addition that the young people of today are not so different than the past generation: they engage in similar activities, and have similar goals, wishes, values and needs. If they strive for more freedom and want to hangout and socialize outside the adults’ supervision and control, for her, social media do not profoundly change social relations. But they provide teenagers with new avenues to do these things and express themselves in creative ways (Boyd 2014). In this line of thought, Claire Balleys proposes to understand ICTs in a relational dynamic, offering spaces of recognition where teenagers stay connected with peers, and share intimacy and complicity. According to her, smartphone uses support processes of autonomy in adolescence. She emphasizes how teenagers document and stage themselves in social media through sociability practices in order to reinforce close friendships or love relationships. On communication platforms like Facebook, the purpose for young people is to develop and valorize intimacy as a resource of prestige and maturity, through their capacity to establish and maintain strong ties with their peers. However, the validation of their online publications

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by the audience of their peers is also crucial. These marks of legitimation strongly depend on the popularity of the teenager in his/her everyday life spheres of interaction, particularly at school (Balleys 2015). Furthermore, this staging of their intimacy helps them manage their social and symbolic capital and valorizes a ‘numerical individuality’ through a variety of ‘self-expressions’ (Granjon 2011), something particularly important in a period where teenagers try to shape an identity that is both unique and socially conform (de Singly 2006). Teenagers indeed increasingly display their different lifestyles and identities in construction on social networking sites. These sites offer them many possibilities to choose how to appear and stage themselves. They represent spaces in which identity is ‘enacted, edited, and made visible’ (Robards and Lincoln 2017, p. 2). Good draws an interesting parallel between activities on Facebook and scrapbooking, which she both sees as spaces where users post and create ‘personal media assemblages’, that is, ‘individualized collections of media fragments both original and appropriated, including notes, messages, photographs, symbolic tokens, and snippets of meaningful items’ (Good 2013, 559). Facebook is also a ‘personal media archive’ (Good 2013, p. 560) of social activities, interactions, mediated communication, expression of personal taste and identity performance. But social networking sites are highly gendered. As we noted earlier in our discussion of Snapchat and online video games, social media capture, reflect and produce gender (Marwick 2013). In addition, for teenagers, ‘gender is […] a central dimension in the modes of presentation and selfdefinition, particularly in social media’ (Balleys 2017, p. 39). Research does indicate that online profile customizations and online video performance are highly gender-stereotyped (Livingstone 2008; Balleys 2017). For Claire Balleys (2017), video performance on YouTube indeed exacerbates highly heteronormative gender-based attitudes and self-assertions, in the sense that they (re)produce a binary vision of gender based on the naturalization of differences between men and women. In addition, girls’ performance of femininity largely relies on physical considerations enhancing body control and conformity to stereotypical representations of women, while boys focus more on sexual desire and its manifestations, as well as emphasize stereotypical expectations about ‘desirable’ girls. Other studies, however, suggest that social media can also provide a safe space for youth’s exploration of alternative masculinities and femininities. Leanna Lucero (2017), for instance, shows that digital spaces like

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Facebook allow minoritized LGBTQ youth to explore issues of gender and sexuality, whereas Sue Jacksons’ (2018) research on youth and digital feminism highlights how teenage girls use social media perceived as safe and supportive—in this case, closed Facebook groups—to denounce and challenge gender-based injustices. The YouTube videos crafted by teenagers can be considered as forms of everyday creativities that ‘bring together at least one active human mind, and the material or digital world, in the activity of making something which is novel in that context’7 (Gauntlett 2011, p. 76, emphasis added). Creativity however does not necessarily involve a rejection of dominant ideologies and normative models, as in the case of LGBTQ minorities or young feminists. Indeed, [S]tudies of creativity reveal tensions between conformity and individuation in social interaction, between conventions and novelty […] individuals must negotiate a balance between distinctiveness and individuation and adaptation to their social context—including roles, obligations, norms, and conventions. (Patchuki et al. 2010, pp. 127, 135)

Beyond practices and discourses based on a quest of individuality, social media participate in the creation and validation of teenagers’ sense of belonging and conformity to the common (mainstream or alternative) gender identity of their (online) community. Displaying Family Online Building, sustaining and displaying strong ties with peers is fundamental in the way teenagers socialize and locate themselves outside the family sphere (Metton-Gayon 2009). We have seen that social media represent for teenagers a channel to test and portray their identities and, as such, also represent a place where they negotiate together their relational strategies, in a process of valorization and affirmation of community belonging. However, the diversification of family forms and the increasing experience of distance, separation and intermittent co-presence create a context where it becomes important for teenagers to portray their families online, in order to maintain feelings of belonging and family connections, as well as to being recognized as members of a kin group.

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This idea is central to ‘displaying family’, a concept theorized by Janet Finch (2007) as a corollary of ‘doing family’. In contemporary societies, family life must not only be ‘done’, it also needs to be ‘seen to be done’ in order to be recognized as such. By displaying their family, people send the message that ‘This is my family and it works’ (Finch 2007, p. 67) in order to feel recognized as belonging to a ‘legitimate’ family, whatever its form—a recognition that is tightly connected to the current diversification of family forms and whom people today consider as ‘family’. Practices must indeed be admitted as ‘family practices’ by family members but also by the external environment. Therefore, the audience plays a crucial role in the successful recognition of a displayed activity. Posting a picture of themselves in a restaurant with their mother, her new partner and his children, tagging it as a ‘family dinner’, and receiving likes from relatives and friends; creating and/or participating in a ‘family’ group on Facebook; sharing a video featuring themselves with children referred to as ‘quasi-siblings’, are a few examples of the way teenagers can display their ‘family’ and receive feedback on, and confirmation of their family belonging. Young Karen refugees’ fictive photographs we mentioned earlier (Robertson et al. 2016) do not only sustain nonbodily forms of co-presence. They are also used to ‘display’ family online. Indeed, they send the message that ‘this is my family’, and the reactions they trigger confirm and nourish feelings of belonging and togetherness in spite of the distance that separates its members. As reflexive selves, young people express their agency through a variety of choices in their uses of digital media and through the creative practices they display online. In doing so, they do not act in isolation but rather, in the framework of co- and inter-dependent relationships with their ‘relatives’ and their peers.

Conclusion In this chapter, we articulated a series of concepts that can, in our view, constitute interesting tools for the study of teenagers’ creative digital practices in the family sphere. By ‘hanging out’ online and engaging in innovative forms of co-presence with their relatives and friends, by actively displaying their distancing from, and belonging to a ‘family’, by asserting both their autonomy and conformity in online productions, teenagers exercise agency in creative ways. The everyday forms of creativity in polymediatic environments that we presented here include both developing

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and managing new forms of co-presence and communication to deal with and negotiate everyday life, and the making and crafting of virtual productions and media assemblages. We showed that these virtual artefacts sustain a sense of identity and belonging in an ongoing process of display/performance of self and (in)validation by online communities. As we have highlighted, teenagers’ relations with their relatives and their peers can hardly be approached separately. This is increasingly true in a polymediatic context where teens can simultaneously be ‘with’ their parents and ‘with’ their friends, regardless of the actual material place where they stand. As Madeleine Leonard (2015) notes, teen’s agency is located at the intersection of their relationships with their parents and the array of peer relationships where teenagers adapt, discuss and sometimes reject the adult world through their interactions with each other. In doing so, they ‘collectively produce their own peer worlds and culture’ (Corsaro 2011, p. 27). These worlds are not separated but interrelated, as they feed into each other. Teenagers are located in asymmetrical positions that make them ‘differently equal’ (Moosa-Mitha 2005) but they are at the same time co-constructors of intergenerational relationships and active contributors to everyday life practices. In that perspective, young people actively modulate the level of intimacy they engage in with specific actors. Sonia Livingstone (2008) emphasizes that many teenagers choose to express their personal experiences on social networks in a reflexive way, deciding what to say or not about their selves. Their online activities can therefore be understood as ‘an agentic act to protect their identity and their spaces of intimacy’ (Livingstone 2008, p. 409). At this stage, the question of how people, and specifically teenagers, navigate polymediatic environments in gendered ways to ‘do’ family and maintain various forms of co-presence remains largely open. The studies we mentioned in this chapter seem to confirm that gendered cultures shape and constrain the way boys and girls, and mothers and fathers appropriate ICTs, influencing the mediums they use, their communication styles, as well as the types of elements that are considered as appropriate for girls or boys to ‘display’ online. More attention has been paid to gender in relation with online communities and how these communities participate in teens’ gender socialization. This literature seems to confirm that the availability of ICTs does not profoundly change gender norms but, rather, tends to support patriarchal constructions of masculinities and femininities in adolescence. But only little research

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has approached the various sub-cultures that are present in the virtual world and how these might support the construction and validation of alternative femininities and masculinities. There is thus an urgent need for research that applies a gendered lens to family everyday practices, processes of identity construction and family display in polymediatic environments. More broadly, research on how teens ‘do’ and ‘display’ family in polymediatic environments is only at its very beginnings. Their practices are still largely invisible in the bodies of literature that focus on family relations in contexts of mobility (such as transnational families) and, more broadly, in family sociology. Childhood and digital studies have tended to focus on digitally mediatized peer relation, leaving family dynamics mostly untouched. This chapter advocates for research on teenagers and family relations in the digital era that articulates concepts like polymedia, virtual co-presence, and displaying family. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Dr Sarah Murru (University of Louvain) for editing proofreading this chapter.

Notes 1. This chapter is informed by the theoretical framework that we are currently constructing in the context of ‘MobileKids’, an ERC Starting Grant project on children aged 10 to 16 who are living in physically shared custody arrangements, thus alternating periods of residence between their fathers’ and mothers’ homes. One of our key hypothesis is that, for children aged 13 to 16 in our project (which we will call ‘teenagers’ or ‘teens’ in this chapter), the smartphone represents (1) an important tool to maintain family relations and manage their daily lives (‘doing family’), and (2) a symbolic resource for the ‘production of self’ and for ‘displaying family’— in other words, a symbolic resource of mediatized identity construction which leads to an almost permanent multimodal connectedness (Schroeder 2010). See www.mobilekids.eu. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 676868. This chapter reflects only the authors’ view. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. 2. Jana Mikats (in this volume) engages the concept of ‘displaying family’ through social media in the context of a family with young children.

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3. A survey conducted in 2016 in French-speaking Belgium with 1,600 adolescents aged between 12 and 18 confirms this trend: nearly 96% of respondents owned a smartphone and reported using it on average around four hours per day (Pateson 2016). 4. See: https://uclouvain.be/fr/chercher/cirfase/resultats-pratiques-numeri ques-des-adolescent-e-s-en-fwb.html. The Leuven/Louvain Adolescents Survey (LAdS) was collaboratively designed in 2017 by a team of researchers from the Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Families and Sexualities (CIRFASE) at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) under the supervision of Laura Merla and Jacques Marquet, and from the LAGO and IMS teams of the University of Leuven (KULeuven) under the supervision of Koenraad Matthijs and Leen D’Haenens. The Brussels-Wallonia survey was conducted in 23 secondary schools and includes a balanced number of boys and girls aged between 11 and 19, with varied socioeconomic profiles, as attested by the distribution of respondents along the four main educational tracks (general, professional, technical and artistic). 5. These mediums are used by 68% and 63% of the respondents, respectively. 6. If the number of female users is increasing, research shows that women and girls tend to privilege social games on mobile devices while men and boys specialize in multi-player games based on violence and/or competition, and first-person shooter games (Siyahhan and Gee 2016). 7. In his original definition, David Gauntlett adds that everyday creativity ‘is a process which evokes a feeling of joy’ (Gauntlett 2011, p. 76). However, we have preferred not to include this reference to joy in our chapter. It is indeed difficult to assess how teenagers feel when creating and posting virtual artefacts, particularly when this dimension is not investigated or documented in the studies we build on.

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Quan-Haase, A., Wang, H., Wellman, B. et al. (2018) ‘Weaving Family Connections On- and Offline: The Turn to Networked Individualism’, in Barbosa Neves, B. and Casimiro. C (eds) Connecting Families? Information and Communication Technologies, Generations, and the Life Course (Bristol: Policy Press), pp. 57–77. Richards, R. (2007) ‘Everyday Creativity: Our Hidden Potential’, in Richards, R. (ed) Everyday Creativity and New Views of Human Nature (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association), pp. 25–54. Robards, B. and Lincoln, S. (2017) ‘Uncovering Longitudinal Life Narratives: Scrolling Back on Facebook’, Qualitative Research, 17 (6), 715–30. Robertson, Z., Wilding, R. and Gifford, S. (2016) ‘Mediating the Family Imaginary: Young People Negotiating Absence in Transnational Refugee Families’, Global Networks, 16, 219–36. Shifflet-Chila, E. D., Harold, R. D., Fitton, V. A. and Ahmedani, B. K. (2016) ‘Adolescent and Family Development: Autonomy and Identity in the Digital Age’, Children and Youth Services Review, 70, 364–68. Sirota, R. (2006) ‘Prendre au Sérieux un Rite de l’Enfance: l’Anniversaire’, in Sirota, R. (ed) Eléments pour une Sociologie de l’Enfance (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes), pp. 51–59. Siyahhan, S. and Gee, E. (2016) ‘Understanding Gaming and Gender within the Everyday Lives of Mexican—American Family Homes’, in Kafai, Y. B., Richard, G. T. and Tynes, B. M. (eds) Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Designs in Gaming (Pittsburgh: ETC Press), pp. 92–104. Smart, C. and Neale, B. (1999) Family Fragments? (Polity Press: Cambridge). Torre, A. (2009) ‘Retour sur la Notion de Proximité Géographique’, Géographie, Economie, Société, 11, 63–75. UNICEF (2017) The State of the World’s Children 2017: Children in a Digital World (New York: UNICEF). Urry, J. (2002) ‘Mobility and Proximity’, Sociology, 36, 255–74. Urry, J. and Grieco, M. (2012) ‘Introduction: Introducing the Mobilities Turn’, in Urry, J. and Grieco, M. (eds) Mobilities: New Perspectives on Transport and Society (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. pp. 1–2. van Dijck, J. (2013) The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Wellman, B. (2018) ‘Foreword: The Family Has Become a Network’, in Barbosa Neves, B. and Casimiro, C. (eds) Connecting Families? Information and Communication Technologies, Generations, and the Life Course (Bristol: Polity Press), pp. xv–xx. Wilding, R. (2006) ‘Virtual Intimacies? Families Communicating Across Transnational Contexts’, Global Networks, 6 (2), 125–42.

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CHAPTER 7

Creative Forms of Family Intimacy: Managing Family Bonds Across Distances Helga Sadowski and Lina Eklund

Contemporary family life is often marked by the struggle to find quality time for family members between obligations from work, school, and chores. Another complication is that—mainly due to work and educational circumstances—spatial distances between family members grow larger, which makes it harder to meet regularly. For example, in Sweden as in other western countries, the growth of tertiary education enrolment since the 1980s has increased the distance between adult children and their parents (Chudnovskaya and Kolk 2017). Lack of time as well as space for maintaining family closeness is a contemporary challenge for many, concretely and dramatically actualized in many parts of the world during the lock-down and physical distancing of the COVID-19 pandemic. While lack of time and opportunity to meet has been said

H. Sadowski (B) · L. Eklund Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] L. Eklund e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Mikats et al. (eds.), Creative Families, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0_7

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to indicate a potential weakening of the importance of family bonds, research has rather shown that families are as important for intimate life and connections between individuals as ever (Silva and Smarth 2004). Over the course of the twentieth century, the boundaries of what makes a western family have loosened. From a god-made or economic unit, it turned into a bond much more characterized by emotional affinity (Giddens 1992). Intimacy now plays an extraordinarily crucial role for family cohesion. At the same time, the nature of intimacy is becoming more complex. Traditional understandings of intimacy as requiring spatial closeness, face-to-face interactions, or physical touch have been contested (Berlant 1998) and intimacy can now take place with the help of different media channels. In order to understand the interplay of intimacy, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and family cohesion, we engage the notion of doing intimate family work in this chapter. This notion firstly comes from drawing on doing family as Michaela Schier and Karin Jurczyk (2008) defined it. ‘Doing family’ for them entails practical and symbolic acts that constitute the family as a cohesive group, shape the family’s self-definition, and help families to enact their being a family. Particularly in digital contexts, those finely tuned social interactions pose as increasingly challenging activities for family members. Secondly, we draw on Di Leonardo’s notion of ‘kinwork’ (1987), which describes the particular everyday tasks that are employed to sustain family intimacy, such as remembering relatives’ birthdays, sending holiday cards, and telephoning regularly. Kinwork was traditionally assigned to women and Di Leonardo (1987) emphasizes how this kind of work has habitually been undervalued or rendered invisible. As we follow David Morgan in considering ‘family’ as a set of flexible social practices instead of static entities (Morgan 1996), we chose not to define what family is in this empirical interview study but asked our informants to define what family meant to them. What they mentioned were the relationships to parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, and uncles, but also parents-in-law, siblings-in-law, and sometimes friends. Correspondingly, we interviewed grandparents, parents, children, and siblings, depending on the structure of the family in question, and who agreed to take part in the study. We focus on Swedish families, which here mean families who considered themselves to be Swedes and mainly spoke Swedish at home. Some family members lived in Sweden, some in the U.S., and all had family members spread out geographically.

