At the Intersection of Fiction and Reality: An Ideological and Rhetorical Contextualization of Two Childfree Heroines on American Television
Abstract
The field of research regarding the mediation of childfree women on television is sparsely populated. This research project begins to fill gaps in the current academic literature by investigating various aspects of the mediation of childfree women on American television, including the role of pronatalist ideology in the framing of childfree heroines, how the portrayal of these characters does or does not adhere to stereotypes about childfree women, and to what extent the mediation of childfree women on television is reflective of the reality of being a childfree woman in America. This research further contributes to the existing literature by investigating the role of semiotic and rhetorical devices in the framing of the childfree characters studied. The data for this project consisted of 20 total pertinent television episodes from two case studies. The content of each episode was analyzed using a qualitative multimodal audiovisual analysis methodology.
This research found that in agreement with the extant literature, the mediation of childfree women on American television continues to portray these characters negatively. It found that pronatalist ideology plays a significant role in the negative mediation of childfree women on television. It also found that the mediations in both case studies adhere to some common stereotypes of childfree women, as well as being semi-accurate representations of the experiences and traits of real childfree women.
These findings indicate the need for an expansion of the academic research on the mediation of childfree women on American television in order to investigate how the negative portrayal of this already marginalized population might play a role in the perpetuation of negative stereotypes about and the subsequent mistreatment of real childfree women. It also highlights the need for investigation into the mediation of childfree men on American television, a field of research that is similarly underpopulated.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………. 1
2. THEORETICAL CHAPTER .......................................................................................... 3
LITERATURE REVIEW ……………………………………………………………... 3
Pronatalism ……………………………………………………………………………. 3
Childfree Terminology ……………………………………………………………... 4
Reality of the Childfree Experience ………………………………………………5
Childfree Stereotypes …………………………………………………………………. 6
Mediation and Persuasion Through Television ……………………………………….. 7
Mediation of Pronatalism on Television ………………………………………………. 8
Mediation of Childfree Women on Television …………………………………….….. 8
Character-Specific Literature ………………………………………………….…. 9
Theoretical Framework ………………………………………………….…………. 10
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY …………………………………………………... 12
Objectives …………………………………………………………….………………... 12
Research Questions …………………………………………………………………. 13
Strategy …………………………………………………………………………………13
Methods and Procedures …………………………………………………………. 16
Ethics and Reflexivity ………………………………………………………………. 19
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION …………………………………………………….. 20
Analysis ………………………………………………………………………………… 20
RQ1: How do the case studies chosen represent fictional American television’s mediation of childfree women, and is this mediation ultimately positive or negative? ……20
RQ2: What role does pronatalism play in framing the childfree characters on these shows? ………………………………………………………………………. 20
RQ3: What commonalities, if any, are shared by these heroines and the shows’ characterization of them? ……………………………………………………..... 24
RQ4: How do the mediations of these characters conform to or reject real-world societal stereotypes of childfree women? ………………………………………………. 24
RQ5: Is there any reflection of the realities of American childfree women on either show and if so, in what way? …………………………………………………….…... 28
Moral Outrage …………………………………………………………………….…. 29
Backlash and Punishment ………………………………………………….…... 32
Dichotomy of Cristina Yang ………………………………………………………… 33
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………….….. 34
APPENDIX …………………………………………………………………………...… 35
REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………..………… 36
Chapter 1
Introduction
Myriad studies have been conducted pointing to the falling birth rate in the United States over the last half-century (Blackstone, 2014; Ashburn-Nardo, 2017; Teitelbaum & Winter, 2014; Gillespie, 2003). Blackstone highlights that “the percentage of women who have not given birth by their 40s has nearly doubled since 1976, when 10 percent of women had never given birth by their 40s” (2014, p. 68). The U.S. fertility rate has been below the replacement rate since 1971 (Blackstone, 2014).
This decline in birth rate has been attributed to external factors affecting whether women choose to have children, including high rates of divorce, increasing likelihood of having to take on the financial burden of caring for elderly parents, and the difficulty of buying a home because of higher mortgage rates (Teitelbaum & Winter, 2014). However, one more controversial factor in the decline in U.S. birth rates has also been garnering attention: The number of women in the United States who are voluntarily and consciously choosing to live a childfree life is increasing (Pitofsky, 2019).
Women have more choices than ever because of factors like freely available birth control, more roles for women in the workplace, and social change movements such as feminism (Gillespie, 2003). As a result, more women in the United States are realizing that the traditional path of family and marriage may not be for them. These women have no interest in having children; they want to prioritize free time and have the opportunity to pursue their professional and personal goals unencumbered by the burdens of motherhood (Pitofsky, 2019).
As the population of childfree women in the U.S. has increased, the representation of childfree heroines on television has not grown at a proportionate rate (Kaklamanidou, 2019; Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013). The research conducted for this paper found that there have been approximately 13 explicitly childfree heroines featured as main characters on American television shows in the last 50 years. The existing literature on this subject has found that the mediation of childfree women on television has been overwhelmingly negative, which is most likely reflective of the negative social and cultural stigma associated with childfree women in the real world (Kaklamanidou, 2019; Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013; Ashburn-Nardo, 2017; Stahnke, Blackstone, & Howard 2020; Verniers, 2020; Ganong, Coleman, & Mapes, 1990).
There has also been almost no thorough academic research specifically involving the portrayal of childfree heroines on American television. With few exceptions, the research that does exist tends to explore these characters at a surface level, examining them in the context of a childfree cohort of characters instead of exploring any one character in depth (Sanchez, 2020; Kaklamanidou, 2019; Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013). The two exceptions to this rule in the academic literature, each of which explore one aspect of one childfree character, are at the time of writing the only studies to do so (Levy, 2014; Palm & Stikkers, 2015).
The existing research does not contain thorough explorations of the semiotic cues, ideological underpinnings, or narrative and rhetorical devices used by the shows on which these characters are featured to frame this type of character. Finally, there is a dearth of academic research exploring how representations of childfree women on television do or do not reflect the reality experienced by childfree women.
This research will begin filling the gaps in the existing literature regarding how childfree women are mediated by American television shows. It will investigate how rhetorical storytelling devices are used to frame these characters and argue that the characters are largely portrayed negatively, as well as making the argument that the mediation of childfree women on television both reflects common stereotypes of childfree women as well as certain aspects of the reality of the experiences of childfree women.
The research utilizes a multimodal audiovisual analysis methodology, pulling in elements of semiotic, ideological, and rhetorical television criticism as described by Vande Berg, Wenner, and Gronbeck, as well as an adapted version of the first two dimensions of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (2004; 2002). Theoretical elements of the analysis include agenda setting and framing theories as described by Entman in 1993; Holbrook and Hill in 2005; McCombs, Shaw, and Weaver in 2014; and Chong and Druckman in 2007. Backlash theory and moral outrage theories are also used (Rudman & Fairchild, 2004; Ashburn-Nardo, 2017). The methodology and theories are applied to two case studies of childfree heroines on two American television shows: Grey’s Anatomy and House of Cards.
