dafne

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
juillet /décembre / 2014 -julho/dezembro 2014

“I Need my Space”: The Discursive Construction of Parenthood

Dafne Muntanyola

Abstract

The expression “my space” appears constantly in the spontaneous discourse of young mothers, defining a need for autonomy and self-realization that becomes paramount once the baby is born. Among fathers’, the favored claim seems to be the opposite: spending time with their child is described as a way of unwinding from work, and thus a way of constructing this private space. We follow a socio-cognitive paradigm, based on Idealized Cognitive Models (Lakoff, 1987). We made eight face to face interviews and two Skype interviews. Since discourse is shaped by age, class, occupation and gender, our sample is restricted to middle class young parents with at least one child from 6 months to 2 years old, balanced by gender and activity. We looked into what these discursive differences say about the experiences of mothers and fathers in taking care of their children. The discursive topos indicates a strongly-gendered construction of roles based on care as a primary activity for mothers, which excludes fathers. Still, this gendered construction of time and space seems to go through transformations that create diversity and that ought to take into account.

Key-words : Space, social metonymy, gendered time, parenting, communication, interviews

1. Introduction

What is personal space in parenthood? Common knowledge, wildly shared in academia, tends to conflate family time with personal time, particularly in the case of mothers. This social metonymy neglects both a pragmatic and a symbolic aspect of parenthood that this paper would like to explore further.

Symbolically, we would like to make visible narratives from both partners. We are aware of the absence of the “father” in many narratives on motherhood (Capdevila, in press), and of the fragmentary presence of fathering (as a perfomative role) in the sphere of childcare and domestic tasks (Romero et al, 2013, Moss & O’Brien, 2010). Still, taking into account the intersubjective and socially constructed nature of parenthood, space cannot be taken exclusively as an atomistic expression of a desire or preference, but as built upon the partner’s role.

Pragmatically, we will discuss the daily practices of subjects to preserve their personal space. Space is an equivalent to personal time, that is, an individualized experience that comes with, but is not just, that of family or work time (Callejo, 2013). Depending on structural social factors, personal space might include activities related to taking care of a healthy and beautiful body, such as waxing or going to the gym; shopping, socially sharing leisure activities with friends; cultural consumption such as reading or watching a movie, or more public activities, such as developing professionally or studying.

We provide a qualitative thematic analysis (Alonso, 1998) of 10 semi-structured interviews to Spanish mothers and fathers. We follow a socio-cognitive paradigm, based on Lakoff (1987) and his concept of Idealized Cognitive Models (or ICM). Since discourse is shaped by age, class, occupation and gender, we created a typology of interviewees restricted to middle class young parents (30 to 35 years, since the average motherhood age in Spain is 31) with at least one child from 6 months to 2 years old), balanced by gender and activity.

A space of ones own (taking Virginia Woolf’s words) appears to be a fuzzy concept that is strongly context-dependent. Clarifying its meaning through a plurality of methodologies will bring forward elements of the social imaginary on parenthood based on idealized cognitive models (Rosch, 1978; Lakoff, 1987). The recent fashion of sustaining gender differences on neuroscience and developmental psychology (see Muntanyola, 2013 review on Bluhm et al (eds) Neurofeminism) naturalizes these roles and practices related to childcare and parenthood. Subjective social expectations have objective effects in family relationships and identity making and can inform social policies such as parental leaves, daycare resources and equality in labor relations (Torns, 2004; Meil et al, 2007; Carrasco et al, 2011).

We expect this different ways of managing work and care to bring to the table the construction of social identities, ways of understanding fatherhood and motherhood, as well as differences in the conceptions of gender, care, work, autonomy, childcare and pleasure. My research questions are two: What do these discursive differences say about the experiences of mothers and fathers in taking care of their children? and ¿These discursive patterns depend on other social factors besides gender, such as resources for care, work conditions or communication in relationships? My claim is that the heterogeneity of the expression “my space” makes it a polyvalent operator (Champagne, 1990). Still, common knowledge tends to conflate family time with personal time, particularly in the case of mothers. This discursive topos indicates a strongly-gendered construction of roles based on care as a primary activity for mothers, which seem to exclude fathers. MY SPACE constitutes a social stereotype on contemporary parenthood and motherhood.

My objectives are to define the specific practices and meanings that fall under the term “my space”. Second, to contextualize this concept as part of the network of caring practices that involve parenthood. Third, try to make visible this different ways of managing work and care. Fourth, bring about the existing conceptions of gender, autonomy, childcare and pleasure, and so bringing to the table fatherhood and motherhood as social identities under construction.

2. Theoretical Framework

The main theoretical standpoint of this paper is that “my space” is a discursive construction that is not arbitrary. That is, following Lakoff (1987), we organize out knowledge by means of structures called indealized cognitive models (or ICM). Each ICM is a complete and complex socio-linguistic structure, a gestalt, which uses one of this four strcturing principles: a proposition, an image-schematic structure, a metaphoric mapping (such as conceptual blending as in Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) or a metonymic mapping. We will work here with the last case, in which given an ICM with some background condition there is a “stands for” relation that may hold between 2 elements A and B such than one element of the ICM, B, stands in for another element, A (Lakoff, 1987). A simple example of this relationship is the substitution of an institution such as a national government for the physical place, thus giving agency to a building, as in “L’Elysée has decided this morning” or “The Kremlin has appeared on Tv and…”.

A relevant example of social metonymy is that of creativity and entrepreneurship as articulated in Alonso & Fernandez(2013). In the mass media and in business literature we find a vision of totally depoliticized, pragmatic economicistic, far from any idea of social conflict, divergent interests or social actors with different strategies and practices (idem:116). Creativity becomes synonymous with entrepreneurial, and is based on psychological variables as atomized as intuition, emotional intelligence or empathy. These illusory metonymy, joins a second one, that is, with the mileuristas

"[..]the part takes the place of the whole by the power of representation and definition of the social problems by the middle class but behind there are dramatic situations that are invisible and accepted (labor unions that disappear, the social conditions of immigrants, the emergence of new poverty and wider social exclusion) (Alonso and Fernández , 2013: 154).