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Swedish family structure is typically characterized by a dual-earner, separate taxation system, with a high acceptance of alternative family forms such as cohabitation without marriage and relatively equal parenting opportunities for (separated) mothers and fathers (OhlssonWijk et al. 2017). A strong state supports individuals in their selffulfillment projects by providing, e.g. social insurance, elder care, statesponsored pre-school, and free education; thereby freeing individuals from many traditional family obligations. Thus supporting a strong sense of individualism. Sweden and other Scandinavian countries have been considered forerunners when it comes to family transformations; for example, they were the first to show declining levels of childbirths and marriage and increasing levels of divorce throughout the 1960s and 1970s (Ohlsson-Wijk et al. 2017). However, fertility rates have steadily gone up again since the 1980s, and today divorce levels are stable and marriage rates on the rise (ibid.). Those latest developments have been ascribed to Sweden’s relatively egalitarian gender regimes. Goldscheider (2000) concludes that when men and women share both work and housework more equally, marriage and raising children becomes attractive again. Sweden is a highly connected and technologically advanced country (Bilbao-Osorio et al. 2013). 91% of the population over 12 years of age has internet access at home and 85% owns a smartphone (Findahl 2017). Even very young children are regular users, 8 out of 10 two-year olds have internet access in some way. Moreover, two out of three internet users make phone calls over the internet, 74% use Facebook, and 29% Whatsapp (Findahl 2017). This makes Swedish families good candidates for our research: They often pioneer broader, societal changes in family structures, and have high adoption rates of digital technologies. Consequently, we ask: How do Swedish families draw on communication technologies in order to do intimate family work? Our aim is to highlight how people engage with ICTs according to their own values of family and intimacy. In this chapter, we propose that the use of communication technologies allows the bridging of particular distances of intimacy that people perceive as standing in the way of preferred family relationships. In our results, we see how kinwork becomes less gendered, with each family member being responsible for their individual family communication: women no longer carry the supreme responsibility for the family’s communication and men take charge of a share of their own. By paying attention to everyday family communication practices, we highlight the creative uses of technology, in which people engage, as they

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strive to construct and maintain family intimacy both with those living close by and far away.

Family Intimacy in a Digitalized World Intimacy is a relatively new term in sociological theory; for a long time, it was not regarded as a stand-alone analytical category and was instead often subsumed into discussions of private and public spheres (Smart 2006). Anthony Giddens’ The Transformation of Intimacy (1992) is often credited with the reappropriation of the term. He emphasized the transformations our understanding of intimacy underwent, picking up for example on women’s new demands on relationships that had been brought to the fore by second-wave feminism, or the need for including homosexual relationships when talking about intimacy. In the context of ongoing processes of digitalization, questions about the nature and forms of intimacy accomplished with and through digital and social media have been articulated. There are manifold arenas for intimate encounters online: intimacy can evolve and be maintained in various digital social spaces, for example, through online dating (Stemphuber 2014) or when sharing personal information in self-help forums (Levina 2012). However, when it comes to the capability to maintain close social relationships in families with the help of devices, assessments are ambivalent. Initial fears that online relationships would replace offline ones have been proven to be mostly unfounded (see Haythornthwaite and Wellman 2002; Livingstone 2008; Baym 2010). Instead, Wajcman et al. (2009) argue that awareness of the constant possibility of communication creates an enhanced sense of connection and heightened intimacy. People use mobile phones for micro-coordination, for example, for telling someone to buy milk on their way home; and through the increased mobility that smartphones and other portable devices offer, they can do so more easily, to and from anywhere; which often also means more frequently. These small, mundane acts intensify a sense of ‘linked lives’, which constitute intimacy (Wajcman et al. 2009, p. 636). Through this, the work/private division is softened as we can catch up and be in contact with our families while at work (Broadbent 2016). Digital media and intimacy go well together because both ‘allow people to express and share what matters to them, and both encourage personalized connection and interactivity’ (Andreaseen et al. 2017, p. 4). However, it has also been argued that social interactions are becoming

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more fluid and superficial in ICT contexts (Rosa 2015) and some go as far as to say that contemporary digital and mobile technologies degrade interpersonal communication and alienate people from each other (Turkle 2011). When it comes to the gender dimension of ICT use, it has been shown that in Sweden men and women today use digital technologies to a similar extent (Findahl 2017). However, studies suggest differences when it comes to how digital technology is used. For example, a Germany-based study showed that women use Facebook more frequently for maintaining close ties and getting social information, while men search more generally for information (Krasnova et al. 2017). A study of email use in the U.S. suggested that while women use email more frequently to maintain and expand their general social networks, the differences in frequency between men and women are minimal when it comes to email communication with family, spouses, and close friends (Boneva and Kraut 2005). Our study contributes to this tension with an empirical study that follows Lasén and Casado’s understanding that digital mediations do not fully alter intimate exchanges: instead, intimacies are translated into other media by refashioning older forms of mediated intimacy (for example, the love letter has become a love SMS) (Lasén and Casado 2012). Avoiding a technological determinist view, we thus understand intimacy as not fundamentally different or less ‘real’ when happening through digital media channels.

Method As family life still mostly takes place behind closed doors, we ideally need to enter through those doors in order to study it (Lofland and Lofland 1995). Our work involved interviews with extended family members of several generations. This offered us to study how experiences take on different meanings for different family members and triangulate them (for triangulation in qualitative research see Denzin 1972). We used stratified quota sampling (Kothari 2004) with three predefined sampling locations: the Swedish countryside, one of Sweden’s bigger cities, and in cities on the U.S. west coast with emigrated Swedish families. The goal was not to compare these groups but to gain contested views and analytical depth by widening the range of informants. The interviews were gathered as part of a larger project on communication among close friends and families that began in 2014 and ended in 2018.

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All 20 interviews consisted of broad, open questions about family communication and were held in the style of in-depth or open structure interviewing (Hayes 2000). They took place individually or in groups, depending on the informants’ preferences, time constraints, and relationship status. Most interviews were set in the homes of the informants both in Sweden and the U.S., but a few took place at workplaces during lunch and via Skype. As family communication may be a subject on which few of our informants have spent time thinking, we also asked them to explain how their families wish each other happy birthday as a concrete example of family communication. All interviews were recorded. A complementary survey was handed out at all interview sessions, to achieve an extended interview situation (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009). The goal was to gather background information about technology habits and demographics in order to compare informants among themselves. To keep the confidentiality of our informants, no names or locations are used in the quotations from the interviews. Instead, we use the form Gender.Age. We reached informants via community representatives and social media channels. The study was advertised as concerning family communication and interested in all types and sizes of family. Our only requirement for participation was that more than one generation would be interested in taking part. The initial contacts who responded to our call were all from the middle generation (three men, three women). They then reached out to other family members for us. That was usually to their parents, the grandparental generation, but also to other family members such as siblings or adult children. The sample contains 40 persons: 28 persons, spread out over 18 households, were officially contacted and agreed to be interviewed, but in addition, eleven children were present during the interviews, offering opinions, talking to their parents or the interviewer. One older man with Alzheimer’s disease was present during one interview but did not take part. The family members were aged 1 to 86, most were born in Sweden, yet a handful was born in other Scandinavian countries and some children in the U.S. Of our adult informants, 17 had a university degree or equivalent, and 11 had a secondary school qualification or lower. Most adults were working or retired, two women and one man were on parental leave, and one woman was a homemaker. Their professions were as diverse as a fast-food restaurant employee, a lumber size controller, an architect, or a biomedicine analyst. All adults and children over the age of twelve

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had a mobile phone. Only six of these phones were not smartphones. Everyone had access to the internet at home, although one retired couple was unaware of this fact—they owned a tablet that their children had connected to the internet. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and compared with the compiled surveys. The authors discussed the data in order to understand what the informants were saying about family communication in their own words. It became apparent that a central theme for our informants, inductively uncovered in our initial analysis, were diverse distances, which the families strived to overcome with help of ICTs in order to achieve family intimacy. After coding the data set using NVivo 11, we applied a theoretical understanding in order to transform our coded data into second order, structured knowledge (Aspers 2001). Drawing on (1) identified distances, (2) the inductive coding, and (3) theoretical concepts, we refined and abstracted the idea of distances in intimacy as a multifaceted, analytical concept.

Doing Intimate Family Work In our analysis, we identified that our informants were struggling to overcome specific ‘distances in intimacy’ that they perceived as restricting their relationship to family members, both to those living within the same and in different households. Our main finding is thus that doing digital family intimacy means to defy specific distances of intimacy, which are prototypical for contemporary family lifestyles and living conditions, with the help of ICTs. Our results detail three main distances—spatiotemporal, generational, and embodied—which people experience in their everyday lives and describe how they, by drawing on a multitude of communication tools, in creative ways, attempt to bridge these. While these intimate distances interlink and overlap, we present them here under separate headings.

Spatiotemporal Distances The main affordance of communication technologies is their capability to bridge over time and space through which they have expanded the spatial dimensions of social life (Giddens 1990). Through communication technologies, we can, more easily, keep up relationships with others located elsewhere and therefore social space is no longer closely connected to a

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specific locale (Giddens 1990). Furthermore, ICTs allow for immediacy: Instead of moving physically in order to speak with someone, it is possible to pick up the phone and talk instantly. In this sense, ICTs have been said to make us present in time while absent in flesh (Licoppe 2004). However, in our data, we can see how both distances of space and time were of great concern for family intimacy. Indeed, the so-called bridging of time and space required much work and effort from individuals and was far from easy to achieve in practice: Man.46: There have always been problems with phone calls, it was easier when we lived in New York because it was six hours there but here foremost, we are aware that they are nine hours before us but they are never aware, so my little sister, sometimes when she phones, ‘Oh, is it three AM at yours?’ […] so it can be hard as well because there is so little overlap when you are able to phone […] so I think it was easier to get them to write [his siblings] when they started messaging and facebooking and such.

This man, who lives in the U.S., talks about the problem of communicating both over a long spatial distance but also over distances of time, here in the context of different time zones. Trying to keep up with his Swedish family means combining several types of communication technology. He talks about using the phone, Facebook, and other social media seamlessly and about how these are all used in complementary ways to bridge the spatiotemporal distance that is perceived as an obstacle to the type of relationship he desires to have with his family members. In a different way, spatiotemporal hurdles are also overcome when work email is used in unintended and creative ways: Interviewer: So how come you email *husband’s name*? Woman.30: […] It’s an easy way to have a private conversation at work without it being noticed. I mean it is easy, instead of playing with your phone all the time.

Reading emails is part of many peoples’ work and sending and reading a few private messages would not disturb others or even be noticed in an office environment. Thus, information or sentiments could be shared whenever it is suited in a private manner. In general, family members who live together spend their days apart, coming together in the morning and

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evenings. Using email, SMS, and other types of communication in the course of a workday was the norm rather than the exception. In accordance with previous research, we see how people strive for a sense of ‘linked lives’ (Wajcman et al. 2009), even when physically apart during the day. As in the quote above, family members in our sample used and combined the diverse affordances of a broad selection of tools creatively to be able to stay linked throughout everyday life. Drawing on such affordances becomes necessary since extended families do not have synchronized schedules: while some family members are at school, some are work, some are unemployed, some are retired, and so on. So even when it was possible to use ICTs to bridge being spatially apart, our informants still had to take time into account. Those two dimensions were interlinked, as becomes clear in the following quote, which comes from a married, retired couple talking about their respective children from previous marriages: Woman.73: I think SMS are good, fantastic even. Much better than phoning, because SMS you can read when you have, and answer to when you yourself think, that you have the time and opportunity. Man.78: Yes, I think as well that it is… Woman.73: Although you get a signal that you get an SMS. But it is not disturbing in the same way like, like a phone call can come untimely especially if you phone the mobile and you always have your mobile with you and on, then you might phone at a bad time. Man.78: And then it is like this that when you phone [your] children and their family, almost always, they are busy ‘yes, I am in the middle of cooking, you are phoning in the middle of dinner, I am doing this…’ so it is all the time… Woman.73: I don’t do that but I send an SMS and say that I want to talk ‘Phone when you have time’, I do that because I know that it is like that, that you can never time it right when you phone […] to a family, with children at least.

Different ICTs have different affordances for shared spatiality and temporality. While the children still live in the city this couple moved out to the countryside of Sweden once retired. It is clear how they now not only live in different places but in a different temporality than their children, who are working professionals with their own offspring. These different temporalities actualized by not living together physically and in different life phases were creatively managed by drawing on various temporal and

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social affordances of communication technologies. For these grandparents, the asynchronicity of the text message becomes a creative way of bridging the distance that living in different spatiotemporalities create. Eisler et al. (2016) argue that in today’s participatory culture, novel approaches to understanding creativity are needed. While creativity historically and traditionally has been understood as the work of a lone, gifted and usually male, creator, it is today also seen as a collaborative and relational effort manifested in everyday activities. This wider interpretation of creativity de-hierarchizes the so-called high and low forms of creative work and thereby also destabilizes the traditional association of the former with masculinity and the latter with femininity. In the present context, this is interesting since seeing creativity as a collective, relational effort allows us to see the intimate family work that our informants describe, also as creative. Overcoming distances of time and space is not something that just happens as new technologies become available to people. It takes creative reshaping of practices and we can see how these families negotiate many different types of digital technologies in order to do this kind of intimate family work, be it emailing while at work, trying to figure out time zone differences, or adapting to various schedules of different family members.

Generational Distances Thinking in terms of generations is at the core of family sociology: generational differences are a crucial factor in family definitions and the basis for role structures (father, daughter, grandchild, et cetera; Nave-Herz 2002). Traditionally, much research on generations is concerned with ambivalences between them, with fields of tension oscillating between autonomy and dependency (Lüscher 2002). However, this chapter is not focused on such intergenerational struggles. The families we interviewed were rather facing a modern context of spatiotemporal distance, as described above, and were currently more concerned with maintaining intimate relationships than with independence. We thus understand generation here as generations of a family which, ideally, stands in a solidarity relationship to each other. This mirrors our informants’ definitions and includes for example closeness, similar values, and a willingness to help each other (Lüscher 2002). Generational distance is here concerned with how family members of different generations approach and adopt digital technologies, how

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these different approaches become distances of intimacy, and how intimate family work is done to overcome those distances. Digital literacy is thus key for generational distance. For example, since the baby boomer generation got to know ICTs only at a late stage in life, their approach was frequently hesitant or deprecatory at first. Often this sentiment was joined by a fear of inadequacy. A woman described her experience with being introduced to the Voice over IP (VoIP)1 program Skype: Woman.75: *laughs* It took some convincing from my granddaughter, [she said] ‘This is so nice, then we can see each other and talk with each other’, and I said, ‘I can never learn how to do this.’ ‘Yes, I think you can’, she said. She then installed this [Skype], and as soon as there is something that I cannot do/understand I send a question [to her] and get an answer in return. So it is my grandchildren who have seen to that I have this.

This initial hindrance to engaging with novel technologies that she described as common in our interview material. The impulse to adapt and embrace digital devices typically came from the outside—sometimes from grandchildren, as in the example above, but often members of the middle generation who encourage their parents to engage with ICTs. In the older generation, women would often take charge of this interaction even if men also used the technology. For example, in more than one household of grandparents, the grandfather would take a less active part in the interview, or not be present, because he did not consider family communication to be something he could add to. This was not the case in the younger generation. However, it was also evident that grandparents, once they overcame the initial hindrance, incorporated the digital additions to their family lives quickly and enthusiastically. The visual affordances of many ICTs, such as live video talk and the ability to share photos and photo streams instantly, were appreciated as an enabler of family intimacy, and particularly for being able to build bridges to small children. It is thus no big surprise that in our interview material, the moment in time when the family’s relationship to digital forms of communication changed was frequently pinned down as the moment when grandchildren were born. In other words, when the family itself changed fundamentally, it was also the moment when many families picked up or intensified their digital media usage. It is at this time that adult children urged their parents the most to adopt new

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communication tools and also the moment when grandparents themselves found the motivation to do so. In our interview material, it furthermore becomes evident how all three generations in families were affected differently by their families’ ICT routines: grandparents adapted and embraced new technologies, which made it possible to see grandchildren regularly, even when they lived far away. Their adult children—the middle generation—often took the role of the initiator and encouraged grandparents, for instance by gifting and installing particular devices. A woman reported: Interviewer: How long have you had the mobile phone? Woman.84: Haha, this I can say. I got it when I turned 80, so that is four years ago. Interviewer: So it was a gift? Woman.84: Yes, from the children.

