This article was downloaded by: [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] On: 09 November 2013, At: 04:19 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Leisure Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlst20 The holiday and work experiences of women with young children Penny Davidson Published online: 01 Dec 2010. To cite this article: Penny Davidson (1996) The holiday and work experiences of women with young children, Leisure Studies, 15:2, 89-103, DOI: 10.1080/026143696375648 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/026143696375648 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly
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This article was downloaded by: [Moskow State Univ Bibliote]On: 09 November 2013, At: 04:19Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
Leisure StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlst20
The holiday and workexperiences of women withyoung childrenPenny DavidsonPublished online: 01 Dec 2010.
To cite this article: Penny Davidson (1996) The holiday and work experiences of womenwith young children, Leisure Studies, 15:2, 89-103, DOI: 10.1080/026143696375648
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/026143696375648
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressedin this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content shouldnot be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly
The holiday and work experiences ofwomen with young children
PENNY DAVIDSON
Faculty of Science and Agriculture,Charles Sturt University,
Australia
This paper looks at the holiday experiences of women with young children. Itattempts to unfold the meaning of that experience, looking particularly at thecontradiction of a work-�lled event being accepted as a holiday experience. Womenwith young children do not have uniform holiday experiences or perceptions of thoseexperiences. Some women will de�ne the experience as a holiday only if they areaway from family obligations; other women will consider the relative rest and theopportunity of being able to have quality time as a mother or partner as meaningfuland worthwhile. The two key features of the holiday for women with young childrenwere the reduction in pressure and the sharing of time in key relationships and roles.However, the overall scenario was one of little support for women to construct aholiday and an absence of dialogue regarding the right to holidays. As work andrelationship are an integral part of the holiday experience, the �ndings question therelevance of the continued use of the work/leisure dichotomy in leisure theory.
Introduction
This paper presents the �ndings from research which explores the meaning ofthe holiday experience for women with young children. The research doesthis from a phenomenological perspective, a philosophy and methodologicalapproach which aims to �nd the meaning of the social experience withoutpresuppositions. It explores the meaning of a particular facet of women’s livesand, in exploring the particular, hopes to contribute to the broader picture ofwomen and men’s lives. It explores how meaning is constructed in anexperience which is commonly de�ned as leisure for a population group thatquite often faces signi�cant leisure constraints. The exploration of women’sholidays questions the validity of utilizing a work/leisure dichotomy in leisuretheory, as the meaning given to women’s holidays was found in the reducedpressure of continued work and in the time available for signi�cantrelationships.
free as possible from unexamined preconceptions and presuppositions(Henderson, 1991). It is essentially a constructionist approach which seeks tounderstand individual and intersubjective meanings and motives. Individualsare seen as agents in social reality in that they construct the social reality andthe ‘way they act depends on the way in which they understand or givemeaning to their behaviour.’ (Waters, 1994, p.7). The method for thisresearch needed to allow individuals to express their perceived reality. Thiswas done through semi-structured interviews with women who have at leastone child below school age.
Whilst utilizing the snowballing method, sampling was also purposive. Thedata consisted of 24 semi-structured interviews with women who live inAllbury/Wodonga, a rural and service centre on the border of NSW andVictoria*. They were women who responded to a request for informantsmade in presentations, posters and a brief questionnaire, or had beenintroduced to the author by other women. As interviews progressed womenwere deliberately selected from the list of volunteers to represent as broad arange of socio-economic situations as possible. The women in the respondentgroup had varied levels of education and types of paid employment for boththemselves and their partner (where one existed). Their own paid workranged from farming, teaching and clerical work to occupational therapy. Themajority of women were Caucasian (one woman was born in Asia and cameto Australia to live with her new husband) and their partners were in paidemployment or, where no partner existed were in employment themselves.The informant group, therefore, presented a varied section of middle rangesocio-economic status from low income to high income. They were womenwith children of various ages, all with at least one child under school age.Most of the women were not in paid work, some had part-time employmentand a few worked full-time.
They were asked to talk about their holidays, particularly the recentexperiences they had had with young children. What were the holidays like?What did they do? What were the good bits? The bad bits? What work wentinto them? What would their ideal holiday be? The holidays they recountedvaried between one night away, a two week family holiday on the coast, tofour weeks recovering from an illness. The interviews were generallyinformal, taking place in the informant’s home, as this is the most convenientplace for a mother of young children. Informants were women who belongedto local nursing mother groups, neighbourhood centre groups, or used one ofthe various child care centres in the region.
