Whilst there has been increasing recognition of intersectionality within family and caring practices, including working-class and low-income households, ethnic minority families, and non-heterosexual couples, many studies of fatherhood have continued to focus on white middle-class co-resident families (see Miller, 2011a; Dermott, 2008). Doucet (2007) recognises that it is difficult to recruit parents from these non-traditional research pools, and even more difficult to encourage them to open up their private life to an
inquisitive researcher2. In order to capture fathers from the desired broad range of socio-economic
backgrounds, a broad range of access routes were employed during participant recruitment. Emails were sent out to four major employers in two large cities in the UK; these organisations were chosen because the researcher had a connection to the organisation and felt it possible to have recruitment email sent to all employees, but also because these organisations were so large that they had employees from a range of occupations. Posters like the one shown in Appendix 2 were put in community centres and libraries in city centres and low-income areas of two large cities. A connection was made with a local support group for non-resident fathers who approached me after seeing recruitment material. The nature of the group meant many current and former members were from lower income backgrounds. Also, the support nature of the group meant that current and former members tended to be more comfortable talking about their feelings toward their children and non-residency, giving a boost to the sample toward the end of the recruitment period. Around three quarters of the 26 participants were recruited through these means.
The other quarter of my sample came through personal connections, primarily through word-of-mouth and social media advertisement. The prevalence and commonality of separated families means that most people know someone who is a non-resident father, be that a family member, a partner, a friend or a colleague. A challenge of using one’s own social network to recruit for participants is that this can source participants from a narrow background. However, it was felt that a somewhat diverse range of fathers was collected through my own networks, particularly younger fathers. In most cases, fathers approached me directly after seeing the advertisements or emails, but three participants told me that they were recommended to take part in the study by an acquaintance who had seen an advertisement (friend, wife and ex-wife). When a participant contacted me about the study (usually by email) I gave an outline of my project aims, explained that this was my PhD study and sent a detailed information sheet to them. I also gave an outline of when and where interviews could take place and stressed that their participation was completely voluntary, and they could withdraw from the study at any time with no explanation.
Interviews were carried out between late October 2017 and early April 2018, with a lengthy break over Christmas. This ‘pause’ on interviewing occurred both because many people, including me, were busy over the Christmas season, but also because it gave opportunity to reflect on the interviews that had been carried out. The first ‘wave’ of interviews were transcribed and allowed for a ‘stocktake’ of the progression of the project and reflection on the content of interviews in relation to initial research aims and the characteristics
of the sample. A redistribution of recruitment materials happened shortly after Christmas and a subsequent connection with the aforementioned support group occurred which boosted the diversity of the sample. Knowing when to stop recruiting when carrying out qualitative research and ‘how many’ interviews is enough is one that is strongly debated (see Baker and Edwards, 2012). My justifications for stopping recruitment were three-fold: firstly, I felt that my data set had reached ‘saturation’ in that many topics were being repeated by participants and little ‘new’ information was being shared. Secondly, I felt the diverse sample desired had been achieved as much as I envisioned possible. Finally, after 26 participants I had over 40 hours of interviews which when transcribed were over 250,000 words. I felt that recruiting more participants would lead to a volume of data that was too difficult to manage, but also that the ‘voices’ of individual participants would become lost. By late March no new participants were coming forward from the methods of recruitment, and for the three reasons outlined, I decided to carry out no more interviews than the few remaining planned.
4.4.1 Sample characteristics
In order to aid analysis of data based upon fathers’ characteristics, as well as being aware of the diversity of my sample through data collection, a survey which included details such as age, ethnicity, job, employment status and income as well as details about ages and location of children (resident and non-resident) was given to fathers after the interview (see Appendix 4). This wealth of quantitative data was collated into a large table alongside participants’ pseudonyms aiding the analysis of data for each father and helping to contextualise some information. Including this table in the thesis was considered but rejected due to concerns that anonymity of participants would be compromised due to the volume of identifiable information alongside interview extracts in subsequent chapters. Instead the data has been collated allowing the reader an understanding of the characteristics of the sample as a whole.
