Re-entering Leisure: Transition Within the Role of Motherhood

Within the leisure literature, a growing body of research is addressing the relationship between gender and leisure. This research has focused on understanding the meaning of leisure within the context of women's lives, the constraints encountered by women during their leisure, and the importance of women's leisure to their quality of life (cf. Bella, 1989; Deem, 1986; Dixey, 1987; Green, Hebron, & Woodward, 1990; Henderson, 1990; Lenskyj, 1988; Wearing & Wearing, 1988). While some attention has been given to leisure from a life course or life span perspective, little research has examined how changing role demands affect leisure or if and how women in varying life situations perceive changes in leisure and family across the life span (Henderson, Bialeschki, Shaw, & Freysinger, 1989). The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between leisure and motherhood from a psychosocial perspective that focused on life course/life span and family life stage. Feminism was used as the organizing framework for the symbolic interactionist approach to this research.BACKGROUNDFeminism is used as a guiding framework because it can provide alternative view points and data for substantiating those views, can provide broader interpretations of the meanings from the analyses, can correct biases that have existed, and can provide different ways to study questions about gender and leisure (Bella, 1989; Deem, 1986; Eichler, 1980; Harding, 1986; Henderson & Bialeschki, 1992). As feminist researchers have suggested (Dixey, 1987; Henderson, 1990; Wimbush & Talbot, 1988), an analysis of women's roles in society must be undertaken before women's leisure can be understood. Such an analysis of the roles related to motherhood will begin the processes of critique, correction, and transformation of the way that mothers are viewed within leisure contexts.When feminist perspectives have been applied to the family, two major contributions to a revised perception of the social construct of family have been noted. First, feminist critique of the family has examined the historical construction of motherhood within a patriarchal structure (Chodorow, 1978; French, 1985; Lopata & Barnewolt, 1984; Skolnick, 1991; Wearing, 1990). These analyses have provided a non-biological explanation for the ascribed gender roles relegated to women during motherhood that presume the innate characteristic and universal qualities of nurturance, self-sacrifice, and narrowness of focus. These roles have also relegated women who are mothers to the private sphere of the home where the associated responsibilities have been viewed as less demanding, less valued, and named as women's work (Bridenthal, 1982; Chodorow, 1978; French, 1985; Haas, 1985; Thorne, 1982; Wearing, 1990; Whitson & MacIntosh, 1989). The result has been for twentieth century women who are wives and mothers to center almost exclusively on the home roles of physical and emotional care of husband and children and home maintenance rather than on past historical focuses of kin, community, and occupational involvement (Lopata & Barnewolt, 1984). Second, feminist research has encouraged a view of women as individuals within the family rather than as mere components of or anchors to the social structure of family. Women can be viewed as persons involved in familial and non-familial activities, just as men routinely have been perceived (Bridenthal, 1982). For example, feminist research has challenged the myths and misconceptions embodied in the fantasy of the perfect mother (Bridenthal, 1982; Chodorow & Contratto, 1982) where mother becomes equated with family. As stated by Thorne (1982):"Feminists argue that the specifics of daily family living (the allocation of tasks, experiences of work and leisure) can not be adequately understood without systematic attention to underlying structures of gender and age. Women's experiences of the family have been buried by the use of overarching, homogeneous units of analysis such as "the household" and "the family"; by a tendency to equate women and family, while men are allowed a separate and individualized status; and by the hegemony of male experience of families. …