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The absence of childhood in tourism studies
Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 772–789, 2008 0160-7383/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain
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doi:10.1016/j.annals.2008.06.002
THE ABSENCE OF CHILDHOOD IN TOURISM STUDIES Jennie Small University of Technology, Sydney Australia Abstract: The meaning of holidays for children and the role of the holiday in constructed subjectivities are largely absent in academic writings. Using the social constructionist research method of memory-work, this study examines memories of childhood holidays of Australian women and girls. It concludes that shared, fun, physical activities are common positive memories of childhood holidays across the generations. At the same time, women’s recollection of the imperative to behave responsibly and appropriately constrained their freedom. The paper addresses the implications of the findings for women and girls and questions whether the findings can be explained through cultural shifts in gender relations, the refashioning of experiences over time through memory and narration, or the context in which the memories are produced. Keywords: children, girls, holidays, memories, social constructionism. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION An acknowledgement of multiple subject positions by tourism scholars in the past decade has led to the study of the tourist experience from different standpoints, such as gender, sexual orientation, and ability/disability. One social dimension, age, has been variously studied. A review of the tourism literature highlights that most of the research on age has been undertaken within a positivist paradigm with the emphasis on description rather than social understanding. The tourism literature has lagged behind the leisure studies literature in examining constraints, negotiation, and resistance of differently aged participants through leisure (tourism). The two fields of study differ in their rationale for the study of age of consumer, with leisure studies focusing on the benefits for the participant and tourism studies focusing on the benefits for the tourism industry. In tourism studies, most of the research has been limited to certain age groups: senior tourists and youth tourists. Children and childhood have been neglected. Little has changed since Graburn’s (1983) observation, twenty five years ago, of the absence of children in the tourism literature. Research which discusses children as tourists has primarily focused on
Jennie Small is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Leisure, Sport and Tourism at the University of Technology, Sydney (PO Box 222, Lindfield NSW 2070, Australia. Email:). Her main interest is the emerging Critical Tourism approach in tourism studies. Her research focus is tourist behavior with specific interest in gender, age, disability (vision impairment), and the life course of tourists. 772
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children’s influence on parental decision making (Filiatrault and Ritchie 1980; Fodness 1992; Tagg and Seaton 1994; Wang, Hsieh, Yeh and Tsai 2004) and children’s influence on adult tourists’ experiences (Johns and Gyimo´thy 2002; Salma 2001; Thompson, Pinney and Schibrowsky 1996; Thornton, Shaw and Williams 1997). With few exceptions, the studies of children have been from the adult perspective. Some writers have recognised the importance of children as a market segment (Cullingford 1995; Ryan 1992; Swarbrooke and Horner 1999). Connell (2005) refers to the phenomenon of ‘‘toddler tourism’’ which emerged in the United Kingdom stimulated by the British TV program, Balamory, set on the Isle of Mull in Scotland. The dramatic influx of visitors to the destination and the reconstruction of the destination as one appealing to children highlight the role of the child in today’s holidaying family. Nonetheless, the value of researching children goes beyond the commercial incentive. Graburn (1983) and Cullingford (1995) have called for research which enquires more broadly about perceptions children form of other countries and peoples and the impact childhood experiences have on their later adult holidays. It is only recently that researchers have begun to examine how children experience the holiday. Cullingford (1995), in a study of attitudes to holidays overseas of British children aged seven to 11 years, found that children had clear ideas of which countries were attractive as holiday destinations. It was the developed world which was most desirable, in other words, that which was culturally familiar. The author found, for most of the children in the study that, travel meant beaches, good weather, and eating out rather than cultural sightseeing. He explains that ‘‘for the most part, children are confined to their clearly demarcated ‘holiday’’’ (1995:125) and while they enjoy the entertainment of a beach holiday with friends, they are also aware of the differences in being abroad. Children holidaying abroad were rarely taken to the ‘‘sights’’ but when they were, they showed a great deal of interest. Children’s formulation of their experience involved the need to categorise both the familiar and the different. Cullingford considers that children’s awareness of differences ‘‘is the side of their experience that has remained unexploited’’ (1995:127). More recently, Gram (2005), in a study of German and Danish children’s experiences of the family holiday, concluded that children want ‘‘activities, sensory experiences and play, where they are active and absorbed – preferably with other children’’ (2005:11). If this is achieved the parents can enjoy the family holiday. In a study of American children aged from ten to 17, Nickerson and Jurowski (2001) similarly claim: ‘‘The active activities will be the ones children remember most fondly’’ (2001:28). A significant finding was the American children’s enjoyment of the shopping experience. These children also were ‘‘generally more pleased with the destination than the adults’’ (2001:27). The importance of peer social interaction on holiday is reinforced by Larsen and Jenssen (2004) who studied a school trip of 14 to 15-year old, Norwegian children. The authors highlight the importance of the social motive prior to departure, during the trip, and in recollection on return. Traveling ‘‘with’’ was more important than
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traveling ‘‘to or from’’ and more important than the motive for learning. Not only is there a dearth of understanding of children’s holiday experiences but little is known of how adults remember their own childhood experiences or the part these memories play in their experiences of adult holidays. In a study of adult memories of childhood holidays, Crawford, Kippax, Onyx, Gault and Benton (1992) examined the social production of holiday memories. They concluded that memories of holidays were gendered. Women’s memories of girlhood holidays involved work, care, and anxieties, whereas the men’s memories reflected what a holiday was expected to be—‘‘freedom from care,’’ made possible by the work of the women and girls. In studying age, one needs to consider gender. As Ginn and Arber state: Gender and ageing are inextricably intertwined in social life; each can only be fully understood with reference to the other. As we age, we are influenced by the societal, cultural, economic and political context prevailing at different times in our life course. We are also profoundly influenced by our gender and by shifts in gender relations over the life course. Thus the connectedness of gender and ageing stems both from social change over time and from age-related life course events; social history and personal biography are interwoven over time (1995:1).
Hareven refers to this juncture as the ‘‘interaction between ‘individual time’, ‘family time’ and ‘historical time’’’ (1982:5). There are many arguments for tourism researchers to focus on children as tourists. Most investigations have been economically motivated; however, a non-economic analysis can offer broader social understanding. If one accepts that the tourist experience has many benefits for the individual, those benefits should be considered for children. There are also arguments for studying adult memories of childhood holidays. In making family holiday decisions for their children or grandchildren, parents might draw on their own memories of holidays as a child. Those working in the tourism industry might also use their own memories as a basis for decision making for today’s children. An understanding of the adult construction of childhood holidays can also indicate the construction of the adult self and how holidays are experienced as an adult. As well as memories informing one’s contemporary self, the construction of self at any moment plays an important part in how past holidays are constructed. As Arnold (cited in Bain 1995) says, ‘‘‘meaning does not lie in the experience. Rather experiences become meaningful as a result of being grasped reflectively’’’ (1995:240). Events are composed as they are remembered (Douglass 1994). As the present changes so do our memories. Put simply, holiday experiences (in childhood) and memories (later) emerge from the particular time and context in which one experiences childhood and the time and context in which one recalls childhood. Bruner (2005:19) distinguishes between: the trip as lived: as it actually happened, the reality; the trip as experienced: consisting of the images, feelings, desires, thoughts, and
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meanings that emerge in individual consciousness; and the trip as told: usually a story, but possibly a series of photographs or other forms of expression.
Memories of the experience, reflected in the ‘‘trip as told,’’, can be studied in their own right and not judged against the ‘‘real/true’’ past event, lived, or experienced at the time. Memories which are told are a reality, and although they might not be identical to the trip as lived or experienced in childhood, ‘‘this does not mean that there is no influence or mutual interdependence of one on the other’’ (Bruner 2005:19). Memories and the ‘‘trip as told’’ will also emerge from the situation/context in which they are told. The present study attempts to go beyond the investigation of a single subject position to acknowledge multiple subject positions, in this case, the confluence of age/life stage, historical time, and gender. The study examines childhood holiday experiences at different historical times from the position of age (four age groups/life stages) and gender (female). It investigates how contemporary groups of girls and older women in reflection understand childhood holidays and the place of these holidays in the development of subjectivities. Holidays are seen as different from the everyday events in life; understanding the construction of the extraordinary also helps explain our experiences of the ordinary. The study is as much about gender as it is about age. The gendered nature of the travel experience is evident in historical writings (Birkett 1991; Middleton 1982; Morris 1993; Robinson 1995) and contemporary accounts of women travelers (Bowen 2005; Davidson 1996; Hall and Kinnaird 1994; Small 2003, 2005a, 2005b, Swain 1995). However, despite a developing scholarly interest in women and tourism, researchers have focused on the holiday experiences of adult women, not girls, and, with the exception of Crawford et al (1992), the focus has been on contemporary holiday experiences, rather than women’s experiences of holidays as children. Adult memories of holidays at age 12 are likely to have been reconstructed many times as women have moved through various positions since childhood. At any point in time, past and present are interwoven. Even for present-day girls, their memories, however recent, are a selection of the holiday as experienced and are constructed from within the context in which they are remembered. The question arises as to whether one can draw conclusions on historical changes in the tourist experience or whether one can only compare social constructions of childhood holidays at different ages/stages in the life course. RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD HOLIDAYS OF WOMEN AND GIRLS The focus of the research was memories of good and bad holiday experiences at age 12. The study examined the memories of presentday girls, young women, middle-aged women, and older women. The researcher investigated, firstly, the commonalities/differences within each age cohort of memories of holidays at age 12, secondly, the
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commonalities/differences between the age cohorts of these memories and finally, how these remembered experiences can be theorised. Study Method The paradigm of this study was feminist social constructionism and the research method employed was memory-work (Haug and Others 1987). Memory-work, developed by German feminists, Frigga Haug and her colleagues, is a research method appropriate for a feminist, social constructionist paradigm. It is a method which enables the researcher to understand the social meaning of life experiences, in this case, holidays. The underlying theory of memory-work is that ‘‘subjectively significant events, events which are remembered, and the way they are subsequently constructed, play an important part in the construction of self’’ (Crawford et al 1992:37). Since the self is socially constructed through reflection, Haug et al. (1987) used memories as their initial data, thus the name of the method. As Crawford et al (1992:38) explain: ‘‘individuals’ memories provide the medium in which their actions are given direction and evaluated.’’ However, they add: What perhaps is not so familiar or obvious is that the relation between oneself and one’s memories of one’s past experience is similar to the relation between other agents and oneself. One’s self engages with one’s memories, has a conversation with them, responds to them, as another responds to oneself. Memories are essential to the duality of self. The ‘I’ reflects back on the ‘me’ and together they constitute the self. Memories contain the traces of the continuing process of appropriation of the social and the becoming, the constructing, of self (Crawford et al 1992:39).
