Accounting for Difference: Commuter Wives and the Master Narrative of Marriage

Accounting for Lesbian-Headed Families: Lesbian Mothers' Responses to Discursive Challenges

“…Changing social structures, including the increase in lesbianheaded families over the last two decades (Tasker & Patterson, 2007), and the potential gravity of challenging one's family identity similarly suggests that previous theoretical explanations for mitigating and aggravating accounting strategies need to be reconsidered. Despite this, research such as the current study and those that focus on other issues of changing family (Bergen, 2010) and work structures (Dunn & Cody, 2001) highlight the usefulness of accounts for understanding how people communicatively respond to valuative inquiry in a climate of contested and changing social norms.…”

“…Unlike Bergen (2010), the mothers in our sample did not use excuses to explain their family form. It may be that discourse dependent families (Galvin, 2006) use different types of accounts based on differences in relational master narratives.…”

“…Yet, new strategies emerged as well. Although, like Bergen's (2010) commuter wife participants, lesbian mothers in the current study reported experiencing master narrative challenges, the challenges they reported (e.g., school forms) are unique to same-sex parents/families. Indeed, West and Turner (1995) reported very similar schoolÁfamily interactions for same-sex families.…”

“…One study on discourse dependent families has explicitly applied an accounting framework. Bergen (2010) found that commuter wives ''chose or felt compelled to account for why they were living apart from their husbands'' based on existing master narratives of marriage (p. 53). When lesbian mothers are challenged, they likely feel similarly called to provide an account (Bos et al, 2004).…”

Communication and Distance: The Present and Future Interpreted through the Past

“…LDR research has primarily focused on the longdistance relationship state or compared LDRs to proximal relationships (Sahlstein, 2004). Bergen's (2010) study reflects an attention to the individuals' simultaneous management of distant and proximal relationships. As Stafford (2005) points out, distanced relationships are not viewed as normal or typical, and like any marginalized individual, couple, group, or culture, long-distance partners communicatively negotiate their identities against dominant, privileged, normative views of relationships.…”