Alonso and Fernández ultimately propose that "the phenomenon of job insecurity cannot be understood only as a dysfunction or as an irregularity result of mismatches in the new post-Fordist scenario: On the contrary, it is an absolutely essential factor for optimal performance (2013: 120). Precariousness is not an unexpected outcome of a market structure, but a deliberate ideological construction in an ideal cognitive model.

Moreover, for our gender analysis of discourse, we are interested in a particular type of metonymy, that of social stereotypes, where a subcategory has a socially recognized status as standing for the category as a whole. A typical example is that of traditional gender roles in parenting such as the male breadwinner for the father and the female housewife for the mother. Subject to change over time, they define cultural expectations, in the shape of desires and goals in everyday life, at work and at home. Most importantly, the reproduction in discourse and in practice of such cognitive constructions reinforces these gender stereotypes and sets them as categories that have a special cognitive status, that of being a “best example”. Not all fathers are breadwinners, but all breadwinners are good fathers. Such is the idealization mechanism at work, both selective and normative. The ideological effects of these categories, in marxist terms, is what Rosch (1978) calls prototype effects of stereotypes.

Figure 1. An example of metonymy: Platon is on the top shelf. (Fauconnier, 1994).

How do prototypes appear, then, and what social mechanisms makes them pervasive in the social imaginary of individuals? The invariant aspects of culture have cognitive elements, just like cognitive elements must have cultural elements. You cannot have culture without cognition, or cognition without culture (Cicourel, 2013). In that sense, the perspective of semiotics goes into the deep structure of this social imaginary (Alonso y Fernandez, 2013).

Discursive analysis here appears as a structural description of a chronological illusion (Alonso y Fernandez, 2013: 36). The social narration gains weight and legitimacy because of its cognitive structure, that is, because of the particular sequential structure of the social stereotype. Still, this formal structure of apparent universality hides the conditions of production which are necessary social. These are the social factors that we will try to put forward in our analysis. The illusion, this mythical dimension of cultural production in modern and contemporary societies is what brings Roland Barthes (1977) to explain fashion as a reproduction of the language of superficial appearance, and Guy Débord (1967) to talk about the objectification of the female body that takes place through nail polish and other body ornaments.

Moreover, Paul Ricoeur (1973) considers the structuralist method as the most reliable to analize a written or spoken corpus that is closed and finished. The deformation of cultural content through social stereotypes implies, on the one hand, a wider openness towards interpretation and, on the other, the dissimulation of alternative role models that do not belong to the prototype. I am thinking the film Don Jon: the porn addiction of a young Italo-American that goes to the gym and to nightclubs, goes hand in hand with his girlfriend’s fascination with Hollywood love stories. While the porn critique is quite mainstream, its juxtaposition with the compulsive consumption of romantic comedies expresses clearly the concept of deformation in Barthes.

The sweetness and lightness of these mainstream films hides a stereotypical discourse that defines men and women in limited gender roles such as that of the brave prince and the princess in danger. Barthes himself, in Fragments d’un discourse amoureux (1977) performs a deconstruction of romantic mythology as an ideological product. Sill, a purely semiotic analysis would let me unsatisfied, because in focusing in words and its referential things, it forgets the speaker and the capacity for agency and intervention.

The idealized cognitive model such as the social stereotype that we are presenting here is meta-theoretical (Portes, 2010). That is, the social texture that gives us this encompassing concept is our theoretical framework , the cognitive lens through which the researcher must chose the strategic places for argumentation, that is, its study cases, the empirical object, and the mechanisms that direct the reserach question. Following Robert K. Merton and its proposal for constructing middle range concepts as explicative mechanisms, I hope to build a typology for the meaning of my space that goes beyond the limitations of its social stereotype, both theoretically and empirically.

In Romero et al (2013), we analyzed the various reasons why Spanish fathers decided to take time off work following the birth of one of their children. The fathers’ discourses were divided into three groups depending on the amount of time that they took off work after the birth: less than five days, (about) 15 days, and more than one month. Discourses were distributed on four axes, each one going from one idea to its opposite (see Figure 2) These axes cross the decision to take time off work and are usually mixed throughout the respondents’ discourses. The first one was taking a leave as a right/duty (Hobson et al., 2002).

The second, individual/couple decisions. The third, personal connections to work and care. The fourth, the use of resources for care. In this paper we will look into four conceptual mechanisms for the construction of idealized parenthood: decision-making in relationships, the place of work, the availability and use of care resources and the gendered construction of personal time. All of these social topos contribute to the background of the idealized cognitive model and so shape the meaning of personal space as a social stereotype.

Figure 2. The axes of discourse in Spanish fathers taking paternity leave (Romero et al, 2013)

2.1. Communication in Parenthood

Intra-family negotiations regarding the allocation of time at work and household activities have been studied globally (Geisler and Kreyenfeld, 2011). A common theme in contemporary sociology of the family and discourse is to look into how parents cope with decision making and how hypotheses of individualization (Beck, 1986) may have an effect on their justification. Taking paternity or parental leave can be taken as the respondents’ individual expression of the will to become available for their children. Still, just some of the fathers interviewed in Romero et al (2013) reported a previous conversation, dialogue, or verbal negotiation with their partner related to taking parental leave.

Individualization seems to be inversely proportional to the degree of internalization of those rights as a duty. This fact opens a new path for fathers to choose their actions in fatherhood, following Beck’s (1986) concept of the flexible biography and its consolidation. Cultural divergences could also explain this lack of negotiation; Geisler and Kreyenfeld (2011) discuss cultural differences about what is assumed to be the ‘right thing to do” for a mother and a father in different European countries.

Evertsson & Nyman (2011) points out that the basic assumption in much sociological theorizing on families and couples is establishing a link between the movement towards more democratic and gender equal intimate relationships, and the increased importance of negotiation. Freed from traditional gendered norms, responsibilities and obligations, couples are assumed to need to reflect over their relationships and make active choices regarding how they want to live their lives (Giddens 1992; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 1995; Castells 1997 Bauman 2003). Families have gone from being seen as duty oriented to being families of negotiation (Evertsson & Nyman, 2011: 70).

