i wish i were a seahorse

I had my second interview Wednesday, which was quite different from the first. The interview lasted about as long as Monday's. I felt giddy afterward. I got a real taste for how brilliant semi-structured interviewing can be when done properly. I really focused on allowing long moments of silence, which often led to what appeared to be more reflection by the participant and then more responses. I was very intent upon formulating my questions as open-ended and found that doing so forced me to think more critically about the question: is this leading?, is this too narrow?, et cetera. I only shifted to asking close-ended questions toward the end of the inteview when time was more of an immediate consideration and I was looking for quick clarification.

I can see now that Monday's interview was great for what its purpose was, which was to dive in and really get a sense of how to move around in all this data collection business. It served this purpose perfectly, but Wednesday's interview was of a very different quality. It is because of this that I have decided to use Wednesday's interview as data for research rather than regard it as a pilot. I checked this with my participant and he was totally fine with that.

I shared with him my impressions and talked with him about the things that he had brought up in the interview that I could relate to. One of the topics raised relates to identifying as a “feminine” male who feels forced in many ways into a “traditional” supportive, provider role. Granted at the moment this is not an issue so much for my wife and I because we both work. Yet we have had some very emotionally heated conversations about what our work dynamic will be like when we have kids. In the past I have felt as though I have very little say in the matter; essentially, Sarah gets to choose first what she wants to do and I get the far less appealing, left over option: working and being less available to be with our future children. Mind you, this is how it feels to me, not how it necessarily actually is. My childhood history was one where my father, as the primary provider (he owns his own business), was consequently gone a lot, leaving me with many memories of spending time with my mom and building our relationship. My father and I have, I believe, only really begun to build a relationship and know each other in the past seven or eight years. I want to prevent this pattern from emerging in my family's next generation. I don't want to have to work all the time in order to make it possible for us to pay the bills as well as pay the consequence of not seeing my children grow up. Sarah and I have talked about both working part time jobs when we have children so that we can have a more egalitarian approach to work and family life, but I have many doubts that such a plan will be successful. For one thing, there is the issue of health insurance...and on and on the list and the argument goes. See, I (we) get all worked up about what we will do when we have kids. But really a large part of this issue, for me, is that I feel begrudged that the default is for me to play the societal role of the working father. There is a lot of discussion about women, mothers, putting aside their aspirations in order to stay at home with the children, but very little acknowledgement, in my opinion, of those fathers who would prefer to more spend time at home to be with their family. (I know that I can be a damn good father, that's largely why I work with kids for living.) Yet I feel pressure to conform to this provider role. Even more, there is this small and very ugly voice in me that judges other men who, for whatever reason, do not work to support their wives and families. It's infuriating and just absurd that this voice exists within me, however, it's there all the same, so the least I can do is call it out. But I also point out this hypocritical voice because I assume it is speaks from a cultural teaching that I received growing up and have been conditioned by to some extent. As diminutive as it may be at this point, evidence of the conditioning still remains. The power of cultural conditioning, huh?

Basically, I fear that I am going to be relegated to being a detached father who works and has a relationship to my children that is supplementary to their mothers. That is a tremendous fear of mine. Biologically, the baby will naturally bond to its mother in ways that the father can’t. Babies of my species don't gestate in men and currently I am unable to lactate, so I have that much more ground to make up, but "I can't right now, Daddy's got to go to work".

[I am thinking too much about these blog entries. I write them for days, editing them and thinking them over. So, I apologize for my sporadic updating. I am trying to relax into them a bit more.]