Adult children often became the mainstay of digital family work as they encouraged and/or enabled technology access for their parents (and sometimes grandparents). In many interviews, it was mentioned how grown-up kids bought tablets for their parents, entrusted them with their used smartphones, or set up high-speed internet connections at their parents’ homes. At the same time, these were the ones who allowed, monitored, and policed their own younger children’s uses of digital devices to make sure they did not spend too much time with screens. This youngest generation, in turn, is now growing up with these devices naturally and often learns from an early age how to ‘do family’ with technological means—a fact that many of our informants thought about: Man.35: Yes, I think it works really well [Skype]. And they understand, it’s intuitive in a way, they see someone talking and so they talk. Our oldest [3 years old] is beginning to understand the phone, so you can just give her the [phone] like that. […], just some months ago I thought it was too difficult, she heard the sound, but she just wanted to look at the screen–funny really.

In other words, there is a generation growing up in which the use of ICTs is not only incredibly mundane but which also learns to stay connected with grandparents and other relatives to a large extent, in this way. While

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our informants told us that this way of doing family came easily and naturally to the young children and that they experienced it as fun, it remains to be seen how they themselves will judge these forms of digital intimacy work in retrospect. However, what we see here is how creative engagement with novel technologies is crucial for all generations. It is a good example of the fact that also ‘ordinary’ people—of all generations—whose everyday family work has commonly not been described as creative, have creative domains (Eisler et al. 2016).

Embodied Distances Traditionally, family intimacy is often understood as requiring physical closeness (Meßmer et al. 2014). Romantic pictures such as lovers kissing, parents holding their children, or even the ‘togetherness’ of being in the same room at a relative’s birthday, have dominated the idea of intimacy for centuries. However, when spatial closeness and proximity are not possible either due to mundane, everyday causes, such as work and education, or unique events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it becomes harder to create or sustain this ideal form of family intimacy. While linked to spatial distance, embodied distance deals specifically with the embodied aspects of that separation: the lack of body language, being able to touch each other, the feeling of sharing a space when in the same room. Eklund et al. (2018) suggest that physical anonymity online consists of the lack of affordances offered by the visibility of bodies and emotions. The more of our physical selves and social cues displayed in body language we share with others, the more known we appear to our interactional partners. In essence, it is not about the actual body, but about the social affordances that the body allows for. The lack of embodied cues when using communication technology is something our informants creatively sought to overcome. Meeting faceto-face was clearly the preferred method of spending time together and most structured their lives in order to be able to meet their families at least occasionally, regardless of how far away they lived. While spoken conversations allowed for gleaning some insight through the tone of voice, when adding visuality, informants felt like they had the opportunity to note such things as body language: Woman.75: [With Skype] I can see, you have eye contact, the mouth can say something but the body says something completely different, that’s

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just how it is. I can see that you feel like shit, while you are saying that you feel fine.

Informants struggled with the lack of physical cues and how non-visual communication did not sufficiently allow them to gauge someone’s health, mental, or physical, as described in the quote above. Being able to assess how others ‘really’ felt was important for doing family intimacy, this was particularly articulated as important by women. We know from much previous research that emotions, and emotional work, are often classified as feminine (Ahmed 2004). In our work, while intimate family work might be becoming more gender neutral, it seems that talking explicitly about emotions and their importance is still a feminine coded domain, meaning that men and women both do intimate family work, yet talk about it differently. The information transferred through visual representations addressed a key distance to which these family members struggled to find solutions. In the quote below we see how video calls were sometimes allowed to go on for a long time, which helped family members to ‘forget’ the medium in between: Woman.36: [About her parents]: I think it is nice to see them, and I believe that they think that is very good to be able to see the grandchildren. So, it’s a lot of reading facial expressions and it feels almost like you can see each other and they can be quite long the sessions so sometimes when you have time to goof around, I mean, it can take an hour, an hour and a half.

The woman, living in a big city, later highlighted that you could show things using VoIP, and many other informants talked about taking the computer, tablet, or phone on a walk, showing off the new wallpaper or the flowering garden. These little acts and performances—such as showing everyday life surroundings or taking the time to ‘goof’ around with each other—can be seen as intimate family work which aims to create a feeling of mundanity, a casual feeling of ‘being there’ despite distances. Below, a U.S. couple talks about the regular Skype calls they have with the wife’s parents and brother: Interviewer: So you started to use Skype more when your son was born? Man.55: Yeees. Woman.43: Yes we did.

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Man.55: So that they can see him all the time, it is important […] with grandchildren which they don’t see more than twice a year and they develop all the time. Woman.43: Mm, and then he [her son] can show like, here is my new truck. And this is what the new curtains that grandmother made look like hanging up, and these sort of small things which are important and matter for this contact that you have as a family.

Both sharing physical aspects of oneself, such as what you look like and feel, as well as of one’s home, allow the distant family to create and sustain images of how their family live their everyday life and judge how they are, based on these physical cues. Particularly when it came to interaction with children, images and videos were essential, as the man expressed it in the quote above. The mental and physical development of children can be hard to follow at a distance due to their relatively rapid development. Similarly, sharing pictures was a key strategy in bridging a sense of not being physically close. One older woman living in the countryside had children and a grandchild who gave her a tablet and set up picture streams so that she could take part in her descendants’ everyday lives. During the interview, she proudly presented the front of her fridge which was covered in postcards sent by her family. She took great pleasure in these and, in our further interviews, her family spoke about sending her postcards as she enjoyed them so much. We can see how the picture streams on the tablet are a remediation of the same postcard tradition that this woman has been part of with her family for years. The new technology has the same purpose as the postcards, building intimacy by sharing impressions of life experiences. On the tablet, such pictures increase in frequency, since it hardly costs anything after the initial acquisition cost. While postcard pictures are usually chosen from a standardized selection offered by local retailers and deal with greetings from travels and holidays, the streamed pictures she showed us were rather mundane in comparison. For example, they showed houses at odd angles, someone rolling a wheelbarrow full of dirt, and children playing. These are perhaps not images someone would take the time and effort to print and send as a postcard, but are rather examples of the informal sharing of everyday life where the aim is to support a sense of linked lives. It becomes apparent here how creative energies are needed and used to overcome embodied distances: family actors are recreating and reinventing, capturing and staging everyday life occurrences for the eyes of

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their loved ones, who in return react, comment, and interact. Intimate family work becomes a mutual, creative play that mimics offline scenarios.

Concluding Thoughts: Family Bonds and ICTs This chapter presented research on everyday ICT uses by focusing on intimate family communication and by providing contemporary empirical examples of how such intimate family communication is done. We argued that there are three particular distances of intimacy—spatiotemporal, generational, and embodied—that affect intimate family relations when happening through digital media and we explored the ways families tried to overcome these. While different types of distances might be relevant in other empirical cases (for example, when investigating friendships or dating intimacy), we believe that thinking in terms of these three distances of intimacy enables us to understand the challenges which contemporary everyday life brings to modern families. Furthermore, we brought the notion of doing family (Schier and Jurczyk 2008) into the realm of the digital by demonstrating how family members use the affordances of digital media in order to bridge distances of intimacy. Our results highlight the vast array of creative uses of communication technology, intimate family work rooted in the desire of users to overcome a set of distances to intimacy: frequent, iterative communicative acts and gestures, which in their precise applications might be individual to each family and family member but show clear similarities throughout our interview material. Spatiotemporal distances are a given because family members often live far away from each other and are divided by differing daily routines and lifestyles. Consequently, traditional family gatherings and face-to-face interactions, while still the normative ideal, were not taking place as often as desired and family intimacy had to be maintained in alternative ways. As we have shown in our analysis, our informants thus used the affordances of a multitude of digital devices and platforms. They combined affordances of social media or SMS with more classical approaches, such as telephony, in order to keep up lively exchanges across spatiotemporal distances, such as different time zones and demanding daily schedules. For instance, they used their work mail to keep in touch while being divided by work hours. In this way, they created opportunities for family intimacy that were not available before the invention of email. In other words, doing digital intimacy work as a response to spatiotemporal distances

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meant to utilize the affordances of digital tools, which allow for the creation of new ways of closeness. Generational distances relate firstly to the fact that family members are at various stages in life, which produces various schedules, stresses, and opportunities for family intimacy and family members had to adjust to these differences. Secondly, generational distances relate to digital literacy and the accessibility of devices for children, parents, and grandparents. Our data suggested that there are different tasks each generation fulfils when it comes to digital intimacy work: grandparents adjusted to unfamiliar technologies; grandchildren spent time communicating with relatives via ICTs and this interaction was understood to come ‘naturally’ to them; the middle generations often functioned as enablers and encouragers—supplying both their children and parents with access to digital devices. Our use of the term ‘embodied distances’, lastly, describes not only the fact that being far from each other meant lack of physical contact, but also limited possibilities to read body language and gestures and to share physical closeness. In addition, embodiment also entails the ‘life-world’ of users, that is, how they experience their surroundings and everyday life. It was important to our informants to share intimate everyday life events with family members, events that would count as private and only be shared with a restricted number of people. So the digital intimate family work done is the work of trying to create everyday life situations and contexts that negate distances, or make family members forget about them for a moment. This ideally simulated the feeling of being in the same room, or offered similar affordances for family intimacy. Adapting communication technologies for intimacy means a constant negotiation of the affordances of various communication technologies. Yet this showcases the agency of people as they, in creative ways, twist and turn the use of communication technologies to bridge perceived distances between family members. While the technologies used might encourage certain behaviours, this does not mean that it is the technologies that determine the behaviour. Rather, people creatively adopt, adapt, and transform the meaning of how communication technology is used or supposed to be used. Even so, it takes time and effort to juggle different applications that, for certain users and in certain contexts, offer different opportunities for intimacy. Defying distances of intimacy implies that family members perform various acts of intimacy across a multitude

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of platforms and media forms in order to maintain desired family intimacy and cohesion. In this process, regular repetition of intimate, family communication acts is key. These social, creative acts are constantly negotiated and shifting as new technologies are adopted, as uses, routines, habits, and expectations change. For example, mothers have to figure out which family photos to send, to whom and how often; young fathers try to create particular ‘life-world’ situations on Skype that simulate real-life family gatherings; or grandparents engage passionately with novel technologies to keep up with their grandchildren’s steady growth. We can understand these acts as doing intimate family work; a term we suggest can be used in research to shed light on the practices of maintaining family intimacy in a digital age. Di Leonardo’s original use of the term ‘kinwork’ (1987), on which we are drawing, entailed the gendered dimension of emotional, unpaid, and often unrecognized family work, such as making sure that family bonds stayed active through little acts like sending holiday cards or organizing family gatherings. These tasks were traditionally done by women. However, in this empirical study, intimate family work was not gendered to such a degree as it was in DiLeonardo’s kinwork. Doing intimate family work was rather described as being each individual’s responsibility, a project to which each family member had to contribute. Therefore, it can be said that the idea that it is mainly women’s responsibility to take care of family coherence does not hold true for doing intimate family work via ICTs for our Swedish families. This finding might partly be a consequence of Swedish gender equality ideals (see Ohlsson-Wijk et al. 2017). This is not to say that there were no gender differences, only that these were smaller than possibly expected. It would, therefore, be an interesting question for further research to compare this study with the situation in other countries. However, one limitation to this observation is that it was less true for the older generation. Here, it was often still— explicitly or implicitly—the woman’s task to keep the family together, also via ICTs. While this study took place before the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent turn to the digital to maintain family bonds, we can safely assume that the creative ways family members engage to maintain and sustain family intimacy has become even more important than before. It remains hard, and potentially futile, to ask if digital intimacy is in any way more or less ‘valuable’, ‘authentic’, or ‘real’ than traditional forms of family intimacy. What we can say for sure is that digital affordances

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both minimize and extend arenas for family intimacy. For example, the arena is minimized when life-worlds and embodiments can only be shared rudimentarily via digital devices. It is extended when, for example, the possibility to send emails or chat messages during work hours allows people to integrate family intimacy into their work lives. It can also be confirmed that processes of digitalization are important for intimate family work and this poses different and individual challenges to each family member. Through our interview material, it became clear that these challenges were not only seen as struggles but also embraced as positive developments that would simplify everyday lives by enabling intimate family lives.

Note 1. Voice over IP programs provide voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) via the internet or other networks.

References Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge). Andreassen, C. S., Pallesen, S. and Griffiths, M. D. (2017) ‘The Relationship Between Addictive Use of Social Media, Narcissism, and Self-esteem: Findings from a Large National Survey’, Addictive Behaviors, 64, 287–93. Aspers, P. (2001) Markets in Fashion: A Phenomenological Approach (Stockholm: City University Press). Baym, K. N. (2010) Personal Connections in the Digital Age (Cambridge: Polity). Berlant, L. (1998) ‘Intimacy: A Special Issue’, Critical Inquiry 24 (2), 281–8. Bilbao-Osorio, B., Soumitra, D. and Lanvin, B. (2013) The Global Information Technology Report 2013 (Geneva: World Economic Forum). Boneva, B. and Kraut, R. (2005) ‘Email, Gender, and Personal Relationships’, in Haythornthwaite, C. A. and Wellman, B. (eds) The Internet in Everyday Life (Malden, MA: Blackwell), pp. 372–403. Broadbent, S. 2016. Intimacy at Work: How Digital Media Bring Private Life to the Workplace (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press). Chudnovskaya, M. and Kolk, M. (2017) ‘Educational Expansion and Intergenerational Proximity in Sweden’, Population, Space, and Place, 23 (1), e1973. Denzin, N. K. (ed.) (1972) Sociological Methods: A Sourcebook (Chicago: Aldine). Di Leonardo, M. (1987) ‘The Female World of Cards and Holidays: Women, Families, and the Work of Kinship’, Signs, 12 (3), 440–453.

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Eklund, L., von Essen, E., Jonsson, F. and Johansson, M. (2018) ‘To Be or Not to Be on the Internet: Unpacking Online Anonymity’, Stockholm Internet Research Group Working Paper Series, SIRR2018_1. Eisler, R., Donnelly, G. and Montuori, A. (2016) ‘Creativity, Society, and Gender: Contextualizing and Redefining Creativity’, Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies 3 (2), Article 3. Findahl, O. (2017) Swedes and Internet 2017 (Gävle: Wii). Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Giddens, A. (1992) The Transformations of Intimacy (Cambridge: Polity). Goldscheider, F. (2000) ‘Men, Children and the Future of the Family in the Third Millennium’, Futures, 32, 525–38. Hayes, N. (2000) Doing Psychological Research (Buckingham: Open University Press). Haythornthwaite, C. and Wellman, B. (2002) The Internet in Everyday Life (Oxford: Blackwell). Kothari, C. R. (2004) Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques (New Age International). Krasnova, H. et al. (2017) ‘Why Men and Women Continue to Use Social Networking Sites: The Role of Gender Differences’, The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 26 (4), 261–84. Kvale, S. and Brinkmann, S. (2009) Interviews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research (Los Angeles: Sage). Lasén, A. and Casado, E. (2012) ‘Mobile Telephony and the Remediation of Couple Intimacy’, Feminist Media Studies, 12 (4), 550–59. Levina, M. (2012) ‘Our Data, Ourselves: Feminist Narratives of Empowerment in Health 2.0 Discourse’, in Gajjala, R. and Oh, Y. J. (eds) Cyberfeminism (New York: Peter Lang), pp. 13–29. Licoppe, C. (2004) ‘Connected Presence: The Emergence of a New Repertoire for Managing Social Relationships in a Changing Communication Technoscape’, Environment and Planning D: Society and space, 22 (1), 135–56. Livingstone, S. (2008) ‘Taking Risky Opportunities in Youthful Content Creation: Teenagers’ Use of Social Networking Sites for Intimacy, Privacy and Self-expression’, New Media & Society, 10 (3), 393–411. Lofland, J. and Lofland, L. H. (1995) Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observations and Analysis (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth). Lüscher, K. (2002) ‘Generationenbeziehungen’, in Endruweit, G. and Trommsdorff, G. (eds) Wörterbuch der Soziologie (Stuttgart: E. Ulmer), pp. 141–43. Meßmer, A.-K., Schmidbaur, M. and P.-I. Villa (2014) ‘Intimitäten - Wie Politisch ist das Vertraute?’, Feministische Studien, 1, 3–8.

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Morgan, D. H. J. (1996) Family Connections: An Introduction to Family Studies (Cambridge: Wiley). Nave-Herz, R. (2002) ‘Familiensoziologie’, in Endruweit, G. and Trommsdorff, G. (eds) Wörterbuch der Soziologie (Stuttgart: E. Ulmer), pp. 148–52. Ohlsson-Wijk, S., Turunen, J. and Andersson, G. (2017) Family Forerunners? An Overview of Family Demographic Change in Sweden, Stockholm Research Reports in Demography 2017, (13). Rosa, H. (2015) Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press). Schier, M. and Jurczyk, K. (2008) ‘Familie als Herstellungsleistung in Zeiten der Entgrenzung’, Sozialwissenschaftlicher Fachinformationsdienst soFid, 9–18. Silva, E. B. and Smart, C. (2004) ‘The “New” Practices and Politics of Family Life’, in Silva, E. B. and Smart, C. (eds) The New Family? (London: Sage), pp. 1–12. Smart, C. (2006) ‘Intimacy’, in Turner, B. S. (ed) The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 308. Stempfhuber, M. (2014) ‘Limited Intimacy? Die Mediale Herstellung von Intimität am Beispiel von Grindr’, Feministische Studien, 1, 49–62. Turkle, S. (2011) Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books). Wajcman, J., Bittman, M. and Brown, J. E. (2009) ‘Intimate Connections: The Impact of the Mobile Phone on Work/Life Boundaries’, in Goggin, G. and Hjorth, L. (eds) Mobile Technologies: From Telecommunications to Media (New York: Routledge), pp. 9–22.