The 60’s revolution seems to have given way to an individualistic and rationalized modern society where couple relationships are pictured as freed from rules and traditional norms. Negotiation in couple relationship is thus qualified as a rational behavior, necessary for the organization of everyday life (Björnberg & Kollind 2003; Giddens 1992). Moreover, within the literature, there has been little consensus regarding the definition and use of the concept negotiation (Espwall et. al. 2001). While some see negotiation as an open and specific form of interaction that can and should be distinguished from other forms of social interaction others define negotiation in a much broader sense. Anselm Strauss, leading proponent of grounded theory, emphasizes that negotiations are an aspect of most kinds of social relationships. Negotiation would be a way of getting things done, which includes a large spectrum of social activities (Strauss 1978).

Negotiation becomes too broad to have explanatory power. Plus, if we follow Evertsson & Nyman (2011) and the theoretical perspective they come from, which includes Schutz(1962) sociological phenomenology and Berger & Luckmann(1966) social constructionism, we can look into the everyday of parents from a much more pragmatic point of view. Let’s take into account that couples share a paramount reality, daily routines that are transmitted and reproduced within the family and significant others.

Well, such normative expectations and ways of doing do not come after rational or intentional planning, but as the natural outcome of how things are.

Charlott Nyman, in an oral paper presented at the ESFR conference in Madrid, puts forward how Norwegian couples share constructions of (un)suitability, thus reporting gender differences on being more or less suitable for different tasks related to care and work. Interests, preferences, personality traits and personal skills are taken as givens that explain the division of housework. Mothers are faster and more effective when dealing with laundry or babyfood, while dads are clumsy, lazy or unaware of these kind of practices. Additionally, the responsibility for ones actions and preferences are placed on someone else (the grandmother, for instance, or the partner) or on circumstances that are outside of one’s control, such as an economic crisis or the biological instinct.

This is a totally different picture from the “negotiation family” that seems to dominate mainstream sociology. If most of daily issues are not up for discussion, them the family is still, despite the sexual revolution and the participation of women in the labor market, an institution that shapes and limits its members choices and desires (Delphy & Leonard, 1992). Such a common definition of shared reality comes with an unequal distribution of power, which, as we will se in our analysis, shows up not so much as an arguments for open discussion but rather as emotional dissatisfaction, unease or guilt. Miller & Woodward (2012) claim that everyday life seems to be “blindingly obvious”.

A common example of the existing gulf between negotiation and doing in parenthood is a conversation I overheard on the bus between a young woman and her mother. The mother was explaining the case of a couple of friends with kids. The mother had been ill, and the father had to take over for a week the daily routine of picking up the kids from school, taking them to their afterschool activities (swimming, piano, judo) and then picking them up and driving them home. He told his wife that he was not sure he could have done the same for another week, and felt incredibily relieved when she recovered. The daughter at this point replied: Well, she could have said something! Meaning that the mother’s friend could have complained or negotiated the division of labor in the household. But the mother on the bus retorted: Well, maybe she just shut up.

This is a great example of the impossibility of negotiation when the social rhythm of everyday life takes over. The mother that I overheard considered this narrative to be an example of the type of duties that are taken by women in childcare and that fathers don’t take into account within a traditional gender model. Talking about it is not an option because there are ways of doing that come with marriage, commitment and parenthood. This idealized cognitive model is not necessarily intentional and, moreover, does not appear as optional in the normal way of doing things. The daughter’s ICM was not the same, and so she could see the possibility for negotiation. When this paramount reality is broken (in this case, when one of the partners is ill and cannot fulfill her assigned duties) this normal expectations become partially explicit, as expressed by the father’s relief.

As Garfinkel (1967) explains in defining the concepts of action and actor, the cognitive perspective of parents is entirely symbolic, attached to experience and meaning. All manner of things are real to him and are objects to him in particular ways (117): thus when entering a relationship and becoming parents, mothers and fathers interact with each other to develop a working consensus (Goffman, 1961:8) and thus share a common experience of how life is like. Still, this subjectivities are not necessarily the product of verbal negotiation, but of hand to mouth adjustments and decisions in the socially defined circumstances of daily life. For instance, social expectations define the mother as the responsible member of the family in social matters such as communicating with the grandmother or family friends. This is the natural state of things, and if the grandmother has this specific social expectation, it will require an extra effort from the parents to break this routine and switch places when she calls her daughter in law, which nowadays is harder because of the preponderance of cell phones as opposed to landlines.

We thus argue here that negotiation is a term that should be used to describe explicit negotiation, and that these type of social communication does not happen that often, but only in moments of garfinkeling, when implicit norms are broken or when critical transitions take place, such as moving in together, having a child or loosing a loved one. As the project Enduring Love (Gabb et al, 2013) from Open University explains clearly, the key nurturing element of a long-term relationship are moments fo communication that take place daily and indirectly. For instance, while making some tea or cooking dinner, while going over the day or thinking of the day that is about to come.

Moreover, since our interviews take place between 6 months and two years of having the first child, we expect to find negotiation, as a type of social interaction, but also other forms of communication such as emotional unrest, new desires, a change of routines or a modification of schedules. Interestingly, Treas (2008) claims that emotional work, once a largely feminine attribute, is increasingly demanded of husbands, because the intimacy of mutual disclosure is said to be the hallmark of satisfied couples. Emotional intimacy makes extreme gender specialization problematic, not because partners must substitute for one another’s labor, but rather because contemporary parenting norms call on them to reciprocate one another’s efforts in kind.

2.2. The place of work and the availibily of resources for care

Most of the interviews that we present here took place in Spain. Apart from high unemployement rates 26% in 2014, 33% in the 25-29 age group, and 54% under the age of 25), 32’4% of those under 40 hold a a contract of limited duration (fixed-term employment) while the EU-28 average is 20,7%. in 2013. The considerable range in the propensity to use limited duration contracts between EU Member States may, at least to some degree, reflect national practices, the supply and demand of labor, employer assessments regarding potential growth/contraction, and the ease with which employers can hire or fire. In Romero et al (2013) we found that work-connected fathers who take the least amount of time off work after childbirth feel indispensable in their jobs, have high levels of uncertainty due to their unstable positions, and/or are in non-care-sensitive workplaces. This finding is consistent with previous Spanish studies that indicate that work conditions, such as employment stability or more father-friendly workplaces, encourage employees to take more time off (Lapuerta et al., 2011; Meil et al., 2007). Spain is a familist Welfare State: Only 1.5% of the social public expenditure is devoted to resources for family care. while the OECD average in was 2’3% in 2009. Individual and family variables seem to be more important than paid work conditions in countries with other types of welfare systems, such as Sweden (Haas et al., 2002).

