Citation: Chao, P.-H.; Chueh, H.-c.

Enactment of Ideal Parenthood

through Consuming a

Multi-Functional Space Named

“Nature”—Blogging Family Camping

in Taiwan. Sustainability 2022, 14,

9409. https://doi.org/10.3390/

su14159409

Academic Editors: Pia A. Albinsson,

Himadri Roy Chaudhuri and

Arindam Das

Received: 11 May 2022

Accepted: 27 July 2022

Published: 1 August 2022

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sustainability

Article

Enactment of Ideal Parenthood through Consuming aMulti-Functional Space Named “Nature”—Blogging FamilyCamping in TaiwanPei-Hua Chao and Ho-chia Chueh *

Department of Bio-Industry Communication and Development, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617,Taiwan; d02630003@ntu.edu.tw* Correspondence: hchueh@ntu.edu.tw

Abstract: Given the evident paucity of parenthood–consumption research on family leisure/tourism,the present study set family camping into the framework of consumption culture research, to explorehow nature (space) consumption is related to parenthood displays. Family camping blog posts werechosen as the data source for this study because of the commonality of tourists using self-media (blogs)to record their travels and display their identity these days, and a thematic method with an inductivenature was adopted to do the data analysis in order to dig deeper into the interwoven relationshipbetween parenthood and consumption. The study results indicate that the campground and itsnatural surroundings are homogeneously consumed as a multi-functional space named “nature”, aswell as a symbol of ideal parenthood for the connotations of purity and pristineness associated withnature, which allow camping parents to satisfy their children’s needs and enjoy their own leisure atthe same time. However, the highly standardized nature (space) equipped with artificial facilities isobviously contradictory to the sentiment of pristine nature. We argue that manipulating ideologyon social media normalizes and reproduces a dominant but controversial discourse of parenthoodand nature consumption, which not only stereotypes the means of family leisure in nature but alsofosters perceptions about the commoditization and othering of nature. This study makes an empiricalcontribution to consumption culture and offers an insight into the importance of identity issue insustainability research.Definition: nurturing children so they develop physically and mentally.

Keywords: parenthood; consumption; nature; family leisure; blogs; discourse; nature-based tourism

1. Introduction

Modern family life is inseparable from the commercial market [1,2]. Consumptionpractices provide a medium through which parents perform parenting and display theirparenthood [3–5]. Purchasing food and daily necessities for children is itself a form ofparenting practice [4,6]; and outsourcing parenting tasks is also a common solution forbusy parents to balance work and childrearing [7–9]. Moreover, symbolic consumptionfor displaying ideal parenthood is gaining prevalence among consumer society [3,10–12].While it is difficult to imagine enacting parenthood without engagement with the market-place, the relationship between parenting and consumption is still an under-told story inconsumer culture research [1,2,5]. In particular, there is an evident paucity of parenthood–consumption research on family vacations, despite the fact that family travel is one ofthe most ubiquitous and essential expenditures of contemporary families [13,14]. In thefollowing, we therefore explore how space consumption is related to parenting practiceand parenthood displays since the biggest difference between family vacations and dailylife is in the transition of space.

Many parents who are occupied with endless work and household chores are used torelying on outsourcing services or other family members to help take care of their childrenduring the week [7,8,13]. For them, weekend family leisure time or family vacations are

Sustainability 2022, 14, 9409. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159409 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability

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precious time for attending to their children on their own [13–16]. On the other hand,parents typically also desire a relaxing holiday with their own time, so they often faceconflicts and struggles between parenting and personal leisure while on the road [17–20].Several studies have indicated the consumption/usage of parent- and child-friendly spacesin hospitality venues (restaurants, cafes, and holiday resorts . . . ) allows parents to meettheir children’s needs and enjoy their own leisure at the same time [21–23]. Given thepopularity of nature-based tourism among families these days [24], the present researchfocuses on the role of this relatively less artificial “natural space” on the aforementioneddichotomy between the parents’ need for quality time with their children and their desirefor leisure time by themselves.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the demand for nature-based tourism is driven by the rise ofan affluent and educated middle class, and is growing [24]. In Taiwan, an increasing numberof urban residents are choosing to engage in nature-based tourism and related leisureactivities on weekends and holidays. Among the various nature-based tourism/leisureactivities, we chose to target family camping to analyze parenthood narratives for twomain reasons. Firstly, Taiwan has notably witnessed a camping boom (some media evencalled the phenomenon a “camping craze”) in the last decade [25,26]. The populationof campers who go camping regularly has reached at least 2 million, and the nation hasnearly 2000 campgrounds currently, both of which have grown dramatically during the pastdecade [26,27]. Family camping has also become many families’ first choice for recreationin nature [28]. The high popularity of family camping also means that Taiwanese parentsoften have wonderful camping experiences, and that they rarely confront the strugglebetween parenting and their own leisure. This shows that family camping is a perfectvenue for this study to explore the relationship between parenthood and consumption.