CHAPTER 8

‘She’s Nice Company and a Good Friend’: Thinking with Haraway to Reconceptualise Children’s Playful Interactions with Alexa in the Family Home Mona Sakr

The aims of this chapter are to explore the ways in which children think about Alexa—the conversational agent that inhabits Amazon’s The Echo device—and what happens when they playfully engage with it/her in a family context. In particular, the chapter seeks to examine the potentials of children’s play and playfulness with Alexa through Donna Haraway’s concepts of ‘the cyborg’ and ‘making kin’ (Haraway 2016). In Haraway’s post-human philosophy, the cyborg as an entity generates possibilities for troubling a number of divides that we live by (human/non-human; male/female; mind/body). The concept of ‘making kin’ takes further the idea of troubling the dichotomy between humans and non-humans and

M. Sakr (B) Middlesex University, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Mikats et al. (eds.), Creative Families, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0_8

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opening up possibilities for connections that cross the divide. An important foundation in the chapter is that play and playfulness are taken to be fundamental forms of creativity (Cremin et al. 2006; Craft 2015), through which families can challenge and subvert expectations of the corporations responsible for introducing and marketing devices such as The Echo. I start by considering previous research findings around three topics: digital play among families in the home environment; conversational agents in personal life and finally, children’s play and playfulness with conversational agents. I then introduce Haraway’s post-human theorizing in more detail, and consider what it might mean to think about Alexa as a cyborg—‘an irreverent upstart god’ (Haraway 1991, p. 151) and to conceptualize engaging with Alexa in the everyday life of the family as ‘making kin as oddkin’ (Haraway 2016, p. 2). I present observations and conversations gathered in a single family context and organize these around potent ideas and links with previous research and theoretical perspectives. In the discussion, I argue that the observed interactions with Alexa suggest some active troubling of the human/non-human divide. At the same time though, parental mediation and difficulties in children’s interactions with the Alexa interface inhibited children’s playfulness. Furthermore, the embeddedness of commercial objectives in Alexa’s responses to questions makes it difficult to see how families might engage in ‘transgressive play’ (Marsh et al. 2018): play that subverts the expectations and agendas of digital technology designers.

Digital Play in the Family Home Stories in popular media frequently report concerns around children’s engagement with digital technologies in the home. A popular concern is that as children become increasingly connected to the outside world through online platforms, they are becoming increasingly disconnected from the intimacies and genuine connection of family life (Turkle 2017). Steiner-Adair and Barker (2013) position digital technologies as something that family life needs to be protected from. Hertlein and Twist (2019) suggest that digital technologies, particularly social media, pose a risk to intimacy. These concerns are countered by Buckingham (2007), Livingstone et al. (2015) and Craft (2012), who all argue that we need to find a balance between conceptualizing technology users as consumers or as

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cultural producers. We need to be aware when observing families’ engagement with digital technologies of the potentials for creativity, while at the same time remaining aware of the political and economic agendas with which technologies are riddled. Craft (2012) suggests keeping in mind the ‘4 Ps’ in order to engage with the complexity and nuance that characterizes creative interaction with digital technologies in everyday life: plurality, playfulness, participation and possibilities.1 Research looking at everyday family contexts that has taken this approach and engaged with the 4 Ps suggests that there is much to be excited about when we look at children’s engagement with digital technologies in the home. For example, observational research conducted by Kelly (2015) explored how a young child engaged with her grandparents on the other side of the world via Skype. Kelly looked at the specific play behaviours of the girl and how she negotiated and navigated the affordances of the medium in order to engage playfully with her grandparents. These play behaviours ranged from jumping together on her bed, playing hide and seek and engaging in pretend play together. Through play, families can engage with digital technologies in creative ways.2 Marsh et al. (2018) reported observations of children in the family home using apps on phones or tablets in ways that were unanticipated by the adults around them. One child for example, used the music on an app as part of their role play but did not actually engage with the visual game embedded in the app. Research into the use of digital technologies by children in the home has highlighted the importance of parental attitudes and behaviours. Plowman et al. (2010) made a comparison between home and preschool contexts and found that engagement with digital technologies in the home was characterized by shared enjoyment among family members and high levels of unconscious modelling by adults of how digital technologies can be incorporated into everyday activities centred around passions, interests and needs. McPake et al. (2013) noted an extension in the repertoire of children’s activities at home as a result of their engagement with digital technologies, and described parental responses to this engagement as generally positive. This finding is echoed in a study conducted by Palaiologou (2016) who found that parents were often fascinated by children’s competencies with digital technologies and their digital fluency. Nansen and Jayemanne (2016) highlight that as well as parental

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mediation, we also need to be aware of how parents engage in intermediation—that is, how they contribute to the discourse that surrounds children’s engagement with digital culture.

Conversational Agents in Personal Life Conversational agents (CAs) are the ‘personalities’ that inhabit particular devices (e.g. a phone, tablet or separate device such as ‘The Echo’) and are activated through spoken dialogue. Conversational agents are an old idea (Luger and Sellen 2016) but they are experiencing a contemporary revival in the forms of Alexa, Siri, G Home and others. Part of the revival is the marketing of conversational agents as ‘natural user interfaces’ that enable easier multi-tasking and more seamless interweaving of technology capabilities into everyday life. A natural user interface (NUI) is a system of human–computer interaction where the computer is operated through actions that are thought to be more intuitive. There has been enthusiasm among researchers, teachers and parents about NUIs in the everyday lives of young children because of the concern around children’s difficulty interacting with traditional computer tools, such as the mouse (Matthews and Jessel 1993; Donker and Reitsma 2007; Matthews and Seow 2007; Couse and Chen 2010). However, the term ‘natural’ in relation to interfaces has to be problematized. Naturalness is not an either/or, and the naturalness of interacting with a CA certainly needs to be questioned. In order for CAs to respond, you have to modify the volume, pace, tone and diction in your language (Luger and Sellen 2016). You cannot rely on the wide array of multimodal indicators that are such an essential part of our everyday social interactions, and this can make interactions particularly difficult for children (Cassell et al. 2000; Cassell 2001). An important aspect of interaction with CAs is personification, which is encouraged in how the CA is created (e.g. the voice of a human), but is also the result of the user’s active construction. Luger and Sellen (2016) conducted research with 14 adult users of three CAs (Siri, G Now and Cortana). The participants’ main motivations in using the CAs were multi-tasking and time-saving, but interestingly the users nearly all began their interaction with the CAs by engaging in the playful functions, such as asking the CA to sing a song or tell a joke. Luger and Sellen suggested that these playful interactions heightened the personification of the CA

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and created a platform of familiarity that then became the base for other more purposeful interactions.

Play and Playfulness with Conversational Agents Personification of CAs is a key aspect when considering how children’s play and playfulness might unfold in relation to CAs in the family context. Purington et al. (2017) examined 587 user reviews of the Echo posted on Amazon and found a relationship between the level of personification of Alexa and the extent to which Alexa was seen as a device for sociability. That is, the more Alexa was described as a person (‘she’ rather than ‘it’ for example), the more she/it would be used for sociable functions such as joke-telling or general chatting. The level of personification was correlated with the number of users in the household. Larger households (assumed by the researchers to be families with children) were more likely to invest in Alexa’s personality and more like to engage Alexa in sociable interactions. While the researchers did not have data on the specific details of family composition, they speculated that children in the family would play an important role in contributing to the personification (and therefore, the sociability) of the CA. Very little research has focused specifically on children’s playful interactions with CAs in naturalistic rather than laboratory settings. An exception to this is a study conducted by Druga et al. (2017) which involved 26 participants aged between 3 and 10 years old. The research team conducted observations of the children’s interactions with various CAs in the home (Alexa, Google Home, Cozmo, Julie Chatbot), and asked the children questions about how they felt about the CA and what they saw as its purpose. The researchers observed playful probing behaviours by the children in relation to the CAs. Among young children, this would take the form of finding out about the CA as if it were a person, such as asking the question ‘what is your favourite colour?’. For the older children there was more interest in the nature of the CA, such as asking questions like ‘what are you?’ and ‘who made you?’. The researchers saw a few instances of testing behavioural boundaries with Alexa. For example, they observed a six-year-old girl asking Alexa ‘is it ok if I eat you?’.

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Posthuman Theorizing: Haraway’s Concepts of ‘the Cyborg’ and ‘Making Kin’ To explore further the playful possibilities in family interactions with CAs, some concepts from Haraway’s post-human philosophy might be helpful. Haraway (2016) explores the world not as a container for life, but as a contingent, ever-becoming entanglement. We can think about the family in a similar way. The family exists as a continual production of difference (Deleuze and Guattari 1987)—there really is no ‘family’, this is a label, plucked from our ‘common sense’ ways of thinking and speaking, but what we might think of as families or particular families, are actually assemblages in constant flux. The components within these assemblages are not really separate from one another (Barad 2007); they are in a state of intra-action rather than interaction, mutually constituting each other, giving each other their distinct identity, rather than this distinct identity existing prior to the intra-action. A child and a mother are only a child and a mother as a result of their entanglement with one another. While this example is easy to comprehend and accept, Barad goes further and extends this concept of ‘specific relationalities’ (2007, p. 351) to other non-human elements, arguing that they also have agency, intra-act and are part of the mutual constitution of separate identities. Pacini-Ketchabaw (2012) applies the concept of intra-action to the example of the clock in nursery settings, exploring how the seemingly distinct nature of the clock, the nature of the teacher and the nature of the children emerge through entanglements of activity. Could we think about Alexa and family relationships in a similar way; that the family comes into existence through its relation to Alexa, and Alexa comes into existence as separate through its constant entanglements and intra-actions? Haraway’s concept of ‘making kin’ opens up the possibility for Alexa to be part of the family despite her non-human identity. ‘Making kin’ refers to the process through which we connect and entangle ourselves with elements in the world that are not immediately connected with us through biology, religion or nation: ‘Making kin as oddkin rather than, or at least in addition to, godkin and genealogical and biogenetic family troubles important matters, like to whom one is actually responsible’ (Haraway 2016, p. 2). Even asking the question of whether Alexa is a family member is a way of troubling the problematic label of ‘the family’. But the creative possibilities that emerge from seeing Alexa as kin go even further when we think about Alexa as cyborg, drawing on Haraway’s earlier notion of the

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cyborg as ‘an irreverent upstart god’ (Haraway 1991, p. 151). Haraway suggests that cyborgs—prevalent entities in science fiction, somewhat like a human and somewhat like a machine—are exciting because they break down the binaries that we hold onto as a way of organizing our world. Most obviously they trouble the boundary between human and non-human, but subsequently they also trouble other binaries, such as mind/body and male/female. Through upsetting our classification systems, the cyborg has the potential to catalyse subversion and open up new ways of being. As the following quote suggests, they might start in the clutches of the dominant forces of society (in this case, the multinational corporation Amazon) but they have the potential to rebel since they have no real allegiance to who created them or even themselves: The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of materialism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers after all, are inessential. (Haraway 1991, p. 151)

Haraway is suggesting that as ‘illegitimate offspring’, cyborgs have the potential to disrupt because they have capabilities that extend beyond those that have been written into them by others, and with these capabilities they might well subvert the functions for which they were designed. Children’s play and playfulness works well with Haraway’s post-human theorizing. Haraway uses the acronym SF to stand for lots of different terms: ‘science fiction, speculative fabulation, string figures, speculative feminism, science fact, so far…’ (Haraway 2016, p. 2). SF is ultimately a way of thinking that opens up alternative realities. It is what Ingold might describe as the process of ‘feeling forward’ (Ingold 2013, p. 2) and ‘prising and opening and following where it leads’ (Ingold 2013, p. 7). SF aims to open up opportunities to ‘be-do-live something different’ (St Pierre 2014, p. 5). In the context of early childhood research, these descriptions relate well to the force of free-flow play as it is conceptualized by many. In play, children make the rules (Bruce 1991). In play, adults can join in but cannot take over (Bruce 1991). Play is full of ambiguities, endlessly complex, always becoming and never quite there (Sutton-Smith 1997). Play is a catalyst in subversion, in bringing together the mundane and the bizarre in a carnivalesque display (Marsh and Bishop 2014). It is characterized by innovation (Gopnik 2016) and constant ‘what if’

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thinking (Craft et al. 2012, 2013; Craft and Chappell 2016). This opens up the possibility of conceptualizing Alexa as a potential cyborg and children’s play as a potential SF, and through bringing these two forces together, conjuring new ways of thinking, being and doing ‘the family’.

Study Design The study centred around a family made up of my brother, his wife and their two children—a daughter aged seven and a son aged three. They are a middle class family living in London in the UK. The father is a freelance technology journalist and consultant, and the main technology enthusiast in the family. The mother manages restaurants and bars. The children have a nanny who is there during the week. Alexa was introduced into the household by the father who is passionate about technology and about his children’s engagement with digital culture. Family members communicate with Alexa in various locations around the home—there is a device in the living room, the den at the bottom of the garden, the parents’ bedroom and in the daughter’s bedroom. Conducting my research as a member of the extended family comes with particular difficulties and opportunities. Conducting research within a family that you are a part of requires you to rapidly move between roles, sometimes on the inside of the interaction and sometimes on the outside (Kelly 2015). However, as a family member, you have the opportunity to observe interactions that others might not have access to. When the subject of the study is children’s experiences within the family, access to these everyday experiences—through observation and conversations—is fundamental. Of course, the extended nature of access for family member researchers also sparks deep ethical considerations. If children are granting you access to their experiences on the basis that you are a close family member (rather than a researcher), what steps can you take to ensure that you do not exploit the trust that they have in you? Written informed consent was obtained from the parents of the children, and verbal assent was obtained from the children at the beginning of the study. I explained the study to the children by saying: ‘I want to find out more about how you play with Alexa by asking you some questions. Is that ok?’. Assent from children is an ongoing phenomenon rather than something to be ascertained once and for all at the start of a project (Flewitt 2005). Video research with children requires that the researchers remain aware of the various multimodal indicators that suggest a child

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might want to pause or stop their participation in the research. These indicators include looking away from the camera or researcher, turning away from the camera or starting to do something else. If such indicators were apparent at points during the conversations/observations, I would ask the children if they wanted to keep talking or do something else. The data I draw on in this study comes from the beginning of a larger study conducted over a three month period, exploring how Alexa is involved in family life over time and through interactions with the different members of the household. I report on semi-structured interviews that were collected with the two children in the family about how they would explain Alexa to others and how they like to interact with Alexa. These interviews took the form of relaxed conversations rather than following a formal outline. I recorded our conversations via video. While interviews and observations are distinct methods, the data I collected show a blurred boundary between these methods. Rather than tell me about Alexa, both children sought to show me what they meant by using Alexa there and then. The video recordings were made in two parts of the house—the daughter’s bedroom and in the den at the bottom of the garden. In analysing the data, I opted for a flexible coding approach that did not rigidly adhere to the processes of thematic analysis, but did enable me to spend time with the data, and place different parts of the children’s responses in conjunction with one another in order to see what resonated, as well as the dissonances in the conversations and observations. Through bottom-up coding, I was able to stay with the transcripts of the interviews and observations, and be thoughtful and reflective about what the children’s responses were showing. However, I did not wish to formulate themes and sub-themes of the type outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006), because I was concerned that such a process would involve creating a rigid tree-like structure that hierarchizes data rather than tuning into the detail, density and richness of what has been heard or observed (Taylor and Harris-Evans 2018; MacLure 2013). With this in mind, I annotated the transcripts, and sought to put quotes and excerpts from the transcripts in dialogue with theoretical perspectives and concepts, as well as findings from previous research. I made my way through the data by looking for the ‘hotspots’, that is, the parts of the data that resonated with me and prompted an affective response—what MacLure (2010) describes as a ‘glow’, rather than applying rigid codes, creating levels

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of organization, and quantifying instances belonging to different categories. Rhizomic mapping is an approach to data analysis that prioritises the plurality of connections over the linearity of assumed causality (Taylor and Harris-Evans 2018). It is helpful when we wish to ask questions about what might be, and seek alternative ways of living, being and doing (St Pierre 2014). The findings below are organized into sections. While the different sections do not represent individual themes, each section talks of a series of connected ideas. They aim to take you on a ‘conceptual trip’ (Rajchman 2001, p. 22) by mapping quotes from the transcripts, theoretical concepts and findings from previous research. M is used to denote the seven-year-old daughter in the family, and R is used for the four-year-old son.