Chapter 2:
Theoretical Chapter
Literature Review
Pronatalism in the United States: An Overview
To discover why the childfree choice is so maligned in American society and on American entertainment television, this paper must conduct a brief exploration of its ideological opposite: Pronatalism. According to Merriam-Webster, to be pronatalist is the “encouraging [of] an increased birth rate.” It is a powerful underlying societal and cultural theme in the United States, not only as an ideology in governmental policymaking and rhetoric but also in American media (Kaklamanidou, 2019). This has been the case throughout American history, with the accompanying fear and maligning of childfree women maintaining a constant presence in American societal norms. Kaklamanidou states that President Theodore Roosevelt even accused childfree women of committing “race suicide” in 1905, illustrating the enduring extremity of moral outrage against childfree women in America (2019, p. 286).
Women who are not reproducing therefore represent a threat to the status quo, and by extension the American way of life. American culture is unable to accept the reality of a woman who does not choose motherhood because it refutes what Americans have been taught to think about women, both what it takes to be a “true” woman and what women “should” want, which is motherhood (Ashburn-Nardo, 2012). Anything less calls their very womanhood into question (Ashburn-Nardo, 2012). Gillespie agrees, stating: “The notion of motherhood as constitutive of feminine gender identity, of women’s social role, and as desirable and fulfilling for all women remains entrenched in industrial, urban, and rural societies” (2003, p. 123). The findings of this research project align with this assessment, with both case studies reflecting the ideological hegemony of womanhood automatically being equated with motherhood. Ashburn-Nardo theorizes that the desire to have children is not innate, but is instead an idea with which American children are indoctrinated by their parents: “U.S. children are indeed socialized by their parents to want to become parents … Through both parents … and peers … people learn that parenthood is both typical and expected” (2017, p. 395). In the U.S., becoming a parent is therefore considered a societal moral imperative (Thompson, 1974), an ideal that is reflected in the mediations of women on American television.
Possible Beginning of the End for Pronatalism
However, the all-consuming cultural hegemony of pronatalism in the United States may be coming to an end. The percentage of U.S. women who do not have children has doubled since 1976 (Grose, 2011). Many studies have found that fewer Americans are reproducing than at any time in the past (Blackstone, 2014; Ashburn-Nardo, 2017; Teitelbaum & Winter, 2014; Gillespie, 2003). An increasing number of women seem to be comparing the risks and rewards of bearing children and deciding the risks far outweigh the benefits (Teitelbaum & Winter, 2014). As a result, more women are deciding to forego childbearing.
‘Childless’ Versus ‘Childfree’
This growing population of women who are actively choosing to not have children goes by many names: voluntarily childless, childless, and childfree are the most commonly used terms. However, the interchangeable use of these terms is problematic, especially in quantitative research; it can obscure the true population of those who are actively choosing not to have children within populations where people do not have children, but it is not necessarily by choice (Blackstone, 2014).
The term “childfree,” which tends to be preferred by people who choose not to have children because it emphasizes the active choice to live their lives without them, is considered problematic and controversial in the literature (Kaklamanidou, 2019). Kelly suggests the term “childfree” may be suggestive of a “denigration of the choice to be a mother” (2009). Kaklamanidou agrees, utilizing “childless” in her work because she argues that “-free” suggests an “enhancement” of the lives of people who choose not to have children and is therefore inflammatory.
However, I disagree with Kaklamanidou and Kelly in support of the voluntarily childless movement in the United States in the 1970s, which adopted “childfree” as the term of choice, stating the suffix “-free” “indicates agency and a freedom from social obligation, where the suffix less indicates a lack” (Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013, p. 241). The term “childless” indicates women are somehow incomplete without children, an implication with which this movement disagreed (Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013).
The positive connotations of the term “childfree” counteract this negative portrayal of people who choose not to have children and instead cast this choice in a positive light, counteracting pronatalist hegemony in the United States and presenting not having children as a viable alternative life choice. I will therefore be using the term “childfree” throughout this paper to highlight the agency, freedom of choice, positive connotations, and lack of deficiency in the lives of those who choose to forego motherhood.
The Reality of the Childfree Experience
In order to contextualize the portrayals of the fictional childfree characters who will be explored later in this paper, it is necessary to first discuss the experiences of real people who make the childfree choice, how this population is perceived by the public, and the stigma childfree women face in the real world.
In general, childfree people tend to work in managerial and professional occupations, “are more highly educated, less religious, more likely to live in urban areas, and hold less traditional beliefs about gender roles than couples with kids” (Blackstone, 2014, p. 69). They also tend to be more liberal than parents (Wattling & Neal, 2021).
Childfree women tend to be highly educated and white (Blackstone, 2014), though the racial gap among childfree people is narrowing in the U.S. (Verniers, 2020). Childfree women are “more likely to be employed” and “more likely to be in management positions” (Verniers, 2020, p. 109). They tend to have better economic outcomes than mothers, rise higher in the professional ranks, and have higher “social prestige attributed to their occupation” (Verniers, 2020, p. 109).
In general, research indicates few differences in overall life satisfaction between parents and non-parents (Wattling & Neal, 2021; Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013). However, elderly childfree people tend to be significantly wealthier than their counterparts with children, and childfree people tend to be more happily married than people with children (Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013; Ashburn-Nardo, 2017). Childfree women also tend to report high life satisfaction and more comfort with their childfree status as they age (Stahnke, Blackstone, & Howard, 2020).
Negative Stereotypes of and Stigma Against Childfree Women in America
The societal perception of childfree people has remained consistently negative over the last 30 years (Ashburn-Nardo, 2017). Childfree people, especially women, are often perceived as maladjusted (Polit, 1978), cold (Bays, 2017), less caring, and less emotionally healthy (Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013) than women who want children. In surveys, childfree women are viewed less favorably than both mothers and women who are unable to have children (Bays, 2017; Kopper & Smith, 2001). Even some scientists have insinuated that women who do not want children are having their “natural maternal urges … subverted by educational, occupational or political aspirations, equal rights, divorce and birth control. Medical literature portrays childless women as the ultimate 'bad mothers,' who, by withholding mothering altogether, are responsible for the downfall of national morality, home and family, the human race itself” (French, 1992, p. 152).
The claim that childfree women are responsible for the downfall of “national morality, home and family, [and] the human race itself” is illustrative of the extremity of the moral outrage felt against childfree people, especially childfree women (French, 1992, p. 152). Moral outrage as defined by Ashburn-Nardo includes “feelings of anger, contempt, and disgust … Intentional wrongdoings need not involve a specific victim, but can be harms to the ‘fabric of society,’ that is, threats to cultural worldviews and violations of societal norms” (2017, p. 395).
While some studies have suggested that the childfree choice is slowly becoming more widely accepted, the United States remains staunchly pronatalist and traditional in its negative views of childfree women (Gubernskaya, 2010; Noordhuizen, de Graaf, & Sieben, 2010; Bays, 2018). Childfree women in the U.S. often report being stigmatized for their decision, saying they are characterized as “selfish and free-riders … they are deemed to benefit from the existence of children without participating in the collective duty of raising them … In addition, they report being discredited ... and neglected regarding their needs” (Ganong, Coleman, & Mapes, 1990). At work, childfree women report mistreatment and psychological aggression from colleagues (Verniers, 2020). In summary, childfree women experience discrimination in many aspects of their lives. This paper will explore the translation of the stigmatization of this population into the mediation of childfree women on American television.
