Paper short abstract:

How do young people navigate expectations inherent in a political discourse of fertility control to enhance economic development and concomitantly manage experiences of intimacy? Referring to Hochschild's concept of emotion work and feminist theory I discuss findings from different African countries

Paper long abstract:

Referring to Arlie Hochschild's concept of emotion work, and to feminist and critical theory, this paper investigates how young people navigate expectations inherent in a public/political discourse of controlling fertility to enhance economic development while negotiating at the same time intimacy, social reputation, education, income-generation, and gendered expectations from their family network. Partly based on previously published literature, partly based on empirical findings from Bénin, DRC, Ghana, Rwanda and Zambia collected by different teams of researchers in the context of implementation research around sexual and reproductive health interventions, I explore how young women and men speak about emotions related to intimacy, sexuality, early pregnancy, and family planning. I delineate the emotional work appearing in the accounts of young women and men who speak about marriage, their fertility intentions and contraception, in settings where sexuality and pregnancy outside the dominant social norm are sanctioned to different degrees. At the same time, in the different contexts, external actors strongly promote the introduction of specific family planning methods, adding a layer of complexity to young people's lives. I investigate intersections between the emotional work needed to manage intimacy and social expectations, and the structural, gendered inequalities young people face, aiming at achieving a better understanding of the interplay of emotions, intimacies, and social and economic power structures and interests, which shape young people's intimate lives.