Data analysis was a process of listening and reading the interview records,coding and interpreting. The identi�cation of categories and themes in thecoding process was recursive in that analysis was concurrent with datacollection. Other researchers in the leisure �eld (Glancy, 1986; Dempsey,1990; Hamilton-Smith, 1990; Henderson, 1991) have found that the methodsof recursive analysis and data collection are well suited to a research
* Excerpts from the interviews used in this paper adopt pseudonyms throughout.
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phenomenon as subjective as leisure (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Howe,1991).
Current understanding of women’s leisure and holiday experiences
There is a dearth of literature that explores the holiday experiences of womenor seeks to determine whether, how or why women’s holiday experiences aredifferent from men’s. The limited work done on this topic includes the workof Cunningham (1994), Crawford et al. (1992) and Cerullo and Ewen (1984).They found that unpaid work which is still predominantly done by womencontinues on holidays (Bittman, 1991), especially the responsibility and carefor others. Quite often it seems that women want to get away from thisresponsibility when they are on holiday and dream about a space forthemselves (Cunningham, 1994; Davidson and McKercher, 1993). Otherresearch has tended to explore the family holiday, distinguishing betweenwomen’s and men’s experiences with respect to who is making the decisionsabout the holiday. Labone and Wearing (1991), for example, argue that thereis a need for research from a symbolic interactionist approach, given thatwomen have a different perspective from men in terms of what they value andexperience. This difference was re�ected in Celeste’s (1988) account of whatwomen and men saw as important features of a resort and their differentreasons for choosing to go there.
Whilst there is limited literature to guide and inform the question ofwomen’s holiday experiences, there is a considerable growing understandingof women’s lived experiences, including leisure, as being different from men’s.Gilligan (1982), whose work forms the basis for Henderson’s analysis ofleisure constraints, elucidates that women and men operate with differentethics or value systems, that women use an ethic of care and valuerelationships in their lives and the wellbeing of others. Rawlin’s (1992)interpretation of friendships for men and women illustrates the impact ofsuch an ethic as he explains that men and women form different kinds offriendships and different quantities of friendships. He argues that womenlearn and practice communal friendships more than agentic ones, whereas theopposite is true of men. As leisure is a primary site for socialization andfriendship development, this difference must have numerous consequences forthe leisure experiences of men and women.
Both feminist analysis and leisure constraint literature interprets leisure asa site where the oppression of women is perpetuated (Dempsey, l989), butalso as a site of opportunity to overcome that oppression (Henderson, 1991;Wearing and Wearing, 1990). The differences in women and men’s leisureexperiences are in both quality and quantity. Women seek and participate inmore expressive, sedentary activities than men (Deem, 1986). Women alsoplace more importance upon relationships and social obligations in theirleisure than do men (Bella, 1989; Lenskyj, 1988; Deem, 1986). Bella suggeststhat the meaning of an activity is found through the ‘relationships servedthrough that activity, not in the activity itself’ (1989, p.173). Many otherstudies support the notion that women’s leisure centres around social
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interaction (Glyptis, 1985; Wimbush and Talbot, 1988) and that it is thissocial interaction which contributes to the meaning of the leisureexperience.
Within the developing body of knowledge regarding the holiday and touristexperience, the most useful �ndings and theories for this study came from asocial psychological perspective. The holiday and tourist experience havebeen described as a source of personal development, an effective means ofescape from everyday stressors and a setting for re-establishing intimateinterpersonal relationships (Mannell and Iso-Ahola, 1987). The idea ofidentity development and maintenance is further discussed by Cohen andTaylor (1992). Whilst these studies are informative, they can be criticized onsimilar grounds to most other tourism research, that is, a failure toacknowledge or consider of importance the in�uence not only of gender butalso of race, socio-economic group, and indeed nationality, upon travelopportunity and experience. The experiences of women and men are veryoften different and it is erroneous to assume that women and men constitutea uniform population with uniform motivations and perceived experiences.Additionally, other factors such as ethnicity and socio-economic status mayimpact upon the perceived experience. Temowetsky’s (1983) work, forexample, found that, in Australia, fewer members of low socio-economicstatus groups than others participate in holidays and that these people havelower expectations of holiday opportunities. He concluded that people geartheir expected behaviour to the constraints that characterize their dailylife.
