Narrative Alignment
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more closely match normative ideals and the employment of alternative narratives. Each
strategy is discussed in detail below.
Living a “Hegemonic” Life
Experiences women convey that most easily align are, in the vast majority of situations,
“hegemonic experiences.”
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These experiences fall within the narrow range of sexual and
reproductive experiences that are reflected, normalized and sanctioned by “mainstream” and
widespread cultural narratives. The social and material world is also generally structured to
support these experiences. To experience life from within the hegemonic sphere is to live a
largely privileged, unquestioned and unchallenged life. There is little distinction between what
“should” be and what you are. To be outside of the hegemonic sphere, on the other hand, is to
have one’s experiences and ultimately one’s identities problematized, de-legitimized and
structurally unsupported.
“Becoming a mother” is the most common experience from the women’s life histories
that easily aligned. Of the few women who told accounts that were effortlessly cogent, all focus
their life history on the decision to have and the birth of their children. These women’s life
histories are almost exclusively narratives of becoming mothers. While most were willing to talk
about sex, sexuality and other relationships during the follow-up interview, the inclusion of this
information in their life histories is limited at most – in fact some of these women barely even
mentioned their partners. Maggie Mae’s life history is representative of those accounts that
easily aligned. She started her life history, by saying:
I always thought that I would have kids when I was younger. Then, we got married right
after we graduated from college, and we definitely weren’t ready to have a family.
After explaining why they were not ready and describing her pill use and subsequent
decision to go off the pill, Maggie Mae went on to describe getting pregnant with her first child:
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Hegemony is “the order of signs, practices, relations and distinctions, images and epistemologies – drawn from a
historically-situated cultural field – that come to be taken-for-granted as the natural and received shape of the
world and everything that inhabits it.” Ewick, Patricia, and Susan S. Silbey. 1995. “Subversive Stories and
Hegmonic Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative.” Law and Society Review 29:197-226, pg. 212.
Convention