Extract 9
1 Alice: and with having fam ily as well it’s .hhh
2 th(h)at’s £what most of us want ri:ght↑£ and
3 you know >me and my partner<
i’m twenty five
4 he’s just about to turn thi:rty we’ve got our
5 £own flat (h) you know it’s- this is the£
6 time of life£ and .hh
Within the context of a discussion about decisions to become a mother
(or not), Alice accounts for her decision not to have children. She
orients to a widely shared desirability of motherhood with the
collective “most of us”, appealing to those who recognise such
feelings with the tag question “right” (line 2), and the affiliative
discourse marker “you know” (lines 3, 5). Alice then lists credentials
that mark her out as a potential Mother , with reference to “me
and my partner” (line 3); use of gendered pronouns; and the
announcements “i’m twenty five he’s just about to turn thi:rty” (lines
3-4) and “we’ve got our £own flat” (lines 4-5). Thus, fulfilling of a
host of normative criteria: being in a heterosexual relationship; a
certain age bracket; and having appropriate resources and stability. In
meeting these criteria, Alice’s decision increasingly emerges as a moral
dilemma and an accountable matter. Thus, whilst making an autonomous
agentic decision to not become a mother, Alice simultaneously
upholds traditional feminised, gendered ideals of what womenshould desire. In constructing her own decision as morally
precarious, Alice offers an apologetic account for locating herself in
the category of intentionally childless woman .