Moreover, the traditional workplace practices are highly presentalist, which means a workplace culture of staying long hours at work: Spain is well above the EU-28 average of number of usually weekly hours at work, which is of 37’3 hours for full time workers, while in Spain is 38’4, behind France, Lituania and Austria, while Italy, Finland or Germany are well below this average. Despite the work conditions that are imposed by the companies and/or the work legislation, parents tend to define their choice as an individual matter. Still, such a strategy for justification seems to stem from a ‘reasoning from necessity’ approach (Bourdieu, 1994). Both mothers and fathers seem to express tastes and preferences which are covertly constrained by economic and material restrictions. Again, remembering Garfinkel’s (1967) moral togetherness, that we can expand to emotional togetherness, work life balance is often times not the outcome of negotiation, but of a social construction of reality. Specifically, the feeling of uncertainty about their work positions shapes parents’ discourse.

This paper includes interviews restricted to middle class young parents (secondary or upper education). The reason for defining this sample is not because we consider class differences irrelevant, on the contrary. Class divisions are paramount, as shown in the academic debate initiated in Sociology (Savage et al, 2013, Bradley, 2014; Savage et al, 2014). Savage and his colleagues propose a multidimensional definition of social class that inlcudes economic, cultural and social capital. While this reelaboration of the concept has raised strong critiques, such as the ones explained and developed in Sociology, we believe its results shows the existence of strong and relevant class boundaries and thus that social class has not been abolished.

On the one hand, we take the educational level as a marker for class and so for work conditions and resources availability. The marketization of knowledge makes brainwork or clean work another commodity for the elite. The aestheticization of employement, together with causalization, poverty and inequality are the key debates in the feminist reflections on work, employment and gender (McDowell, 2014). On the other hand, a key issue in taking care of a child is the availability of care resources and the value of parental childcare in comparison with other types of care. The analysis of how fathers use the available childcare resources in Romero et al (2013) indicates how fathers’ preferences and choices about childcare change according to their decisions about taking time off work after childbirth.

Work and family are not biological organisms but social institutions. Feminist perspectives on society made intelligible connections between the sexual division of labor which referred the socio-sexual domestic work or, more broadly, the work of reproduction relegated to the private sphere which excludes women of the liberal model of citizenship (Carrasco et al, 2011). Historical studies, questioning false essentialism and naturalization, have shown the large variability of conceptions of care and home over time.

The historical perspective also shows that the devaluation of work within the family was a social construction that accompanied the development of commodity production, and offers light on the root causes of gender inequality on which it is based. Since the late nineteenth century, motherhood has increased in complexity. Tasks are progressively less conceptualized as work and more as the result of maternal love, based on emotions (Galligan, 1989), and constantly monitored for its suitability as a type of "expertise". However, mass consumption has made unnecessary much of the "expertise" generated by the domestic sphere. In some countries some of these tasks have been assumed by the welfare state, such as in Scandinavia, while on others such as in Spain or the US women continue to perform on a private basis, at home, the reproduction of the labor market and for the family welfare.

The time that women spend on daily household tasks is inversely proportional to their involvement in paid work (Bianchi et al., 2000). As Treas (2008) and Moreno (in press) put forward, specialization in the household division of labor reduces the substitutability of labor. Daly (2011) states that couples who have more egalitarian behaviours regarding housework are those formed by two adults working full-time (Moreno, in press). Countries with more equal time use are those that have a higher participation of women in the labour market, so the females’ relationship to the productive market is key (Kan et al., 2011).

Moreover, a new international division of labor is based on the commodification of domestic labor, with immigrant women as doubly marginalized workers (Parella, 2003; Castelló, 2011). Recently, the focus has been on embodiment and performativity (Brook, 2009, Bolton 2009, Hakim, 2011) Kate Huppatz (2009) review of Bourdieu’s capitals claims the existence of both feminity and femaleness as resources women draw upon within the field of paid caring work.¿So what happens with personal space and parenthood?

2.3. The gendered construction of personal space

Researchers have argued that the actual division of childcare is less important than whether the division meets one’s expectations (Gonzalez et al, 2014). In the literature, violated expectations are found to be a stronger predictor of depression and relationship satisfaction than the reported division of labour (Biehle & Mickelson, 2012). Violated expectations may lead to less satisfaction with the transition to parenthood (Khazan, McHale & Decourcey, 2008). This claim reinforces the skepticism showed by Evertsson & Nyman (2011) about the negotiation model. The organization of social order, as Garfinkel (1967) claims, is necessarily moral. Thus, when dealing with our partner we cannot only take into account the rational or instrumental aspects of care, but the moral implications that come with any social relationship.

In our own terms, given the social construction of everyday life, together with the gendered construction of work and care, parents build their discourse on idealized cognitive structures that put some social stereotypes, such as motherhood or personal space, at the core of identity as parents. Torns & Moreno (2008) explain clearly how the discourse of young mothers in Spain is still strongly gendered along the traditional role models of male breadwinner and female carer, and this despite both working full time in the productive labor market. Women tend to coordinate and synchronize the weekday schedule of the family, while dads are those in charge of free time and weekends. According to the authors, this sexual division of time marks a strong difference in availability and accessibility of personal time. Zerubavel (1997), one of the key proponents of cognitive sociology, claims that the key difference is that fathers save time for their own needs, time that cannot be accessed by their children, while mothers is always there, expecting to cover the needs of her children: The woman is always mom while the man is father when he can or wants (Torns & Moreno, 2008: 111). This division responds directly to the morality of social order that we explained earlier.

