Telling

Doing research differently

I am currently reading Doing Research Differently by Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson.  It is really good and so far seems to endorse my own research style which is nice!  The authors are qualitative researchers looking at fear of crime.  They criticise traditional quantitative questions used to measure fear of crime such as "how safe do you feel walking alone in this area after dark" as too suggestive of particular types of crime and evoking fears which might not relate to crime at all (Why might you be "walking alone" in the first place?  Is this not the stuff of nightmares and films rather than everyday experience?)  They point to alternative qualitative approaches and in particular the "non-inventionist free narrative".  This approach does not expect the interviewee to understand completely their own actions, motivations or feelings and looks for clues within stories for psycho-social explanations for why they feel the way they do about crime.  Story telling has the advantage of having 'indexicality' in that they contain certain facts or signficances beyond the tellers intentions.

One problem with the free narrative is that whilst I'm sure it can work excellently in a one to one conversation about crime, which is after all a whole literary genre, I'm not sure it works nearly so well in group situations addressing less colourful subjects, say dishwashers or pensions.  In addition, one of my problems with facilitation can be overindulging  the keen story tellers at the expense of the other participants' boredom levels.  My rescue is the facilitator 'box of tricks' which has to be prepared well in advance.  This contains small exercises such as point allocation games, completion tasks or role play to get out of the groove of well rehearsed stories and into new and surprising terrain.

Nappy natter

It's hard to imagine being in nappies oneself.  But it must have happened once.  My first contact with the reality of nappies was realising as a teenager that the cloths used in the washroom for general cleaning and mopping up spillages were in fact ex-nappies and undoubtably once used for me.  Urgh!  I never changed a nappy until I changed my own baby's in hospital. 

Of course I use washable nappies for my baby.  Washable nappies are so almost-back-in-fashion that they have not yet settled on a permanent name for themselves.  They are variously known as 'washable', 'non disposable', 'real', 'cloth' and also by their oh-so-cute brand names TotsBots, Fluffles, Kissaluvs, Motherease, Sam-I-am and so on.

The Women's Environmental Network and the manufacturing associations have been at war for some time over the environmental credentials, of lack thereof, of the two different nappy choices.  Clearly disposables are bad for landfill, but it is equally clear that washables are bad for water and energy use.  My understanding is that the science is hazy and it is inherently difficult to compare a paper/plastic/silicon/waste system with a cloth/energy/water system and come out with a definite answer.

So if the science is hazy, why do I use washable nappies?  Well, I believe that new, better scientific research will show more conclusively that washable nappies are indeed better for the environment.  Common sense just says so.  It is also easier to cope with the guilt of using the washing machine a lot (electricity is invisible after all) than the guilt of generating massive multiple stinking sacks of rubbish for other people to clear up and send in barges down the Thames.

I also like to support the underdog so I view myself and my baby as sort of pioneers of cloth nappies in a smug sort of way. The odds are really stacked against us.  They are expensive because they are not mainstream.  Clothes are not cut to fit over the wider bottoms of cloth nappied babies.  Mothers no longer have the knowledge of how to deal with real nappies.  It's a lot easier to throw something in the bin than work out what temperature to wash them at, how full to fill the nappy bucket with water, what to soak them in etc. etc.  Nursery staff are not keen on washable nappies and some don't know how to use them.  Some nurseries even provide pampers as part of the nursery fee.

There are also other beneficial side effects.  By my calculations there is a cost benefit which becomes a lot more significant if the nappies are used for more than one child.  There's also an instant camarardarie between mothers of cloth-bottomed babies which is a real delight.