Memory-work breaks down the barriers between the subject and the object of research. Everyday experience is the basis of knowledge (Crawford et al 1992) and this experience can be seen as generalizable. Memory-work is a collective process. As Haug et al (1987) explain: ‘‘Human beings produce their lives collectively. It is within the domain of collective production that individual experience becomes possible’’ (1987:44). Memory-work is also a feminist method in that it was developed for women with the aim of liberation. In its original form, the academic researcher using this method positions herself with the group and becomes a member of the research group. Concurrently, the researched become researchers, thus eliminating the hierarchy of ‘‘experimenter’’ and ‘‘subject.’’ Haug et al (1987) referred to the participants as ‘‘co-researchers.’’ In the present study adaptations were made to the methodology as the researcher could only position herself with her own age group. Further barriers to an elimination of hierarchy were university requirements regarding research ownership and the large number of participants in the study. The three phases of memory-work involve the participants in both individual writing and group discussion of memories: Phase 1: Each girl and woman wrote about a good and bad holiday experience at age 12;
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Phase 2: Groups of similarly-aged members met and each participant read her memories. The groups discussed the read memories, looking for commonalities and themes and, in so doing, revealed their collective understanding of holidays at age 12. Crawford et al (1992) explain: ‘‘The two foci of memory-work capture something of the duality of self. The self talking with itself is phase 1 and responding to itself as others respond to it is phase 2’’ (1992:40). Although expressed as Phase 1 and Phase 2, Crawford et al (1992) stress, ‘‘intersubjectivity precedes subjectivity’’ (1992:52); Phase 3: The researcher read the transcripts of the recorded discussion in Phase 2 and identified the themes across the different age groups. The participants were white, Anglo-Australian, middle-class girls and women resident in Sydney. Their age varied: girls (aged 12), young women (aged early 20s), middle-aged women (aged 40s), and older women (aged 65+ years). Their life stage also varied: those in their 20s were single and without children, those aged 40s and 65+ were married, separated or widowed, and had children. Their ethnicity and current social class position privileged the girls and women in terms of their likelihood of holiday taking. The participants identified themselves as ‘‘middle-class’’ but it is possible that the women might not always have done so. While their memories of childhood were constructed from a current middle-class adult position, the holidays at the time might have been experienced from a different class position. There were four to six groups of women in each age group with four or five members in each. A total of 86 women and girls participated. The memories of the women and girls came from different historical periods. The youngest group was aged 12 in the mid to late 1990s, the 20-year-olds were 12 around 1990, the 40-year-olds were aged 12 in the 1960s, and the 65+ year olds, due to the range in ages of the women, experienced age 12 somewhere between the mid-1920s and the late 1940s. Girls’ and Women’s Memories The recalled holidays occurred over a period of more than eighty years. The memories reflected historical, social changes in travel and tourism with an increase over the period in the number of holidays taken, distance traveled, destination choice, engagement with the tourism industry, and changes in type of transportation and accommodation. Despite social differences in the historical times in which the holidays occurred and the different positions in the life course from which they were remembered, there were behavioral themes which were consistent across the memories of the generations. The dominant theme which emerged in the memories of the collectives of girls and women at age 12 was the physicality of the tourist experience. Positive memories focused on a moving body and negative memories related to a hurting body. For the women and girls at age 12, a good holiday memory involved outdoor physical activities such as swimming, snorkelling, skiing, theme park rides, and riding
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bikes. While the more commercially developed activities such as skiing and theme park rides were specific to the memories of the younger groups, swimming was common in the memories of all generations. Kristina [Age 12]: From the moment I arrived on Plantation Island, Fiji, and spotted the pontoon with the sun sparkling down on it, I knew it was going to be one of the highlights of my holiday. . . I would swim out through the sparkling warm water and you would be able to see the bottom of the water as it was so clear. When I reached the pontoon, I climbed up the ladder and stood up on the surface of it. I would feel very proud and look out over the water and feel like I’m on top of the world! You could also dive off the pontoon into the water and that was heaps of fun too. Jessie: Oh yeah, I agree because when I went to Fiji I dived off a pontoon too, and I thought it was fun. (Non-italicised quotation is the read written memory) Clair [Age 20]: Before they left each reef site, Clair and her sister enjoyed jumping off the side of the boat into the water. They would jump off the top of the boat and then find ways to climb higher and jump further. It was always fun when other kids would join in and they’d have a big contest going. Clair loved these boat trips as they were full of her favorite things. She could swim herself, snorkel, see amazing things, eat great food, be in the sun, and do daring things. Josephine: Oh, wonderful! That sounds fabulous. Belinda: Wow! That was good. Eleanor [Age 65+]: They slept in the afternoon, it was so hot. Then they walked to the river to swim which was so beautiful after a very hot day. Cold and very strong. How wonderful to have the cold, wonderful water to swim in. She rode her bike with her cousins a long way, over creek beds into town. What a great adventure!
For all age groups, the stress was on lots of activities. While the present-day 12-year-olds portrayed holidays as busy and frenetic, the older groups of women remembered childhood holidays as relaxed and unrushed. Across the age groups, the country was remembered as a good holiday destination as it offered many activities and an opportunity to experience wildlife (important to the present-day 12-year-olds). A significant feature of a good holiday experience was recalled as having fun. Although there were a few references to sightseeing, education and learning usually were not considered positive experiences. Nicole [Age 20]: They spent a week in London . . . where they traveled to cathedrals, castles, museums, and art galleries. Nicole and her brother and sisters were not overly impressed (mainly due to their age) and because they’d been having such a good time in Florida. Like at this age it’s (Other: it was boring), yeah, a bit boring. Lucy: Because you had to do what your parents wanted to do. Nicole: What your parents wanted to do. Monica [Age 20]: Having fun, really isn’t it? Other: Yeah. Clair: It’s got to do with fun. Other: Yeah.
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Monica: Yeah. It’s not about, you know, educating yourself, Clair: [not about] finding meaningful things.
The emphasis on bodily movement at age 12 is striking especially as it is not significant in memories of holidays at other ages (Small 2003, 2005a, 2005b). The physical bodily theme was also a theme of the negative memories for all age groups. Here the focus for the present-day 12-year-olds was the hurting body through illness or physical discomfort caused by tiredness, sunburn, insect stings, or extreme temperature. The women’s negative memories involved fear of being physically hurt by fire, drowning, animals, or people. Other themes were identified which were common to all age groups or specific to particular cohorts. Prominent in the women’s positive memories was the experience of ‘‘doing something different’’ through visiting new places, experiencing new people and lifestyles and, most importantly, through engaging in new activities, such as sleeping in a bunk bed, having the bedroom at the top of the house, and traveling by an unfamiliar mode of transport. These experiences were described as ‘‘exciting’’ and ‘‘an adventure.’’ Those aged 40 years and over remembered the sense of discovery, wonderment, and fascination in these experiences that they ‘‘had never done before.’’ As one group said, ‘‘people letting you do things you couldn’t do at home.’’ The women recalled consuming different foods on holiday which distinguished the holiday as a special time. Susan [Age 65+]: First came the packing of the trunk . . . In a good safe place surrounded by clothes to keep it safe. . . one enormous tin of cookies, given to Susan’s father by his boss . . . What a treat this was for Susan as they never had bought, store cookies, as her mother did all the baking.
Childhood holidays were also recollected as an opportunity to learn new skills, such as rowing, surfing, and skiing. For some in the older age groups, a holiday in itself was remembered as a novelty. Achievement and a sense of competence were positive features for the women in their memories of holidays at age 12. Independence from parents and a feeling of being grown up was a common positive theme in the women’s and girls’ memories of age 12. Sometimes the girls and women reported holidays without their parents (with a friend’s family/other relatives or school camp). At other times, the holiday was seen as providing a space to be independent even when traveling with the family. Karen [Age 40]: [On board a ship] There was an immense sense of freedom and being grown up. Being able to go places on her own.