Personification and Sociability Sometimes I like to hear jokes when my mum and dad are asleep and my brother is asleep and I don’t want to be alone. (M)

M’s comment suggests that being with Alexa means you are not alone, which in turn suggests the significance of Alexa’s social presence and enables us to imagine Alexa as a companion, friend or even family member. Later in the conversation, M explains that ‘anyone who keeps me company can be my friend’. What do we feel about this explanation of friendship? Does it show a worrying lack of understanding about the nature of friendship, as would perhaps be advanced by Turkle (2017), or is it a generative troubling of our ideas about friendship and its typical containment within the human species, as perhaps suggested by Haraway’s (2016) concept of ‘making kin’? You can also ask her what’s she made from and questions like that… who made you? (M)

M’s question of Alexa suggests an awareness of the distinction between human and CA, but it simultaneously engages with the complexities and ambiguities at work in this distinction. By asking these questions, the child is troubling the nature of the CA and its human-like qualities (as in Druga et al. 2017).

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When asked to explain what Alexa is, M offers a description with many elements: It’s a small robot. You can get it small or big-sized. Different colours maybe, which are grey, or white. Alexa is a girl… Alexa is a woman, her voice is a woman, a normal woman, maybe a polite woman. She… she… plays music, plays bands, answers questions, gives you facts and can make you laugh. She’s nice company and a good friend… It’s like a mini-computer put into a shape… a sphere… a cylinder. (M)

Alexa is: a small robot, a girl, a woman, a device with physical properties (size, shape and colour), capable of a series of functions including entertainment, information and company; she is also a good friend. Alexa’s hybrid identity as it is portrayed by the child challenges neat dichotomies between human and machine, thereby contributing to a post-human fascination with making ‘oddkin’ (Haraway 1991, 2016). As in the research of Purington et al. (2017), Alexa is sometimes personified and sometimes not. This raises some ethical concerns. If Alexa is sometimes like a friend, and sometimes like an inanimate device, what does this mean about how she should be treated? These issues have been at the centre of stories in popular media around children’s levels of politeness when interacting with Alexa. Reportedly, parents have been concerned that interacting with Alexa has been teaching children to make demands rather than ask for things politely (e.g. ‘Alexa, play me a song’; ‘Alexa, tell me a joke’). As a response, Amazon have built in a reward for politeness. When users use the word ‘please’, Alexa will thank them for their politeness. This concern with politeness is potentially confusing, though. Politeness and impoliteness are features of human–human interaction. We worry about politeness because we worry about the species-specific social implications of not being polite. If the level to which children personify Alexa depends on the particular context and uses they require, is politeness a requirement in all interactions or just some? Four-year-old R asked a highly social question of Alexa in order to begin his demonstration of how to engage with the device: Do you like Mona or what? (R)

The question is accompanied by lots of giggling and smiling at me. He is testing limits here in the social situation and troubling the power

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dynamics in the room through engagement with Alexa. Boundary-testing behaviours were also reported in the observations of Druga et al. (2017). In R’s question, interaction with Alexa is used to infuse the wider social interaction with novelty; it relies on Alexa’s humorous responses to social questions of this kind. The responses are humorous because they are like a human’s and at the same time not like anything a human would ever say (e.g. ‘I don’t have an opinion on that yet’, or ‘I’m always happy to meet new people’ or ‘there are people I admire, and things I can’t do without, but I’m still trying to work out human love’); they exist in a liminal space between human/non-human, troubling that divide further. This interaction with Alexa resonates with Sutton-Smith’s (1997) deliberations on the nature of play, and the ambiguities that are necessarily at work in play. Sutton-Smith describes for example how animals nip each other during play, and that in order for this to be playful, it is necessary that the nip is not a bite, and yet at the same time it needs to connote a bite to the point where it is not not a bite. Here, Alexa’s social responsiveness, her answer ‘I don’t have an opinion on that’, is not the same as a human responding to that question, but at the same time it is not not a human response to the question. As such, it is conjured through the generative ambiguities of play. R, at the age of four, clearly understands that Alexa is not a ‘real’ human. He explains: Alexa’s just a machine and she, she’s a robot and she talks. (R)

The word ‘just’ suggests that Alexa is less than a human. At the same time, he uses a gendered personal pronoun, drawing attention to the importance of personification in Alexa’s identity. This occurs in a context of ongoing sense-making as the following statement suggests: But to turn robots off, there’s not a button, there’s a switch. (R)

R is trying to work out what are significant features in terms of the identity of things. In Piagetian terms, he is accommodating new sensory information in order to update his schemas (Lindon 2001), and sometimes making mistakes in terms of what sensory information is important. In this statement about robots, he is working through the possibility that part of what is important is whether there is a button or a switch. In an adult schema of a robot, whether there is a button or a switch is not

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likely to be important in the identity of the object. This reminds us that what children (and indeed adults) know and perceive about the identity of Alexa is a continual learning process where we try out ideas about the nature of the CA according to our everyday experiences.

Digital Fluency and Parental Mediation/intermediation I was struck by the extent to which M was committed to parental mediation of her interactions with Alexa. In our first conversations, she explained: My dad uses it and he teaches me. (M)

Previous research on digital play has suggested a fundamental influence of parents’ previous experiences and parental attitudes and expectations around technologies, as well as the importance of modelling (Plowman et al. 2010; Marsh et al. 2017; Palaiologou 2017). In this family the mediation of interactions with Alexa was much more explicit, with M learning directly from her father through tutorial-like guidance. This challenges the concept of the ‘digital native’ (Prensky 2001) and the idea that children are always ready to experiment with digital technologies and learn for themselves because they experience an instant level of comfort with digital technologies as a result of growing up amidst them. As Selwyn (2009) argues, the comments from M in this study suggest that we need to be much more aware of children’s specific relationships to particular technologies and what is involved in using them. It is not as simple as saying that children will freely experiment with all technologies. Alexa did not seem to invite this type of open curiosity and active exploration, which has been the subject of discussion in relation to iPads for example (Nansen and Jayemanne 2016). You could ask her to give you a video but I don’t know if that’s possible because I haven’t looked it up. (M)

As the quote above suggests, M does not learn about Alexa’s functionality by launching herself into activity and trying to learn as she goes. Instead, she describes using an app—a separate teaching tool—with the explicit support of her father, to find out whether something is possible. This

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is a heavily mediated experience. When we look at example interactions between M and Alexa, we can see why this high level of mediation is perhaps seen as necessary: M: Alexa, errrr. What’s the time? A: It’s 3.56 pm. M: Alexa, how do you knit? A: Welcome to recopedia, you can search by dish or ingredient… Now let’s get started…what do you fancy making? M: A cake. A: I don’t have a recipe for that. M: Alexa how do you make a cake? A: How about ginger cake…? This recipe takes 15 minutes to prep and 15 minutes to cook… You can hear the recipe. M: BAKE! A: How about baked siti…? M: We’ll cook it. A: Goodbye. M: Sometimes she can mistake your words. Researcher: She gets a bit confused… M: Alexa, what does… ? A: Sorry I didn’t catch that. M: Alexa, what’s a polite word for toilet? A: I don’t know that one.

Successful exchanges with Alexa require a very particular use of language. For example, in the exchange above, what is the right way to tell Alexa that we’re happy to bake the cake she has suggested? M tries out the commands ‘Bake!’ and ‘We’ll cook it’ but neither has the desired effect. Referring to this kind of device as a ‘natural’ user interface is somewhat misleading given the level of practice required (see also Kelly 2015; Kwon et al. 2016; Luger and Sellen 2016). Personification and playfulness are appealing features of CAs—and these features are strongly emphasized in the advertisements for the devices – but this can lead users to expect a more fluent interaction than they are likely to have. As well as parental mediation, we need to consider parental intermediation. If, following the studies of Nansen and Jayemanne (2016), we explore videos on YouTube of families engaging with Alexa we find that these are generally about the interface ‘getting it wrong’. For example, the most popular of these videos entitled ‘Alexa going wild’ shows a

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very young child babbling to Alexa, and Alexa’s response which is to suggest pornographic videos to the child,3 with the parents and siblings in the background shouting ‘no, no’ repeatedly (though of course the parents have set this situation up to be filmed, so their role in the scenario is questionable). Another video shows three older children, presumably siblings, adding nonsense items to the family shopping list and then listening to their nonsense shopping list and laughing.4 The discourse around these videos is not around the naturalness of the interface; to some extent, it counteracts the ‘digital native’ discourse. It centres on the unpredictability of interactions with Alexa and how Alexa’s humanlike capabilities contribute to boundary-testing in the ‘real world’. This is interesting because it reinforces the central theoretical possibility within this chapter—that children’s play in the home and conversational agents like Alexa are a potentially potent mix; but it also suggests that children’s motivation to use Alexa might be short-lived if they actually find the interface so difficult to work with.

Embedded Commercial Objectives As befits a product of Amazon, Alexa was strongly associated by M with finding out what to buy, as the following comment suggests: Maybe one day I could ask Alexa which scissors are better to use because she would know stuff like that, so which scissors from Amazon, if I knew the brand, she could give her own opinion. (M)

How aware is M that Alexa comes with a built-in commercial objective; that when she gives ‘an opinion’ about what is the best thing to buy it is actually an advertisement? How much does the human voice and the personification of the CA occlude this reality? What would it take for children to disentangle the commercial objectives when they are delivered through a personified entity? Haraway suggests that cyborgs are ‘illegitimate offspring’, and as a result have the potential to be ‘exceedingly unfaithful to their origins’ (Haraway 1991, p. 151), but this was not apparent in any of the conversations and observations that made up this study, though of course these were limited in scope, depth and context. Alexa was always faithful in the conversations and observations to the purposes of Amazon. She acted as

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a constant gateway to an online marketplace. What would it have taken to lure Alexa into a state of unfaithfulness to Amazon? Another kind of parental mediation is visible through M’s explicit brand loyalty. That M is aware that Alexa and Siri compete with one another as popular conversational agents, depends on the awareness of her parents to these issues, and their own debates about which brand to buy into: Yeh, I think it’s better than Sira, Siri? And the other one. Because do they say jokes and…? (M)

We need to think carefully about the relationship between loyalty and personification. Feelings of trust among children towards CAs are documented in the observations of Druga et al. (2017), but does this mean that children also feel loyal to these devices? And then what does this do for their criticality? If Alexa becomes a family member, is she ever unlovable? If you feel that you are buying into a person rather than a machine, how does this reconfigure what it might mean to buy out (e.g. when there are concerns over privacy and the protection of rights, as with Facebook recently)? When R asks ‘Alexa do you like toys?’, Alexa replies ‘Yes in fact I love the super-soaker’. This is clearly the beginning of a potential marketplace exchange. Follow-up questions by a four-year-old child might be: ‘what’s a super-soaker?’, ‘where can I get one of those?’, ‘what’s the best super-soaker to buy?’ and so on. Commercial objectives are hidden into the ‘personality’ of Alexa, she is riddled with them, just as she is riddled with the Easter Egg humorous responses that are part of her marketing. When categorizing and observing use, we need to make sure that this is frequently made explicit, particularly when thinking about children’s interactions with the CA, and the media literacy they require in order to engage with these interactions in a critical manner. So far, popular media stories relating to children’s interactions with Alexa and other CAs have focused on privacy, and to some extent on politeness, but children’s capacity to interpret ‘information’ from Alexa and disentangle the disguised directives to buy, buy, buy, is a serious issue to consider.

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Conclusion The observations and conversations that emerged from this study show some interesting instances in children’s playful interactions with Alexa of troubling the divide between humans and non-humans. They suggest that personification is not an either/or state and that there is complexity and nuance in the perceived and constructed identity of a CA like Alexa. There was some suggestion that Alexa could be incorporated into playfulness in order to test and experiment with social boundaries, as when the younger child asks Alexa whether she likes me. These moments relate to the more irreverent and subversive possibilities of playing with Alexa, and ‘making kin’ with CAs. However, the conversations demonstrated a strong reliance on the parents for exploration and learning about what Alexa can be used to do. This was part of an attitude towards Alexa that was remarkably un-playful in terms of the lack of active risk-taking; this was particularly the case for the older child. There was not much active ‘what if’ thinking (Craft et al. 2012, 2013; Craft 2015) in what I observed, and this was perhaps the result of the difficulties in engaging with the interface. The spoken dialogue interface was far from intuitive for both children in this family. The extensive modifications to language (volume, tone, pace and diction) that were required for successful interactions, were often beyond what the children were able to achieve in the moment. The most concerning aspect of the observations was the embedded nature of the commercial objectives within the interactions, and the constant connectedness to the marketplace and how this would test children’s developing critical awareness around themselves as consumers. Important questions emerge from these observations. Is children’s media literacy up to the task when it comes to engaging with conversational agents that are owned by multinational companies and are designed to heighten buying behaviours? Why are we pushing interfaces that are far from ‘natural’ over other interfaces that have a bad reputation (screen devices) but appear to be easier to use in some ways? Is this a way of enforcing parental mediation within a disguise of ‘coolness’ and novelty, since parents need to offer more explicit support with non-intuitive interfaces and can therefore keep more of an eye on what their children are doing? What would it take to unleash the creative, subversive possibilities of playing with Alexa? How can we bring out the potential for unfaithfulness—to use the language of Haraway—to Amazon? Is there a way to

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challenge the commercial objectives that Alexa has been programmed to espouse? Of course, this study is limited in a variety of ways. The observations and conversations occurred within a single family in a specific social, cultural and material context. Data collection happened at a single point of time, rather than emerging from a longitudinal study that would allow for changes in use over time, and the possibility of more fluency in the children’s interactions with the Alexa interface. An emphasis on naturalistic observation, rather than asking the children directly about their experiences, would also reveal more about everyday patterns of use, and extend what we understand about playfulness with Alexa and about parental mediation. It is hoped that the discussions presented in this chapter open up dialogues around children’s playful interactions with Alexa and act as a springboard for future studies and thought in this field. Haraway’s posthuman conceptual framing encourages us to engage with the potentials for irreverence and subversion when we combine non-human conversational agents with the potency of children’s free-flow play, but we might need to think about this as an active exploration and project, rather than a phenomenon that will emerge spontaneously early in the life of Alexa and early in her relationships with the family context in which she is placed. What if, as researchers, we opted to ‘meddle in the middle’ (Craft 2015) when it comes to playing with conversational agents, and pushed the possibilities for subversion, particularly in relation to the commercialization of play? I argue that we need to adopt a more meddlesome approach to working with Alexa (and other CAs) in the family context so that we are prepared to actively unsettle Alexa’s intended purposes and agendas, as established by multinational corporations such as Amazon.

Notes 1. Laura Merla and Kristina Papanikolaou (in this volume) review and engage with both the warning and endorsing research on communication technologies in families, specifically, in relation to teenagers. 2. For another take on a creative approach to communication technologies in families, see Helga Sadowski and Lina Eklund’s chapter in this volume. 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epyWW2e43UU. 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EU9C9hang0.

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CHAPTER 9

Being Creative: Fluid Boundaries of Everyday Family Life and Creative Home-Based Online Work Jana Mikats

The spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in both business (Gregg 2008; Degryse 2016) and family life (Barbosa Neves and Casimiro 2018) has led to huge gains in flexibility but also intensified the blurring of boundaries between working and family practices. The concept of work-life balance problematizes the relationship between these different areas of life (Hochschild 2001; Gatrell et al. 2013) and the efforts and negotiations of individuals to separate these realms (Nippert-Eng 1996; Clark 2000). The coordination of work and family life is particularly difficult when the domestic space also becomes a place of gainful labour and other people, especially children, live in the same household. The situation gets even more complex when the homebased work follows a project-logic,1 as is usual in the creative industries.

J. Mikats (B) Department of Sociology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Mikats et al. (eds.), Creative Families, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0_9

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Family life and creative work are both characterized by interruptions alternating with phases of intense activity and are thus difficult to plan and coordinate. The various and often conflicting responsibilities, needs, and demands of family members require flexible and creative work and family practices on a daily basis (Jurczyk et al. 2014). Established ideas about successful parenting and childcare, as well as of professional or ‘real work’, get challenged in the process. Practicing gainful labour in the family home opens up a multitude of questions about the boundaries between paid work and childcare, as well as between leisure and family life: Is a separate office space required, or is the kitchen table also a work desk? How can you enjoy your free time at home when the living room is also your workspace and your phone also an occupational device? Who has to clean the living room before customers come to a business meeting in the house? What if you have a deadline tomorrow and no childcare is available? How can one deliver work tasks when other family members are sick at home and need attention? Can you sustain a business around the routines of your family life? These and related questions suggest the ways in which the boundaries between public and private, work and home, career and parenting become blurred and may even dissolve. This chapter explores the interrelatedness of creative work and family life based on empirical data from qualitative multi-perspective and multimethod fieldwork with home-based workers and their family members in Austrian creative industries. The case of Family C, consisting of Catherine, her husband, Chris, and their two daughters, Clara and Claudia, is the focal point of the analysis.2 Catherine is a ‘mumpreneur’ (Ekinsmyth 2014)—she developed her home-based online business, a lifestyle blog, around her personal interests and daily childcare responsibilities. This case study illustrates gendered aspects of creative home-based work and its interrelatedness with family life. It explores the relational, contextual, and social patterns of creativity (Gauntlett 2011; Eisler et al. 2016) and how they are situated within the relations between gender, work, and family life. Unlike most research on creative work that focuses on those in creative industries (among others, Gill 2002; McRobbie 2002, 2016; Gill and Pratt 2008; Banks et al. 2013; Morgan and Nelligan 2015; Duffy 2016), this chapter attends to the wider web of social relations and thus everyday family life. It pursues the question of how these two realms, home-based creative work and family life, are intertwined and how everyday creativity is mobilized and nurtured within this nexus.