Secondly, since 2017, the media have begun to reveal that the vast majority of camp-grounds in Taiwan are illegal, which is partly caused by the outdated regulation and unclearresponsibilities of authorities [27]. Numerous media reports have exposed the environmen-tal damage caused by some of these illegal campgrounds, mainly from deforestation, therelease of raw sewage into streams, and the production of non-biodegradable trash [25,29].Despite this, the population of campers in Taiwan has grown apace in recent years [30]. Werarely see any discussion of illegal campgrounds or environmental impacts in these rapidlyaccumulating and numerous online camping blogs. Given the increased importance ofidentity issues in sustainability research recently [31,32], and the fact that environmentalcommunication studies have indicated that the analysis of tourists’ travel experiences orcomments is useful to the exploration of the contextual reasons behind environmentalinattention or inaction [33,34], we believe that investigating the parenthood narratives offamily camping may help to shed the light on why many campers (un)intentionally ignoredthose negative environmental issues.

This study aimed to examine how nature (space) is consumed by camping parents todisplay their parenthood while enjoying their own leisure time at the same time. Based onthe results, we further discuss how this “nature (space)” is ideologically constructed andoperated, normalizing and reproducing a dominant discourse about perfect family leisureand ideal parenthood. To nuance these questions, we refer to the theoretical discussionof the parenthood–consumption relationship in the scholarly literature, and adopt aninductive approach through thematic analysis of parenthood narratives in family campingblogs. Family camping blog posts were chosen as the data source for this study because ofthe commonality and convenience of tourists using these blogs to record their travels indetail these days [35,36].

The study begins with a literature review. By reviewing the parenting-related studiesin the field of consumer culture research, we address the complex parenting tasks andclarify the interaction and relationship between parenthood and the consumption of goods,services, and symbols, which will serve as theoretical building blocks for this research.Then, the data sources of blog texts and analytic methods are introduced. Next, in thefindings section, we illustrate how nature (space) is consumed in different ways and how

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this affects the parents’ parenting and leisure experiences. We also discuss the ideologicaloperation of this idealized but controversial discourse of nature consumption. Finally, weconclude this study with its empirical and theoretical contribution, the study’s limitations,and suggestions for future research are also presented.

2. Theoretical Background: Practicing and Enacting Parenthood through Consumption

For most parents nowadays, their child-rearing life and parenthood displays are closelyintertwined with various consumer practices [3–5]. In modern society, being parents meansmore than satisfying fertility or blood relationships; it also requires a practice procession toconstruct and confirm their parental identity [37]. Ruddick [38] (p. 25) was the first to define“motherhood” in terms of practices, identifying three basic motherhood tasks: nurturance,protection, and training. Subsequent research on parenthood/parenting mostly acceptedRuddick’s categories of maternal tasks [39,40]. Driven by cultural contexts and commercialinterests, the above three parental tasks have been complexified in recent years. Forexample, the scope of nurturing tasks has been extended to include the children’s mentalhealth, stressing intensive care and companionship for children [40,41]. With the expandingcontent of tasks involved in parenting practices in this modern society where self-sufficiencyis a challenge, parenting has long been interlinked with various consumption practices.Cook [42] (p. 318) argues that “we cannot ‘know’ parenthood (motherhood) without‘knowing’ the consumer/commercial contexts of the parents’ (mothers’) lives”. While it isdifficult to imagine enacting parenthood without engagement with the marketplace, therelationship between parenting and consumption is still an under-told story in consumerculture research [1,2,5]. We here explore how space consumption features in accounts ofparenting since the most significant difference between family vacations and daily life liesin the transition of space.

