6 - Giving voice to Irish mothers experiencing separation and divorce

Summary

Introduction

This chapter highlights the importance of utilising feminist methodology to amplify previously silenced voices of women in Ireland who have undergone a dissolution of marriage. Based on lived experiences, the voices of women in this research contest historically prescribed normative accounts of motherhood. Listening to previously silenced voices of women generates a firsthand understanding of historical, cultural and social processes on the lived lives of mothers. Feminist researchers seek to identify the subjective meanings that women assign to events and conditions in their lives, disregarding the traditional objective perspective that has historically dominated social science research, which seeks to gather information that relates to historical change, cultural events or the impact of social structures on individuals. Indeed, Lentin (1993) argued that the development of feminist research methodologies constituted a new paradigm, inviting scholars to pay attention to difference, women's voices and lived experiences. At a basic level and central to a feminist perspective is the view that researching accounts of women is not just about redressing an imbalance in the making and telling of history but a means of identifying possible continuities with women's oppression in the present (Chamberlayne et al, 2000).

Our research aimed to explore if and how interactional, social, cultural and historical conditions mediate women's stories: as Marx observed, men and women ‘make their own history but not … under conditions that they have chosen for themselves; rather on terms immediately existing, given and handed down to them’ (Marx, 1852/1983, cited in Denzin, 1989, p 10). Reflecting this assertion, our research required a methodology that could provide for a deeper understanding of constraining social structures on individual lives. Biographical narrative data collection and the voicecentred relational method of analysis provided a means by which this could be achieved.

Biographical research or biographical sociology is somewhat undefined, and encompasses terms such as narrative, biography, life history and life story, which are increasing in popularity. The defining feature of such research and a contributing factor to its rise in popularity is surmised by Shantz (2009, p 117), who states that biographical studies are ‘not simply the study of individual life but offer a unique approach to understanding individual–societal relations’ in a move away from traditional structure–agency dichotomies.