Television as a Medium of Mediation and Persuasion
Of all the forms of media in which to explore the mediation of childfree women, this study utilizes television for several reasons. Television represents a widely publicly accessible media space in which to explore social issues, and there is some evidence that television shows can influence the beliefs of their viewers (Thompson & Mittell, 2013; Kaklamanidou, 2019). In the United States, television is also practically ubiquitous: There are televisions in bars, medical waiting rooms, and in nearly every room of people’s homes (Vande Berg, Wenner, & Gronbeck, 2004).
Studies have suggested that television, specifically fictional television, can influence its audience’s opinions, and this is especially true if the audience empathizes with the main character in a fictional series (Mutz & Nir, 2010). It has been suggested that the path of influence is the strong emotional response fictional television programs elicit in their viewers (Zillmann & Bryant, 2002). This is especially true of television series, where the audience comes to know the characters better and therefore becomes more emotionally invested in them (Zillmann & Bryant, 2002). Because the plots of these shows are complicated and take place over a long period of time, audiences can be “transported” by them, which has been shown to strengthen the persuasive power of narratives (Green, Strange, & Brock, 2002).
I chose to explore two television shows for these case studies because of the potential television has to influence public opinions, both political and personal. This medium may present an opportunity to transform public opinion about the childfree choice by educating the public about women who make this choice and illustrating the complexity and emotional depth of a population that has thus far been perceived as one-dimensional at best, and as potentially evil and dangerous to society at worst.
The Mediation of Pronatalism on Television in the United States
The American pronatalist ideals explored earlier in this paper are translated from the real world into media, including television. In fact, network television actively promotes pronatalism (Kaklamanidou, 2019). For example, portrayals of women of childbearing age on television will almost certainly culminate in the character having children at some point. As Cowart states: “Popular media, such as magazines, television and movies fortify the pronatalist juggernaut by depicting motherhood as the only credible form of fulfillment for women” (2003, p. 22). Kaklamanidou deems motherhood an “inescapable element” of being a woman on television; she states that while television has many female character types, almost all of them bear the title of “mother” (2019). One of the reasons the case studies for this research were chosen is because the childfree heroines featured in them do not change their minds about having children, a rarity on American television.
U.S. Television’s Failure to Accurately Mediate Childfree Women
Despite the growing population of childfree women in the United States, portrayals of childfree women on television are rare. Kaklamanidou and Moore and Geist-Martin point out that television, among other mediums, has failed to represent this population accurately (2019; 2013). Many of the women on television who do not have children are not portrayed as explicitly childfree; instead, their motherhood status and opinions on motherhood are nebulous and uncertain (Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013).
The most likely reason there are few childfree women on television is because these characters tend to be as unpopular with audiences as childfree women are with the public in real life. As Taylor states, childfree female characters tend to be portrayed as objects “of abject horror, harbouring barely sublimated rage, murdurous urges and profound jealousy toward those living the patriarchal nuclear familial dream” (2012, p. 53). The moral outrage people feel toward childfree women in reality is translated into the moral outrage often directed at fictional childfree television heroines (Kaklamanidou, 2019).
Character-Specific Literature
In order to explore the mediation of childfree women on contemporary American television, this research comprises case studies of two childfree television heroines: Cristina Yang on the show Grey’s Anatomy and Claire Underwood on the show House of Cards. The literature specifically pertaining to these characters is briefly explored here.
Literature on Cristina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy
Three extant studies have explored some aspect of Cristina Yang of Grey’s Anatomy. Grey’s Anatomy has been running continuously since 2005 and is currently in its 18th season (Epstein, 2021). It is “one of the most-watched series on US television” and “one of the longest-running scripted shows ever” (Epstein, 2021). It “averages more than 15 million viewers per episode” and is the “second-most popular streaming show in the world” (Epstein, 2021). It is also the “second highest rated scripted show on TV” and is the “highest-rated show on TV in the … 18-49 age demographic” (Epstein, 2015). These statistics illustrate the potential of Grey’s Anatomy to influence American viewers on myriad issues, one of which could be the childfree choice and perceptions of childfree women.
Cristina is the “most complex and culturally informed depiction of voluntary childlessness on contemporary television” (Kaklamanidou, 2019, p. 281). Cristina’s character arc, including her departure from the show, is a testament to American pronatalism and an example of the punishment of childfree heroines (Kaklamanidou, 2019). She was one of the only childfree women on television in the last decade to be portrayed in a somewhat positive light (Paskin, 2013).
Literature on Claire Underwood on House of Cards
There have been two brief explorations of the character of Claire Underwood of House of Cards in the literature: One by Kaklamanidou and one by Palm and Stikkers, both exploring the character in terms of her being childfree. Kaklamanidou’s exploration of Claire is shallow, consisting of little more than a paragraph explaining Claire’s character arc and stating that her character is an example of a negative representation of childfree women on television (2019). Palm and Stikkers explore Claire more thoroughly, interpreting her character as regretful of not having children and vindictive toward those who do, a perspective on the character with which this paper takes issue and that will be explored further in the discussion section.
Theoretical Framework
This paper will utilize a combination of theories to begin to fill several gaps in the current literature by investigating how the writers of the characters of Cristina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy and Claire Underwood on House of Cards set certain ideological agendas using the storylines and context around their childfree characters and how the treatment of the childfree heroines on the shows coincides with the treatment childfree women often experience in real life. The research will also explore how the writers on each show utilize rhetorical devices to frame their childfree heroines for their audiences. The paper will incorporate other theories to explore the emotional reactions of other characters to the childfree characters affirmatively expressing their desire to not having children, and to investigate how reactions by other characters to the childfree characters mirror the reactions of people to childfree women in real life.
Agenda Setting Theory
In order to explore these questions and perspectives, agenda setting theory will be included as described by Entman; McCombs, Shaw, and Weaver; and Holbrook and Hill (1993; 2014; 2005).
Agenda setting is “the process by which mass media shapes the issues that become most important to the public” (Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013, p. 235). While agenda setting is often utilized in the interpretation of news programs, Holbrook and Hill propose the concept can be applied to entertainment programs. They extrapolate that the psychological mechanism that makes agenda setting effective, which is changes in theoretical construct accessibility in the brain, can be applied to entertainment programs (Holbrook & Hill, 2005). Construct accessibility is described as “a change in what items are more easily accessed in memory due to recent and/or frequent activation induced by consumption of media messages” (Holbrook & Hill, 2005, p. 279). The researchers also propose messages enveloped in more intense content tend to be retained longer and to be more influential in the mind of the individual (Holbrook & Hill, 2005). Both case studies chosen for this paper have highly charged emotional content.
This research investigates the content of the agenda setting taking place on each of the shows selected. It will not explore the real-world effects of agenda setting on audiences as this is beyond the scope of this research. However, the proposal of further research along these lines is included in recommendations at this paper’s conclusion.
Framing Theory
Framing theory is described by Chong and Druckman as the idea “that an issue can be viewed from a variety of perspectives and be construed as having implications for multiple values or considerations. Framing refers to the process by which people develop a particular conceptualization of an issue or reorient their thinking about an issue” (2007, p. 104). This theory will be used to explore characters’ reactions on the shows to the childfree women characters.
Backlash Theory
Ashburn-Nardo describes backlash theory as what happens to “people who violate social role expectations based on widely shared cultural stereotypes” (2017, p. 395). This study will use a combination of Rudman and Fairchild’s backlash theory and Darley and Pittman’s theory of moral outrage to explore the element of punishment often experienced by childfree women on television shows, and how this punishment and backlash manifests in the case studies (2004; 2003).