Linked to the issue of not considering structural in�uences upon people’sholiday experiences is the failure to consider the context in which the activitytakes place (Henderson, 1991). The context of holidays must include ananalysis of the normal leisure and work routine. Work is a vital concept in theinterpretation of leisure. It is signi�cant because much of ‘women’s work’ isdistinguished from, and diminished in comparison to, other ‘work’ (Alford,1984; Waring, 1988; Poiner, 1990). The value of a person’s work andcontribution to society signi�cantly affects what they feel is their right to askfrom society. The consequence, then, is that women feel they have little rightto ask for or receive the same rewards that other ‘work’ (most often paidwork) accrues. Secondly, for many women, leisure and work intertwine andcannot be separated. The meaning of leisure for women cannot be found bylooking for activities or time which are ‘free of obligation’ or ‘opposite towork’, (Bella, 1989, p.169). This paper focuses on two of the primarymeanings that women attributed to their holiday experience:
c �rstly that the holiday is a period of relative rest and less pressure;and
c secondly, that the holiday is a place to maintain and developrelationships.
Each of these meanings is explained beginning with an examination of thework in women’s lives and the contradictory way in which a holiday offers arest from their work. The signi�cance of the holiday for relationship
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development is then explored and, �nally, implications of these interpret-ations are discussed.
Work and rest in holidays
Even though the holidays that women described contained many of theirusual and out of the ordinary work tasks, one of the primary meanings thatthey gave to the holiday was as a place of relaxation and less pressure. Thepresence of usual work in holidays raises a number of issues: �rst, work in theholiday contradicts the common sense and dictionary de�nition of a holidayas being a break from work. Secondly, how can an experience which is �lledwith the usual work tasks be restful, relaxing or constitute less pressure?Women were asked what a typical day on holiday involved and Julie’s answerre�ected the way in which the usual work-load continued:
‘‘well I usually go down and do a load of washing, come back up, because she (mymother) lives in a �at and (the) laundry was out the back, try and organise the kidsbreakfast, organise their clothes and get them ready, so we could go down to the poolor to the beach or whatever we were going to do for the morning. Pack some food,and towels and sunblock and everything else. In between that I’d probably beenabout to hang out the washing and put the other load, if I had another load and thenprobably by about ten o’clock, we’d get down to the beach or the pool. . . . Spend acouple of hours there, come home for lunch, put Catherine to bed. And then we’deither go down to the beach again or, you didn’t sort of do a lot, because, (you) justcouldn’t, you know, do too much . . .
Julie clearly demonstrates that the holiday experience for women does notmean an absence of work. Why do women de�ne these work-�lled times asholidays? It seems that work is very much a part of the holiday experience ofwomen and yet even when they go away with the family, whose careconstitutes their work, there is a sense of ‘getting away’.
‘‘It’s just getting away, the change of scene, and the fact that you’re with people thatreally care about you, and that you can really just be yourself, and Brian’s there the‘full time’ and it’s a good family time as well.’’ – Jodie
‘‘I think just getting away, just driving away from it all, you just sort of think wellthis is wonderful.’’ – Sue
‘‘You sort of think oh how long is it since I washed those windows, oh those curtainsreally should be washed, I really should get in and clean the stove . . . whereas whenyou’re away from it, well, you don’t have to do that.’’ – Karen
‘Getting away’ is more than a physical change of site, but a getting awayfrom a sense of pressure created by a constant and ceaseless routine. Theholiday offers a respite to this routine, a sense of getting away from thepressure, as distinct from getting away from the work. Normal (non-holiday)work involves having clothes washed and ironed for Monday, shopping withsmall children in tow, or �tting in the shopping before children need to bepicked up from child care, of getting the children to have a nap at 1.00 pm sothey will not be grizzly when they are woken to go and collect the other
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children from school, of cooking dinner and bathing youngsters all at thesame time. In such a routine it is not possible to delay tasks, to put them asideuntil you have �nished the �rst task, or choose to do one task �rst becauseyou have more energy to do that now. It is a routine that offers only limitedchoice to the individuals concerned, as many of the work patterns are dictatedby the needs and wants of others. For women with young children work canalso be required twenty four hours a day. Women on holiday are not ‘gettingaway’ in total from this work, but are, it seems, getting away from thepressure and constancy of never-ending responsibility. The ‘getting away’ thatis talked about here is not a physical going away from home but it is theconceptual or experiential feeling of ‘getting away’. Very often the two occursimultaneously.
