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

This edited collection brings together two strands of current discussions in gender research through the concept of creativity. First, it addresses creativity in the context of the family, by exploring changing and newly emergent family forms and ways of creating and maintaining intimate relationships. Creativity here is understood not as just “newness or originality,” but as that which, in the words of Eisler and Montouri (2007), “supports, nurtures, and actualizes life by increasing the number of choices open to individuals and communities.” One aim of this book, therefore, is to investigate the social, collaborative, and creative interactions in contemporary family and kin formations in Europe. Second, the volume examines how new media and technologies are entering and shaping everyday family lives. Technological transformations and adaptions have not only enabled the creation of new forms of families and ways of family living, but also challenged the established constellations of gender and family arrangements. The present volume addresses these issues from multiple perspectives and in different contexts, and explores the involvement of different actors. By problematizing the creativity of becoming and “doing” family and kinship, the authors acknowledge the increasing fluidity of gender identities, the evolving diversity of relationships, and the permeation of technology into daily life. Contents 6 Notes on Contributors 8 1 Introduction: Creative Families: Gender and Technologies of Everyday Life 12 Creativity of Family Life and Kinship Relations 13 Changing and Newly Emerging Family Forms 13 New Media and Technologies in Family Lives 16 Becoming Family 18 Being and Doing Family 21 References 23 Part I Becoming Family 28 2 Creatively Becoming a Family in the Fertility Clinic? Matching Donors with Non-heterosexual and Single Recipients in Commercial Care 29 Queer Families, Heteronormativity and Assisted Reproduction 31 The Situation in Finland 33 Ethnography of Everyday Fertility Care Practices 34 Children with Two Biological Mothers, Children Without Genetic Ties to Their Biological Parents 36 Children Fitting and not Fitting the ‘Environment’ 38 Room to Creatively Make Kin and Family 41 Conclusion: Hetero-, Couple- and Homonormativity in Belonging to Family and Nation 44 Funding 46 References 48 3 Confronting Monomaternalism in Italy: Non-heterosexual Mothers Accessing ARTs 52 Monomaternalism 53 Research Design 56 Method 56 Recruitment Strategies 57 Participants 57 Data Analysis 58 ‘A Lesbian Can’t Be a Mother’: Heteronormativity and Monomaternalism at Work 59 Creative Strategies to Get Around Institutional Homophobia 63 Lesbian and Bisexual Women Dealing with Class 67 Concluding Thoughts 70 References 72 4 Images of Parenthood, Family Life and Reproductive Strategies Among Gay Men in the Czech Republic 75 Gay Fatherhood in International Scholarship 76 Gay Fatherhood in the Czech Republic 80 Parental Desires and Family Trajectories of Czech Gay Men 82 Moral Dilemmas of Gay Fatherhood 86 Reproductive Strategies and Family Constellations 91 Conclusion 95 References 97 5 ‘What Family Actually Means’: Re-Articulations of ‘Family’ in and Around Netflix’s Sense8 102 ‘What Family Actually Means’: ‘Family’ as a Leitmotif in Sense8 103 ‘Fan-Mily’: ‘Family’ as Affective Force in (Queer) Fandom Culture 109 Conclusion 116 References 119 Part II Being and Doing Family 124 6 ‘Doing’ and ‘Displaying’ Family in Polymediatic Environments: Conceptual Tools for the Analysis of Teenagers’ Digital Practices 125 Polymedia 127 ‘Doing Family’ and Co-presence in Polymediatic Environments 129 Moving Beyond Physical Co-presence 130 ICTs and the Construction of ‘Self’ During the Adolescence 136 ICTs as a New Source of Identity Construction? 137 Displaying Family Online 140 Conclusion 141 References 144 7 Creative Forms of Family Intimacy: Managing Family Bonds Across Distances 151 Family Intimacy in a Digitalized World 154 Method 155 Doing Intimate Family Work 157 Spatiotemporal Distances 157 Generational Distances 160 Embodied Distances 163 Concluding Thoughts: Family Bonds and ICTs 166 References 169 8 ‘She’s Nice Company and a Good Friend’: Thinking with Haraway to Reconceptualise Children’s Playful Interactions with Alexa in the Family Home 172 Digital Play in the Family Home 173 Conversational Agents in Personal Life 175 Play and Playfulness with Conversational Agents 176 Posthuman Theorizing: Haraway’s Concepts of ‘the Cyborg’ and ‘Making Kin’ 176 Study Design 179 Personification and Sociability 181 Digital Fluency and Parental Mediation/intermediation 184 Embedded Commercial Objectives 186 Conclusion 187 References 190 9 Being Creative: Fluid Boundaries of Everyday Family Life and Creative Home-Based Online Work 194 Atypical Work, Creativity, and Gender 196 Home-Based Work, Technology, and Family Life 198 Methods 199 Shifting and Blurring Boundaries Between Creative Work and Family Life 202 Mumpreneurship: Blogging Professionally at Home About Personal Interests and Family Life 203 The Live-With Workhome: Multiple Spatiotemporal Interrelation of Family Life and Paid Work 207 Making Is Connecting: Doing Family While Doing Work 211 Conclusion 213 References 216 Index 220