Most of the girls and women reported that independence led to a feeling of capability and increased self-esteem. For the present-day 12-year-olds, interaction with the family was not a feature of positive holiday memories. They also did not like being treated as a child on holiday. Many of the women appeared ambivalent about family holidays at age 12. On the one hand, families could be irritating. The women recalled parents arguing, fights with siblings, and getting into
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trouble, especially with fathers. However, in the memories of the 20and 40-year-olds, there was also fond recollection of sharing the holiday with the family. Families were seen as providing security. It was evident in the girls’ and women’s memories that other people were necessary for holiday activities to be fun, exciting, and enjoyable. For the present-day 12-year-olds and many of the 20- and 40-year-old groups, the preferred playmate was a girlfriend of the same age. The physical environment could facilitate these social relationships. Tania [Age 20]: You make friends in a pool . . . I remember when I was young and used to say, ‘I’ll see you at the pool, tomorrow morning’ (Stephanie: Yeah). And you always meet your friends back at the pool. You spend the day with them and you meet them back at the pool the next day.
For the present-day 12-year-olds, particularly, the emphasis underlying the various themes was ‘‘me and my pleasure.’’ When the girls were expecting a certain outcome and it did not eventuate, they reported disappointment for themselves. If others suffered misfortune, it was significant only insofar as it constrained the girls’ pleasure. Unlike the women’s stories, the girls’ stories showed no awareness that adults were providing and maintaining the holiday while they enjoyed freedom from responsibility. The egocentric memories of the present-day 12year-olds are distinguished from the older age groups who saw themselves and others as mutually impacting on each other. No doubt, having experienced responsibility as adults and, in the case of the 40- and 65+-year-olds, responsibility for a family, the women were able to take their parents’ standpoint. The women incorporated their mothers’ responsibility for holidays into their memories of childhood. There was no indication in the memories of the girls that they were expected to do something for others. This was in contrast to the memories of the 65+ age group who recalled helping out with the daily chores. Lorna [Age 65+]: . . . at Boat Harbour my cousins and their families had opened up the land with poultry farms, fruit orchards, and pigs . . . Every school holiday was spent there, picking fruit at fruit-picking time, gathering the many thousands of eggs, and helping out at feed time.
Although the 20- and 40-year-olds did not refer to contributing to the maintenance of the holiday at age 12, many 40-year-old and some 20year-old women expressed an obligation on holiday to ‘‘do the right thing.’’ The negative memories revealed feelings of insecurity, embarrassment, guilt, and unresolved conflict when the women as girls failed to behave ‘‘appropriately.’’ Implicit in these memories is a move away from ‘‘me’’ to an awareness of other people. At age 12, the women were aware that there were social rules, that there was a correct way of behaving, but often they did not understand the rules. These occasions were problematic and were remembered. Although the presentday 12-year-olds remembered adult anger and ‘‘getting into trouble,’’ these did not appear to be negative experiences. For many girls, improper behavior was associated with bravado. Where adult authority was recalled with respect and fear by the women, it was more likely to be mocked by the present-day 12-year-olds.
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Incorporated into the theme of ‘‘me and my pleasure,’’ the memories portrayed a desire amongst the present-day 12-year-olds (and some 20-year-olds) for ‘‘luxury’’ and pampering. This could be achieved primarily through accommodation (resorts and 5 star hotels) and transport (planes). In contrast, the 65+-year-old women recollected pleasure in the simplicity of holidays as children. An Interpretation of the Emergent Themes The findings from the present study are, in many ways, similar to those from the holiday studies of British (Cullingford 1995), German and Danish (Gram 2005), Norwegian (Larsen and Jenssen 2004), and American (Nickerson and Jurowski 2001) children despite differences in research methodology and participants (different age ranges and gender). They all suggest that a good childhood holiday is perceived and/or remembered as one with a number of activities, especially swimming, which children can enjoy with other children. Cullingford’s (1995) conclusion that children appreciate holidaying in a culture which is similar to their own was particularly evident amongst those in the present study who had experienced both similar and dissimilar cultures (the present-day 12-year olds and the 20-year olds). As Cullingford (1995) says, ‘‘Children express a far greater interest in travel for the sake of holidays than they do for exploring new lands or different places . . . the perfect destination is seen as one which provides all the pleasures they would have at home, with extras’’ (1995:123). However, Cullingford believed that if children were given the opportunity for sightseeing experiences in their overseas ‘‘beach and sun’’ holidays, they would appreciate the educational value. The holiday as a site for education for children has been recognized in earlier academic discourse (Crompton 1979; Mayo and Jarvis 1981). In the present study, a number of the memories of childhood holidays referred to educational opportunities through sightseeing but, unlike Cullingford’s (1995) prediction, these were not identified as good holiday memories but rather remembered as ‘‘boring.’’ The findings from the present study stress the embodied nature of childhood holiday memories; pleasure was in the body, not the mind. It was a body which was engaging in the physical activities and providing sensory feedback from bodily movement. This could be positive as in skiing or negative as in travel sickness. The recollection by all age groups of the taste of foods consumed in childhood holidays further confirms that holiday memories are not only visual. Gram (2005) similarly identified the importance of ‘‘a sensory experience’’ in German and Danish children’s memorable events of holidays. The findings of the present study contribute to the growing body of literature (such as Dann and Jacobsen 2003; Morgan, Ateljevic, Pritchard and Harris 2005; Pritchard, Ateljevic and Morgan 2007; Veijola and Jokinen 1994) which recognizes that tourists experience destinations bodily as well as culturally. The tourist experience goes beyond the cognitive and visual to incorporate all the senses, including the kinaesthetic.
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The centrality of physical activity in memories of childhood holidays compared to its peripheral position in memories of adult holidays (Small 2003, 2005a, 2005b) coincides with the findings from leisure studies that female participation in physical activity declines after childhood (James 1995). The social imperative for restraint in girls’ and women’s physical activity is documented by Henderson (1993) and Tinkler (1995). However, as Wearing (1998) comments, there is an exciting awareness of bodily power when women make the effort to refuse what they have been told they are. Femininity becomes ‘‘expansive rather than constrictive’’ (1998:112). In the present study, holidays appeared as a space in which girls were free from the tension of two competing discourses: ‘‘active, inquiring, discovering’’ childhood and ‘‘passive’’ femininity (Walkerdine 1990:34). Good holidays were remembered as exciting and an adventure, with ‘‘adventure’’ particularly prominent in the memories of the women. As Goffman (cited in Mitchell 1988) says, adventure is to be found beyond everyday, common routines. According to Simmel (cited in Wearing 1998), adventure, like sociability, is outside the commodification process and thus can provide emotional satisfaction and personal control. The benefits of adventure are personal expression and identity formation. As with physical activity, the significance of adventure in the women’s memories of childhood holidays is highlighted by its absence in their accounts of adult holidays (Small 2003, 2005a, 2005b). The association of adventure with the holiday could elevate the significance of a childhood holiday for women since, historically, adventure has been part of the masculine discourse (Wearing 1998) rather than an element of femininity. The girls’ lack of reference to ‘‘adventure’’ could mean that adventure is no longer an extraordinary experience. The girls might be participating in changing gender relations which now see more women, as adults, engaging in ‘‘adventurous’’ holiday activities (Cater 2007). On the other hand, a lack of reference to such an experience does not mean necessarily that they did not experience ‘‘adventure’’ at the time. Perhaps they did not have the language for such an experience or perhaps the research context prevented such a construction of the holiday. ‘‘Adventure’’ might not fit with their public presentation of themselves at age 12. The present-day 12-year-olds recalled enjoyment of ‘‘a resort.’’ It could be said that the resort, constructed by the tourism industry as a ‘‘playground for tourists,’’ has a special appeal for children. The sites themselves create what a holiday experience should be. One might say the fiction of the holiday and the holiday resort is powerful because it is a fiction of desire and fantasy - freedom, relaxation, prestige, and pampering. The tourism industry recognizes fun and excitement as desirable elements of a holiday. As Makens (1992) says, ‘‘Resorts and children have much in common. Both are dedicated to having fun’’ (1992:25). Strangely, leisure and tourism scholars have not studied the experience of ‘‘fun.’’ An explanation for the silence can be found in the gap between the cultural code of leisure which ‘‘emphasizes individualistic, self-referential enjoyment models’’ (Podilchak 1991:137) and
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the defining features of fun: ‘‘a social emotional interactive process which deconstructs the social and historical biographical inequalities of lived experience to create a with-equal other social-human bond’’ (Podilchak 1991:134). The assertion that for men the incentive for leisure is competition and for women the incentive is social suggests that the cultural code of leisure is a masculine code which has no room for the non-hierarchical social dimension and consequent fun. Traditionally, fun and the social are seen as unrelated to self-development and constraints to the concept of flow (Podilchak 1991). However, such distinctions might not be appropriate for children. When fun was recalled by the girls there was what Podilchak called a ‘‘fusion of emotional intersubjectivity’’ (1991:145). Rather than viewing fun passively, a more appropriate view, at least for children/girls, is to see fun as resulting from the active engagement and the reframing of/‘‘a growing out of’’ (Podilchak 1991:140) an activity with others. A criticism of the traditional, ‘‘malestream’’ tourist motivation theories is that they view the social motive as just one of a number of travel motives. The interactive theme of children’s holiday experiences (Cullingford 1995; Gram 2005; Larsen and Jenssen 2004) and the overwhelming and underlying significance of social connectedness in women’s memories of holidays (Small 2005a) are ignored in theories of tourism which stress a subject/object relationship to the tourist destination, a ‘‘gazing’’ (Urry 1990) on the destination. In the present study, valued memories of holidays at age 12 did not involve ‘‘gazing’’ on the destination but rather the reinforcement of female friendships which allowed for the emergence of new subjectivities. Through tightknit friendship groups, the girls at age 12 could ‘‘gain private inaccessible space’’ (McRobbie and Garber 2000:24). According to Hey, it is the lack of ‘‘powerful public discourses for different groups of girls that potentiates the significance of girls’ private relations with each other’’ (1997:132). The academic holiday discourse has considered the holiday an opportunity for ‘‘the strengthening of family bonds and for sharing important and memorable experiences’’ (Mayo and Jarvis 1981:102). Gram (2005) reports that ‘‘being with their parents’’ was a holiday aim for German and Danish children. In the present study, family togetherness was a good holiday memory for many of the women but was not recalled by the girls. Cultural and/or methodological differences might explain the variance in the findings of Gram (2005) and the present study. Possible explanations for the differences between the girls’ and women’s memories in the present study are: a cultural shift in the value of family togetherness; research contextual effects (pressure for the girls from their peers in the discussion group to present as grown up and independent); and different age/life course positions from within which the memories are constructed. From the position of adulthood and motherhood, one’s family of origin is likely to take on different meaning. As one woman recalled: Jenny [Age 40]: . . . as a 12 year old, I had no insight into the . . . family as a value thing. But as I grow older that’s something that I consciously value more.