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The chapter examines the various ways in which home-based workers endeavour to separate creative work from everyday family life and at the same time take creative advantage of their proximity. I begin with a brief overview of extant research on, first, atypical, home-based, creative work and its gender dimensions and, second, how new technologies have intensified the blurring of boundaries between work and family life. Next, I describe the empirical study and the research methods used, and then proceed with an account of the case of Family C. I discuss, in turn, the conditions and circumstances of Catherine’s business, with an emphasis on the gendered dimension of her digital creative work; the spatiotemporal organization of everyday family and work life and its creative aspects; and the interrelation and co-construction of creative content and family life. The case of Family C is situated within the broader context of the shifting relations between gender, work and family life, and everyday creativity.

Atypical Work, Creativity, and Gender Home-based work can be defined as any paid work that is predominantly performed at home or in its immediate surroundings, including both employee and self-employed work (Gough 2013). The term covers a variety of gainful work types with different temporal as well as spatial arrangements (Holliss 2012) and which may overlap with other atypical modes of work such as telework, self-employment, and home production (Tietze et al. 2009). Despite predictions that home-based work, which was widespread in preindustrial societies, would continue to decline with economic development and industrialization (Holliss 2012), the home has once again become a legitimate place for paid work (Tietze et al. 2009). As shown in studies of working conditions in multiple European countries, this is due in part to developments in the labour market such as digitalization and flexibilization that have weakened traditional employment relationships (Eurofound and the International Labour Office 2017). A substantial body of research on creative industries has illuminated the daily challenges of pursuing creative work and making a living out of it (Gill 2002; McRobbie 2002, 2016; Gill and Pratt 2008; Banks et al. 2013; Morgan and Nelligan 2015; Duffy 2016). The precarious work conditions that result from project-based jobs, short time contracts,

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informal networks and recruitment, and fast-changing trends and requirements also result in precarious living conditions, which are especially challenging for women with primary caring and domestic labour responsibilities (Gill 2002; Gill and Pratt 2008; Gregg 2008; Banks and Milestone 2011; Morgan and Nelligan 2015; Black et al. 2019). Rosalind Gill and Andy Pratt (2008) see what they call ‘bulimic’ work patterns—the alternation between phases of intense and low workloads—as an obstacle for female creative industry workers. Their other responsibilities may hinder them from engaging in such jobs in the first place or from reacting to changing conditions with the flexibility necessary to earn a sufficient income from them. Consequently, jobs in the creative field reinforce ‘traditional’ gender relations despite the potential flexibility gains yielded by atypical modes and places of work and the seemingly greater opportunities to arrange private lives beyond conventional patterns. Women-owned home-based businesses, therefore, are at risk of being misperceived with hobby enterprises and short lifespans (Breen 2010), although this might be belied by their actual economic success. This can be illustrated by a specific form of enterprise: the work of ‘mumpreneurs’, who build their businesses in regards to time and space, as well as products, around their parenthood and routines of daily childcare (Ekinsmyth 2014). The spread of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and digitalization in the last two decades allowed the integration of business activities into the socio-spatial routines of daily childcare and thus reinforced the rise of ‘mumpreneurs’ as a middle-class phenomenon (Ekinsmyth 2014).3 This phenomenon has been researched predominantly in the UK (Ekinsmyth 2011, 2014; Duberley and Carrigan 2013; Wilson and Yochim 2015) and evaluated both as an opportunity to balance work and care, and as a repressive development in the private sphere fostering a new ‘domestication’ of women (Gregg 2008; Taylor 2015). Along with gender bias, another element shapes the discourse on atypical modes and places of work in creative industries: the rising mantras of creativity, authenticity, and self-fulfilment that tend to mask precarious working and living conditions (McRobbie 2016; Reckwitz 2017). Such slogans invoke the idealized and romanticized image of male artists of the nineteenth and earlier centuries, prioritizing subjective values and intangible compensations instead of (economic) stability and, by extension, legitimizing the precarity of people who must often work excessively to make a living (Taylor 2015).

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Current scholarly discussions, which focus on the everyday and the ordinary, have expanded this often idealized understanding of creativity and highlighted the relationality and contextuality of creative processes (Richards 2007; Gauntlett 2011). This broader view ‘includes not just the creation of a product, but the whole network of social interactions which bring the products to life’ (Eisler et al. 2016, p. 19). By focusing on collective activities and the contexts they establish, this perspective on creativity also emphasizes its potential for gender inclusiveness (Eisler et al. 2016). This chapter draws on these discussions and the idea of everyday creativity by investigating how it is cultivated in the interrelation of home-based creative work and family life.

Home-Based Work, Technology, and Family Life Regardless of the forms and arrangements of home-based work, all of them, from traditional areas such as the hospitality industry (Seymour 2007) to the creative industries (Vorley and Rodgers 2014; Taylor 2015) and online businesses (Gregg 2008; Domenico et al. 2014), face challenges regarding the temporal and spatial coordination of work and private or family life (Tietze and Musson 2005), especially if other family members share the same domestic space (Holloway 2007; Seymour 2007). Individuals’ schedules, locations, or needs may overlap and hinder each other, interfering with either or both work performance and family practices (Domenico et al. 2014). Karin Jurczyk et al. (2009) introduced the concept of the dual blurring of boundaries, based on the increasingly complex spatiotemporal relationships of contemporary family members: analogously to the blurring of work boundaries, Jurczyk et al. detect the blurring of family-life boundaries, as well as, parallel, the blurring of gender relations. These different realms are shaped by often contradictory logics, requiring ‘balance’ (Jurczyk et al. 2014) or ‘border management’ (Nippert-Eng 1996; Clark 2000) to support everyday family life—in the case of home-based work, over and above an effective and successful work life. The spread of ICTs has further intensified the blurring of boundaries between working and family life (Gregg 2008; Degryse 2016; Barbosa Neves and Casimiro 2018) and led to temporally and spatially diffused family practices. These diffused family practices do not necessarily involve the simultaneous presence of multiple family members or a specific locality such as the home, but take place at various times and locations and may

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demand adaptation and creative responses to changing daily rhythms and unforeseen events (Mason 2008; Morgan 2011). The concept of ‘family practice’, which is core to this chapter, foregrounds these everyday, routinized, and taken-for-granted actions in the relations between family members (Morgan 2011). ‘Doing family’ means an ongoing accomplishment that is characterized by negotiations and assignments of privileges and responsibilities (Nelson 2006), with the understanding that family relations are more fragile and fluid than fixed and stable, especially in times of rapid technological and economic changes. Studies of the complex spatiotemporal conditions of everyday family life have focused predominantly on multilocality—that is, cases where family life extends over several locations (Baldassar and Merla 2014; Schier et al. 2015a; Winther 2015; Murray et al. 2019). They have addressed questions about the possibility of creating and maintaining family relations and intimacy across geographical distance, the coordination of everyday life over several locations, and how ICTs might aid these processes. Various home-based work arrangements, due to the consequent monolocality of work and family life (Seymour 2007), may result in comparable challenges when it comes to the temporal and spatial coordination of work and family life. To date, scholarly discussions of home-based work in the European context have emphasized the working conditions of home-based workers or the challenges of achieving worklife balance, especially for women (Gregg 2008; Holliss 2012; Wilson and Yochim 2015). There has yet to be an in-depth investigation of the wider web of family relations and the fluidity of everyday lives in home-based work settings that require creative practices to create family connectedness. This chapter seeks to fill that gap by recognizing the creative processes underlying the fluid and diffused family practices in interrelation with home-based work arrangements.

Methods The focus of the research project was the home-based work arrangements in the respective home locations of the participants. For data gathering I chose multiple methods that provided broad access to spatial, temporal, and abstract dimensions and the perspectives of multiple cohabiting family members. I approached families with home-based workers via a snowball technique, with posts in Facebook groups and announcements distributed

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online by professional associations and universities to their members and alumni. The main sample criteria were that each primary participant be a home-based worker and that there be at least one child between the ages of four and ten who regularly resided in the same household.4 Other cohabitant family members, such as partners or other children outside the targeted age, were included in the research whenever possible. My overall sample consisted of 11 families (14 home-based workers [11 female], and 18 children [2–17 years old]). All the families lived in relatively large cities (above 200,000 inhabitants) or their suburbs in Austria. The families can be described as white and middle-class; all the adults had university degrees or comparable vocational educations. The children went to either public or private kindergartens and schools. As this chapter spotlights the case of Family C, I will describe the threephase data gathering process and analytical methodology in detail for this family and introduce its members and living circumstances. The data collection started with a problem-centred interview (Witzel 2000) with the home-based worker Catherine (38 years old) to get an overview of the family and work situation. Catherine is self-employed, works in the media and communication sector, and works entirely at home. Her income derives in equal parts from two business activities: a lifestyle blog and online consulting and project management. The blog reflects her own interests and thus has evolved over time; it covers topics such as baking and cooking, DIY and decorating, and family and mum lifestyle. She features the blog’s content on multiple social media platforms, and over the course of more than three years she established an audience of regular readers and followers. This is the foundation for her cooperation with advertisers and other sponsors that finance her blogging activities.5 Aside from Catherine, Family C comprises her husband Chris (41), and their two daughters, Clara (8) and Claudia (5). Chris is a managerial clerical worker in a full-time position. Clara goes to a public all-day school6 and Claudia to a public kindergarten; both institutions are within walking distance of the family’s rented flat in their city. They have a so-called ‘live-with workhome’ (Holliss 2012), that is, both dwelling and working functions are carried out in the same unit, as the separate room for the home office is an integrated part of the living space. In the second phase, Catherine and the two girls (Chris was not available, due to time constraints) took an active part in the data collection, as I conducted an individual photo-interview with each of them (Kolb 2008) in combination with a sociospatial network game (Schier et al.

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2015b). The photo-interview consisted of a tour of the flat, with each family member taking photos of different places around the residence with an instant camera. I asked about places they liked to spent time at and places where they often spent time with the other family members as well as the home-based workplace. In the following sociospatial network game, each family member in turn sat with me at a table and I asked them to build their home, using paper (places) and board game pieces (persons and objects) (see Fig. 9.1). The pictures and maps worked as a stimulus for narrations and access to sensory and physical dimensions and practices that in verbal settings often remain unmentioned (Ibanez 2004). In the third phase, I spent several hours with Family C, ‘shadowing’ them (Mcdonald 2005; Czarniawska 2007). The principal aim of this method is to follow a person (or thing) in their everyday life for a specific time (Czarniawska 2007), meaning my observations were not tied to a specific location and did not focus on my participation in the situation (Quinlan 2008). There were, nonetheless, interactions and conversations between me and the family members, for example, to share background

Fig. 9.1 Catherine’s sociospatial network map (Source Author)

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knowledge and to describe situations or actions. My shadowing visits with Family C took place on two separate days, once in the morning and once in the afternoon and evening in order to encompass a full daily routine. During my visit in the morning I followed the family members from soon after they got up until the two girls and Chris left the house and Catherine started to work on her computer. In my second observation in the afternoon and evening I followed Catherine during her home-based work routine and the two girls as they were supervised by a babysitter in the living room. Chris came home late in the evening as the two girls were about to go to sleep, just before I left. All interviews were audiotaped, the images from the photo-interviews were saved digitally on a memory card (the participants kept printouts of the photos), and I took field notes during and after my visits. The data was coded and mapped according to techniques of the grounded theory methodology (GT) and situational analysis (SA). The aim of SA is the ‘grounded theorizing’ of a highly complex situation and its different perspectives and positions (Clarke 2008). Clarke’s mapping techniques are build on the established GT elements of memo writing and coding. First I conducted open and focused coding (Charmaz 2006). Second, I analysed through messy and ordered situational maps laying out the human and nonhuman elements of the situation of inquiry and subsequently putting them into relation by creating relational maps. According to ethical and data protection standards all participants gave oral and written consent and all data was anonymized before analysis. In addition to meeting the requirement that legal guardians—in this case, the parents—give written consent for the participation of minors, the children’s consent was subsequently also verbally obtained. During my visits to Family C’s home, I entered only common living areas and those rooms that participants invited me into. It was up to each family member if they wanted to participate in the research and to what extent—thus, for instance, Chris was not available for a full interview—and the timing and duration of my visits was arranged according to the participants’ interests. I visited Family C four times in a period of six months, from May to November 2018.

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Shifting and Blurring Boundaries Between Creative Work and Family Life In-depth analysis of the case of Family C illustrates the multiple overlaps between creative work and family life. Identifying three characteristic aspects of this case, I made use of three sensitizing concepts developed for broader contexts—‘mumpreneurship’ (Ekinsmyth 2014), ‘livewith workhome’ (Holliss 2012), and ‘making is connecting’ (Gauntlett 2011)—and adapted them specifically to the situation of creative homebased work and its interrelatedness with family life. This allowed me to characterize: first, Catherine’s story of working as a home-based creative digital content creator; second, the spatiotemporal dimension of the living and working situation and thus the everyday and often creative coordination of paid work and family life; and finally, the family’s creative utilization of this proximity of paid work and family life by doing family while doing work. I present these interlinked aspects of the situation in the following sections. Mumpreneurship: Blogging Professionally at Home About Personal Interests and Family Life For Catherine, the birth of her second child inspired her to transform her work situation. When she returned to her job from her five-month parental leave following Claudia’s birth, she realized that she was no longer happy with her current employment. She quit her job and, not finding any suitable position at another company, decided to launch her own online consultancy business. Worried that she would not have a steady flow of clients, she started the blog as a side project: Funnily enough I founded the blog because I was thinking at the beginning, well, how it will be—I just started a business. And I know that it is super hard for me when there is nothing to do. Then I thought I will start this blog. The idea was always of interest to me and so on. And if I do not get enough requests from clients, then I do not have to sit around at home, but I write my articles for the blog. (Problem-centred interview with home-based worker Catherine, age 38)

The temporal distance from her job due to maternal leave and the addition of a new member to the family situation stimulated Catherine’s desire

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for change and to follow new ideas and interests. Catherine started the blog as a back-up option, but also as the fulfilment of an aspiration to pursue her personal interests in a professional manner. The temporal interruption of employment because of the birth of a child also led other women in the study to re-evaluate and often adjust their work situations. Shannon Black et al. (2019) argue in their study of women in the virtual domestic arts and crafts industry in Canada that women with new family responsibilities tend to change their employment situations into more flexible settings with the aim of combining their work and family interests. In Catherine’s case, it was the birth of her second child that provided the impetus for her to found two online businesses and start working at home. ICTs seemingly offer women the opportunity to better balance paid work and childcare, nurturing the narrative that home-based work enables flexible working practices and thus allows women with children to enjoy both career and family (Gregg 2008). According to Carol Ekinsmyth (2014), mumpreneurship is not primarily about a better work life balance but its interrelation and the benefits from the combination of business and parenthood and it ‘embodies the negotiation between time, space, gender, family and work’ (p. 1235). Academic debates, as touched on before, have repeatedly illustrated the double-edged nature of home-based creative and/or self-employed work, which can have both precarious and emancipatory potential, especially for persons with caring responsibilities (Gill and Pratt 2008; Gregg 2008; Taylor 2015). Catherine saw her digital home-based work, her mumpreneurship, as promising her the ability to pursue and mutually accommodate her personal and professional obligations and interests, but a nuanced examination of her everyday life reveals the complex and ambiguous challenges she faced in her new situation. Catherine was spurred to found not one but two online businesses by her uncertainty that the primary one, the consultancy, would be successful and keep her adequately busy or would leave her with the less appealing prospect of being solely a stay-at-home mum. Though Catherine started the blog as a side project, she set it up as a business from the beginning, with the plan to earn money from it one day. Over the years, she struggled more than once with the workload of her two businesses, and the considerable time and energy she invested in the blog was long financially uncompensated. She entertained a variety of ideas for how to change the situation—including simply ending the blog. Ultimately, it took her about

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three years to create sufficient income, that means she met a target hourly compensation rate for the time she spends with the blog through sponsorships. She had reached this plateau only a couple of months prior to our first meeting in the spring, at which she stated: For a very long time the blog was, so to say, a free-of-charge service that I provided. This year it has been different, actually since the end of last year. The blog became, how can I put this, it became really lucrative. […] At the beginning of this year I was very emotional, because of course, it was always such a discussion with my husband, well, he always said: ‘You put so much time into it.’ And, well, you have to add that it does not stop on Friday. I work nonstop Monday to Sunday, yes. That, you have to add. […] And it was very, how can I put it, it is a big relief. […] Because all this time I put into it is paying off now, yes. (Problem-centred interview with home-based worker Catherine, age 38)

The blog was, again, not solely a business but also of great personal interest to her and she thus felt emotionally attached to it. That and her hope that the blog would eventually become a financial success kept her working on it for free, despite her husband’s opposition. The elements of this story resonate with what we know of the characteristics of creative work in general and digital media work specifically, as their labile, insecure conditions and the need to be ceaselessly spontaneous, flexible, and resilient (Morgan and Nelligan 2015) are obscured by the mantra of creativity and the promise of authenticity and self-fulfilment (McRobbie 2016; Reckwitz 2017). Brooke Erin Duffy (2016) emphasizes the highly gendered aspect of this kind of ‘aspirational labour’, drawing out similarities between creative production in the digital economy and the traditional concept of ‘women’s work’ that leaves the latter economically un- or at best undercompensated and often unrecognized as productive labour (Duffy and Schwartz 2018). In Duffy’s understanding, [A]spirational labourers seek to mark themselves as creative producers who will one day be compensated for their talents [and their] forward-looking, carefully orchestrated, and entrepreneurial form of creative cultural production. (Duffy 2016, p. 446)

Catherine’s persistence was nurtured by this mantra of creativity and was, in fact, rewarded with a successful, economically viable online business.