Callejo (2013) develops a similar analysis of interviews and focus groups to Spanish men and women forom diverse social backgrounds and activity on the sintagm “My Time”. He develops a typology for time as expressed in discourse, creating two categories: Time for others, which would be the time of duty, for obligations such as productive work but also housework, studying, taking care of others and socializing with family if it is seen as following social conventions, or else volunteering. The second group would be “MY TIME”, divided in Available Time or Checking Account time, which is at the fringe with the time for obligations. It is the time parents invest for their children in the long run, such as driving them to piano lessons.

My time also includes Spending time, or conspicous time, as defined already by Veblen (1899), that is, time to buy valuable objects of distintion (jewelry, cars, clothes…) or to by more time (travel, hollidays); and time for oneself, under the form of beauty treatments or health activities such as sports which take care of the body and the soul. Our analytical goal in this paper is to discover if personal space as a social stereotype follows the same path as time. Myykänen & Böok (2014) found that Finnish parents seem to build discourses which emphasize ‘own time’ and ‘own pleasure’ (which is not “guilty talk”).

Care becomes a state of mind. The identification of feminity with an individual that cares about others, and that takes care of them, with personal qualities such as being sweet, soft, delicate and responsive becomes another social stereotype.This social metonymy forgets that caring includes more than childcare and that such practices evolve and change depending on the social context. Caring involves emotions, but also practical skills such as cleaning or scheduling, and multitasking, which is one of the reasons why pop neuroscience identifies, in another social metonymy, feminity with the skill of doing several things at the same time (Bluhm et al, 2012) Ontologically, feminist neuroscience counters pop neuroscience, which is how Robyn Bluhm names the best sellers that locate women’s agency in a brain that is separate from the body. An example is Naomi Wolf’s last book, which locates the female agency in a particular genital area, the vagina. As Cynthia Krauss (in Bluhm et al, 2012) puts forward, naturalizing gender stereotypes and reducing gender issues to communication problems (such as in Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps) makes gender inequality less political. The responsibility for changing discrimination against women at work, or an unfair domestic share of household tasks, falls into the hands of women that thus blame their essentially problematic biological equipment.

Popular narratives on women identities counter contemporary cognitive science take on how we think. Cognition never happens in isolation and it is always interactive. The body, in words of philosopher Andy Clark, is the locus of willed action, the point of sensory-motor confluence, the gateway to intelligent offloading (2008: 207). Human cognition is not the innate, monolithic, deterministic, genetic and individual process that mainstream neuroscience and pop neuroscience picture. The brain is a plastic, situated and flexible organic entity that interacts constantly with the physical, cultural and social environment. Most importantly, and here is where sociology, anthropology and social psychology can play an important role, these changes happen not only at the biological or the psychological level, but at the social level. When authors from pop neuroscience picture women as unique brain-body-behavior systems, they are ignoring the social nature of the embodied mind. Is at the level of the social system that women and men negotiate work family balance in their everyday lives, through work, pleasure, love and creativity.

We must keep in mind that care is not an homogeneous concept, but varies over time and across social class (Moreno, 2006; Letablier, 2007; Torns, 2008, Castelló, 2011). The attitudes and expectations are constructed in the early stages of socialization, in the family and at school. Thus, Idealized Cognitive Models such as my space are strongly marked by class, gender and ethnic origin (Carrasco et al, 2011). Gowing up comes with the devaluation of care: look at teenagers, which are not totally part of the system and still value caring for their friends as key in their every day life. Friends become less and less present overtime, and the individuals we care for are restricted to the very close family members. Howerver, philosophers such as Nancy Fraser (2013) puts forward that the capitalistiic society still needs social relations based on trust and mutual excange at home and at work. Everyone needs to be taken care at some point in one’s life, not only in the beginning As Cicourel (2013) explores in a recent paper, sociology has focused on primary socialization and thus on how children become part of society, and its time to focus on de de-socialization process, how individuals leave this society through aging and death.

A way of understanding the formation of ICM around parenthood is through the emergence of a new identity status, that is, becoming a mother or a father, as identity theory claims (Habib, 2012). Following Gonzalez et al (2014) three are the key dimensions of practice that shape the pleasurable time that parents spend with their children: engaging in care activities and play, showing availability and being responsible for the child, so making decisions related to her well-being. In this kind of focused interaction (Goffman, 1961), parents develop a personal connection to work and care.

In Romero et al (2013), we found that men who take parental leave, and especially those who take an extensive leave, are usually more care oriented than those who do not (Duvander et al., 2010). The importance of this focused interaction during primary socialization is what pushed us to include in our questionnaire the place that the grandparents had as a role model for mothers and fathers. As Coltart & Henwood (2012) put forward, the analysis of narratives by fathers from working and middle classes make clear differences in terms of the rejection or replication of inherited classed masculinities (38).

The role models of their fathers and mothers, together with their family system of care, are crucial in the formation of the identity of these fathers. Moreover, these fathers have different work environments and work culture. Working class fathers belong to more traditional work environments which are object of disdain by middle and upper classes; while middle class fathers which share with their peers socially valued practices and roles closer to affection and mothering (Coltart & Henwood, 2012).

Labor unions play an important role as well, as part of this work culture: Miguelez et al (2007) shows how the discourse of Spanish unions in collective bargaining reproduce mainstream and traditional gender views on work life balance. Thus, class inequality impacts working class fathers in a more dramatic way. They must reject their own parental models on care and work thus lacking the positive role-models that middle class fathers have both in the family and at work. Working class fathers fall into a double bind (Bateson et al, 1956), an ICM based on a specific pattern of disturbed communication in which one member of the family is subjected to a pair of conflicting injunctions, or binds, in a situation were there is no escape (Appignanesi, 2009: 410). For example, a working class father whose own father followed strict masculine traditional values refusing emotion and care but who wants to be present in his child’s life is confronted to a dilemma: one the one hand, he loves his dad and wants to continue his cultural heritage and family identity; on the other hand, he doesn´t want to reproduce his practices and values, and thus he feels irrevokably guilty towards him.

3. Methods

Since discourse is shaped by age, class, gender and social imagery, we created a typology for 30 interviews restricted to middle class young parents (secondary or upper education) with at least one child (30 to 35 years, since the average motherhood age in Spain is 31 years old), balanced by gender and occupation. In our sample we took educational level, type of activity and job qualifications as indicators of upper-middle class. The exploratory example includes 10 individual interviews to 8 Spanish mothers and fathers, and to a couple from California as a contrast case because of different social policy national frameworks. We analyzed 10 them with a grounded theory apporach (Corbin & Strauss, 1990).