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In the memories of the present-day 12-year-olds and many of the women, the holiday also appeared as a space to resist the discourse of childhood (and gender) which requires girls to be under the parental gaze. The holiday at age 12 could be a site for the ‘‘loosening’’ rather than ‘‘strengthening’’ of family bonds. Many women recalled the holiday at age 12 as the first experience of such independence. These memories of freedom often emerged from holidays in which the physical nature of the destination, a resort, ship, or small town provided a safe place to play. This can be particularly important for girls as parental concern for their safety in public spaces has the effect of limiting girls’ use of space and thus leisure activities (Henderson and Bialeschki 1993; McRobbie and Garber 2000). Free use of space is seen as essential for seeking, experimenting, and shaping identity and subjectivity (Ganetz 1995) and increasing self esteem (Garret cited in James 1995). Good holidays were thus associated with the development of independence, self-esteem, and being in control. While there were similarities between the girls and women in their positive memories of physicality, social interaction, freedom from others, and fun, the negative recollections differed. For the women, gendered emotions of shame, embarrassment, guilt, and fear of others were the negative memories of holidays at age 12. The women professed to a lack of social competence at age 12. Such emotions constrained freedom from care that might be expected in holiday memories. Resistance to the feminine discourse, as demonstrated by their memories of physical activity and adventure, remained only partial as the women struggled to be ‘‘good girls’’ and to ‘‘do the right thing,’’ forever aware of the gaze of others. These findings reflect those of Crawford et al (1992) who reported constant reference to responsibility in women’s memories of childhood holidays. ‘‘Me and my pleasure’’ defined the present-day 12-year-olds’ memories and differentiated them from the memories of the women. In the present study, being ‘‘nice and kind and helpful’’ was missing from the 12-year-olds’ accounts. Resentment at having to put others first was also a negative memory for a couple of 20-year-old women. What surfaces from the present study is that the holiday memories of today’s 12year-old girls are, in many ways, more closely related to the holiday memories of men in boyhood (Crawford et al 1992) than they are to women in girlhood. Crawford et al (1992), in their study of adult memories of childhood holidays, found that for men (as boys) drama revolved around their private excitement, fun and play, unaware of the work performed by their mothers on holiday. Since subjectivity is not unitary but fluid, the discourse of femininity might be moving closer to a discourse of masculinity. The question arises, do girls today present as more egocentric than their mothers or grandmothers would have done at their age? There is certainly the view that this generation in the Western world is the ‘‘me’’ generation and young girls have come to believe that they can ‘‘do anything’’ (Summers 2003:68). Or have the women in the intervening years learned caring behaviors which have provided a framework from which to recall experiences at age 12? An explanation for
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these cohort differences in memory could also lie in the research context in which the memories were produced. Perhaps social credibility amongst 12-year-old peers is gained through rejection of feminine attributes of care. At the same time, the women’s traditionally ‘‘socially correct’’ presentation of themselves as caring might also have emerged from the research setting. In a comparison of the holiday memories of 12-year-old girls to those of a similar group of 12-year-old boys (a study conducted by the writer), common themes emerged. The boys’ positive memories portrayed lots of fun, different, physical activities with friends of the same age. In their negative memories, boys were prevented (for example, through illness or physical discomfort) from achieving their goals. In the boys’ memories there was no mention of responsibility for others. The focus again was on ‘‘me and my pleasure.’’ Similarities which have been found between boys’ and girls’ reported holiday experiences might lead one to question if the childhood holiday is gendered. It is argued that the discourse of childhood holidays needs to be understood within the gendered discourses of later stages of the life course and also in relation to discourses in contexts other than the holiday. CONCLUSION The present study highlights that positive memories of childhood holidays are associated with feelings of shared fun, excitement, and adventure through physical activities rather than with learning and education. They are the playful, social pursuits - not visiting museums which represent the good holiday. The women associated the holiday with feelings of strength, competence, and being in control; a time when they felt comfortable with themselves. In their memories, the holiday allowed them to be subversive. These findings have particular relevance for women. However, the finding that the childhood holiday was also associated with memories of caring for others indicates that the women saw subversion as only partial – they did not recall fully escaping the gendered discourse of everyday life. That the present-day 12-yearold girls reported no such conflict between the needs of self and others, being fully focused on ‘‘me’’ and ‘‘my’’ holiday, highlights the fluidity of gendered discourse. Although longitudinal research might answer some questions as to whether there has been a ‘‘cultural shift’’ in lived experiences at age 12 or whether differences are the result of reconstituted experiences, one must not forget the fluidity of the social context which makes comparisons difficult. As Bruner says: Posttour narratives have no ending. They are never finished, for with each retelling the circumstances, the audience, and the situation of the narrator changes, providing the opportunity for novel understandings and new narratives to arise. Travel tales, told and retold throughout the life course, have a synchronic dimension as they construct and reconstruct the self as well as the memory of the original travel experience. . .. When articulation happens, it changes the recollection of the trip as lived and reorders the experience so that the
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tour comes to be both told and remembered differently. The past is reconstructed and memory refashioned. It is not the first telling but the subsequent retellings that are truly constitutive. (2005:27)
In many ways there were similarities between the first tellings of the girls and the subsequent tellings of the women. These similarities across generations and also across contemporary cultures (as evidenced in previously cited European and American research) could be explained by similarities in experiences. As Bruner says, there can be mutual interdependence of trip as lived, experienced, and told. Perhaps there is a narrative which is robust across cultures and historical time, to which all subscribe, that childhood holidays are a time of freedom, safety, and happiness (at least in contrast to adult holidays). In a globalized world it is likely that narratives will be shared. However, that the women recalled emotions of shame and guilt suggests that, if there is a happy narrative, the women were also breaking with the sanitized version. That the girls did not report these memories could be explained by changes in the lived experience at age 12. Or perhaps, at the ‘‘first telling’’ at age 12, a feminine discourse of care and maternal family value which involves looking beyond oneself, has not yet been appropriated. This study cannot answer whether the holiday experiences of 12-yearold girls today are different from 12-year-olds of the past or whether present-day girls relate to the research setting differently from previous generations of girls. Since the eldest women were girls in 1925 there have certainly been social changes with different discourses concerning consumerism, technology, education, and gender and age relations which might be expected to produce different holiday experiences at age 12. However one might explain the generational similarities or differences in the memories of childhood holidays, the narrated memories are real and ‘‘in their construction of meanings create places for identification’’ (Walkerdine 1990:89). The study of child/girlhood holidays can suggest meanings of adult holidays if one accepts that the self at any point in time is socially constructed through reflection of subjectively significant events, such as holiday experiences. Also, that adults might seek to recreate their memories of childhood holiday experiences for today’s children (Kyle and Chick 2004; Marles 2001) further legitimates the study of the meaning of holidays in childhood. The focus of the present research was to expand the knowledge in tourism studies of the meanings of childhood holidays rather than the economic value of children as consumers. The findings also contribute to feminist studies, in particular, tourism and leisure gender scholarship. The conclusions from this study are the starting point for further exploration into how the childhood holiday is understood by various groups of children and adults: male and female, of different ages, socio-economic circumstances, ethnicity, family structure, and dis/ability. For those marginalized and less privileged, the meaning of childhood holidays may be quite different from the meanings attributed by the white, middle-class, able-bodied women and girls in the present study. For those less advantaged, childhood holidays may represent an event that only others experience and enjoy.