Kim demonstrates this when answering the question ‘What things actuallymade it a holiday?’:
‘‘I think mainly getting away from home, not being in the home environment, beingin a different environment I think that’s half of being away, a change is as good as aholiday. Perhaps being in small place. Also too, when you tend to go on a holiday,you don’t sort of worry so much about housework, so you tend to leave it, whereasat home I suppose you probably, you know, tend to clean up a little bit more thanwhat you would when you’re on holiday. So there’s not the usual routine houseworkthat you usually do, you’re probably a bit more slapdash too, you know, throweverything together, rather than making it properly or something like that, that’s justas an example. Also too, I think, you don’t worry about ironing things, and that sortof thing, when you’re away which you probably would do at home, so all those sortof household chores. And having the shared chores, like having your husband thereto actually give you a hand doing most things, which he did, like he would’veactually given us a hand and help do most things. I think too having the time to dothings that you probably don’t normally do at home. Like going for walks and goingto the beach and just relaxing mainly, just not the day to day pressures. It wasprobably more a holiday for my husband in that he was sort of not working duringthe day. But for me it was a holiday too. And also too I think you get away from thedaily pressures of life, you can sort of block out what’s going on at home and, youknow, say OK, forget about that for now . . . we’ll, you know, cope with that whenwe get back again.
Yeah I think actually once you’ve got children I think holidays are a bigger breakthan they used to be, you know what I mean, like before you used to have time foryourself.
You’d have your leisure time and you’d have your time for yourself, whereas now,when you do go away on holidays because you’ve got like a shared work load andall that sort of thing it probably is more of a holiday, more of a break. . . . Yeah, wellperhaps it is more special, because you don’t have it all the time. It’s probably moreprecious I suppose, so you probably appreciate it more. Mmmm, I think youprobably do, and just getting away from the regular routine, the everyday hohumsort of thing.’’
Kim talks about the sense of ‘getting away’ from the normal routine, thesharing of work, and the work that is left behind. Travelling away from home
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allows women to leave their place of work, which ultimately means leavingsome of the work behind. So, whilst much of the work goes with women ontheir holidays, much of it also stays behind. Those jobs of scrubbingbathrooms, tidying cupboards, all the ‘little’ maintenance jobs in the homecan be avoided when women go away.
The key factor in women’s experience of holidays, then, is a reduction inpressure that is associated with a change in site and family function. Thisrespite or reduction in pressure can be found without moving to a new place,without moving away from the home. Instead the pressure may be reducedbecause aspects of the work ‘go away’, that is, children and partner go away,or someone else comes to share the work load within the home.
‘‘another holiday that would even be quite nice would just be staying home, havesomebody come in and housekeep a bit, and just do all the things around Albury thatyou wanted to . . . I would be quite happy for that . . .
She’d (mother) come over while he (husband) was away . . . that was just ace, thatwas a holiday, even though I didn’t leave.’’ – Karen
Every woman I talked to indicated that on the whole family holidaysrequire less work, less effort than the normal routine. Whether away fromhome or at home women de�ned periods of reduced pressure as holidays.There are a number of ways that women ‘get away’ from pressure:
c The work load is reduced because husband and children are on holidaysand therefore their own work is reduced, e.g. no school clothes toprepare, work related to other commitments such as playgroups hasceased.
c There is assistance with childcare and housework. Most commonly thepresence of grandmother and/or partner relieves the burden of having todo both jobs at the same time. The sharing of the tasks takes the pressureand anxiety out of the work. Some families are able to purchase thisassistance at resorts where activities for children are provided but, for themost part, assistance with work comes from partner or grandmother.
c There is less concern and worry about child care and home duties, e.g.simpler meals or take-aways eaten, preparedness to let the house andchildren get dirty and eat less regularly. Many of the tasks associatedwith house care and childcare cannot be postponed while one goes onholiday, the work still needs to be done, and usually there is noone elseto do it. However, the work does not need to be done as conscientiouslyand there is a greater element of choice as to how and when the tasks aredone.
c Conveniences such as take-away food and paper nappies will be used.Pressure is reduced through the use of convenience products whichreduce the work required. These products are seen as not desirable all thetime, but for brief periods, such as holidays, they are thought not to doany harm and to be treats for the children, as well as being a treat for themothers.
