Single pregnant women's encounters in public: changing norms or performing roles?

This paper presents data on single pregnant women's encounters
in public in an Irish context. Data were collected using in-depth
interviews, which were analysed using a grounded theory
strategy. The study was conducted in Dublin City and 51
unmarried women whose ages ranged from 16-36 participated.
Findings suggested that while dominant public discourses on
non-marital childbearing within the culture were negative (albeit
challenged) at the time data were being collected, responses
from others whom participants interacted with in verbal face-toface
encounters in public were generally (though certainly not
exclusively) experienced as positive in tone. An attempt is made
to explain the discrepancy between the mainly negative macro
messages and mainly positive micro messages by drawing on
Erving Goffman's theory of dramaturgy; it would seem that at
the micro-level of interaction, a 'performance' was being acted
out that may be at variance with definitions of non-marital
pregnancy expressed by those beyond the encounter.