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Submitted 22 August 2006. Resubmitted 16 June 2007. Resubmitted 30 August 2007. Final Version 28 April 2008. Accepted 13 June 2008. Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor: Oriol Pi-Sunyer
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures
doi:10.1016/j.annals.2008.06.002
THE ABSENCE OF CHILDHOOD IN TOURISM STUDIES Jennie Small University of Technology, Sydney Australia Abstract: The meaning of holidays for children and the role of the holiday in constructed subjectivities are largely absent in academic writings. Using the social constructionist research method of memory-work, this study examines memories of childhood holidays of Australian women and girls. It concludes that shared, fun, physical activities are common positive memories of childhood holidays across the generations. At the same time, women’s recollection of the imperative to behave responsibly and appropriately constrained their freedom. The paper addresses the implications of the findings for women and girls and questions whether the findings can be explained through cultural shifts in gender relations, the refashioning of experiences over time through memory and narration, or the context in which the memories are produced. Keywords: children, girls, holidays, memories, social constructionism. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION An acknowledgement of multiple subject positions by tourism scholars in the past decade has led to the study of the tourist experience from different standpoints, such as gender, sexual orientation, and ability/disability. One social dimension, age, has been variously studied. A review of the tourism literature highlights that most of the research on age has been undertaken within a positivist paradigm with the emphasis on description rather than social understanding. The tourism literature has lagged behind the leisure studies literature in examining constraints, negotiation, and resistance of differently aged participants through leisure (tourism). The two fields of study differ in their rationale for the study of age of consumer, with leisure studies focusing on the benefits for the participant and tourism studies focusing on the benefits for the tourism industry. In tourism studies, most of the research has been limited to certain age groups: senior tourists and youth tourists. Children and childhood have been neglected. Little has changed since Graburn’s (1983) observation, twenty five years ago, of the absence of children in the tourism literature. Research which discusses children as tourists has primarily focused on
Jennie Small is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Leisure, Sport and Tourism at the University of Technology, Sydney (PO Box 222, Lindfield NSW 2070, Australia. Email:
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children’s influence on parental decision making (Filiatrault and Ritchie 1980; Fodness 1992; Tagg and Seaton 1994; Wang, Hsieh, Yeh and Tsai 2004) and children’s influence on adult tourists’ experiences (Johns and Gyimo´thy 2002; Salma 2001; Thompson, Pinney and Schibrowsky 1996; Thornton, Shaw and Williams 1997). With few exceptions, the studies of children have been from the adult perspective. Some writers have recognised the importance of children as a market segment (Cullingford 1995; Ryan 1992; Swarbrooke and Horner 1999). Connell (2005) refers to the phenomenon of ‘‘toddler tourism’’ which emerged in the United Kingdom stimulated by the British TV program, Balamory, set on the Isle of Mull in Scotland. The dramatic influx of visitors to the destination and the reconstruction of the destination as one appealing to children highlight the role of the child in today’s holidaying family. Nonetheless, the value of researching children goes beyond the commercial incentive. Graburn (1983) and Cullingford (1995) have called for research which enquires more broadly about perceptions children form of other countries and peoples and the impact childhood experiences have on their later adult holidays. It is only recently that researchers have begun to examine how children experience the holiday. Cullingford (1995), in a study of attitudes to holidays overseas of British children aged seven to 11 years, found that children had clear ideas of which countries were attractive as holiday destinations. It was the developed world which was most desirable, in other words, that which was culturally familiar. The author found, for most of the children in the study that, travel meant beaches, good weather, and eating out rather than cultural sightseeing. He explains that ‘‘for the most part, children are confined to their clearly demarcated ‘holiday’’’ (1995:125) and while they enjoy the entertainment of a beach holiday with friends, they are also aware of the differences in being abroad. Children holidaying abroad were rarely taken to the ‘‘sights’’ but when they were, they showed a great deal of interest. Children’s formulation of their experience involved the need to categorise both the familiar and the different. Cullingford considers that children’s awareness of differences ‘‘is the side of their experience that has remained unexploited’’ (1995:127). More recently, Gram (2005), in a study of German and Danish children’s experiences of the family holiday, concluded that children want ‘‘activities, sensory experiences and play, where they are active and absorbed – preferably with other children’’ (2005:11). If this is achieved the parents can enjoy the family holiday. In a study of American children aged from ten to 17, Nickerson and Jurowski (2001) similarly claim: ‘‘The active activities will be the ones children remember most fondly’’ (2001:28). A significant finding was the American children’s enjoyment of the shopping experience. These children also were ‘‘generally more pleased with the destination than the adults’’ (2001:27). The importance of peer social interaction on holiday is reinforced by Larsen and Jenssen (2004) who studied a school trip of 14 to 15-year old, Norwegian children. The authors highlight the importance of the social motive prior to departure, during the trip, and in recollection on return. Traveling ‘‘with’’ was more important than
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traveling ‘‘to or from’’ and more important than the motive for learning. Not only is there a dearth of understanding of children’s holiday experiences but little is known of how adults remember their own childhood experiences or the part these memories play in their experiences of adult holidays. In a study of adult memories of childhood holidays, Crawford, Kippax, Onyx, Gault and Benton (1992) examined the social production of holiday memories. They concluded that memories of holidays were gendered. Women’s memories of girlhood holidays involved work, care, and anxieties, whereas the men’s memories reflected what a holiday was expected to be—‘‘freedom from care,’’ made possible by the work of the women and girls. In studying age, one needs to consider gender. As Ginn and Arber state: Gender and ageing are inextricably intertwined in social life; each can only be fully understood with reference to the other. As we age, we are influenced by the societal, cultural, economic and political context prevailing at different times in our life course. We are also profoundly influenced by our gender and by shifts in gender relations over the life course. Thus the connectedness of gender and ageing stems both from social change over time and from age-related life course events; social history and personal biography are interwoven over time (1995:1).
Hareven refers to this juncture as the ‘‘interaction between ‘individual time’, ‘family time’ and ‘historical time’’’ (1982:5). There are many arguments for tourism researchers to focus on children as tourists. Most investigations have been economically motivated; however, a non-economic analysis can offer broader social understanding. If one accepts that the tourist experience has many benefits for the individual, those benefits should be considered for children. There are also arguments for studying adult memories of childhood holidays. In making family holiday decisions for their children or grandchildren, parents might draw on their own memories of holidays as a child. Those working in the tourism industry might also use their own memories as a basis for decision making for today’s children. An understanding of the adult construction of childhood holidays can also indicate the construction of the adult self and how holidays are experienced as an adult. As well as memories informing one’s contemporary self, the construction of self at any moment plays an important part in how past holidays are constructed. As Arnold (cited in Bain 1995) says, ‘‘‘meaning does not lie in the experience. Rather experiences become meaningful as a result of being grasped reflectively’’’ (1995:240). Events are composed as they are remembered (Douglass 1994). As the present changes so do our memories. Put simply, holiday experiences (in childhood) and memories (later) emerge from the particular time and context in which one experiences childhood and the time and context in which one recalls childhood. Bruner (2005:19) distinguishes between: the trip as lived: as it actually happened, the reality; the trip as experienced: consisting of the images, feelings, desires, thoughts, and
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meanings that emerge in individual consciousness; and the trip as told: usually a story, but possibly a series of photographs or other forms of expression.
Memories of the experience, reflected in the ‘‘trip as told,’’, can be studied in their own right and not judged against the ‘‘real/true’’ past event, lived, or experienced at the time. Memories which are told are a reality, and although they might not be identical to the trip as lived or experienced in childhood, ‘‘this does not mean that there is no influence or mutual interdependence of one on the other’’ (Bruner 2005:19). Memories and the ‘‘trip as told’’ will also emerge from the situation/context in which they are told. The present study attempts to go beyond the investigation of a single subject position to acknowledge multiple subject positions, in this case, the confluence of age/life stage, historical time, and gender. The study examines childhood holiday experiences at different historical times from the position of age (four age groups/life stages) and gender (female). It investigates how contemporary groups of girls and older women in reflection understand childhood holidays and the place of these holidays in the development of subjectivities. Holidays are seen as different from the everyday events in life; understanding the construction of the extraordinary also helps explain our experiences of the ordinary. The study is as much about gender as it is about age. The gendered nature of the travel experience is evident in historical writings (Birkett 1991; Middleton 1982; Morris 1993; Robinson 1995) and contemporary accounts of women travelers (Bowen 2005; Davidson 1996; Hall and Kinnaird 1994; Small 2003, 2005a, 2005b, Swain 1995). However, despite a developing scholarly interest in women and tourism, researchers have focused on the holiday experiences of adult women, not girls, and, with the exception of Crawford et al (1992), the focus has been on contemporary holiday experiences, rather than women’s experiences of holidays as children. Adult memories of holidays at age 12 are likely to have been reconstructed many times as women have moved through various positions since childhood. At any point in time, past and present are interwoven. Even for present-day girls, their memories, however recent, are a selection of the holiday as experienced and are constructed from within the context in which they are remembered. The question arises as to whether one can draw conclusions on historical changes in the tourist experience or whether one can only compare social constructions of childhood holidays at different ages/stages in the life course. RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD HOLIDAYS OF WOMEN AND GIRLS The focus of the research was memories of good and bad holiday experiences at age 12. The study examined the memories of presentday girls, young women, middle-aged women, and older women. The researcher investigated, firstly, the commonalities/differences within each age cohort of memories of holidays at age 12, secondly, the
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commonalities/differences between the age cohorts of these memories and finally, how these remembered experiences can be theorised. Study Method The paradigm of this study was feminist social constructionism and the research method employed was memory-work (Haug and Others 1987). Memory-work, developed by German feminists, Frigga Haug and her colleagues, is a research method appropriate for a feminist, social constructionist paradigm. It is a method which enables the researcher to understand the social meaning of life experiences, in this case, holidays. The underlying theory of memory-work is that ‘‘subjectively significant events, events which are remembered, and the way they are subsequently constructed, play an important part in the construction of self’’ (Crawford et al 1992:37). Since the self is socially constructed through reflection, Haug et al. (1987) used memories as their initial data, thus the name of the method. As Crawford et al (1992:38) explain: ‘‘individuals’ memories provide the medium in which their actions are given direction and evaluated.’’ However, they add: What perhaps is not so familiar or obvious is that the relation between oneself and one’s memories of one’s past experience is similar to the relation between other agents and oneself. One’s self engages with one’s memories, has a conversation with them, responds to them, as another responds to oneself. Memories are essential to the duality of self. The ‘I’ reflects back on the ‘me’ and together they constitute the self. Memories contain the traces of the continuing process of appropriation of the social and the becoming, the constructing, of self (Crawford et al 1992:39).