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c Occasionally there are ‘total’ absences from work by leaving the childrenand housework behind. This style of holiday �ts the more conventionalmodel of holiday – a break away from work. However, even whenwomen do have a period of time away from their work quite often muchof the work is already done by them before they leave, or is waiting forthem when they return home.
The holiday was not uniformly experienced as less pressurized but includedperiods of reduced pressure. Indeed, many parts of the holiday were seen asextra work, e.g. packing, organizing the car for the children, the journeyitself, children being sick, having to wash and cook in a new place, stayingwith friends or family who offered respite in childcare but also created extratensions. Women were also very clear in identifying some experiences as notbeing holidays. If an experience was not less pressure, it was not called aholiday.
‘‘you have to wash, even though there was a washing machine and a dryer, . . . youstill end up in a routine, and that’s what I think is important when I get away, is tobreak that routine. We’d do something in the morning so at night I’d wash theclothes, and you didn’t have a clothes line, you just put it straight in the dryer. Wellat night was really the only time you could sort of wash, and then you just bung itin the drier. But it was still something that fell back on me because Peter would neversort of think, ‘I’ll put some washing in the washing machine and turn it on.’ I thinkthat’s what I hate about holidays is I’m the one that still has to keep thinking aboutthe everyday things, like I can’t just sort of think oh we’ll go and do so and sotomorrow, I’ve still got to think well, have we got milk in the fridge, or do we needto get milk on the way back so that we haven’t got to go out 5 kilometres to buy it.You can never just not do that, and to me the only way I can ever do that is to goaway on my own.’’ – Sue
Sue’s frustration with not being able to get away from her sense ofresponsibility for washing and eating is quite evident in her words. She isresigned that the only way to get a break from these aspects of her work is togo away by herself, without her family. The words of Sue re�ect the differentinterpretations that women give to their experiences. Some women arefrustrated by the dif�culty in getting away from the care routine, others willvoice a sense of relaxation and relief at the changes that the holiday offers,and the same woman will express both feelings about the same holiday. Of aless ambiguous nature, though, is the signi�cance of relationships in theconstruction of meaning in the holiday.
Roles and relationships
The other key feature of women’s accounts of their holidays was thatrelationships had a signi�cant effect on whether the holiday was consideredto be good or bad. That is, relationships were signi�cant in constructing theexperience as a holiday or not. When asked what were the ‘good bits’ abouttheir holiday or what they were looking forward to, all the womeninterviewed mentioned relationships with signi�cant others.
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‘‘We looked more after them than ourselves, its what we normally do anyway . . . wetook them to Plaster Fun House, we went for long walks along the open beach, otherdays we stayed at home . . . I would never go anywhere without the children. If wewent away on holiday we would never leave them behind, I couldn’t think ofanything worse than leaving them with somebody. Time together makes it a holiday,with no pressure. You know, if you want to sit down and draw with the kids thenyou can. Who cares if tea’s at half-past six instead of six o’clock . . . a holiday isrelaxation, being with the family, doing things that you don’t normally do, likewalking along the beach and that gave me satisfaction, to see them enjoying that, tosee them having a play in the sand or looking for shells.’’ – Joanne
‘‘I spent a lot of time just visiting, like catching up with my friends, and then myhusband met me and we travelled up to my mothers . . . I’m with my friends and I’mactually socializing a lot more and getting out and not just being somebody’s motherand wife, and you go back in time, you’re having a good time and not that you cando it forever but it’s just good, makes a nice change, I had that week on my own toobefore he joined me and I had no one to answer to. There’s a couple of girls fromwork that save and go away for weekends to Melbourne and I know I won’t do itthis year, but next year I’m hoping that I can start putting money away and go withthem and just have a weekend that’s totally my weekend without children andwithout husbands.’’ – Julie
As Joanne and Julie indicate, what they wanted to get out of a holiday, andwhat they did get, was a nurturing of the relationships that are signi�cant tothem. The kinds of interactions that they were seeking are very clearlydifferent: Joanne wanted to enjoy her relationship with her children, and Juliewanted to enjoy her relationships with her friends. The holiday nurturesrelationships in a way that the routine of normal or non-holiday lifesomehow does not always allow for, perhaps especially for women and menwith young children.
