Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
time and the perceived freedom from commitments in own time. Including
the children's voices highlighted again the important notion of social fun
on holiday, while the fathers' voices stressed their need to pursue their own
interests away from the family. This provides an understanding of family
holidays that encapsulates the lived complexities of family life and moves
away from the idealistic notions of family time discussed in Chapter 2.
Rather than focusing on family togetherness, a more holistic and critical
approach allows acknowledgement of the private needs for time away from
the whole family, and is attentive to generational and gender differences. At
a societal level, the orthodoxy of family time (Daly, 2001; Shaw, 2010) needs
to incorporate these individual needs and thus to reflect a more realistic
representation of holiday life than is presented in the media and academic
literature.
Conclusion
Against a background of weak methodological developments in family
tourism and fragmented understandings of family holiday experiences, the
application of the whole-family methodology is making original contribu-
tions. This is based on a more critical and holistic approach to research
that allows for a more balanced representation between the individual
perspectives of all the family members and the more collective perspective
of the family group. It adds the role of the father, the emphasis placed by
the children and the internal family group dynamics to understandings of
the family holiday. Giving a voice to fathers within the context of the family
has identified gender differences and highlighted the undervalued fathering
role as main entertainer of the children and as facilitator of mothers' own
interests. The gendered role of the father on holiday is more concerned with
activity-based parenting. This echoes themes in the leisure literature on
fathers and active involvement in their children's leisure (Kay, 2009) and
represents a continuation of their fatherhood discourse on holiday.
The tourism context, however, extends our understanding of father-
hood, as holidays are concentrated time spent with the family, away from
everyday school, leisure and work schedules. Including both group and
individual perspectives in the research process gave the opportunity for par-
ticipants to talk as both family members and individuals. This highlighted
that the individual pursuits of fathers on holiday centre more on physical
and mental activities and challenges. A focus solely on the fathers' role with
the children on holiday without an understanding of their own pursuits
away from the children would provide an incomplete understanding of the
complexities and contradictions of fatherhood in tourism.
Giving a voice to the children has identified generational differences
and highlighted the importance that children place on fun and sociality
on holiday. Parents and children bring different purposes to the holiday