Memory-work breaks down the barriers between the subject and the object of research. Everyday experience is the basis of knowledge (Crawford et al 1992) and this experience can be seen as generalizable. Memory-work is a collective process. As Haug et al (1987) explain: ‘‘Human beings produce their lives collectively. It is within the domain of collective production that individual experience becomes possible’’ (1987:44). Memory-work is also a feminist method in that it was developed for women with the aim of liberation. In its original form, the academic researcher using this method positions herself with the group and becomes a member of the research group. Concurrently, the researched become researchers, thus eliminating the hierarchy of ‘‘experimenter’’ and ‘‘subject.’’ Haug et al (1987) referred to the participants as ‘‘co-researchers.’’ In the present study adaptations were made to the methodology as the researcher could only position herself with her own age group. Further barriers to an elimination of hierarchy were university requirements regarding research ownership and the large number of participants in the study. The three phases of memory-work involve the participants in both individual writing and group discussion of memories: Phase 1: Each girl and woman wrote about a good and bad holiday experience at age 12;
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Phase 2: Groups of similarly-aged members met and each participant read her memories. The groups discussed the read memories, looking for commonalities and themes and, in so doing, revealed their collective understanding of holidays at age 12. Crawford et al (1992) explain: ‘‘The two foci of memory-work capture something of the duality of self. The self talking with itself is phase 1 and responding to itself as others respond to it is phase 2’’ (1992:40). Although expressed as Phase 1 and Phase 2, Crawford et al (1992) stress, ‘‘intersubjectivity precedes subjectivity’’ (1992:52); Phase 3: The researcher read the transcripts of the recorded discussion in Phase 2 and identified the themes across the different age groups. The participants were white, Anglo-Australian, middle-class girls and women resident in Sydney. Their age varied: girls (aged 12), young women (aged early 20s), middle-aged women (aged 40s), and older women (aged 65+ years). Their life stage also varied: those in their 20s were single and without children, those aged 40s and 65+ were married, separated or widowed, and had children. Their ethnicity and current social class position privileged the girls and women in terms of their likelihood of holiday taking. The participants identified themselves as ‘‘middle-class’’ but it is possible that the women might not always have done so. While their memories of childhood were constructed from a current middle-class adult position, the holidays at the time might have been experienced from a different class position. There were four to six groups of women in each age group with four or five members in each. A total of 86 women and girls participated. The memories of the women and girls came from different historical periods. The youngest group was aged 12 in the mid to late 1990s, the 20-year-olds were 12 around 1990, the 40-year-olds were aged 12 in the 1960s, and the 65+ year olds, due to the range in ages of the women, experienced age 12 somewhere between the mid-1920s and the late 1940s. Girls’ and Women’s Memories The recalled holidays occurred over a period of more than eighty years. The memories reflected historical, social changes in travel and tourism with an increase over the period in the number of holidays taken, distance traveled, destination choice, engagement with the tourism industry, and changes in type of transportation and accommodation. Despite social differences in the historical times in which the holidays occurred and the different positions in the life course from which they were remembered, there were behavioral themes which were consistent across the memories of the generations. The dominant theme which emerged in the memories of the collectives of girls and women at age 12 was the physicality of the tourist experience. Positive memories focused on a moving body and negative memories related to a hurting body. For the women and girls at age 12, a good holiday memory involved outdoor physical activities such as swimming, snorkelling, skiing, theme park rides, and riding
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bikes. While the more commercially developed activities such as skiing and theme park rides were specific to the memories of the younger groups, swimming was common in the memories of all generations. Kristina [Age 12]: From the moment I arrived on Plantation Island, Fiji, and spotted the pontoon with the sun sparkling down on it, I knew it was going to be one of the highlights of my holiday. . . I would swim out through the sparkling warm water and you would be able to see the bottom of the water as it was so clear. When I reached the pontoon, I climbed up the ladder and stood up on the surface of it. I would feel very proud and look out over the water and feel like I’m on top of the world! You could also dive off the pontoon into the water and that was heaps of fun too. Jessie: Oh yeah, I agree because when I went to Fiji I dived off a pontoon too, and I thought it was fun. (Non-italicised quotation is the read written memory) Clair [Age 20]: Before they left each reef site, Clair and her sister enjoyed jumping off the side of the boat into the water. They would jump off the top of the boat and then find ways to climb higher and jump further. It was always fun when other kids would join in and they’d have a big contest going. Clair loved these boat trips as they were full of her favorite things. She could swim herself, snorkel, see amazing things, eat great food, be in the sun, and do daring things. Josephine: Oh, wonderful! That sounds fabulous. Belinda: Wow! That was good. Eleanor [Age 65+]: They slept in the afternoon, it was so hot. Then they walked to the river to swim which was so beautiful after a very hot day. Cold and very strong. How wonderful to have the cold, wonderful water to swim in. She rode her bike with her cousins a long way, over creek beds into town. What a great adventure!
For all age groups, the stress was on lots of activities. While the present-day 12-year-olds portrayed holidays as busy and frenetic, the older groups of women remembered childhood holidays as relaxed and unrushed. Across the age groups, the country was remembered as a good holiday destination as it offered many activities and an opportunity to experience wildlife (important to the present-day 12-year-olds). A significant feature of a good holiday experience was recalled as having fun. Although there were a few references to sightseeing, education and learning usually were not considered positive experiences. Nicole [Age 20]: They spent a week in London . . . where they traveled to cathedrals, castles, museums, and art galleries. Nicole and her brother and sisters were not overly impressed (mainly due to their age) and because they’d been having such a good time in Florida. Like at this age it’s (Other: it was boring), yeah, a bit boring. Lucy: Because you had to do what your parents wanted to do. Nicole: What your parents wanted to do. Monica [Age 20]: Having fun, really isn’t it? Other: Yeah. Clair: It’s got to do with fun. Other: Yeah.
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Monica: Yeah. It’s not about, you know, educating yourself, Clair: [not about] finding meaningful things.
The emphasis on bodily movement at age 12 is striking especially as it is not significant in memories of holidays at other ages (Small 2003, 2005a, 2005b). The physical bodily theme was also a theme of the negative memories for all age groups. Here the focus for the present-day 12-year-olds was the hurting body through illness or physical discomfort caused by tiredness, sunburn, insect stings, or extreme temperature. The women’s negative memories involved fear of being physically hurt by fire, drowning, animals, or people. Other themes were identified which were common to all age groups or specific to particular cohorts. Prominent in the women’s positive memories was the experience of ‘‘doing something different’’ through visiting new places, experiencing new people and lifestyles and, most importantly, through engaging in new activities, such as sleeping in a bunk bed, having the bedroom at the top of the house, and traveling by an unfamiliar mode of transport. These experiences were described as ‘‘exciting’’ and ‘‘an adventure.’’ Those aged 40 years and over remembered the sense of discovery, wonderment, and fascination in these experiences that they ‘‘had never done before.’’ As one group said, ‘‘people letting you do things you couldn’t do at home.’’ The women recalled consuming different foods on holiday which distinguished the holiday as a special time. Susan [Age 65+]: First came the packing of the trunk . . . In a good safe place surrounded by clothes to keep it safe. . . one enormous tin of cookies, given to Susan’s father by his boss . . . What a treat this was for Susan as they never had bought, store cookies, as her mother did all the baking.
Childhood holidays were also recollected as an opportunity to learn new skills, such as rowing, surfing, and skiing. For some in the older age groups, a holiday in itself was remembered as a novelty. Achievement and a sense of competence were positive features for the women in their memories of holidays at age 12. Independence from parents and a feeling of being grown up was a common positive theme in the women’s and girls’ memories of age 12. Sometimes the girls and women reported holidays without their parents (with a friend’s family/other relatives or school camp). At other times, the holiday was seen as providing a space to be independent even when traveling with the family. Karen [Age 40]: [On board a ship] There was an immense sense of freedom and being grown up. Being able to go places on her own.