A parenting (care) deficit—resulting from dual-earner households and distance fromextended family—coupled with rising consumerism leads to parenting outsourcing [7,13].Challenges in self-sufficiency have led parents who are already used to spending on dif-ferent products and services to obtain functional assistance to fulfill various parentingtasks, such as purchasing nutritious or organic ingredients to ensure their children’s intakeof healthy foods and protect them from the harm of chemical additives [4,43]. However,with the increasing time constraints on parenting practices by the demands of career andwork-life, many parents are consuming goods and services not only to obtain “assistance”for their direct parenting practice but also to obtain solutions that serve as “replacements”or “substitutes” for them in meeting their children’s potential needs [7–9,44]. Parenting out-sourcing is commonly defined as “the transfer of intimate tasks historically or normativelyseen as being performed within the family and by family members to formal commercialestablishments located outside of the family” [7] (p. 911). Such parenting outsourcingservices are so widespread that they are no longer limited to traditional accompany or edu-cational services, such as nannies and home tutors. Hochschild [8] (p. 146) indicated thatmost (middle-class) American parents are seemingly exposed to large-scale outsourcingservice outlets where they are able to outsource every kind of parenting task or intimaterelationship, which includes toilet training for babies, their children’s birthday party cele-brations and gift selections, and even helping fathers to plan how to create memories withtheir families.

One main reason for the high prevalence of these outsourcing services is that themarket constantly stimulates more demands for outsourcing through the construction ofvarious parenting discourses [7,8,44]. The cultural deal offered by advertisements and othermedia content usually redefines various parenting tasks as acts—of accompanying, feeding,or putting the child to bed—but not the relationship. For example, a toy commercialemphasizes that as long as a child gets exposure to words read by an audio toy, theirneeds to be read to (nurtured) will be met even though the parent is not actually therewith them [9]. Therefore, the acts of parental tasks can be carried out by specific objectsor even spaces, not necessarily by a person. Considering that almost all current parenting

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outsourcing studies are focused on the discussion of goods and services, little attentionhas been paid to the possibility of spaces [22,23]; this study was focused on nature (space)consumption and parenting relationships in the context of nature-based family leisure.

Modern parents are getting used to displaying their parenthood through symbolicconsumption. Veblen’s [45] concept of conspicuous consumption implies two features ofconsumption: a functional element that reflects a desire for the useful, inherent qualitiesof an object, and a symbolic aspect used to demonstrate status or display identity toothers [46,47]. At present, such symbolic consumption habits are no longer limited toreflecting one’s class status but also include the demonstration of specific cultural or genderidentity, as well as the idea of parenthood (parental identity), as focused on in the presentstudy. Parents sometimes consume specific goods or services that are meant to connectwith the symbolic meaning behind the object, to demonstrate what kind of parent theyare [48]. In this case, the main consideration of their consumption decisions is not theactual function of this product or object [8,49]. This entails a highly codified consumption,where the symbolic value of the products is rooted in the position of children as vicariousconsumers [3]. For example, some safety-certified products or edutainment toys carried bythe children directly represent a visible symbol of competent parenthood [50]. Furthermore,many parents these days also make use of organizing huge and unique birthday parties fortheir children to demonstrate their ideal of good parenting [11]. This trend is not confinedto Western countries; the intensified consumption of educational toys is framed as a way tohelp the achievement of the ideal Vietnamese woman who can raise her children well, andmanage her professional career and household work properly [51].