Moral Outrage Theory
Moral outrage is described as the reaction to “perpetrators who are perceived as intentionally (rather than accidentally or negligently) committing a wrong or inflicting harm evok[ing] moral outrage in perceivers” (Ashburn-Nardo 2017, p. 395). Moral outrage includes “feelings of anger, contempt, and disgust … Intentional wrongdoings need not involve a specific victim, but can be harms to the ‘fabric of society,’ that is, threats to cultural worldviews and violations of societal norms” (Ashburn-Nardo 2017, p. 395). Childfree woman characters on television often experience some form of punishment and/or backlash for their choice to forego motherhood. This paper will explore whether some form of punishment occurs in the case studies.
Chapter 3:
Research Methodology
Objectives of the Research
The current literature on this subject leaves much to be explored by further research as it minimally explores the ideological or rhetorical elements, significant dialogue and word choices, or cultural context of the mediation of each of these childfree heroines. The extant studies do not explore the relationship between the mediation of these characters and childfree women in real life, or between the portrayal of these characters on television and the stereotypes associated with childfree women in the real world. This research begins to explore the answers to these questions and is intended to inspire other researchers in the field to explore how childfree women are reflected in American entertainment media.
The primary research question explored in this paper is:
RQ1: How do the case studies chosen represent fictional American television’s mediation of childfree women, and is this mediation ultimately positive or negative?
Subresearch questions to be explored include:
- RQ2: What role does pronatalism play in the framing of the childfree female characters on both shows?
- RQ3: What commonalities, if any, are shared by these heroines and the shows’ mediations of them?
- RQ4: How do the mediations of these characters conform to or reject real-world societal stereotypes of childfree women?
- RQ5: Is there any reflection of the realities of American childfree women on either of these shows and if so, in what ways?
Research Strategy
This research investigates various elements that make up the framing of the childfree character within each show, which includes the dialogue and particular word choices the writers made; wardrobe choices the showrunners made for particular scenes featuring the childfree character; body language of characters within the pertinent scenes; emotional reactions of other characters in the scenes; and the narrative of the shows, which includes the context created around the childfree character.
This research utilizes a multimodal, qualitative, audiovisual analysis-based methodology to investigate the stated research questions. This method was selected because it was the most appropriate for exploring the media-based contextual framing of each of these characters within the environments of their respective shows. It is the most practical analytical method for exploring both aural elements and visual elements of a text simultaneously, as well as being the most appropriate method for the exploration of television-based elements relevant to the research, such as shot distance and the emotional response it is meant to trigger in the viewer; the significance and symbolism of the use of color; the significance of gazes within scenes; and the rhetorical narrative elements of the show.
Other approaches were considered and subsequently rejected because they did not explore enough of the aforementioned elements to make an informed study of the characters’ framing. A critical discourse analysis methodology is usually more suited to text-based analysis involving written sources like books or articles; however, this research does repurpose the first two elements of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis to explore dialogue and word choices (2002).
This research investigates the shows based on character arc, dialogue, and visual elements, and analyses the results based on the semiotic, ideological, and rhetorical criticism methods as described by Vande Berg, Wenner, and Gronbeck (2004). The elements of the shows that were datafied were categorized under character, occupation, positive or negative character arc, and dialogue.
This approach incorporates text-centered television criticism in the form of critical discourse analysis methodology involving ideological criticism (Vande Berg, Wenner, & Gronbeck, 2004). This methodology interrogates “the ideological links between television texts and the sociocultural and institutional contexts in which they are produced and consumed” (Vande Berg, Wenner, & Gronbeck, 2004, p. 302). Because this research investigates how the case studies perpetuate ideologies and societal perceptions surrounding childfree women, this type of critical discourse analysis is useful; it allows the research to explore the dichotomy between the media text and the surrounding society, identifying significant ideological relationships and translating these relationships in the media back to those mirrored in the real world (Vande Berg, Wenner, & Gronbeck, 2004).
One of the issues that arose with choosing an audiovisual analysis-based approach was that it does not have a research focus dedicated to dialogue and word choice, important elements for framing a character. These elements convey emotion, mindset, values, and other elements needed to build a picture of the way the characters are framed. This roadblock necessitated the utilization of a multimodal approach incorporating Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis to incorporate this element into the research. This research incorporated parts of the first element of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis method in order to examine how the dialogue and word choices impact the framing of the character as well as conveying meaning and attitude from the sender of the text to the recipient of the text (2002).
Research Methods and Procedures
Media Text Sampling and Limitations
The basis for the sampling of the texts entailed choosing among the childfree female characters on television to conduct the analysis. While the field of childfree female characters on popular television shows is narrow, attempting to conduct a thorough analysis of all childfree female characters on television would be prohibitive in terms of both time and resources. In order to accomplish a project of that scale, a team of researchers would be needed, each of whom could focus their analysis on just one female childfree character. Because there is only one researcher for this project and the scope of this study is necessarily narrow due to time constraints, resource constraints, and word count allowances, the scope of this research is narrowed to two characters. This scope limits the resulting data quality in that it only allows for the comparison of two characters. This research is also limited by my reflexivity, cultural perspectives, and personal experiences in interpreting the audiovisual elements of these shows.
The research began by searching Google for a synopsis of each show. A Google search for “episode synopsis Grey’s Anatomy” resulted in 1,790,000 hits. A Google search for “episode synopsis House of Cards” resulted in 6,140,000 hits. One website, Fandom, contained a thorough description of every episode of Grey’s Anatomy, a number that at the time of writing is 400 episodes over 18 seasons. (This show is still running.) The same website contained thorough descriptions of every House of Cards episode, which was 73 episodes over six seasons. I reviewed the episode descriptions of the first 10 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, which is the timeline during which the character of Cristina Yang appeared, to determine which episodes involved a storyline both prominently featuring Cristina and having to do with her being childfree. Claire Underwood appears in every episode of House of Cards, necessitating the review of all synopses of the show available on Fandom to find the episodes with pertinent plotlines.
The final relevant episode count for each show was 14 pertinent episodes featuring Cristina on Grey’s Anatomy, and six pertinent episodes featuring Claire on House of Cards. This entailed approximately 45 hours of data-gathering, which takes into account the research on which episodes to watch, that each episode is approximately an hour long, that many scenes required multiple viewings to gather the data, and that episodes were often paused in order conduct a surface analysis.
Rationale for Media Texts Chosen
The characters of Cristina Yang from Grey’s Anatomy and Claire Underwood from House of Cards were chosen for several reasons, the first of which is that they remain childfree throughout their character arcs, which is rare even within the cohort of female childfree characters on American television. However, there is an important note on the inclusion of Claire from House of Cards in this project under this criterion: This research excludes Season 6 of House of Cards because circumstances external to the show – the discovery of sexual assault allegations against lead House of Cards actor Kevin Spacey and his subsequent ejection from the show – forced the showrunners to pivot Claire’s character in a different direction than originally planned (Katz, 2018). This externally motivated change of narrative direction abruptly changed Claire’s childfree status in Season 6, a pivot that ran contrary to her character development in the preceding five seasons. This research therefore only takes into account Claire’s originally planned story arc, which was for her to remain childfree. The reasons for this change and the explanation of Claire’s originally childfree storyline were detailed in articles about the show in 2018 written by Katz, Debnath, and Anderton. Claire was selected for this study due to the limited availability of options in this character category.