Most of the girls and women reported that independence led to a feeling of capability and increased self-esteem. For the present-day 12-year-olds, interaction with the family was not a feature of positive holiday memories. They also did not like being treated as a child on holiday. Many of the women appeared ambivalent about family holidays at age 12. On the one hand, families could be irritating. The women recalled parents arguing, fights with siblings, and getting into
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trouble, especially with fathers. However, in the memories of the 20and 40-year-olds, there was also fond recollection of sharing the holiday with the family. Families were seen as providing security. It was evident in the girls’ and women’s memories that other people were necessary for holiday activities to be fun, exciting, and enjoyable. For the present-day 12-year-olds and many of the 20- and 40-year-old groups, the preferred playmate was a girlfriend of the same age. The physical environment could facilitate these social relationships. Tania [Age 20]: You make friends in a pool . . . I remember when I was young and used to say, ‘I’ll see you at the pool, tomorrow morning’ (Stephanie: Yeah). And you always meet your friends back at the pool. You spend the day with them and you meet them back at the pool the next day.
For the present-day 12-year-olds, particularly, the emphasis underlying the various themes was ‘‘me and my pleasure.’’ When the girls were expecting a certain outcome and it did not eventuate, they reported disappointment for themselves. If others suffered misfortune, it was significant only insofar as it constrained the girls’ pleasure. Unlike the women’s stories, the girls’ stories showed no awareness that adults were providing and maintaining the holiday while they enjoyed freedom from responsibility. The egocentric memories of the present-day 12year-olds are distinguished from the older age groups who saw themselves and others as mutually impacting on each other. No doubt, having experienced responsibility as adults and, in the case of the 40- and 65+-year-olds, responsibility for a family, the women were able to take their parents’ standpoint. The women incorporated their mothers’ responsibility for holidays into their memories of childhood. There was no indication in the memories of the girls that they were expected to do something for others. This was in contrast to the memories of the 65+ age group who recalled helping out with the daily chores. Lorna [Age 65+]: . . . at Boat Harbour my cousins and their families had opened up the land with poultry farms, fruit orchards, and pigs . . . Every school holiday was spent there, picking fruit at fruit-picking time, gathering the many thousands of eggs, and helping out at feed time.
Although the 20- and 40-year-olds did not refer to contributing to the maintenance of the holiday at age 12, many 40-year-old and some 20year-old women expressed an obligation on holiday to ‘‘do the right thing.’’ The negative memories revealed feelings of insecurity, embarrassment, guilt, and unresolved conflict when the women as girls failed to behave ‘‘appropriately.’’ Implicit in these memories is a move away from ‘‘me’’ to an awareness of other people. At age 12, the women were aware that there were social rules, that there was a correct way of behaving, but often they did not understand the rules. These occasions were problematic and were remembered. Although the presentday 12-year-olds remembered adult anger and ‘‘getting into trouble,’’ these did not appear to be negative experiences. For many girls, improper behavior was associated with bravado. Where adult authority was recalled with respect and fear by the women, it was more likely to be mocked by the present-day 12-year-olds.
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Incorporated into the theme of ‘‘me and my pleasure,’’ the memories portrayed a desire amongst the present-day 12-year-olds (and some 20-year-olds) for ‘‘luxury’’ and pampering. This could be achieved primarily through accommodation (resorts and 5 star hotels) and transport (planes). In contrast, the 65+-year-old women recollected pleasure in the simplicity of holidays as children. An Interpretation of the Emergent Themes The findings from the present study are, in many ways, similar to those from the holiday studies of British (Cullingford 1995), German and Danish (Gram 2005), Norwegian (Larsen and Jenssen 2004), and American (Nickerson and Jurowski 2001) children despite differences in research methodology and participants (different age ranges and gender). They all suggest that a good childhood holiday is perceived and/or remembered as one with a number of activities, especially swimming, which children can enjoy with other children. Cullingford’s (1995) conclusion that children appreciate holidaying in a culture which is similar to their own was particularly evident amongst those in the present study who had experienced both similar and dissimilar cultures (the present-day 12-year olds and the 20-year olds). As Cullingford (1995) says, ‘‘Children express a far greater interest in travel for the sake of holidays than they do for exploring new lands or different places . . . the perfect destination is seen as one which provides all the pleasures they would have at home, with extras’’ (1995:123). However, Cullingford believed that if children were given the opportunity for sightseeing experiences in their overseas ‘‘beach and sun’’ holidays, they would appreciate the educational value. The holiday as a site for education for children has been recognized in earlier academic discourse (Crompton 1979; Mayo and Jarvis 1981). In the present study, a number of the memories of childhood holidays referred to educational opportunities through sightseeing but, unlike Cullingford’s (1995) prediction, these were not identified as good holiday memories but rather remembered as ‘‘boring.’’ The findings from the present study stress the embodied nature of childhood holiday memories; pleasure was in the body, not the mind. It was a body which was engaging in the physical activities and providing sensory feedback from bodily movement. This could be positive as in skiing or negative as in travel sickness. The recollection by all age groups of the taste of foods consumed in childhood holidays further confirms that holiday memories are not only visual. Gram (2005) similarly identified the importance of ‘‘a sensory experience’’ in German and Danish children’s memorable events of holidays. The findings of the present study contribute to the growing body of literature (such as Dann and Jacobsen 2003; Morgan, Ateljevic, Pritchard and Harris 2005; Pritchard, Ateljevic and Morgan 2007; Veijola and Jokinen 1994) which recognizes that tourists experience destinations bodily as well as culturally. The tourist experience goes beyond the cognitive and visual to incorporate all the senses, including the kinaesthetic.
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The centrality of physical activity in memories of childhood holidays compared to its peripheral position in memories of adult holidays (Small 2003, 2005a, 2005b) coincides with the findings from leisure studies that female participation in physical activity declines after childhood (James 1995). The social imperative for restraint in girls’ and women’s physical activity is documented by Henderson (1993) and Tinkler (1995). However, as Wearing (1998) comments, there is an exciting awareness of bodily power when women make the effort to refuse what they have been told they are. Femininity becomes ‘‘expansive rather than constrictive’’ (1998:112). In the present study, holidays appeared as a space in which girls were free from the tension of two competing discourses: ‘‘active, inquiring, discovering’’ childhood and ‘‘passive’’ femininity (Walkerdine 1990:34). Good holidays were remembered as exciting and an adventure, with ‘‘adventure’’ particularly prominent in the memories of the women. As Goffman (cited in Mitchell 1988) says, adventure is to be found beyond everyday, common routines. According to Simmel (cited in Wearing 1998), adventure, like sociability, is outside the commodification process and thus can provide emotional satisfaction and personal control. The benefits of adventure are personal expression and identity formation. As with physical activity, the significance of adventure in the women’s memories of childhood holidays is highlighted by its absence in their accounts of adult holidays (Small 2003, 2005a, 2005b). The association of adventure with the holiday could elevate the significance of a childhood holiday for women since, historically, adventure has been part of the masculine discourse (Wearing 1998) rather than an element of femininity. The girls’ lack of reference to ‘‘adventure’’ could mean that adventure is no longer an extraordinary experience. The girls might be participating in changing gender relations which now see more women, as adults, engaging in ‘‘adventurous’’ holiday activities (Cater 2007). On the other hand, a lack of reference to such an experience does not mean necessarily that they did not experience ‘‘adventure’’ at the time. Perhaps they did not have the language for such an experience or perhaps the research context prevented such a construction of the holiday. ‘‘Adventure’’ might not fit with their public presentation of themselves at age 12. The present-day 12-year-olds recalled enjoyment of ‘‘a resort.’’ It could be said that the resort, constructed by the tourism industry as a ‘‘playground for tourists,’’ has a special appeal for children. The sites themselves create what a holiday experience should be. One might say the fiction of the holiday and the holiday resort is powerful because it is a fiction of desire and fantasy - freedom, relaxation, prestige, and pampering. The tourism industry recognizes fun and excitement as desirable elements of a holiday. As Makens (1992) says, ‘‘Resorts and children have much in common. Both are dedicated to having fun’’ (1992:25). Strangely, leisure and tourism scholars have not studied the experience of ‘‘fun.’’ An explanation for the silence can be found in the gap between the cultural code of leisure which ‘‘emphasizes individualistic, self-referential enjoyment models’’ (Podilchak 1991:137) and
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the defining features of fun: ‘‘a social emotional interactive process which deconstructs the social and historical biographical inequalities of lived experience to create a with-equal other social-human bond’’ (Podilchak 1991:134). The assertion that for men the incentive for leisure is competition and for women the incentive is social suggests that the cultural code of leisure is a masculine code which has no room for the non-hierarchical social dimension and consequent fun. Traditionally, fun and the social are seen as unrelated to self-development and constraints to the concept of flow (Podilchak 1991). However, such distinctions might not be appropriate for children. When fun was recalled by the girls there was what Podilchak called a ‘‘fusion of emotional intersubjectivity’’ (1991:145). Rather than viewing fun passively, a more appropriate view, at least for children/girls, is to see fun as resulting from the active engagement and the reframing of/‘‘a growing out of’’ (Podilchak 1991:140) an activity with others. A criticism of the traditional, ‘‘malestream’’ tourist motivation theories is that they view the social motive as just one of a number of travel motives. The interactive theme of children’s holiday experiences (Cullingford 1995; Gram 2005; Larsen and Jenssen 2004) and the overwhelming and underlying significance of social connectedness in women’s memories of holidays (Small 2005a) are ignored in theories of tourism which stress a subject/object relationship to the tourist destination, a ‘‘gazing’’ (Urry 1990) on the destination. In the present study, valued memories of holidays at age 12 did not involve ‘‘gazing’’ on the destination but rather the reinforcement of female friendships which allowed for the emergence of new subjectivities. Through tightknit friendship groups, the girls at age 12 could ‘‘gain private inaccessible space’’ (McRobbie and Garber 2000:24). According to Hey, it is the lack of ‘‘powerful public discourses for different groups of girls that potentiates the significance of girls’ private relations with each other’’ (1997:132). The academic holiday discourse has considered the holiday an opportunity for ‘‘the strengthening of family bonds and for sharing important and memorable experiences’’ (Mayo and Jarvis 1981:102). Gram (2005) reports that ‘‘being with their parents’’ was a holiday aim for German and Danish children. In the present study, family togetherness was a good holiday memory for many of the women but was not recalled by the girls. Cultural and/or methodological differences might explain the variance in the findings of Gram (2005) and the present study. Possible explanations for the differences between the girls’ and women’s memories in the present study are: a cultural shift in the value of family togetherness; research contextual effects (pressure for the girls from their peers in the discussion group to present as grown up and independent); and different age/life course positions from within which the memories are constructed. From the position of adulthood and motherhood, one’s family of origin is likely to take on different meaning. As one woman recalled: Jenny [Age 40]: . . . as a 12 year old, I had no insight into the . . . family as a value thing. But as I grow older that’s something that I consciously value more.