Shouldering the burden of the hyper-symbolization of parenting and consumption,modern parents rely on finding a framework of parental practices to guide their decision-making and navigate the marketplace [11]. The expert-guided “dominant cultural reper-toire of parenting” not only influences parents’ perceptions about “what they should do asgood parents”, but it also shapes their idea of “what good parents should be like” [52,53].Advertisements and other media contents, through various ideological manipulations ofwords and images, construct the symbolic meaning of a particular good or service andconnect it to the ideal of parenthood, forming parents’ beliefs that consuming those prod-ucts will signal they are good parents [9,54–56]. In recent years, “sharenting” has becomea trend, allowing modern parents to portray the image of themselves as good parentsthrough the textual and visual content of blogs and social media posts [57]. As a result, theproduction of parenting discourse is no longer limited to traditional media advertisementsor a few experts. In addition, the rise of the influencer mom has made motherhood morecommercial-oriented by limiting motherhood to a set of certain “mummy-must-have” prod-ucts and other artifacts of consumption. These self-mediated discourses show motherhoodand parenthood from a limited perspective, considering them from the point of view offorms of “having” rather than of “being” or “doing” [58]. In light of the importance of self-media on the parental discourse, this study attempts to clarify how the narrative of travelexperience gradually forms a dominant parenting discourse through the deconstruction offamily camping blog post texts.

Based on the discussion of this parenthood–consumption literature, we have explicatedthe main objective of this study in the form of three research questions, as follows: (1)How do these camping parents display their parenthood during family camping? (2) Didparents fulfill these parenting tasks by themselves (direct parenting), or did they acquiresubstitute solutions through consumption (indirect parenting/outsourcing parenting)? (3)What kind of functional or symbolic role did the nature (space) play in these (in)directparenting practices or parenthood display narratives?

3. Methods: Analyzing Family Camping Blogs

This research adopted family camping blog posts as the data source due to the com-monality and convenience of tourists using these blogs to record their travels and displaytheir identity [35,36]. Moreover, compared to questionnaires or interview studies, the

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online user-generated data, such as blog posts and social media status updates, usuallyreflect the tourists’ current travel experiences more immediately [59–61]. Additionally,these blogs provide an attractive virtual arena for parenthood displays because of the“sharenting” boom [57], as parenthood narratives on these self-media platforms have beenproven to have a significant impact on parent peers in terms of consuming and parent-ing decisions [58,62]. Given that family camping blog posts are rapidly increasing andbecoming a kind of camping guidebook for potential campsite visitors in Taiwan, we arguethat the analyzed results not only contribute to understanding the possible relationshipbetween parenting and nature consumption, but also facilitate the examination of thepossible discursive practices of self-media.

As Pixnet is currently the most popular and well-developed blog platform in Tai-wan [63], the posts on family camping used in this study were mainly extracted fromPixnet. This study is part of a wider research project, which was initiated at the end of 2019,aiming to examine what constitutes family camping experiences by using a corpus analysismethod. In November 2019, we filtered out all the articles with the hashtag “#parent-childcamping” dated between March 2017 and October 2019 with the assistance of a web crawlersoftware, and obtained 450 blog articles. The data range started from 2017, because theillegal campground and environmental destruction news began in 2017, and also becausethe earliest blog posts retrieved were dated in March 2017 using “#parent-child camping”as the keyword (maybe that was when Pixnet initiated the hashtag function). As part ofthe wider research project, this study aims to explore the relationship between parentalidentity and consumption, which requires a detailed back-and-forth reading of the text,making the analysis of a large number of blog articles extremely challenging. Therefore,we arranged the blog posts according to date, and then selected three articles from eachmonth (the first three articles from March 2017, then the first three articles from April2017, and so forth until and including the first three articles from October 2019). In total,90 articles were collated for the purpose of analysis in this study after six articles wereexcluded for evident commercial content. Selecting blog posts from each month ensuresthat analyzed data include the camping experiences in different holidays, seasons and years.The reason for choosing three articles is that there were only three blog posts from July 2017and August 2018 in the database of the wider research project. Due to the extremely hotweather, summer is the least favorable camping season in Taiwan. We assume that is whythere are fewer blog articles in summer months than in other seasons.

Considering the complexity of identity and consumption, this study adopted aninductive approach through thematic analyses of parenthood narratives in family campingblogs [4,31,37,62,64]. Thematic analysis with an inductive nature is a qualitative methodof organizing data and deriving concepts by identifying underlying themes [65,66]. Withthe aid of Nvivo-MAC software, the analysis was conducted in three steps, addressingthree research questions, which are articulated in the final paragraph of Section 2. Thedetails of the analysis process in each step will be illustrated in the next three paragraphs.In almost all of the camping blog posts, there are texts along with images, but the webcrawler software captured the texts only. In order to reduce misunderstanding, we havecategorized and coded the data in NVIVO with reference to images/photos in the originalwebpage. The process of reading and analyzing was based on the original language of theblog content, which was written Chinese. Some quoted texts have been translated intoEnglish during the manuscript-writing process.