A second reason these characters were selected is because of the audience size of the shows on which they appear: Grey’s Anatomy averages 15 million viewers an episode (Epstein, 2021). While Netflix, the platform that produced House of Cards, does not release viewership figures, estimates hover around 5 million viewers per episode (Morris, 2016). These audience size figures represent the potential of these shows to shape their audience’s perceptions of childfree women.
Design of Research Tools
The analysis was undertaken by recording copious data-gathering notes on each unit of analysis, which took the form of scenes and individual shots framing the character. Each relevant episode contained 1 to 12 pertinent scenes. (The minute markings denoting each pertinent scene in each episode analysed can be found in the appendix.) The only individually analysed shots within these scenes were those directly relating to the childfree character.
The data-gathering notes taken concerned the following elements in each relevant scene: minute marking for significant scenes; overall storyline of scene; wardrobe and makeup; emotions of childfree character in scene as well as those of other characters; body language and facial expressions of all characters involved; dialogue, tone, and word choice in the form of transcriptions of relevant dialogue; the gazes of the characters; blocking (how the characters move through the physical space); and camera work, including angles of shots and movement of the camera. Each of these elements were chosen because they are the mediums through which information is conveyed in visual storytelling media about how the audience should perceive the characters.
The qualitative analysis techniques used were two forms of critical discourse analysis: Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, and semiotics, ideological criticism, and rhetorical criticism as described by Vande Berg, Wenner, and Gronbeck (2002; 2004). Ideological criticism is described by Vande Berg, Wenner, and Gronbeck as a way to “describe how the powerful forces at work in texts—commodification, capitalist ideology, and patriarchy, for example—attempt to manufacture consent to the dominant ideology and then to identify and critique media institutions, texts, and discursive practices that promote or sustain forms of oppression and domination” (2004, p. 223). This research utilized this framework to explore whether the shows promoted ideas like pronatalism and if so, how this was accomplished.
Rhetorical criticism as described by Vande Berg, Wenner, and Gronbeck sets out to explore the power of signs and symbols to persuade audiences of a certain view of the world (2004). This research explores how the elements about which data was gathered in each scene might be utilized by the showrunners to frame the characters.
The analysis was undertaken by performing thorough data-gathering on each scene, then using the aforementioned methodologies to interpret how the showrunners used the various elements of each scene to persuade the audience to perceive the childfree character. It was also used to uncover patterns indicative of the framing of the childfree heroine on each show.
Ethics and Reflexivity
The steps taken to ensure the research is ethically sound included submitting an ethics form that was subsequently approved. There was little to no risk of ethical breaches in this research because the subjects of the research are television characters played by actors, who are public figures.
The role of reflexivity in this research project is primarily that I am a childfree woman of color, which played a part in the initial conception of the research project and the formulation of the research question and subquestions. I belong to a large community of childfree people who interact on an online forum. I have seen myriad questions raised there about the representation of childfree people in media, especially childfree women, leading to my curiosity about this subject.
I am also cognizant of the scarcity of childfree women characters in popular entertainment in the United States, an observation eventually refined into the primary research question. The sample for this research was chosen in part because I wanted to ensure a childfree woman of color (Cristina Yang) was included, and that the role of her race was specifically considered. None of the extant literature discussing Cristina in this context discusses her race and its possible intersectional role in the mediation of a childfree woman, or how her choice goes against the pronatalist cultural norms of her background.
Finally, I have been working as a professional in media in various roles for almost a decade, leading to my familiarity with common devices, techniques, and cues that are used in visual storytelling to evoke certain audience reactions and perceptions of characters. I utilized this experience in the analysis. It is essential for women of color to be doing this research because they have a unique perspective on the role of context and culture in the representation of childfree women.
Chapter 4:
Results and Discussion
RQ1: How do the case studies chosen represent fictional American television’s mediation of childfree women, and is this mediation ultimately positive or negative?
Both Shows Ultimately Frame Their Childfree Heroines in a Negative Light
As will be explored in detail in the discussion section that follows, both of these shows ultimately mediate their childfree characters within a pronatalist worldview, making them both ideological pariahs within their respective worlds, leading to both characters being punished in multiple ways by both the showrunners and the rest of the characters as well as facing backlash and moral outrage from the other characters.
While Grey’s Anatomy spends several episodes paying a modicum of respect to Cristina’s decision to be childfree, the elements of the punishments she receives on the show for her decision belie the truth of the mediation of childfree women within the dominant pronatalist ideology of Grey’s Anatomy.
RQ2: What role does pronatalism play in the framing of the childfree female characters on these shows?
Both Shows Negatively Frame Their Childfree Characters Within a Pronatalist Worldview
Both Grey’s Anatomy and House of Cards promote the ideological agenda of pronatalism. This is evident in the framing of the narrative arcs of most of the female characters. This finding is consistent with what has been found by the existing literature concerning American television shows featuring childfree characters. In the ideological criticism context as described by Vande Berg, Wenner, and Gronbeck, both of these shows are media texts that “attempt to manufacture consent to the dominant ideology” and “promote or sustain forms of oppression and domination,” with the dominant ideology being promoted in both shows being pronatalism (2004).
Pronatalism on Grey’s Anatomy
On Grey’s Anatomy, an American medical soap opera set in Seattle, Washington, almost all of the prominent female characters ultimately have children, or they express a desire to have children at some point if they have not yet had them. (The show is still running.) That almost all of the female characters on the show have children conforms to pronatalist ideals for women and is indicative of the showrunners’ ideological agenda setting of American pronatalism on the show. This contributes to the normalization of motherhood in the narrative arcs of female characters on American television.
If at any point in her narrative arc a female character in the ensemble cast on Grey’s does express the desire to remain childfree, she eventually changes her mind, a narrative arc adhering to the real-world stereotype that childfree women will eventually decide to become mothers (Blackstone, 2014). Cristina Yang is the only exception to this rule on the show (other than the female characters who died young). This makes her an ideological pariah within the fictionalized world of the show, rendering her alone in her resolve not to have children and highlighting her negative traits in order to contextualize this refusal to adhere to the dominant ideological pronatalist narrative.
An example of Grey’s conforming to the dominant ideological pronatalist idea that childfree women ultimately change their minds takes the form of another prominent female character in the Grey’s ensemble cast, Arizona Robbins. Arizona is a respected surgeon, and she is portrayed as explicitly childfree in the beginning of her narrative arc on the show. However, when Arizona’s lover, Callie Torres, becomes pregnant, Arizona becomes a mother to their daughter, thus negating her childfree status.
Other indications of the show’s pronatalist agenda setting include that many of the episodes of Grey’s Anatomy center around one or more characters’ parenthood, which is always portrayed as a positive choice. No regret is ever expressed around having children, even by Arizona, who did not want children originally. In the real world, some 17% to 18% of parents are thought to regret having children, but having any narrative arc include this relatively common aspect of parenthood would not align with the pronatalist ideology in the show (Piotrowski, 2021).