The signi�cance of a relationship for an individual goes beyond theinteraction and sharing with another: that sharing and interaction hasconsequences for the individual’s sense of self. ‘Identity is formed by socialprocesses’ (Berger and Luckmann, 1967) and one such social process is theinteraction with others resulting in an af�rmation of who we are inrelationship to others. The work of Gilligan, 1982 (also Coles, 1980; Bella,1989; Green et al., 1990; Hunter and Whitson, 1991) suggests that womenconsider relationships to be very important in their lives and leisure and workhard to maintain them. The value that women place on relationships impliesthat the role they �ll within these relationships is important and valuable tothemselves. To value being with children, partner, or friends is to value therole as mother, partner and friend respectively. There are different ‘selves’ ableto be nurtured in a holiday and, to a limited extent, the holiday provideschoice over which particular self or selves will be engaged – the mother,partner, social or individual self. Some women want to use the holiday tonurture their self as mother, so the holiday involves keeping the nuclear familyintact, doing pleasurable activities together, leaving the children only on fewoccasions. Other women put themselves or their relationship with their
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partner as a higher priority than the ‘family’ and their role as mother, andthey seek relief from childcare work so that they can put energy into thepartnership or themselves.
The holiday functions as a place where women can indulge in any of theseroles, such as the role of mother, in a more satisfying way. On the other hand,however, women might be more interested in developing their other roles, andsense of self associated with these, and so de�ne holidays as a period withouttheir family. In looking at holidays in this way we can make sense of why theholiday is a positive and rewarding experience for women even though theyonly get a relative rest from their work role as mother, or why it might be thatsome women prefer to have holiday time away from their family.
For women who want a holiday apart from their family the holiday is usedto construct or reconstruct a self that is sometimes absent in the normalroutine, a social and independent self. The social and independent self is arole that does not include mothering and women talk about and yearn fortimes when you do not have ‘kids tugging at your skirt’. The social andindependent self might also be a return to a pre-mothering role. Many womenlive considerable distances from long-term friends or family. To return to thisnetwork is to regain a sense of who you are, your history, and to develop therelationship by sharing recent events in your lives. This time for self might bea holiday totally away from family and partner or might be an hour or twofound within the family holiday, but devoid of family responsibilities.
Time for self does not just happen, it has to be organized. Time for self isa common theme in the study of women’s leisure, and found by otherresearch on women’s holidays (Cunningham, 1994). Some women organize anon-holiday routine which provides time out; for example, they will go awayfor weekends, or regularly take breaks from childcare work. Other women�nd it harder in their normal routine to have time for self and feel that timefor self will happen when the children are older. To ask for and organize timewhilst the children are young was thought to be irresponsible by some womenin this study. Other women asked for ‘time-out’ but the resulting experiencewas not always optimum in either quantity or quality.
‘‘If two were asleep and Keith was looking after the other one, I could go to the beachfor an hour, but it’s usually at the hottest part of the day.’’ – Jodie
Women did not go on holiday to undertake particular activities, they wentbecause being with signi�cant others was just as important as resting. Aholiday location was chosen because it allowed the role of mother, partner orself to be achieved rather than because a particular activity was available.Going to Disney World in Queensland, for example, was not importantbecause women wanted to participate and be in and ‘do’ Disney World; it wasimportant because that was the place they could develop a particularrelationship with their children. It was a place that they could share with theirchildren and offer a new experience to their children in a way which �ttedwith what they wanted to achieve as a mother.
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Implications
The research and analysis focused on a particular group of people.Theoretical sampling was used to obtain data but this sampling process mighthave gone further to include a greater variety of cases. There are undoubtedlywomen whose experiences are not covered here, including: women who livein violent homes; women who live in extreme poverty; women who live inextreme wealth; women from a multitude of ethnic backgrounds; womenwho live in lesbian relationships. Additionally, the picture which emerges ofwomen with young children raises questions about the holiday experiencesthat their male partners might have. How signi�cant is the effect of genderroles and access to paid work? Not covered in this paper is an analysis of theeffect of paid work upon women’s holiday experiences but preliminaryanalysis suggests that women who have some paid work are more likely toask for and organize time away from their unpaid work roles.