In step 1, we referred to the definition and extended categories of parenting tasks[38–42,53,54] to identify which descriptions and related pictures in these camping blogarticles were related to parenting practices and parenthood (see Appendix A for details).As each parent addressed different topics of interest in his or her blog posts, some postsincluded contents in addition to parenting content. Besides this, rather than directlyemphasizing what they did for their children and how much they thought of them, theparents generally tried to project what kind of parent they were (their parenthood) by

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depicting the positive feelings, experiences, and other benefits their children receivedduring this journey [3,67].

In step 2, we examined and categorized all parenting-related narratives identified inthe previous step, by referring to Pugh’s in-depth interpretive analysis method as applied totoy advertisements [9] (p. 735). Through the deconstruction of ads, Pugh revealed how toycatalogs offer a cultural deal (solution) for busy modern mothers: by consuming the toys,these mothers can satisfy their children’s need for companionship and training even whenthey are not physically with their children. These advertisements redefine parenting as thefulfillment of an action, rather than the original focus of the relationship [9] (pp. 738–743).Therefore, in this step, we focused on whether the meeting of these children’s needs wasdirectly related to the actions of their parents, and divided these parenting narratives intotwo categories: direct parenting and indirect parenting. For example, we examined thecontext and related photos of the descriptions of a child having fun, smiling, or not beingbored at all, focusing on whether it was the parents themselves, or someone/somethingelse, who fulfilled the needs of the child and preserved his/her happy childhood.

In the third step, the categorized content was interpreted using a thematic analysisapproach composed of a search for emergent themes, with reference to the analysis methodof studies regarding parenting blogs [62] and parenthood–consumption [4,37]. Duringthe analysis, we placed special emphasis on the role of the campground space and itssurrounding nature in these indirect parenting narratives. In other words, when weidentified the features or attributes of nature (space) that directly substitute for the parentsin meeting their child’s needs or facilitate the outsourcing of parenting tasks, we classifiedthem with open codes. For example, children play together and keep each other companyon the large grassland; there are plenty of play facilities so the children will not be bored; orchildren can enjoy a happy and unrestrained childhood in nature (examples of open codesare in italics.) Then, the associations among the open codes were examined and refinedthrough iteratively reading the texts, and thus the sub-themes appeared. Finally, based onthe theoretical discussion of functional and symbolic consumption in the literature [46,47],all sub-themes were consolidated into two main themes: (1) the consumption of multi-functional space named nature, and (2) consuming nature as a symbol.

We referred to the erasure strategy of Ecolinguistics to evaluate if the nature is con-sumed as a symbol. Ecolinguistics, as an ecological discourse analysis, aims to revealthe perspective of an unequal human–nature relationship implicit in the stories we liveby [68,69]. The erasure strategy, one of the many analytic concepts of Ecolinguistics, in-cludes three main forms: (1) void (“something important” is entirely absent or eliminated ina discourse), (2) mask (“something important” is mentioned in a discourse but in a distortedway that erases its true nature), and (3) trace (manage to erase “something important” bydescribing it in a vague or abstract way) [69] (p. 4). Based on the erasure concept, wefound that some parenting narratives in blogs tend to represent “nature” in a distortedor obscured way. For example, playing with artificial facilities in the campground wasdescribed as an authentic experience in nature. We argued that this is a kind of erasure,reducing the richness of the natural environment to a symbol that represents the innocenceof childhood, or an act of parents distinguishing themselves from other parents who keeptheir children in the city.

Although the family camping blog posts selected in this research are all publiclyaccessible, we still decided to maintain the anonymity of the bloggers with reference to thedata of two parenting/family related blog studies [62,70]. We have listed the bloggers whoare the authors of 90 family camping blog posts in Table 1, and kept them non-identifiablethrough changing their names using alphabetical codes. When quoting a selected datapoint, we used the blogger’s code in Table 1, instead of the link to his/her blog post. Allquotes used within this paper paraphrase the original one and are translated from Chineseinto English. Therefore, the bloggers (authors) are not easily traceable through internetsearch engines.