In addition, no female character in the ensemble cast is held back professionally by having children. The common real-world conflict between being a mother and having a demanding career, the progression of which is often limited by motherhood, is not discussed on the show (McIntosh, McQuaid, Munro & Dabir-Alai, 2012). The lack of acknowledgement of the reality of this situation perpetuates pronatalism by supporting the American ideal that women are able to be hands-on mothers while also successfully juggling a demanding career, which has become the expected norm in the U.S. (Hewlett, 2002).
Deviation From Pronatalism on Grey’s Anatomy
In contrast to the dominant pronatalist ideology of the show, in later seasons of Grey’s Anatomy that focus on Cristina’s choice to be childfree, the Grey’s writers go to some lengths to show that being childfree is a valid lifestyle choice that should be respected, and that it is not abnormal for a woman to not want to have children. This is not the case in earlier seasons of the show when Cristina is initially introduced; at first she is portrayed as rude, abrasive, emotionally cold, and entirely focused on her career, all traits aligned with stereotypes of childfree women (Bays, 2017; Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013; Ashburn-Nardo, 2017).
On each episode of Grey’s Anatomy, the episode begins and ends with a voiceover from one of the characters, usually the main female character, Meredith Grey. In an example of a deviation from the show’s pronatalist agenda, in Episode 19 of Season 6, entitled “Sympathy for the Parents,” the concluding monologue states, “Some were born to do it. Some have other gifts,” referring to parenthood. Other pertinent examples of deviation from the pronatalist agenda setting on Grey’s will be discussed in a later part of this section having to do with moral outrage, where they are able to be more thoroughly explored.
Pronatalism on House of Cards
On House of Cards, an American political drama set in Washington, D.C., the pronatalist ideology and agenda setting on the show takes a different form from that on Grey’s Anatomy. House of Cards uses pronatalist ideology as a rhetorical device to highlight the pathological emotional and mental states of its main characters. That these characters commit the ideological aberration of not wanting children, deliberately going against the dominant American pronatalist agenda, is utilized as one of the narrative devices marking how psychologically abnormal these characters are and painting them in a negative light.
Their abnormality in this respect is exemplified by the invariably negative reactions Claire Underwood receives from other characters on the show upon any discussion of Claire not wanting children. For example, on Season 2, Episode 4, Claire gives a live interview to a television reporter. The interviewer asks her about children, pointing out that she and her husband, Frank, never had any. Claire gives a rehearsed answer, but the reporter presses her, pointing out how unusual it is for politicians at high levels to not have children, and Claire agrees that it is unusual (Season 2, Episode 4). The reporter pressing this point in the interview illustrates the ideological baseline against which the childfree character is being compared and the negatively connotated abnormality of Claire being childfree.
RQ3: What commonalities, if any, are shared by these heroines and the shows’ mediations of them?
Commonalities Between Characters
Both Claire Underwood on House of Cards and Cristina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy conform to many of the stereotypes associated with childfree women: Both women could be described as maladjusted and less than emotionally healthy (Polit, 1978; Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013). Both women are ambitious and driven, which is both a trait childfree women often have in real life as well as a negative stereotype associated with childfree women; ambition in women is often viewed negatively (Verniers, 2020; French, 1992). Claire begins her character arc as the CEO of a nonprofit and becomes the president of the U.S. over the course of the show, while Cristina is a respected cardiothoracic surgeon who ultimately runs her own hospital by the end of her character arc (Fandom). Both women are well-educated, another trait they share with real-world childfree women: Claire received a masters degree in public health from Harvard, and Cristina was top of her class at Stanford and received her doctorate from Berkeley (Blackstone, 2014; Fandom).
RQ4: How do the mediations of these characters conform to or reject real-world societal stereotypes of childfree women?
Both Shows Conform to Many Societal Stereotypes About Childfree Women
Societal Stereotypes About Childfree Women on Grey’s Anatomy
Cristina prioritizes her professional ambitions over her relationships with others, her health, and almost any other matter in her life, which is a negative stereotype of childfree women (French, 1992). For example, at one point in Season 2 of Grey’s Anatomy, Cristina has to undergo emergency surgery. On Episode 4, “Deny Deny Deny,” Cristina repeatedly attempts to go back to work immediately after her surgery despite not being physically recovered. At the 03:29 mark of this episode, Christina is shown dressed in a hospital gown and attached to an IV, standing in the hallway outside a patient’s room. She interrupts the doctors’ rounds to answer a question that the resident doctor in charge has posed to the group about the patient. Cristina is smiling and looks happy to be participating at work again. When the other doctors look at her incredulously, shocked she is attempting to work when she is not fully physically recovered, she asks, “What?” as though they are the strange ones. She is unable to see how working in a hospital gown while attached to an IV is inappropriate. This exemplifies her prioritization of her career over her own health.
Cristina can also be cold, another negative stereotype of childfree women (Bays, 2017). For example, in Season 1, Episode 8, “Save Me,” Cristina is giving a pregnant patient the options for treating the patient’s breast cancer. The patient asks if she can wait for treatment until after her pregnancy. “Oh, none of these options will allow the baby to survive,” Cristina says off-handedly in a casual tone of voice, not meeting the gaze of the patient.
Cristina’s inability to grasp the importance of the patient’s pregnancy, her lack of sentiment around the idea of a baby, and her lack of empathy to the idea that the patient might be upset by losing the baby are evident in her tone of voice, her choice of words, and her body language here. Utilizing Fairclough’s first dimension of critical discourse analysis to analyze word choice, Cristina’s use of the term “survive” in this scene rather than “live” is notable because of the attitude and opinion it conveys: Cristina is thinking of the baby in scientific, empirical terms where “survive” is the most apt description rather than thinking of an unborn baby as having a human life that will be lost, and how this loss might affect the mother (2002). Her coldness on the topics of children and motherhood are emphasized during this scene, adhering to the stereotype of childfree women as unfeeling.
In another example of Cristina’s coldness, in Season 2, Episode 4, “Deny Deny Deny,” three of the other main characters in the ensemble cast are discussing a miscarriage Cristina had earlier in the season that resulted in emergency surgery:
Izzy: “Nobody goes through what she went through and is totally over it by now.”
George: “Christina can.”
Meredith: “She’s fine.”
Izzy: “Too fine. She’s cold.”
George: “No, she’s hardcore, she’s got ice in her veins. She does what she has to to get through it.”
Izzy: “She lost a baby, she lost a fallopian tube, and she’s acting like she doesn’t even care. She’s all, ‘Hello, I’m totally fine’ person. I mean, she’s my friend too, but she’s acting like she has no emotions or warmth. Like she’s missing a soul.”
George: “God, she’s going to make a great surgeon … You show no weakness, you make it to the top.”
The composition of characters who are speaking about Cristina in this scene is significant: Izzy is a female character on the show who adheres to all of the Western societal norms about how women “should” be: She is highly maternal, emotional, and traditionally feminine, the polar opposite of Cristina, which is highlighted in this scene as Izzy is unable to fathom how Cristina seems unaffected by the loss of a pregnancy and the partial loss of her fertility. George, a male character who often wishes he could be more traditionally masculine, admires Cristina’s lack of obvious emotion and her coldness. However, he is the only character who thinks that Cristina being cold is an asset rather than a detriment; the others think Cristina’s coldness is in some way pathological.
This scene highlights the show’s characterization of Cristina as cold and unfeeling, especially on the subject of children, and emphasizes her emotional separateness from the rest of the cast.
