Extract 5
1 Lizz: =that ’s where there are- that’s whe:re y- become
2 [a pro blem
3 Anna: [but there’s- i have [four chil dren-
4 Lizz: [are you saying they’re not
5 [telling you everything↑
6 Anna: [i have- yeah but i don’t want to know everything
At line 1 Lizzie assumes the role of Problematiser (Thornborrow, 2007), and Anna moves to respond, presenting her ‘how many-how old’ credentials (line 3) but Lizzie does not cede. Lizzie’s overlap (line 4) moves to undermine Anna’s credibility, questioning her credentials as a ‘good mother’ by querying the level of openness in Anna’s relationship with her children (line 4-5). In response Anna asserts “I don’t want to know everything” (line 6). We see here how mundane moral expectations are tied to the category of ‘good mother’, but also how these expectations are emergent in the interaction (Jayyusi, 1984), and remain malleable in the hands of members. Just as Lizzie constructs ‘children should keep no secrets’ as a predicate of ‘good motherhood’, Anna undoes this category-tie, reframing this not as an issue by which her motherhood fails, but as a feature with no place in her own measure of ‘good motherhood’.
In our next extract, mothers Shona and Karen discuss leaving children alone in cars.