All interviews were face to face and filmed, except for the US couple which was recorded on Skype. The questionnaire started with an open ended question: Please explain a normal weekday, your daily routines, schedules and activities from when you wake up to the time you go to bed. If there is night routine, please include it as well. and followed with four sections on work conditions, communication, resources for care and gendered personal time.

Figure 3. Exploratory sample: 10 interviews, middle-class couples, 5 women, 5 men, 29 to 35 years old, Spain & US

4. Findings and Discussion

Our analysis will figure out which of these four social factors shape the social prototype of my space related to good parenting: communication in parenting, the place of work and care resources and the gendered construction of personal time.

I am flexible, if I have to stay a little longer at work, there is my partner or my mom. I have good conditions, I am not a civil servant but my work conditions are those of a civil servant ((Neus, female, 32 years old, part time job)

The social stereotype that we find in the interviews is that of the integrated mom or dad, the profile most closely associated to middle-class parenting. Work and care resources are not perceived as an unsatisfied need: parents work and they share care obligations. Plus, they have enough social policy rights to cover daycare and/or they have access to alternative care resources such as grandparents, a common strategy in Spain. This social metonymy follows closely Callejo (2013) approach to personal time in Spain.

I miss a space for myself, because when you are with him you are with him and that´s all, the first six months were a drag. Before we always met with girlfriends on Friday evenings, and now with the kids you can´t really talk… So yes, getting together with friends and having time for oneself, reading a book calmly, more the mental stuff, and not only the “Run, Mommy, jump, do a headstand!” (Neus, female, 32 years old, part time job)

This personal space in wishful thinking would be filled with activities related to cultural capital, such as reading, which is an activity that this mother used to do before having her child, and opposed to the physical activity of playing with her child, which is identified by the headstand. Personal space is also associated with conspicuous leisure (Veblen, 1899), that is, socializing with friends just for fun, following the ritual of Friday’s girl talk. Interestingly enough, personal space is the product of a clear separation, since it is not shared with the partner nor the child, and space for others. We need to explore further the findings with further interviews, but from our small sample it seems that this profile was for both men and women, so it seems that there is a masculinization of the sense of personal space that breaks with the everlasting availability of motherhood as opposed to the selective time of fathers.

I have a google calendar with a task category that is “Space” and they are things dedicated to myself: the hairdresser, yoga, a coffee with girlfriends...I stopped breastfeeding because it was torture and I was stuck to her. (Núria, f, 31, full time)

Moreover, this type of ICM includes a high level of reflexivity in organizing parenting, with the existence of negotiation of schedules for work and care. Items for the organization of time such as calendars and other devices are apparent, indicating a rationalization of free time. The existence of negotiation indicates that this ICM that is the product of a ideological disruption with the previous traditional model, with a marked awareness of gender inequality and the will off changing the taken for granted organization of parenthood.

We had a babysitter, my mom worked full time, my dad didn’t do anything at home, he set the table, emptied the dishwasher…I think about it a lot, how when my mom served dinner he said yikes, veggies! I don’t like greens. And of course we (my sister and I) sided with him. He played a lot with us. They are the lost generation, they had to work at home and outside (Núria, f, 31, full time)

There is a strong awareness of the importance of the parents role model, and as Coltard & Henwood (2012) put forward, a will to reject the previous power inequality in the organization of care. In her description of her parents model, Neus describes the stereotypical opposition between feeding and cleaning on the one hand, and playing on the other. This opposition could explain her strong rejection of play as part of her personal space, being more a refusal of her own father’s lack of involvement in other aspects of parenthood.

Friday mornings the 3 hours that Sam is at daycare I go biking (Jon, m, 30, full time).

Such a rationalization of free time could indicate as well, as Callejo (2013) claims, the submission to a capitalist market that commodifies personal time and space. Everything, including subjectivity, must be transformed into some kind of valued activity, such as taking care of one’s body, diet or well-being through beauty treatments, sports or education. The individualization of personal space becomes another instrument for the objetivation of the female body, following Debord (1967) and Barthes (1977). As we see in the previous quote, activities are strongly gendered: fathers play sports away from the family, such as biking, and mothers discuss gregariously with other women or take care of their bodies.

Figure 4. Figure 4. Models of personal space by type for work identity and type of communication in parenting

I miss a space for myself, because when you are with him you are with him and that's all, the first six months were a drag. Before we always met with girlfriends on Friday evenings, and now with the kids you can´t really talk… So yes, getting together with friends and having time for oneself, reading a book calmly, more the mental stuff, and not only the “Run, Mommy, jump, do a headstand!” (Neus, female, 32 years old, part time job)

This personal space in wishfull thinking would be filled with activities related to cultural capital, such as reading, which is an activity that this mother used to do before having her child, and opposed to the physical activity of playing with her child, which is identified by the headstand. Personal space is also associated with conspicous leisure (Veblen, 1988), that is, socializing with friends just for fun, following the ritual of Friday’s girltalk. Interestingly enough, personal space is the product of a clear separation, since it is not shared with the partner nor the child, and space for others. We need to explore further the findings with further interviews, but from our small sample it seems that this profile was for both men and women, so it seems that there is a masculinization of the sense of personal space that breaks with the everlasting availability of motherhood as opposed to the selective time of fathers.

We had a babysitter, my mom worked full time, my dad did´t do anything at home, he set the table, emptied the dishwasher…I thinkt about it a lot, how when my mom served dinner he said yikes, veggies! I don´t like greens. And of course we (my sister and I) sided with him. He played a lot with us. They are the lost generation, they had to work at home and outside (Nu´ria, f, 31, full time)

There is a strong awareness of the importance of the parents role model, and as Coltard & Henwood (2012) put forward, a will to reject the previous power inequality in the organization of care. In her description of her parents model, Núria describes the stereotypical opposition between feeding and cleaning on the one hand, and playing on the other. This opposition could explain her strong rejection of play as part of her personal space, being more a reffusalt of her own father’s lack of involvement in other aspects of parenthood.

