Anticipating and ‘experiencing' birth: Men, essentialisms and reproductive discourses

Reproductive realms, discourses and practices are being reconfigured in Western worlds as shifts in late modernity make possible new ‘choices’ and ways of imagining and doing motherhood and fatherhood. In this paper data from a qualitative longitudinal study on transition to first-time fatherhood will be used to examine men’s experiences of anticipating and witnessing the birth of their first child. As relatively new actors in what traditionally have been configured as maternal spaces, men can be seen to embark on uncertain personal journeys which are characterised by less clear reproductive trajectories than those assumed for women. Examining men’s unfolding expectations and experiences as they move through this novel terrain - the antenatal period, preparation classes and the hospital birth - provides important insights into discursive possibilities, masculine practices of gender and men’s ‘choices’ and presentation of selves as prospective fathers. The men engage a range of discourses to narrate their transition experiences which include elements of essentialist language - ‘bonding’ and ‘instincts’ – challenging dominant  ideas of maternal primacy to the child. In contrast attributes of hegemonic masculinities, for example power and autonomy are not associated with preparations for the birth of a baby and the men navigate the antenatal period and the process of birth in sometimes ambivalent and uncertain ways. This paper will illuminate and theorize men’s gendered practices of agency as new paternal identities are contemplated and realised.