Abstract:
This article reports holiday experiences at age 40 of women who were mothers with a
child under the age of 15 years. Current 40-year-old women (the women were aged in their 40s but
for ease of discussion I have referred to them as aged 40) and women aged 65+ recalled holiday
experiences at age 40. The research method was memory-work in which individuals wrote about
tourist experiences and then discussed their experiences with a group of similarly aged participants
in order to understand how the experience was socially constructed. Themes were identified from
the discussion. A major finding at this life stage was the freedom the women sought from their
positions as women and mothers. Despite the fact that many women at this age were in paid employment,
the freedom of which they wrote and spoke was not freedom from their paid jobs but
freedom from their unpaid positions as carers of house, pets, husband, children, and others. However,
it was freedom from the care of children that emerged as the prominent feature of a good
holiday experience. This finding contradicts the popular literature on women's travel, which accentuates
the joys and rewards of traveling with children. While acknowledging that family holidays
had some benefits as a time for family sharing and education for children, the women yearned for
a space of their own, to experience the freedom of travel and holidays that others (non mothers)
appear to enjoy. Disrupting the myth of the forever-caring, uncomplaining mother, the women
highlighted the never-ending physical and emotional work of motherhood both at home and when
traveling. The constraints to leisure were many but the women demonstrated the means by which
they resisted the motherhood discourse and found a leisure space for themselves. The implications
of the findings are relevant to the travel and tourism industry if women are to experience the freedom
that holidays and travel can offer.