Societal Stereotypes About Childfree Women on House of Cards
On House of Cards, Claire prioritizes her own success and the pursuit of power over everything, which is a negative stereotype associated with childfree women to which she conforms (French, 1992). When Claire learns Frank has murdered a senator in order to advance their goals, she briefly feels guilty for depriving the senator’s children of a father, but ultimately she approves of her husband’s actions (Season 1, Episode 12). Claire kills her own mother and takes the life of Thomas Yates, a biographer with whom she has an affair (Season 4, Episode 10; Season 5, Episode 12). She does not feel guilty because ultimately these acts are politically expedient, an example of Claire’s single-minded prioritization of her success over anything else as well as the extremity of her coldness, emotional removal, and maladjustment, all stereotypes associated with childfree women (French, 1992; Bays, 2017; Polit, 1978).
The impression of Claire being cold and therefore not traditionally feminine begins with her character’s styling. Claire has short blonde hair cut cropped close to her head. She is tall, and her body is more muscular than curvaceous. Her wardrobe consists entirely of neutral colors tailored in clean lines cut close to her body; there are no ruffles, A-line skirts, bright colors, or any other traditionally feminine accoutrement. The showrunners use the semiotic cues of the styling of the character to convey that she is removed from traditional femininity in all ways, including her lack of desire for children.
An example of Claire’s coldness takes place in Season 2, Episode 1 of House of Cards. Claire engineers a plot to bend a woman to her will by threatening the viability of that woman’s pregnancy, withholding health care coverage that provides the woman with an essential medication. The pregnant character, Gillian, threatens to expose what Claire has done in court. Claire says:
“You mean six months from now? You’re due in four. That’s four months without the medicine you need. I’m willing to let your child wither and die inside you if that’s what’s required. But neither of us wants that. Now tell me, am I really the sort of enemy you want to make?”
This interaction highlights Claire’s dispassion for the life of the unborn child as well as her disregard for how Gillian will feel about losing this pregnancy. Using Fairclough’s first dimension to aid in the analysis, the language Claire uses – “wither and die” – conveys her removal from human empathy and her attitude toward the child (2002). These words are more appropriate for the description of fruit on a vine than a human life inside a mother’s womb. This interaction is an example of how Taylor characterized childfree heroines on television: Objects of “abject horror, harbouring barely sublimated rage, murdurous [sic] urges and profound jealousy toward those living the patriarchal nuclear familial dream” (2012, p. 53).
The House of Cards writers utilize several rhetorical and semiotic devices during all of Claire’s scenes with Gillian to highlight the perception of Claire-as-villain. In each of the scenes with Gillian, Claire is wearing a dark color and Gillian is wearing a light color. The result of this semiotic device is to subtly put the audience in the mindset of dark versus light, good versus evil. The significance of gaze in these scenes between Gillian and Claire is Claire’s glances at Gillian’s pregnant stomach, which she does several times before threatening Gillian. Claire’s gaze in these scenes indicates her focus on Gillian’s pregnancy and her intention to use the pregnancy against Gillian. This use of the pregnancy against Gillian is particularly negatively connotated because of Claire’s own childfree status.
RQ5: Is there any reflection of the realities of American childfree women on either of these shows and if so, in what ways are they reflected?
Both Shows Are Semi-Accurate Reflections of the Experiences of Real Childfree Women
While both shows adhere to many common stereotypes about childfree women, they are also semi-accurate in terms of reflecting childfree women as they are in real life. Both of these characters are in professional high-powered positions and both are highly educated (Blackstone, 2014). Both have careers with high social prestige attached to them (Verniers, 2020). However, this is where the accurate reflection of real-world childfree women ends for House of Cards.
Reflection of Reality of Childfree Women on Grey’s Anatomy
In terms of depicting childfree women as they are in real life, Grey’s Anatomy does this more effectively than House of Cards. There are many examples of the accuracy of Cristina’s experiences as a childfree woman, which will be explored both in this section and in the following section about moral outrage.
The first instance is in Season 8, Episode 1, “Free Falling.” Meredith and Cristina are discussing why Cristina might be reluctant to go through with the abortion she is planning to have after accidentally becoming pregnant in the course of her marriage to the character of Owen Hunt. Meredith says, “Maybe you want to be a mom too and that’s why you can’t go through with it.” Cristina, who is walking away from Meredith as she says this, turns around and comes back to stand next to her. The camera focuses in a close-up of Cristina’s face, encouraging the audience to feel they have a level of intimacy with her and highlighting the importance of her words. Cristina says:
“I wish I wanted a kid. I wish I wanted one so bad, ‘cause then this would be easy. I would be happy. I’d have Owen and my life wouldn’t be a mess. But I don’t. I don’t want a kid. I don’t wanna make jam. I don’t wanna carpool. I really really really don’t want to be a mother, I want to be a surgeon. And please, get it. I need someone to get it.”
The alienation from others that Cristina describes when she says she “needs someone to get it” is a common sentiment within the childfree community. Childfree women often feel alienated from others because not wanting children is still relatively rare, which can lead to feelings of loneliness as they experience the social stigma that comes with being childfree (Ashburn-Nardo, 2017; Moore & Geist-Martin, 2013; Stahnke, Blackstone, & Howard, 2020; Verniers, 2020; Bays, 2018; Park, 2002).
Moral Outrage on Grey’s Anatomy and House of Cards
On both shows, various forms of moral outrage as described by Ashburn-Nardo are expressed against the childfree female characters for not adhering to the moral imperative of parenthood in American society (2017).
Moral Outrage on Grey’s Anatomy
Moral outrage takes many forms in both shows, but the most pertinent to the argument of this research is Owen Hunt’s moral outrage against Cristina on Grey’s Anatomy. Owen adheres to the model of moral outrage by expressing feelings of “anger, contempt, and disgust” against Cristina because of his perception of Cristina’s abortion, her reasons for it, and her lack of desire for children, all of which he perceives as a threat to his concept of the “fabric of society” (Ashburn-Nardo, 2017, p. 396).
This perspective is evident in several interactions between Owen and Cristina. During these interactions, Owen personifies the dominant American ideology of pronatalism, serving as a foil to Cristina’s childfree character. He expresses a series of sentiments commonly espoused by non-childfree people when childfree people express their position in the real world.
Cristina and Owen have a series of conversations in Season 7, Episode 22, “Unaccompanied Minor,” that illustrate Owen’s role as the personification of American pronatalism. In one scene, they are arguing about whether to have the baby Cristina is accidentally pregnant with. Owen says if Cristina agrees to have the baby, he will take annual leave from work. He offers to make the baby “his problem,” saying Cristina will not have to take care of it. Cristina says, “There is no compromise. You don’t have half a baby. I don’t want one. It isn’t about work, this isn’t a scheduling conflict. I don’t want to be a mother.”
Owen is fundamentally unable to understand that Cristina could not want children because the American ideological indoctrination of pronatalism is so powerful and ubiquitous that he automatically equates being a woman with wanting to be a mother. Cristina’s lack of desire for motherhood clashes with his worldview to the extent that he is incapable of understanding that it is possible for a woman to not want a child, a reflection of America’s collective inability to imagine the same.