The mean age of participants was 40, with the mean age of becoming a father being 29. Eight fathers had their first child before the age of 25 and could be classified as young fathers (see Neale et al., 2015). In terms of number of children, both resident and non-resident, including step-children: 1 father had four children, 6 fathers had three children (including 2 fathers who have one step-child), 5 had two children, and 12 fathers had one child. The sample appears skewed towards smaller families, however ONS data show that 55 per cent of single parent families have one child and only 13 per cent have more than two children, and one could assume similar figures for non-resident fathers (ONS, 2017a). Routes into non-resident fatherhood can be found in Table 5.1 in section 5.2.
Half (13) of the participants identified as single, and for the remaining 13 participants in relationships, one participant had remarried, six participants were cohabiting with female partners, and, six were in relationships but not living together.Only two fathers had children living with them full-time, smaller than the 29% of non-resident fathers who also have resident children in Poole et al.’s study (2016). This may be because my recruitment material made it unclear if those with resident children could also take part, and as such, mainly solely non-resident fathers responded to my invitation to interview.
Socio-economic characteristics were collected with these summarised below: • In terms of tenure:
o 1 participant owned his home; 12 had a mortgaged home; 7 rented a private property; 1 lived in a Local Authority/Housing Association property; 3 lived with friends or family paying board; and 2 did not disclose their tenure status.
• 16 were currently working full-time, 1 was working part-time, 2 were employed on zero-hours contracts, 3 were self-employed, 1 was a student and 3 were not currently employed.
• Occupations (or last previous occupation) were transferred into the ONS National Statistics Socio- economic classification (NS-SEC):
o 2 participants were in ‘Higher managerial and professional’ occupations; 11 were in ‘Lower managerial and professional’ occupations; 3 were in ‘Intermediate’ occupations; 4 were ‘Small employers and own account’ workers; 1 was in a ‘Lower supervisory and technical’ occupation; 2 had ‘Semi-routine’ occupations; 2 had ‘Routine occupations’; and, 1 was a full-time student.
• In terms of highest educational qualification:
o 13 participants had a degree or equivalent; 6 had A-Levels or equivalent; 1 had GCSEs or equivalent; 2 did not know their highest educational qualification; 1 said he had no educational qualifications; and, 3 did not disclose their highest educational qualification. • Ethnicity was based upon the ethnic group question used in the 2011 census in England:
o 18 participants identified as ‘White British’; 1 identified as ‘Any other White background’; 1 identified as ‘White and Asian’; 1 identified as ‘White and Black Caribbean’; 1 identified as ‘Other mixed background’; 1 identified as ‘Black British’; 1 identified as ‘Black African’; and, 2 did not disclose their ethnic group.
• Participants were asked if they were religious;
they had no religion; and, 3 did not disclose a religious affiliation.
As can be noted for some demographic information, ‘not disclosed’ is used when a participant did not give an answer. Two possible reasons for this were considered: the first is that participants did not wish to disclose this information. The second is that as this survey was self-completed by fathers at the end of interviews, for some participants who had another meeting or engagement planned after the interview, their time was rushed and not every question on the survey was answered. It was thought that by giving the survey at the end of interviews, rapport would have been built between the participants and therefore questions about their family life, job, and income might be perceived as less invasive. However, it was not considered that if interviews lasted longer than projected, fathers would not have time to answer these quantitative questions. Some of the ‘missed’ responses were able to be discerned from interview data, but those that could not be confidently decided were left as ‘not disclosed’. The low representation of specific minority groups in the study means that whilst a father’s ethnicity may be influential in their lived experiences of fatherhood, it is difficult to generalise or draw conclusions about the association between ethnicity and non- resident fatherhood in this study.