Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
focus is on the parents. Fun for children reflected their self-interest and
primary purpose of family holidaying and included connecting with relatives.
Giving a voice to the children highlighted the social aspect of fun, which
emphasises a social emotional process (Podilchak, 1991) in that children
perceive fun as fundamentally interactive on holiday. This stresses the fact
that holiday experiences for children have a stronger social dimension and
are different from the individual focus of most tourism research. Children
mainly desired active fun and sociality, whereas the parents' main purpose
of holidaying was more deliberate, such as establishing social identities.
For children the notion of spending time with peers in their
own time
emerged from the findings. This could be time with siblings, or time with
other children such as friends or cousins, or making new friends on holiday,
which is linked to social reconnecting. The first was more related to delib-
erately connecting with relatives and known friends while the second was
more incidental:
We were spending a lot of time alone and doing stuff within the family
and that was good but it was good to have a break from that and catch
up with <friend> and chat together and do things together. (Hoiho boy,
11, post-holiday family interview)
I met a girl called [name] and she came over to our motel and played stuff
in Kerikeri. But now they went back to Australia but I got their email.
She emailed me twice and I emailed her once. When we were in Kerikeri,
me and [name] met because I was looking for a friend. (Goldfinch girl,
10, post-holiday family interview)
Peer time for younger children was more about making new friends,
whereas for teenagers it was more about established friends or cousins. Peer
time for the children was more important than for the parents, which was
about spending time as a couple or with friends and relatives. Spending
time with other children was considered by both parents and children to
be an imperative for a good holiday, confirming a finding by Small (2002).
In contrast, couple time was considered subsidiary to family time and less
important. Including the perspectives of the children then adds a genera-
tional dimension to our understandings of family holiday experiences. This
highlights differences, in that children seek fun and sociality as their primary
purpose on holiday, which their parents do not.
Fathers as an illustration of gender perspectives
It emerged that within
family time
fathers were expected to take on a more
physically active role as entertainer of children, with a focus on facilitat-
ing fun with the children. This was particularly prevalent when visiting