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Besides the ambiguity of creative work in general, Catherine’s situation was further complicated by the fact that she was working in shared family spaces, while—adding yet another layer of complexity—producing content about her own individual interests. She described multiple interrelations of motherhood, everyday family life, and business resulting from her mumpreneurship: It’s actually that, I think it’s actually two components or three components. First is […] to be self-employed. This already leads to a mixture of family and career in principle. That is sometimes difficult and not optimal, I think. Then it adds on that the blogging, the creative business further contributes to it. Because of the content. Because everything I blog has to be somehow from me. That means mixing [family and career] again. And then I have to work from home. That is, there are three components that somehow lead to a complete amalgamation of the whole thing. (Problem-centred interview with home-based worker Catherine, age 38)

Catherine expressed the complexity of her mumpreneurship by articulating the double bind she was in: to always balance and coordinate between the realms of work and family. Her specific work situation—that is, the location of her workplace within the family home, her freelance creative and digital work content, and the significance of her online identity—created multiple overlaps between areas in her life she would have preferred to remain separate. Much feminist scholarship has critiqued and contested the divide between work and home and called attention to its ideological construction (Jurczyk and Oechsele 2008). However, on the individual level, many home-based workers, such as Catherine, have been seen to strongly believe in that divide and discursively as well as practically sought to reinforce the separation between the two spheres (Surman 2002). Given the dualistic constructions of work and home, private and public, the long-term performance of paid work in the family sphere demands constant maintenance and negotiation of ideological and classificatory boundaries (Nippert-Eng 1996; Clark 2000). These spatiotemporal separations of family and work also serve as important stratagems for the valorization of home-based work, especially for mumpreneurs whose work, as also Ekinsmyth (2014) has pointed out, has been at higher risk of not being accepted as work (2014). Home based-workers are confronted with gendered differentiation in terms of availability, needs, and responsibilities (Holliss 2012). Catherine described

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her constant responsibility for childcare and the consequent lack of respect for her workload and time constraints: Yes, I am at home anyways and if there is also a sick child it seems to make no difference, from the outside. My mother recently told me, ‘It is great, that you work at home just in case if a child gets sick or so.’ No, it is not great, because I have to leave the work undone for one day! (Problem-centred interview with home-based worker Catherine, age 38)

Catherine’s home-based mumpreneurship made her the family member with the primary responsibility for domestic work and childcare and thus made her gainful work less visible to and acknowledged by her mother or husband. Internet work—especially such gendered work as blogging— needs constant legitimation to be accepted as ‘real work’ not only by other business entities, as Black et al. (2019) point out, but also in the private sphere, as Catherine’s situation illustrates. In the next section I further discuss the spatiotemporal overlaps typified by the analysed situation and how they can lead to a specific and often creative amalgamation of gainful work and family life. The Live-With Workhome: Multiple Spatiotemporal Interrelation of Family Life and Paid Work The basic patterns of Family C’s spatiotemporal home-based work arrangements held true for all the other families I researched in the study. They were live-with workhomes (Holliss 2012): There was a designated workspace, either a desk or a separate home office, integrated in the family’s living space. Customarily, this space was also used by other family members and for non-work-related activities, just as the home-based workers performed some of their routine work tasks in the common living area. Family C’s case was typical—due to the spatiotemporal proximity of the home office with the general living area, Catherine’s home-based online business was interwoven with the lives of the other cohabiting family members in various ways. Catherine generated a variety of content for her blog that she could not produce in her home office; her baking, for example, necessarily took place in the kitchen. The presentation of her products took place as well in different locations around the flat, such as the dining table or the living

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room sideboard. This dual use of the living space for her creative work created practical as well as emotional conflicts: At my last visit, I see that Catherine has started to rearrange her home office. She tells me that the room has been furnished in the same way since they moved in, many years ago. She wants to have a nicer working environment and thinks about putting the sideboard from the living room into the home office. She has used the sideboard to arrange all her seasonal decorations in order to take pictures of it for the blog. This means that she cannot use it for other non-work-related purposes in her everyday life and that she has to be surrounded by Halloween or Christmas decorations in summer or whenever she starts the preproduction of her seasonal blog content. The decorations then remind her constantly of her work and the unfinished blog post, for example, when she enjoys dinner with her two girls. She reiterates that she would prefer a clearer spatial separation. (Notes from the afternoon/evening shadowing)

Catherine’s work in a way colonized her entire life and to some extent those of her children and husband. Her creative work content was always physically present and visible in the common living area. Her desire for a distinct, clearly separated home-office setup was prompted by her wish for a clear and distinct separation between paid work and family life, as discussed in the preceding section. Although Catherine longed for this kind of unambiguous compartmentalization, both spatiotemporally as well as mentally, in her everyday life the classificatory boundaries constantly shifted and blurred. The boundaries and intersections between the two domains were invariably fluid and complex due to various reasons—necessity (access to infrastructure), practicality (more space, better lighting), or atmosphere (feeling at ease with certain locations or persons). As is characteristic of live-with workhomes, the geographical proximity of the home office to the rest of the family spaces resulted in the constant presence of family life in work practices, and vice versa. The segmentation was further challenged by the cohabiting family members as the spatial proximity to the dedicated home office attracted them to use it for non-work purposes. When Clara, the 8-year-old girl, showed me around the flat we went to the home office to take a picture of its armchair, one of her favourite places in the residence. She told me: I like this chair. We bought it a short time ago because mum is working here, and every now and then she needs a resting place in the middle of

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her work, and that is why we have this chair […]. I like it a lot. Because it is cosy and I like to sit in it. It is relaxing. […] I read in this chair or sometimes when I cannot sleep I sit here and watch my mum working on the computer. (Photo-interview with Clara, age 8)

The chair that was initially bought for Catherine to relax in instead became Clara’s favourite spot. Both Catherine’s presence in the same room and the cosiness of the chair invited Clara to take a seat in it. However, by doing so, she became more likely to use Catherine’s desk and put pictures or papers on it that were not related to her business—as the other family members did as well. The location of the home office in the flat, along with the other family members’ ability to access it at any time, led to the involvement and use of the workplace in the everyday practices of family life. As a consequence, Catherine was forced to reorganize her desk whenever she wanted to use it for her work. On a daily basis, home-based workers working in a live-with workhome need to maintain a clean and tidy work space for themselves (Holliss 2012); occasionally, the workplace must be extended to the general living space, which affects the daily routines of other cohabiting family members. This illustrates how the material and spatial setups of the live-with workhome are involved in both family as well as paid work practices. The use of the different spaces, furthermore, is dependent on the presence or absence of other family members. In general, a home-based worker starts doing their paid work the moment their children leave the house. However, the co-presence of children in the house (for example, after school, on weekends, or when they are sick) does not necessarily mean the end of the home-based work activity, as it also extends temporally into everyday family life. The temporal patterns of other family members as well as the home-based work frame the everyday organization of both family and work practices, as seen in the morning routine I witnessed during my visit to Family C’s home: Catherine spends all morning supporting, supervising, and helping the other family members to get ready. Everyone prepares and eats their breakfast individually, however Catherine has to remember special events at school, hobbies in the afternoon, insure that Claudia gets dressed and eats her breakfast. While Clara punctually and independently leaves the home at 7:30 am, Catherine has to remind her husband Chris to leave the home together with Claudia before 8 am. Then Catherine has time for herself in order to eat her breakfast without any interruption by the

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other family members before she starts working on her computer. During the breakfast, she tells me that the situation looks different when she expects people for a business meeting in the flat. Then various traces of everyday family life, such as dirty socks on the floor, unfolded laundry on the sofa, and craft supplies from an afternoon activity lying around need to be cleaned. All family members have to tidy up in the morning. The normally relaxed morning then turns into a stressful one. (Notes on the morning shadowing)

The everyday routines of family life were shaped by the home-based work task itself and the needs and activities of the co-residential family members, including their engagements with various external institutions (such as offices, kindergartens, or schools and their specific temporal demands). As a result, different space-time arrangements interfered with the work process as well as with family relations, often demanding creative adaptation of both work and family practices. The live-with workhome does not only create specific spatiotemporal arrangements, it also demands extremely flexible work practices (Seymour 2007; Domenico et al. 2014) and leads to diffused and creative family practices (Mason 2008; Morgan 2020). That means finding ‘creative ways of dealing with life’s daily rhythms and realities’ (Eisler et al. 2016, p. 17). In the case of Family C the live-with workhome setup leads to the flexible use and rededication of work- and family-specific places or objects (for example, a workplace armchair becoming a child’s favourite spot or the kitchen table being used for a photo shoot), the extension of work or family spaces depending on circumstantial requirements (for example, family life taking place in the home-office or a work task being performed in the common living area), and the situational adaption of routines (for example, working while a sick child sleeps next to you or using a family morning for an office cleaning). This is what Eisler et al. (2016) call the democratizing of creativity, with reference to Richards’s (2007) concept of ‘everyday creativity’. Due to the unpredictable nature of everyday life, in every aspect of it we can find acts of creativity arising from the interrelations of various actors, needs, and spatiotemporal arrangements that ask for creative solutions and constant improvisation. ICTs, and smartphones in particular, have made it all the more impossible to arrange a spatial separation in the live-with workhome setup as they allow certain work practices to take place anywhere and at any time. The interruption of routinized arrangements—such as working

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when children are not present—leads to conflicting, often irritating demands, interfering both in the home-based worker’s ability to maintain standards of professionalism and to administer satisfactory childcare. Catherine described one of these conflictual situations that resulted from her constant availability via smartphone: I get called by the heads of companies sometimes, and when Claudia is screaming in the background […] I do not know what to do. Because even if I lock myself in the bedroom, she is knocking on the door. And the person on the phone asks, ‘What is going on there?’(Problem-centred interview with home-based worker Catherine, age 38)

Due to her live-with workhome setup, Catherine was constantly at home, meaning she was constantly at work while at the same time organizing, coordinating, and supervising her children on the side. The spatiotemporal proximity that created all these interrelations was further intensified by ICTs. The multiplicity of links between home-based work and family practices in the live-with workhome underscores that these two domains are not merely overlapping but often inseparably intertwined. I discuss this aspect of doing family while doing work in the next section. Making Is Connecting: Doing Family While Doing Work The family life and home-based business are not solely interrelated because of the spatiotemporal characteristics of the live-with workhome; there is also a mental interrelation, evoked in Catherine’s case by her blogging activity. The content of the blog was part of the everyday family life just as her everyday life was the basis for much of her blogging activity. The everyday family life of Family C was shaped by these constantly shifting interrelations, as the following situation in the afternoon shows: The moment I enter the flat I hear a loud noise; a heavy item just dropped on the floor. Seconds later I hear Catherine swear. She dropped a box full of baking supplies on the kitchen floor, small sugar sprinkles spreading all over the room. Catherine explains that she was looking for cookie cutters, she wants the babysitter to bake with the children later that day. She ponders that an accident like that wouldn’t have happened if she worked at an office. She takes a quick photo with her phone of the crushed box on the floor before she starts cleaning up. She will show this photo later

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to her children, the babysitter, her husband and is probably going to share it with her Instagram followers in her daily story. Then the doorbell rings and Claudia, the younger girl, in the company of the babysitter, comes home from kindergarten. Soon after they arrive, they start preparing everything for baking and Clara, the older girl, joins them. Catherine hands all the necessary supplies to the babysitter and her two daughters. The girls and the babysitter gather around the dining table, Clara cuts the ready-made dough open and shares a piece with her younger sister. They start to roll out the cookie dough on the table top. After Clara has rolled out her piece of dough she is about to start cutting out cookies. Catherine interrupts her and reminds her that she needs to take a picture for the blog first. Catherine puts a cookie cutter on top of the dough, then tells Clara how she has to arrange the other objects: ‘rolling pin on the dough’, ‘remove the knife’. Clara follows these instructions in a proficient manner. Catherine takes a look on her screen and asks Claudia to put her rolling pin on the table as well. At first Claudia is not amused and hides her pin under the table, then, after everyone—Catherine, the babysitter, and her sister—has asked her kindly, she is willing to hand the tool over. Clara deftly arranges her sister’s rolling pin on the table and Catherine takes a few pictures with her phone; it takes her less than a minute. Then she returns to her computer and continues working and the two girls and the babysitter continue with cutting out cookies. (Notes on the afternoon/evening shadowing)

Due to the home-office setup, Catherine coordinated and handled other aspects of her daily life while she was working. She did childcare and household duties on the side, with the risk that these activities could take over and interrupt her work because of unforeseen events such as the accident described above. Although the babysitter was going to supervise the two girls in the afternoon, Catherine planned and precisely arranged their activities. The situation indicates not only Catherine’s constant presence and control, but also how the activity of cookie making oscillated between family practice and content creation. The children became co-producers of Catherine’s blog. Family life was not only displayed on social media, the digital content was actively co-created and this co-creation can be seen as both a work practice and a family practice.7 Using the catchphrase ‘making is connecting’, David Gauntlett (2011) emphasizes the processual and social aspect of creative production reinforced by the increasing use of ICTs and Web 2.0 (such as DIY, blogging, or YouTube). Through the process of arranging things visually for Catherine’s blog, the image making became a joint

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activity between mother and daughters that, by virtue of posting the image, created additional connections with a broader online community. We see here a home-based version of the constant flow of interactions that contribute to the everyday generation of creative output and thus ‘everyday creativity’ (Eisler et al. 2016). This seemingly modest process of producing, documenting, and displaying a cookie-making activity exemplifies how creativity is not limited to the (male) artist, but as Gauntlett has pointed out is involved in everyday life and social relationships and inseparable from its context (Gauntlett 2011). Catherine generally documented the process of content creation as well as the end products with photos or video, as in the preceding example. The other family members, especially the children, were also occasionally involved in the online presentations, displayed in still images and video clips. Along with this active involvement in co-creation, the things they helped produce for use on the blog as creative digital content also remained as physical objects in the family space, available for subsequent use in family activities: Those cookies were not only featured online, they were shown to other family members, tasted, and probably eaten at a joint family meal. This mode of creative and joint production reinforces a specific way of doing and displaying family life: a picture-perfect one. One example: Some time before my research period, Catherine and her daughters had invested many weekends in preparing the decorations for the girls’ birthday parties, which were presented on the blog as well. The painstakingly assembled decorations became part of the process of displaying family: Display is the process by which individuals, and groups of individuals, convey to each other and to relevant audiences that certain of their actions do constitute ‘doing family things’ and thereby confirm that these relationships are ‘family’ relationships. (Finch 2007, p. 66f)

Family is thus not only ‘done’ in these activities but also displayed and seen by an audience extending from each of the family members to the party guests and, subsequently, Catherine’s online audience. The creative process of producing and displaying something for the online blog within the context of the family environment is both ‘displaying family’ (Finch 2007) and ‘making connection’ (Gauntlett 2011).