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In the memories of the present-day 12-year-olds and many of the women, the holiday also appeared as a space to resist the discourse of childhood (and gender) which requires girls to be under the parental gaze. The holiday at age 12 could be a site for the ‘‘loosening’’ rather than ‘‘strengthening’’ of family bonds. Many women recalled the holiday at age 12 as the first experience of such independence. These memories of freedom often emerged from holidays in which the physical nature of the destination, a resort, ship, or small town provided a safe place to play. This can be particularly important for girls as parental concern for their safety in public spaces has the effect of limiting girls’ use of space and thus leisure activities (Henderson and Bialeschki 1993; McRobbie and Garber 2000). Free use of space is seen as essential for seeking, experimenting, and shaping identity and subjectivity (Ganetz 1995) and increasing self esteem (Garret cited in James 1995). Good holidays were thus associated with the development of independence, self-esteem, and being in control. While there were similarities between the girls and women in their positive memories of physicality, social interaction, freedom from others, and fun, the negative recollections differed. For the women, gendered emotions of shame, embarrassment, guilt, and fear of others were the negative memories of holidays at age 12. The women professed to a lack of social competence at age 12. Such emotions constrained freedom from care that might be expected in holiday memories. Resistance to the feminine discourse, as demonstrated by their memories of physical activity and adventure, remained only partial as the women struggled to be ‘‘good girls’’ and to ‘‘do the right thing,’’ forever aware of the gaze of others. These findings reflect those of Crawford et al (1992) who reported constant reference to responsibility in women’s memories of childhood holidays. ‘‘Me and my pleasure’’ defined the present-day 12-year-olds’ memories and differentiated them from the memories of the women. In the present study, being ‘‘nice and kind and helpful’’ was missing from the 12-year-olds’ accounts. Resentment at having to put others first was also a negative memory for a couple of 20-year-old women. What surfaces from the present study is that the holiday memories of today’s 12year-old girls are, in many ways, more closely related to the holiday memories of men in boyhood (Crawford et al 1992) than they are to women in girlhood. Crawford et al (1992), in their study of adult memories of childhood holidays, found that for men (as boys) drama revolved around their private excitement, fun and play, unaware of the work performed by their mothers on holiday. Since subjectivity is not unitary but fluid, the discourse of femininity might be moving closer to a discourse of masculinity. The question arises, do girls today present as more egocentric than their mothers or grandmothers would have done at their age? There is certainly the view that this generation in the Western world is the ‘‘me’’ generation and young girls have come to believe that they can ‘‘do anything’’ (Summers 2003:68). Or have the women in the intervening years learned caring behaviors which have provided a framework from which to recall experiences at age 12? An explanation for
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these cohort differences in memory could also lie in the research context in which the memories were produced. Perhaps social credibility amongst 12-year-old peers is gained through rejection of feminine attributes of care. At the same time, the women’s traditionally ‘‘socially correct’’ presentation of themselves as caring might also have emerged from the research setting. In a comparison of the holiday memories of 12-year-old girls to those of a similar group of 12-year-old boys (a study conducted by the writer), common themes emerged. The boys’ positive memories portrayed lots of fun, different, physical activities with friends of the same age. In their negative memories, boys were prevented (for example, through illness or physical discomfort) from achieving their goals. In the boys’ memories there was no mention of responsibility for others. The focus again was on ‘‘me and my pleasure.’’ Similarities which have been found between boys’ and girls’ reported holiday experiences might lead one to question if the childhood holiday is gendered. It is argued that the discourse of childhood holidays needs to be understood within the gendered discourses of later stages of the life course and also in relation to discourses in contexts other than the holiday. CONCLUSION The present study highlights that positive memories of childhood holidays are associated with feelings of shared fun, excitement, and adventure through physical activities rather than with learning and education. They are the playful, social pursuits - not visiting museums which represent the good holiday. The women associated the holiday with feelings of strength, competence, and being in control; a time when they felt comfortable with themselves. In their memories, the holiday allowed them to be subversive. These findings have particular relevance for women. However, the finding that the childhood holiday was also associated with memories of caring for others indicates that the women saw subversion as only partial – they did not recall fully escaping the gendered discourse of everyday life. That the present-day 12-yearold girls reported no such conflict between the needs of self and others, being fully focused on ‘‘me’’ and ‘‘my’’ holiday, highlights the fluidity of gendered discourse. Although longitudinal research might answer some questions as to whether there has been a ‘‘cultural shift’’ in lived experiences at age 12 or whether differences are the result of reconstituted experiences, one must not forget the fluidity of the social context which makes comparisons difficult. As Bruner says: Posttour narratives have no ending. They are never finished, for with each retelling the circumstances, the audience, and the situation of the narrator changes, providing the opportunity for novel understandings and new narratives to arise. Travel tales, told and retold throughout the life course, have a synchronic dimension as they construct and reconstruct the self as well as the memory of the original travel experience. . .. When articulation happens, it changes the recollection of the trip as lived and reorders the experience so that the
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tour comes to be both told and remembered differently. The past is reconstructed and memory refashioned. It is not the first telling but the subsequent retellings that are truly constitutive. (2005:27)
In many ways there were similarities between the first tellings of the girls and the subsequent tellings of the women. These similarities across generations and also across contemporary cultures (as evidenced in previously cited European and American research) could be explained by similarities in experiences. As Bruner says, there can be mutual interdependence of trip as lived, experienced, and told. Perhaps there is a narrative which is robust across cultures and historical time, to which all subscribe, that childhood holidays are a time of freedom, safety, and happiness (at least in contrast to adult holidays). In a globalized world it is likely that narratives will be shared. However, that the women recalled emotions of shame and guilt suggests that, if there is a happy narrative, the women were also breaking with the sanitized version. That the girls did not report these memories could be explained by changes in the lived experience at age 12. Or perhaps, at the ‘‘first telling’’ at age 12, a feminine discourse of care and maternal family value which involves looking beyond oneself, has not yet been appropriated. This study cannot answer whether the holiday experiences of 12-yearold girls today are different from 12-year-olds of the past or whether present-day girls relate to the research setting differently from previous generations of girls. Since the eldest women were girls in 1925 there have certainly been social changes with different discourses concerning consumerism, technology, education, and gender and age relations which might be expected to produce different holiday experiences at age 12. However one might explain the generational similarities or differences in the memories of childhood holidays, the narrated memories are real and ‘‘in their construction of meanings create places for identification’’ (Walkerdine 1990:89). The study of child/girlhood holidays can suggest meanings of adult holidays if one accepts that the self at any point in time is socially constructed through reflection of subjectively significant events, such as holiday experiences. Also, that adults might seek to recreate their memories of childhood holiday experiences for today’s children (Kyle and Chick 2004; Marles 2001) further legitimates the study of the meaning of holidays in childhood. The focus of the present research was to expand the knowledge in tourism studies of the meanings of childhood holidays rather than the economic value of children as consumers. The findings also contribute to feminist studies, in particular, tourism and leisure gender scholarship. The conclusions from this study are the starting point for further exploration into how the childhood holiday is understood by various groups of children and adults: male and female, of different ages, socio-economic circumstances, ethnicity, family structure, and dis/ability. For those marginalized and less privileged, the meaning of childhood holidays may be quite different from the meanings attributed by the white, middle-class, able-bodied women and girls in the present study. For those less advantaged, childhood holidays may represent an event that only others experience and enjoy.
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Submitted 22 August 2006. Resubmitted 16 June 2007. Resubmitted 30 August 2007. Final Version 28 April 2008. Accepted 13 June 2008. Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor: Oriol Pi-Sunyer
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