Childfree and “bingoed”: A relational dialectics theory analysis of meaning creation in online narratives about voluntary childlessness

ABSTRACT

We utilize RDT 2.0 to analyze 424 narrative accounts by voluntarily childless (“childfree”) Reddit users of bingo-response interactions to explore how discourse constrains and enables meaning creation. Contrapuntal analysis revealed competing Discourses of Reproductive Normativity (DRN) and Reproductive Autonomy (DRA). We identified both dialogically expansive and contractive discursive practices. The carnivalesque, a communication genre characterized by the sample, enabled discursive closure to occur via single-voiced monologue. Calcification is offered as a discourse marker through which authoritative monologism is accomplished. Discursive interplay occurred via countering, negating, and one discursive hybridization, pet parenthood. We offer the bingo-response interaction as a heuristic framework for advancing future RDT inquiry and critically oriented research about challenging social topics. We describe additional implications and future directions.

KEYWORDS:

• Childfree
• bingo
• relational dialectics
• contrapuntal analysis
• online narratives

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Steven R. Wilson, Professor at the University of South Florida, for his comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Hintz is a doctoral student at the University of South Florida, where she studies Interpersonal and Health Communication. She holds an M.A. in Interpersonal Health Communication from Purdue University. Her work can be found in journals such as Communication Methods and Measures, Health Communication, and Journal of Family Communication.

Clinton Brown is a doctoral candidate at Purdue University where he studies Interpersonal and Health Communication. He holds an M.A. in Interpersonal Communication from Eastern Illinois University.

ORCID

Elizabeth A. Hintz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5202-4771

Clinton L. Brown http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5806-3149

Notes

1 Initial codes were generated after a review of a subset of the data and refined through the coding process. If multiple codes for location or person were present in a single post (e.g., “my brother and my grandmother both bingoed me”), both categories were coded for that post, and these instances are noted in Online Supplemental Tables 2 and 3. The entire sample (n = 424) was utilized for this coding. Initially, a sample of 40 posts were selected using a random number generator. We then individually coded each post, participating in two total rounds of coding with 40 posts each for a total of 80 posts (constituting 18.8% of the total sample). Disputes were identified and resolved until agreement was reached on all codes. This process was repeated (two times) until reliabilities of 0.69 or greater were reached on all codes (Krippendorff, 2018). Final KALPHA reliabilities were α = 1.00 for the location of the bingo and α = .91 for the identity of the other person in the conversation. We then each independently coded half of the remaining posts (n = 344 total posts remaining, each coder coding n = 172) equally. Frequency data were tabulated using Hayes and Krippendorff’s (2007) KALPHA macro.