Friday mornings the 3 hours that Sam is at daycare I go biking (Jon, m, 30, full time).

Such a rationalization of free time could indicate as well, as Callejo (2013) claims, the submission to a capitalist market that commodifies personal time and space. Everything, including subjectvity, must be transformed into some kind of valued activity, such as taking care of one’s body, diet or wellbeing through beauty treatments, sports or education. The individualization of personal space becomes another instrument for the objetivation of the female body, following Debord and Barthes. As we see in the previous quote, activities are strongly gendered: fathers do individual sports away from the family, such as biking, and mothers discuss gregariously with other women or takes care of her body.

As a contrast category, we find the superparent. Personal space is closely associated to a state of mind which is not attached to a particular activity, and which can be shared with the child, with other people, be part of work or involve an individual activity such as running or cleaning.

Yesterday, I was with the baby and we went outside. I had a glass of wine, he had his bottle, and he was looking up, and I realized he was looking at the palm trees blowing in the wind, and I said this is so cool! I didn´t notice the palm trees before. Paying attention at what the baby is doing is very meditative. Its a new routine. (Aina, 33, full time).

Both mothers and fathers are represented in this profile, which is the least negotiated profile of it all. This state of mindfulness comes with the sense that having a child, while being an important moment in the parents’ life, in not a traumatic event but a totally assumed episode that takes place in the flow of things.

Its just a great opportunity to be able to take care of her, to get to know her, see all these little things. Unexpectedly, its made me more productive, all the dumb stuff that I used to do to occupy time...You can only get 4-5 hours of good work , mental work, a day. (Tona, male, 35, full time).

There is a a strong continuity between the before and after of the birth of the baby. Still, parents in this profile have a strong work related identity, usually with jobs that allow for flexible schedules which help this sense of flow and liquid parenting. The rationalization that comes with the integrated profile here reappears in relation to work: the pressure of multitasking and taking care of a child brings efficiency instead of stress.

My Dad would take care of me during the day, because my mom worked as a teacher, and he would go to night class to get his MA (Tona, male, 35, full time).

Interestingly, the role model for parenting is also important here: the more equalitarian organization of childcare here is a given and doesn’t need to be negotiated, precisely because the previous generation were already aware of it and changed it. These are grandparents that went through the 60’s revolution and that transmitted more egalitarian models to their children that are now becoming parents.

You know like some people are transgender? I am a transocial class, an aristocrat in a working class body ( (Aina, 33, full time).

It is also important to say that this profile comes with those couples where both have the highest education level (MA or PhD), which is also an indicator of pioneering cultural practices and an awareness of the social structure of everyday life.

If the integrated mom/dad and the superparent profile are at odds in their degree of explicit communication, the relationship to work and care, and their gendered construction of time, we found two radial categories, which are alternative cognitive models of personal space that are in between: the bubblemom and the balanced mom. Both profiles are clearly represented by women. In the bubble mom personal space is transformed for the child, making more space for care related activities and often times displacing the place of work at home to be able to be physically close to the child.

When I do things, I do it at a 100% I could continue with my previous job and I decided to start something totally new (Mercè, f, 33, self-employed)

Here we find mothers who after having the baby decide to quit their previous white collar jobs to become bloggers, and to start a business making crafts, knitting, making beauty products or designing clothes for kids. Importantly, work here occupies a central role, because the new activity is considered as a real vocation, opposed to the previous job which was not part of their real identity. The decision is formulated individually and there is no mention of the partner, so there is no negotiation and apparently not even communication with the partner before actually taking the step of leaving her job.

(Some parents) want them to grow up really fast, and they are not adults, they are children. They push them to much, and what for? To consume more, to go to the gym, to go shopping? Two kids and the work is done. What does this even means? Nobody forces you to have kids, they want them to grow up and be done with it. I get really upset when I hear this kind of stuff. (Mercè, f, 33, self- employed).

The change that the child caused in the parent relation to the child is described in positive terms, as a source of wellbeing and pleasure. There is a strong push against a capitalistic and neoliberal society and a revival of essentialist and naturalistic view of childhood as a unique stage of life which parents must cherish, respect and enjoy.

Now I do more things than ever, with less money: I have been working in the restaurant business since I was 14, so because of Sam, and most of all stress, I changed (Llorenc, m, 30, part time).

The drawback of this change in labor status is less money, which appears in the parents discourse, but which is largely downplayed by the positive aspects of this life-saving decision. The change can inolve in some cases, such as in the previous quotation, spending less hours in a vocational job such as being a cook.

Still, the father views this change as a positive step toward improving his health, since in this particular case he had been ill during the first year of life of his son out of guilt for not spending enough time with him. This is a typically gendered attitude towards time, that we will find in the next profile as well. What is relevant here is that the way of getting over the gilt is changing the work conditions and adopt a caring role closer to traditional motherhood. Personal space then becomes childcare. This change brings satisfaction, a sense of liberation from previous work constraints and better quality of life.

Finally, we defined the balanced mom, since fathers were a clear minority. Here personal space is nonexistent, substituted bt transitional spaces, such as the commuting train or car, to and from work.

I email friends when I am on the train coming to and from work. I got a smartphone when Max was 10 months and got back to work, and I am so glad I got it right now because if I didn’t have it I honestly would not email anybody ever. Is the only way I email anymore. (Neus, 33, part time)

This spaces are occupied in socializing through online devices, such as chat, email or facebook, and it is defined as the only possibility for keeping touch with friend and family.

I don´t want to regret it, I’m really grateful that he gets this time, that the baby has him to take care of him, I hope that my decision is ok, that I’m not going to be sad later that I didn’t have more time because this is the only baby time I got. (Tatiana, 33, full-time)

Here work is defined in opposition to childcare, and there is a clear expression of guilt towards the classic work life balance and the will of spending “enough” time with the child.

I wanted to send flowers, and I called while I was pumping. I didn’t have my wallet, so I had to call back, and I haven´t called back, and that’s 2 weeks ago. (Tatiana, 33, full-time)

The specific gendered care duties, such as pumping milk at work, is for this mothers another possible personal space to do errands, such as sending flowers to a friend whose loved one passed away. This multitasking puts forward a level of stress and anxiety.