The case study of holidays of women with young children provides data toassist further understanding of women’s lives and leisure. The �ndings alsoraise questions about the signi�cant and de�ning features of leisure experi-ences, such as holidays, and the way these are theorised and facilitated. The�ndings demonstrate that ‘work’ is an accepted part of the holidayexperience, albeit at different levels for different women. The �ndings alsoshow that one of the central meanings of the holiday experience is foundthrough relationships with others and that the holiday can facilitate thedevelopment and maintenance of these relationships. The �ndings suggest,then, that the work/leisure dichotomy is not useful to understand women’sexperiences but that leisure theory should be more concerned with relation-ship and identity. This follows on from Bella’s (1989) suggestion that leisureis constructed and de�ned more by who we do it with, than what it is that weare doing.
Holidays for women with young children (and undoubtedly men andwomen in other situations) are not periods of time totally absent from work.The holiday is �lled with the work of cooking, cleaning, organizing and thework of relationships and the emotional energy needed to create andmaintain harmony (Bella, 1989; Crawford et al., 1992; Poiner, 1993).However, the work is different in the holiday than in the normal routine andthat difference is found in the release or diminution of pressure. As Shaw(1985) notes, relaxation is found not in ‘doing nothing’ but by being in a stateof no anxiety. Women stated that they were not concerned about ensuringthat children had clean clothes everyday, or that their diet was not ideal orthat the unit or tent was untidy; in leaving behind concerns about these taskswomen left behind the pressure. The relocation in place and change inattitude to work tasks whilst on holiday plays an important role in thefacilitation of the relaxing experience. It is quite clear that the presence ofwork in a holiday routine does not preclude the experience being de�ned asa holiday, nor is the lack of work the de�nitive characteristic.
Indeed work of various kinds was valued in the holiday. Women did notwant to relinquish all their work tasks. This is, �rstly, because the work tasks
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of a mother are central to the role and enactment of motherhood. Not to dothe work tasks required of a mother can make women feel uncomfortableabout their accomplishments in this role. Young children are seen as havingclose to twenty-four hour needs and therefore the role of mother needs tocontinue over the same time frame. Not to ful�l these tasks results in acon�ict between the accepted image of the mother role and the way womensee themselves as accomplished in that role.
Secondly, women do not always wish to relinquish work because the workitself is very often perceived as leisure, hence the problem of utilizing a work/leisure dichotomy which attempts to separate one activity into two. Women’sunpaid work includes looking after children and partner, which includestaking care of their emotional as well as the physical needs. The workrequired for ful�lling emotional needs is time- and energy-consuming but isalso rewarding and satisfying. Women do not want to give up the tasks ofteaching their young children about the world around them. They want toput time and energy into the relationships that they have with other peopleand to a certain extent the holiday allows women to make choices aboutwhich relationships they put energy into. The relationship work and othercare and organization tasks done on holiday are also those that providesatisfaction and enjoyment.
The value that women place on relationships in the holiday experiencereinforces the signi�cance of relationships in women’s lives that has beenfound in other leisure research (Coles, 1980; Henderson and Rannels, 1988;Bella, 1989; Green et al., 1990; Hunter and Whitson 1991) and psychologyresearch (Gilligan, 1982; Crawford et al., 1992; Rawlins, 1992). The holidayis a space to nurture and develop the relationships that are signi�cant towomen by providing time and activities that are not available in the normalroutine. This sharing time contributes greatly to the reported satisfaction withthe holiday and disappointment with relationships was a key reason fordissatisfaction with a holiday experience. It is important to acknowledge thatthese important relationships can also be constraining – particularly for theperson who feels responsible for the relationships. Different women havedifferent views on mothering and their own place in the world. Women forwhom the notion of mothering disallows self may not question the continuedresponsibility in holidays. They believe that it is normal for women withyoung children not to have respite from work and expect to make thissacri�ce for the �rst years of their children’s lives.