Owen then says a series of things people say to women in real life when they express that they do not want children, which are said so often to childfree people that the childfree community has a word for them: bingos, reflecting the idea that the sentiments are so common you could check them off on a bingo card (Hintz & Brown, 2020). He says, “You would be a great mother,” and “I believe your life can be so much bigger than you think it can” (Hintz & Brown, 2020).
Another example of Owen’s moral outrage against Cristina is in Season 8, Episode 12, “Hope for the Hopeless,” when Owen screams at Cristina: “You killed our baby!” His use of the word “killed” here is significant: He views the abortion as a murder, a homicide that Cristina committed against his unborn child. This negatively connotated word belies his underlying pro-life sentiment.
In Season 8, Episode 15, “Have You Seen Me Lately,” Cristina and Owen are in couples therapy. Owen refuses to believe that there is no deeper reason that Cristina does not want children, which is a common real-world interaction between childfree individuals and people who are not childfree. The following is their dialogue in therapy. During this scene Owen is pacing behind the couch impatiently, running his hands through his hair in frustration while Cristina sits very still on the couch, facing away from him, conveying her emotional withdrawal from the situation and from Owen.
Cristina: “There is no deeper reason.”
Owen: “There has to be.”
Cristina: “There is no deeper reason. I wasn’t abused, I don’t have a dark secret, I wasn’t mugged by a baby. I just don’t want kids.”
Owen: “Nobody doesn’t want kids.”
Cristina: “People can not want kids. It’s a thing.”
Owen: “That is not a thing.”
Cristina: “Well, it’s my thing.”
Owen: “You’re going to change your mind. You’re going to change your mind in three years or five. You’re going to change your mind about having a baby, and then it’s going to be too late. And you’re going to regret it.”
Cristina: “And I will know and understand that I made a choice. I choose medicine. I choose me. I choose that over the remote possibility that I might one day regret not having a child. And by the way, it’s all right to never want kids. Some people don’t ever want kids.”
Owen: “Well I want to know why. Why?”
In this scene, the showrunners of Grey’s Anatomy are attempting to normalize the choice to not have children while simultaneously illustrating common pushback received by childfree women. This interaction is significant because it highlights Owen/society’s inability to accept that a woman could not want children.
Moral Outrage on House of Cards
House of Cards employs the same rhetorical device of other-as-society when Claire discusses her childfree stance, but the interaction is less nuanced and relegated to one scene. On Season 2, Episode 4, Claire is confronted by a reporter about an abortion she had. The interviewer asks whether she has had an abortion in the past, and when Claire confirms this, the interviewer is speechless, frowning. Here the interviewer is a personification of society’s negative reaction to Claire terminating a pregnancy, implying that women should always be maternal and should always want children. Claire pauses the interview to speak with her publicity team. She tells them in reality she has had three abortions and wants to share this information with the interviewer to show she is unashamed of them, but her publicity team discourages her from revealing these additional abortions because of the anticipated moral outrage the voting public would feel against her if they learned she both has no desire to have children and has had more than one abortion. The implication is having more than one abortion is irresponsible and amoral, and that this disclosure would lose Claire any sympathy the public may have with making a single mistake that resulted in an abortion.
Backlash Theory on Grey’s Anatomy and House of Cards
In addition to moral outrage theory, Rudman and Fairchild’s backlash theory can be utilized in the analysis of both shows. Backlash theory explains the treatment of “people who violate social role expectations based on widely shared cultural stereotypes ... This backlash is justified in the minds of perceivers because the targets are thought to have brought it upon themselves by not fulfilling their expected roles” (Ashburn-Nardo 2017, p. 395).
Backlash Theory on Grey’s Anatomy
On Grey’s Anatomy, Cristina’s character is ultimately punished by the showrunners by accepting a position as director of a hospital in Switzerland, which necessitates her leaving the show as well as all of her friends and family. Kaklamanidou writes that this “narrative choice diminishes Cristina’s childlessness, at the same time implying that America’s pronatalism is safe and sound” (Kaklamanidou 2019, p. 286). While Cristina ostensibly gets a happier ending than most by receiving a prestigious professional role at the conclusion of her character arc, her childfree status costs her a marriage to Owen Hunt, a form of punishment. She is punished for being childfree by being deprived of a significant romantic relationship, which is considered the pinnacle of achievement for most female characters on television, as well as being sent away from her family and friends at the end of her tenure on the show (Cheever, 2010).
Backlash Theory on House of Cards
On House of Cards, Claire is punished almost from the outset of the series by being forced to deprioritize her professional and personal goals in favor of her husband’s goals throughout the run of the show. She is increasingly isolated with no friends or family to rely on as the series continues, and she faces an increasing emotional estrangement from her husband as well, rendering her completely alone. While eventually she begins to reprioritize her own professional goals as the seasons go on, she is never rewarded with any significant relationships and grows increasingly cold and ruthless throughout the arc of her character. The pursuit of her professional goals and success costs Claire any semblance of a satisfying personal life and her romantic relationship, which could be interpreted as a cosmic punishment within the universe of the show for her being childfree.
The Dichotomy of Cristina Yang: A Brief Exploration of Her Role as Both Model Minority and Childfree Stereotype-Breaker
The character of Cristina on Grey’s Anatomy is one of the few existing representations of childfree women of color on American television. Cristina does adhere to many stereotypes about Asian Americans, who are often (harmfully) labeled the model minority: She is well-educated and academically successful, driven, ambitious, hard-working, and professionally successful (Wong & Halgin, 2006). However, she also flouts stereotypes about Asian women, who are popularly perceived as “family oriented and motherly and … passive, mild-mannered, shy, and quiet” (Verniers, 2020, p 117). Cristina is none of these things, being openly childfree, assertive if not combative, at times rude, and opinionated.
While most women who choose to be childfree in the United States are highly educated white women, women of other races, including Asian American women, are closing that gap (Verniers, 2020). This trend points to the increasing importance of representing complex, successful childfree women of color like Cristina on American television in order to show women of color another possibility for their lives.
Conclusion
This research has concluded that based on the case studies examined, the overall portrayal of childfree female characters on American television remains negative, though steps are being taken by some television shows to ensure childfree characters are more rounded, complex, and portrayed in a somewhat positive light. Pronatalism is still the underlying ideological premise of all shows featuring childfree female characters. Several negative stereotypes about childfree women as well as some real-world traits of childfree women are both represented within these case studies. Moral outrage against childfree women is reflected in the case studies examined by this research, and the childfree heroines experience backlash against their choice. The pronatalist agenda setting and framing entailing the punishment of childfree women on American television continues, as evidenced in these case studies.
The representation of childfree people in American media is sorely lacking, even as the population of childfree people grows in the U.S. This lack of representation on television can be discouraging and isolating for people in this already marginalized population who are constantly bombarded with American pronatalism, both by the media and by U.S. culture. Cristina Yang remains one of the only childfree women of color on American television, and the only childfree heroine of color who was a long-running main character on a widely watched major television show.
More research is needed to examine the mediation of childfree people on American television – not only childfree women, who have been the focus of this particular study, but the mediation of childfree men on American television as well. Further research could be conducted on how mediation and agenda setting concerning childfree people in American media may or may not affect real-world public perceptions of childfree people, and how the mediation of this marginalized population may have the potential to help or harm real childfree people.
[This paper originally contained an appendix, but the formatting on Medium made it garbled, so it has been removed. It’s available upon request.]
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