I work all day long. It’s a jam packed day, I’m going very fast, I have more work to do because usually before the baby a 9 hour work was a nice work day. Tona and I have been negotiating a strategy where I need to get home at a certain time. (Tatiana, 33, full-time)

The work and life balance for this mothers involves squeezing more in less time, which virtually erases personal spaces, in a classic “superwoman” model. Still, what is interesting here is that Tatiana is Tona’s partner, who is the main caregiver for the child. So here we so how, while Tona as a superparent seems unfazed by the baby appearance, in the case of Tatiana, because of the work schedules and the care arrangements, this event is much more disruptive. We van see that such disruption is expressed by explicit communication patterns of negotiating the time that she must be home to take care of the baby and give Tona personal time.

I haven’t had time to think about personal space, but one thing I have wished is that I feel I don´t have Alberto-Mercè time anymore. I don’t ever have time to talk to her. Last weekend we had a 3 hour drive to Mia’s party and I didn’t stop talking for 3 hours about work, gossip, things (Alberto, 34, self-employed).

Guilt is the other side of another regret, which is to have shared intimate space with the family, being the child or, in the case of Alberto, with his partner. Communication, as the project Enduring Love puts forward, is is the most important nurturing element of a long-term relationship, and Alberto explicitly states that he feels the need for shared time, which Callejo (2013) would classify as time for others, rather that this non-existent personal space.

Conclusions

“My space” becomes a social stereotype when the parenting experience is restricted to a particular prototype, such as integrated mom/dad, which is the mainstream model in middle class parenting and is represented by both genders. Personal space in integrated parenting is time that is not invested in others but in one’s body or mind. This space comes with explicit negotiation within the couple and it is facilitated by comfortable work conditions and the availability of care resources that are not perceived as problematic. As stated by Callejo (2013), but also Beck (1986) and Myykänen & Böok (2014), the integrated parent personal space is constructed in opposition to family time. The construction of personal space as an ICM relates to a process of identity construction related to work, the cultural practices of care transmitted in primary socialization by the family role models, and the degree of individualization in the relationship. Still, within dual earners couples of middle class families such as the ones that we put together in our sampling, we observed gender differences. These differences put forward three other profiles that define personal space in an alternative way to the integrated mom/dad.

As a contrasting category to the integrated mom/dad we find the superparent, also represented by both genders. Here personal space becomes a state of mind that it is not attached to a specific activity. Space is then identified with mindfulness, thus enjoying the present moment and making the most of it. Work is vocational but flexible, and the transition towards parenthood is taken as a key motivator, an impulse to make one’s life better. Mindfulness comes with flow, and here communication in the family does not take the form of negotiation but of focused interaction and togetherness. These interviewees are those with higher level of education and with egalitarian parental role models, pioneers in the practices of care and pleasure.

The other two profiles, bubble mom and balancing mom, are over represented by women. In the former, personal space is indistinguishable from the family, there is an identification of the mother with the child which includes also the fagocitation of work, which often times implies abandoning a previous job and “reinventing” oneself to be more hours physically present at home. There is no negotiation because the partner does not appear in the picture, similarly to what Capdevila (in press) describes in the dicourse of UK mothers around health issues. It is a fusional relationship mother-child which is built against the consumer society that commodifies emotions, space and time, where “Mom knows best” (Capdevila, in press). The bubble mom has transformed her everyday life in a bubble of love and emotions in childcare. Finally, the balancing mom is the other side of the superparent: her relationship with work is also vocational, but there is a discourse of guilt that builds personal space as the missing link in the communication patterns with the family, constrained by rigid schedules and locations at work and the multitasking that comes with everyday life. Personal space then is time for being with the loves ones, that the mother seems to be trading for time at work outside the household.

In our theoretical framework we have put forward the existence of a social metonymy that restricts the definition of personal space along the gender divide in availability and accessibility of personal time (Zerubavel, 1997; Torns & Moreno, 2008). The literature makes clear that there is a dominant Ideal Cognitive Model where fathers are considered as integrated parents, while mothers are bubble moms (maman poule or mamá gallina). This ICM brings about the definition of good parenting under the light of gendered relations in everyday life.

Our exploratory analysis suggests that this idealized cognitive model is a social metonymy for the analysis of parenting, since it neglects the diversity of activities and meanings attributed to being a parent. On the one hand, we found two other models, the superparent and the balancing mom. Following the communicative approach of everyday life (Evertsson & Nyman, 2011), in the integrated mod/dad personal space is individualized and negotiated, while in the other three profiles it is shared and interactive, or negotiated only in cases of a crisis, such as in the balancing mom case.

On the other hand, gender differences cross these categories of parenting, While fatherhood is strongly represented in superparents and integrated categories, and motherhood dominates the bubble and balancing models, there is no clear cut differentiation.

We claim that four background condition explain the plurality of parenting; the flexibility of work schedules and location, the existence of good communication within partners, the existence of positive care role models and the availability of resources for care in case of need. These social factors shape the construction of personal space within an idealized cognitive model.

Our discursive analysis of first time parents, who have gone through a recent major transition, explains in detail and from a socio-cognitive perspective the changes on the in availability and accessibility of personal space and time by gender (Zerubavel, 1997; Torns & Moreno, 2008).

The next step is to expand the interview sample to 30 interviewees, according to the existing typology. Another element to take into account is the unemployment rate in Spain which is 26% in 2014. Our complete sample should include the corresponding proportions of activity: non active (20%), a situation that can hide unemployment or students, employed (40%), on parental leave (20%), and unemployed (20%). Finally, it would be not only interesting but necessary to include in the sample single parents, homosexual couples and other diverse forms of parenthood beyond the mainstream models.

Biography

dafne.muntanyola@uab.cat has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona , Centre de Recerca en Treball i Vida Quotidiana (QUIT)

(2008), where she is currently teaching Cultural Consumption and Ethnography. She has been an MA student at Stockholm University, and a postdoc reseracher in Nice and Madrid, as well as Fulbright Scholar at University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Her research interests are doing ethnography of creative environments, gendered parenthood and the analysis of interactivity in everyday life from the perspective of cognitive sociology. You can see her publications at academia.edu.

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