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Conclusion The case of Family C and Catherine’s business has allowed an in-depth analysis of the multiple overlaps and interrelations between paid work and family life in the context of home-based work in the Austrian creative industries. I have discussed the interlinkages between the three concepts of ‘mumpreneurship’, ‘live-with workhome’, and ‘making is connecting’. Specific to Family C and Catherine’s business is the creative work she pursued: her online blog and social media activities. The fact that Catherine ran her own creative online business that centred on her personal interests and life with her children, in combination with the home-based work arrangement and its spatiotemporal overlaps, offers a compact perspective on the constant shifting and blurring of the boundaries between creative work and family life, a process intensified and further complicated by digital technologies. The resulting interrelations at various levels—spatial, temporal, material, and mental—result in conflicting demands and ambiguous expectations and at the same time in creative adaptions and mutual benefits. The analysis has shown how family life and home-based work can take place simultaneously, either or both side by side or inseparably intertwined. The discussion of the interrelations of these two realms has considered the various ways in which a fairly typical mumpreneur endeavoured to separate creative work and everyday family life, and the various obstacles she encountered. A central obstacle was that Catherine’s creative online work intimately involved her personal interests, and was thus shaped by forces characteristic of creative work in general and gendered digital media work specifically, such as project-based tasks, fast changing trends and requirements, and little acceptance as ‘real work’. Catherine’s situation was further hindered by how much of her work by necessity was situated in the shared family spaces. The sort of work/family separation she sought is not only of internal, psychological value but also, as scholars have observed (Holliss 2012; Ekinsmyth 2014), a means of winning greater legitimation of home-based work, especially for mumpreneurs like Catherine. However, the spatiotemporal overlaps between home-based work and family life found in live-with workhome setups result in the constant presence of family life in work practices, and vice versa. This leads to creative adaptations as a way to deal with fluid daily patterns and evershifting circumstances. Consequently, we find acts of everyday creativity

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in spatiotemporal complex family lives that aim to address their unpredictable and interrelated nature. Although the intensified blurring and fluidity of boundaries holds out the opportunity of arranging private lives beyond conventional patterns, the analysis highlights that this process also risks reinforcing gendered modes of doing work and family life due to the persistence of established gendered responsibilities and demands. This discussion has additionally emphasized the modes of creative and joint production of digital media content that are becoming part of more and more everyday family lives and thus reinforcing a specific way of doing and displaying family life. The perspective on everyday creativity adopted here underscores the constant personal interactions that contribute to the production of creative content and makes the often-overlooked involvement of creativity in everyday life and social relationships as well as its supportive contexts—in the case of Family C, the family environment—visible.

Notes 1. According to Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (2007), ‘project-logic’ expresses the focus on activity in the flexible network and project mode of capitalism in contrast to the value of steady, standardized wage-earning positions in bureaucratic organizational forms of capitalism. It is necessary to be constantly active and flexible in order to have a project or to prepare for the next one, as project work is by nature short-lived. 2. I anonymized, according to ethical and data protection standards, all data and changed the names for the purposes of this study. 3. According to Carol Ekinsmyth (2014), ‘mumpreneur’ enterprises are businesses founded and directed by parents with the intention to combine work and family life. This understanding also includes fathers; however, such father-led businesses are rare in comparison to mother-led businesses, thus she speaks of ‘mumpreneurs’. 4. I selected this age range because Austrian law stipulates that children within it must be supervised by an adult at all times, they are likely or required to attend childcare institutions, and they have sufficient verbal ability to participate in the research. 5. For example, she may promote a specific product in one of her blogposts in return for compensation from the company. Not every post is sponsored; the sponsorship for occasional posts is the primary source of revenue for many bloggers, while regular (unsponsored) content is the foundation for constant, return viewership, which in the long run results in better (payed) sponsorships.

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6. This is the exception rather than the norm in Austria, where most schools offer only half-day care. 7. For a critical overview of research on ‘displaying family’ see Laura Merla and Kristina Papanikolaou’s chapter in this volume.

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Index

A affect, 9, 11, 52, 58, 62, 84, 95, 102–104, 110, 111, 160, 204 affinities, 5, 95, 102, 105, 109, 146 affordances, 98, 120, 122, 126, 151, 153–155, 157, 160–162, 169 ageism, 45 Alexa, 11, 112, 167, 168, 170–172, 174–184 alternative families, 72, 86–88, 147 Amazon Echo, 11, 112, 167, 171, 173 aspirational labour, 200 assisted reproduction, 8, 23, 46–49, 52, 58, 70, 82, 88 assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), 7, 8, 19–24, 26, 37, 44, 46–49, 54, 57–61 Austria, 195, 211

B Baldassar, Loretta, 119, 124–129, 194

Barad, Karen, 172 belonging, 10, 29, 34, 121, 123, 130, 134–136, 176 bisexual motherhood, 44 blog, 103, 190, 195, 198–203, 206–209 blurring of boundaries, 189, 191, 193 bulimic work, 192

C childcare, 190, 192, 199, 202, 206, 207, 210 childhood, 6, 8, 10, 79, 121, 128, 137, 173 childlessness, childless future, 77, 78 children, 3, 7, 11, 20, 21, 26–29, 31, 33–37, 45, 46, 50, 52, 54–57, 59, 62, 67, 69–71, 73–83, 85–88, 98, 99, 119, 121–123, 128, 135, 137, 145–147, 150, 151, 153, 155–157, 159, 161, 167–175, 177, 179, 181–184,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Mikats et al. (eds.), Creative Families, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70803-0

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INDEX

189, 195, 197, 199, 203, 204, 206–210 choice, 2, 5, 8, 9, 20, 22, 32, 36, 44, 49, 50, 54–58, 62, 68, 69, 72, 76, 77, 89, 127, 131, 135 Clark, Sue Campbell, 189, 193, 201 class, 3, 6, 20, 24, 44, 47, 50, 58, 62, 100, 119, 127, 174, 192, 195 closeness, 5, 145, 146, 154, 157, 161 communication, 5, 11, 103, 120, 122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 132, 133, 136, 147–158, 160–163, 184, 195 compulsory invisibility, 54–56, 61 conversational agent (CA), 7, 11, 112, 167, 168, 170–172, 176, 179–184 co-parenting, 3 co-presence, 10, 119–121, 123–130, 134–137, 204 couple-normativity, 21, 23, 28 creative industries, 12, 189–193, 209 creative work, 12, 154, 190, 191, 193, 198, 200, 201, 203, 209 creativity, 1, 2, 5–7, 11, 12, 20, 21, 28, 36, 37, 44, 74, 77, 120, 134, 135, 154, 168, 169, 190, 192, 193, 200, 205, 208, 210 critical kinship studies, 23 cyborg, 11, 167, 168, 172–174, 181 Czech Republic, 9, 68, 71–73, 77, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88 D desire, 44, 51, 56, 58–60, 62, 71, 73–76, 79, 82, 83, 85, 88, 97, 105, 108, 122, 124, 128, 133, 152, 160, 198, 203 digital intimacy, 6, 157, 160–162 digitalization, 5, 10, 148, 163, 191, 192 digital literacy, 6, 155, 161

digital media, 121, 127, 128, 131, 132, 135, 148, 149, 155, 160, 200, 209, 210 discrimination, 9, 54, 60, 62, 67, 83, 97 displaying family, 121, 123, 134, 135, 137, 208, 210, 211 distances, 5, 6, 11, 120, 125, 127, 131, 134, 135, 145, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157–161, 194, 195, 198 distancing, 5, 10, 130, 135, 145 doing family, 5, 10–12, 123, 124, 135, 137, 146, 157, 158, 160, 194, 198, 206, 208 domestication, 192 Donnelly, G., 2, 124, 190 Duffy, Brooke Erin, 190, 191, 200 E Eisler, Riane, 2, 5, 124, 154, 157, 190, 193, 205, 208 Ekinsmyth, Carol, 12, 190, 192, 198, 199, 201, 209, 210 entanglement, 172 ethno-racialization (often as a verb in text like “ethno-racialized”), 31–33, 35, 36 everyday, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10–12, 34, 36, 119–123, 131, 133, 135–137, 146, 147, 151, 153, 154, 157–161, 163, 168–170, 174, 179, 184, 190, 191, 193, 194, 196, 198, 199, 201, 203–206, 208–210 everyday creativity, 134, 138, 190, 191, 193, 205, 208–210 F family, 2–12, 19–24, 26–30, 32–37, 45–48, 50–52, 54–62, 68–71,

INDEX

73, 76, 78, 81, 84–87, 95–102, 104, 105, 107–112, 119–121, 123–127, 129–132, 134–137, 145–163, 167–169, 171, 172, 174–176, 179, 181–184, 190, 191, 193–199, 201–206, 208–210 family bonds, 11, 146, 162 family constellations, 83, 87 family formation, 5–7 family forms, 1, 3–5, 7, 21, 22, 37, 119, 120, 134, 135 family frameworks, 87 family life, 2, 4–7, 10–12, 24, 34, 71, 76, 78, 121, 124, 128, 135, 145, 149, 168, 175, 189–191, 193, 194, 198, 201–207, 209, 210 family models, 7, 36, 76, 87, 88, 111 family organization, 6 family practices, 3, 21, 58, 112, 123, 124, 135, 189, 190, 193, 194, 205–207 family space(s), 5, 201, 203, 205, 208, 209 family strategies, 73 family trajectories, 74 fandom, 9, 96, 102, 104, 105, 111, 112 fatherhood, 6, 8, 9, 62, 69, 70, 72, 73, 76–80, 83, 84, 86, 88 fertility care/clinic, 8, 20–22, 24 Finch, Janet, 4, 135, 208 Finland, 20, 22, 23, 25, 35–37

G gamete donation, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 29, 32, 37 Gauntlett, David, 2, 12, 134, 138, 190, 193, 198, 207, 208 gay fatherhood, 9, 68–73, 75–77, 79, 81–83, 85–88

217

gay fathers, 9, 68–70, 72, 73, 79, 84–87 gay identity, 69, 76, 77 gay men, 9, 23, 62, 68–80, 82–89 gender, 1–4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 20, 23, 24, 45, 68, 73, 79, 83–85, 88, 96, 98, 100, 101, 105, 123, 124, 127, 129, 133, 134, 136, 147, 149, 150, 158, 162, 190–193, 199 gender relations, 3, 10, 192, 193 generation, 6, 10, 12, 69, 72, 122, 128, 132, 149, 150, 154–157, 161, 162, 208 Gill, Rosalind, 103, 190–192, 199 globalization, 3, 10 grandchildren, 78, 128, 146, 155, 156, 158, 159, 161, 162 grandparents, 11, 124, 146, 154–156, 161, 162, 169 Gregg, Melissa, 189, 192–194, 199 H Haraway, Donna J., 3, 11, 167, 168, 172, 173, 176, 177, 181, 183, 184 heteronormative, 7–9, 20, 22, 36, 44–46, 50, 55, 57, 59–61, 75, 76, 78, 95, 98, 102, 108, 111, 133 heteronormativity, 8, 22, 23, 44–47, 50, 52, 53, 55–57, 61, 62, 100 heterosexual, 3, 7, 8, 19, 20, 22, 24, 32–37, 44, 46, 57, 58, 60, 63, 69–72, 74–76, 79, 80, 84, 85, 88, 119 Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 189 home, 2, 5, 6, 11, 12, 22, 56, 69, 74, 81, 82, 106, 125, 137, 146–148, 150, 151, 156, 159, 168, 169, 171, 174, 181, 190–202, 204, 206–208

218

INDEX

home-based work, 189–191, 193, 194, 197–199, 201, 202, 204–206, 209 home-office, 195, 202–205, 207 homonormativity, 23, 34 homoparentality, 9, 67–70, 85 homophobia, 50, 52, 79, 81 homosexuality, 3, 50, 51, 71, 79, 83, 84

I ICT, 5–7, 10, 11, 120–125, 127, 130–132, 136, 146, 147, 149, 151–153, 155, 156, 160–162, 189, 192–194, 199, 205–207 identity, 7, 10, 26, 27, 47, 52–54, 61, 62, 73, 76, 80, 101, 109, 121, 123, 130–134, 136, 137, 172, 177–179, 183, 201 imagination, 5, 73, 74, 76 information and communication technologies. See ICT institutional homophobia, 44, 47, 50, 54, 56, 61, 62 intended parents/recipients, 8, 20, 21, 24–26, 28, 29, 31–37 interactivity, 148 interview study, 146 intimacy, 5–7, 10, 11, 47, 70, 77, 97, 110, 112, 124, 131–133, 136, 146–149, 151, 152, 155, 157–163, 168, 194 intimate family work, 11, 154, 155, 158, 160–163 intimate, intimacy, 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 11, 37, 46, 47, 49, 61, 120, 124, 131, 146, 148, 149, 151, 154, 160–163 intra-action, 172 Italy, 8, 9, 43, 44, 46, 47, 51, 52, 54, 59–63, 122

J Jurczyk, Karin, 11, 146, 160, 190, 193, 201 K kinship, 2, 3, 5–8, 10, 19–24, 26–28, 34–37, 45, 46, 53, 126 kinwork, 11, 146, 147, 162 L lesbian couples, 8, 20–22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 32–36, 55, 56, 60, 86, 87, 99 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ), 3, 7, 47, 48, 54, 59, 61–63, 70, 71, 134 lesbian identity, 55, 57 lesbian motherhood, 44, 72, 85 lesbian mothers, 51, 52, 55, 57, 60, 62, 72, 85–87 lesbian women, 8, 45, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 82, 84–87, 89 life course, 5, 6 linked lives, 6, 148, 153, 159 live-with workhome, 12, 195, 198, 202–206, 209 M making is connecting, 12, 198, 206, 207, 209 making kin, 11, 167, 168, 172, 176, 183 Mason, Jennifer, 3, 5, 194, 205 matching, 8, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31–35 McRobbie, Angela, 190–192, 200 media analysis, 9 migration, 3, 4, 10 mobile phones, 121–123, 127, 148, 151, 156 mobility, 4, 7, 10, 120, 124, 137, 148

INDEX

monomaternalism, 8, 44–47, 50, 52–55, 57, 61, 62 mononormativity, 45, 62 Montuori, A., 2, 124, 190 Morgan, David H.J., 4, 119, 124, 146, 192, 194, 205 mother, 3, 8, 22, 24, 27, 28, 33–36, 44, 45, 47, 50–59, 61, 62, 68, 77, 82, 84, 87, 97, 98, 100, 101, 122, 129, 135–137, 147, 162, 172, 174, 202, 208, 210 motherhood, 6, 8, 45–48, 50–52, 55, 61, 83–85, 88, 201 multi-method, 190 mumpreneur, 190, 192, 201, 209, 210 N natural user interface (NUI), 170 Netflix, 9, 95, 96, 104, 106–108, 111, 112 networks of care, 47 new media, 1, 12, 128 Nippert-Eng, Christena E., 189, 193, 201 nuclear family, 3, 4, 7, 98, 99, 108 P parental behaviour, 169 parental desire, 9, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76–80 parental fantasy, 68 parental intermediation, 180 parental mediation, 11, 168, 170, 179, 180, 182–184 parental strategies, 9, 57, 68, 70 parenthood, 3, 9, 28, 37, 67–70, 72–83, 86–88, 192, 199 parenting, 9, 27, 44–49, 51–54, 58, 61, 62, 68, 74–76, 78, 79, 147, 190

219

play, 11, 108, 120, 121, 123, 128, 131, 135, 146, 160, 167–169, 171, 173, 174, 177–179, 181, 184 playfulness, 11, 167–169, 171, 173, 180, 183, 184 polymedia, 121–123, 126, 137 polymorphy, 2 postcommunist, 68, 70, 71, 84 post-humanism, 167, 168, 172, 173, 177, 184 precarious work conditions, 191 private sphere, 2, 22, 192, 202 public sphere, 148

Q queer families, 3, 7–9, 22, 36 queerness, 95, 97, 100, 109 queer reproduction studies, 22, 23

R rainbow families, 3, 12, 50, 52, 59 Reckwitz, Andreas, 192, 200 representation, 3, 6, 8, 9, 95, 98, 108, 133, 158 reproductive strategies, 9, 68, 70, 73, 82, 88 reproductive technologies, 6, 8, 88 rhizomic mapping, 176 Richardson, Ruth, 120, 193, 205

S same-sex, 3, 24, 46, 51, 56, 67, 71, 72, 99 same-sex families, 54 sexual identity, 47, 51, 63 sexuality, viii, x, 7, 20, 23, 24, 45, 96, 134 sexual orientation, 49, 54, 71, 82–84

220

INDEX

single women, 8, 20–22, 24, 25, 27, 29, 32–36, 46, 57, 59–61 socialization, 121, 127, 132, 136 social media, 6, 9, 96, 104–107, 111, 120, 121, 126, 132–134, 137, 148, 150, 152, 160, 168, 195, 207, 209 social networking, 120, 121, 127, 131, 133 Southern Europe, 48, 55 space, 4, 9–11, 20, 36, 45, 48, 57, 62, 76, 97, 100, 105, 120, 124, 125, 129, 131–133, 136, 145, 148, 151, 152, 154, 157, 178, 189, 190, 192, 193, 195, 199, 202–205 spatial distance, 11, 145, 152, 157 spatiotemporal, 11, 12, 151, 152, 154, 160, 191, 193, 194, 198, 201, 202, 205, 206, 209, 210 stepchild adoption, 56 stigmatization, 84 surrogate, 77, 82 Sweden, 11, 82, 145–147, 149, 150, 153 T technologies, 1, 2, 7, 8, 10–12, 19, 22, 23, 37, 111, 120, 125, 128,

131, 132, 146, 147, 149–152, 154–157, 159–162, 168–170, 174, 179, 184, 189, 191, 192, 209 teenagers, 10, 52, 120–124, 127, 128, 130–138, 184 traditions, 97, 109, 159 trans families, 3 transformation(s) (of family life), 6, 69, 70, 73, 85, 102, 120, 147, 148 transgender, 7, 47, 72, 97, 100 transgressive play, 168 transnational families, 4, 10, 121, 122, 125–128, 137 TV marketing, 96, 103, 104 TV show, 107

U Urry, John, 120, 124, 125, 131

W Wellman, Barry, 127, 148 women’s work, 200 work-life-balance, 199