Berättelser om brist. Bloggar om ofrivillig barnlöshet

Abstract

This article studies diary weblogs about involuntary childlessness, focusing on Swedish contemporary weblogs written by heterosexual women. The article suggests that the inability to procreate can be seen as an interruption in the western expectation of a predictable life course, and explores how the weblog authors deal with this interruption. The diary weblog is discussed as a genre and as a form of life writing and pathography, and different types of writing within the weblogs are discerned. The article discusses the blogging diarists’ construction of a new progression in the interruption, through their attempts to become pregnant, and how they deal with contemporary Nordic norms equating childbearing with things like happiness and life meaning, by striving to live up to the norms and at the same time questioning them.