A re�ection of the media representation and promotion images of theholiday suggests that there is a strong social expectation that holidays areperiods of rest, relaxation, escape and, at times, excitement. What con-sequences do these social expectations have for women’s behaviour during,and perceptions of, the holiday experience? In listening to women’s experi-ences we should be aware that the holiday is expected to be a ‘fun time’. Assuch, then, the question needs to be asked ‘To what extent are women able tosay that their holiday was not enjoyable?’ First, it should be pointed out thatthe image of the holiday as being a place of rest and relaxation neglects thework that goes into organizing the holiday as well as the vast amount of work
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activities which must continue whilst on holiday. This expectation is based ona holiday routine which is contrasted with a paid work routine and thosepeople who are not in paid work have few broad social de�nitions by whichto construct their holiday experience.
There is an absence of dialogue about how a mother gets rest, relaxation,leisure and holidays. Is it that the pervading stoicism of women regardingtheir work and responsibilities discourages them from entering into nego-tiations for pleasure in life? Joanne and Mary talk about wanting to get awayand yet not needing to, knowing quite well they can cope, thinking it throughand weighing up the advantages of actually ‘getting away’ compared with‘staying’, which might also mean continuing the chores and which wouldtherefore not be a relief from pressure. So, whilst it is acceptable to go on aholiday, it is not acceptable to say ‘I want a rest’. This request means that thework has to be done by some other, but women know how much effort isrequired in that work and can be reluctant to ask others to do somethingwhich they see as their responsibility, in order to provide an opportunity of‘indulgence’ for themselves. Mothers do not do things for themselves unlessthey need to: the children should come �rst. It is dif�cult for a woman to say‘I want to do this, and the children will have to stay home and be cared bysomeone else for a few days’; it is also dif�cult for a woman to say ‘I need todo this’ when she knows that she still has reserves and can continue to cope.Jodie says:
‘‘as a woman you just can’t get out on your own and just think about yourself. Youknow, that went by the wayside when you get married. You just do it, well I don’tthink of myself �rst.’’
Crawford et al. (1992) point out that women feel responsible for makingthe holiday experience a happy and successful experience and that to admitthat a holiday was tedious might be perceived as their own personalfailure.
Without an expectation of achieving a holiday there is little motivation andaction to ensure that holiday experiences are available. So we �nd thatwomen’s holidays are constrained or impaired by: poor travel facilities; theresponsibility for the organization and work of making the holiday happenand ‘unhappen’ (unpacking and cleaning); �nding that their normal work hasincreased or got harder because they are in a different work environment, orbecause they feel guilty for going away and not doing their normal tasks. Thework involved in being a mother of young children cannot be left undone andso to get a break from this work necessitates the work being done by someoneelse. Even should the family unit want to make this possible, it is rarely thata family has the resources to do this, so visions of tropical islands withactivities for children, all meals prepared and no housework to do keepappearing in women’s ideal holiday but not in their reality. The holiday as arest is impeded by non-existence of or inaccessibility to those who wouldprovide relief (e.g. a grandmother), commitment to mothering and being therefor the children, guilt if women choose to do something for themself and thehigh value and responsibility that is placed on relationships.
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Women have an ethic of survival, of making the best, getting on with thejob, and an awareness of their own strength and ability to cope with theconstant work. So whilst they will talk about the holiday being a welcomerespite from constant pressure, they also feel that they can cope without abreak, even though it might be months or years before another break fromwork occurs. Therefore, women who expect mothering to be a role whichdisallows self and the right to talk about wants might also feel that the rightand good holiday in this life period is one in which their mother rolecontinues, or is not one which is self-determined or meets their individualpreferences. Other women will use the holiday experience to nurture andreconstruct the self as an individual, rather than self as mother. Where thishas been done, women have had to take responsibility for themselves andorganize their own holiday. Time away for self as an individual can onlyoccur if support and resources are available.
The holiday is clearly not an experience that is demarcated by leisure orwork. Women with young children do have holiday experiences and �ndvalue, meaning and relaxation in these experiences, even in spite of thelimited emotional and physical support for them to access holidays. The�ndings of this study, whilst identifying a need for greater support for womenwith young children, also suggest that work and leisure are not separateentities and that leisure is an experience that is de�ned as much byrelationship and contribution to self-identity as it is by reduced pressure andpleasure.
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