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Table 1. Profile of bloggers and their blog articles.

Blogger Father/MotherCamping Experiences 1

Number of Blog Articles 2Trips Years

1 A Mother 31~40 5 Y 42 B Mother 1~10 2 Y 13 C Mother 121~130 8 Y 54 D Mother 81~90 7 Y 65 E Mother 61~70 5 Y 46 F Mother 31~40 5 Y 67 G Mother 1~10 2 Y 18 H Father 51-60 4 Y 29 I Mother 11~20 3 Y 210 J Mother 11~20 2 Y 211 K Mother 241~250 8 Y 512 L Mother 1~10 2 Y 113 M Mother 1~10 4 Y 114 N Father 41~50 6 Y 415 O Father 51~60 5 Y 416 P Mother 241~250 7 Y 1017 Q Mother 1~10 4 Y 218 R Mother 151~160 10 Y 519 S Mother 81~90 5 Y 320 T Mother 11~20 7 Y 221 U Mother 51~60 5 Y 622 V Mother 1~10 2 Y 123 W Mother 61~70 6 Y 624 X Mother 11~20 2 Y 225 Y Mother 1~10 3 Y 226 Z Mother 61~70 5 Y 3

Note 1. Camping experience is indicated by “the number of years of participating in camping activities” and “thenumber of camping trips” reported by the blogger on his or her webpage. Note 2. Number of articles among atotal of 90 family camping blog posts.

The overall trustworthiness of the results was enhanced through the following twosteps. First, the first author read through and decoded all of the blog post contents, con-stantly discussing with the second author about the analytic results in each analysis phase.If any difference in opinions arose in the process, another researcher, also a professionalin leisure and tourism studies, was invited to join the discussion so a consensus could bereached. Second, as the data were relatively dated (90 blog posts were retrieved at the endof 2019), we selected another 18 blog articles (dated between January 2020 and June 2021)that were more recent using the same hashtag, in order to check if there was any emergingnew theme. These 18 articles were used only for data saturation verification, and were notincluded in the analysis sample of this study.

4. Findings

The analysis of family camping blog posts indicates that nature-based family leisureis indeed the primary occasion of parenting practices and parenthood display for busyurban parents. Drawing from Veblen’s vicarious consumption concept, Brusdal and Fronesemphasized that the possessions of children signal not only their parents’ economic andcultural capital, but also their moral capital and concerned parenting [3] (p. 162). Similarly,camping parents (un)intentionally displayed their parenthood through depicting whattheir children had experienced during the journey in blog posts. Most of the narrativeswere about the children, and relatively fewer were about the adults themselves, despitethese articles being about family trips. The parents mostly described what their childrendid, how they felt, and the benefits of being in such a place. Many benefits they mentionedwere consistent with the definition of parenting, which includes meeting the needs of thechildren. Among the descriptions, one commonly stressed theme was how the children

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were accompanied in a safe environment and granted an innocent and happy childhood.Moreover, a few parents directly emphasized in the articles how much effort they had putinto preparing for this camping trip; some of them even stressed how making their kidshappy has been the only reason why they started camping, because they themselves do notlike outdoor activities.

However, on closer inspection of the blog posts and photos, we found that whatactually happened in much family camping was that, even though the adults and childrenwere in the same campground space during the vacation, they spent most of the time ata distance from each other doing separate things. That is, despite the descriptions aboutmeeting the children’s needs in the blog posts, it was not the parents who performed theaction. As in some restaurants with kid-friendly facilities and spaces where parents do nothave to accompany their children all the time [21], the campground and its surroundingnatural environment served as a multi-functional space that had a great impact on howparents could fulfill their parental tasks and enjoy their leisure experiences during camping.Nature (in the blog posts, parents tend to refer to the campground as “nature”; therefore, wedo the same when referring to the campground and its surrounding natural environment)in family camping has been consumed and become a solution to outsourced parenthood,relieving parents of such basic parental tasks as accompanying their children or attendingto their other needs. Typically, parents usually feel guilty when they outsource parentaltasks [7,8]; on the contrary, this sort of family leisure outsourcing was highly praised in theblog texts because the parents believed themselves to be good parents by bringing theirchildren closer to nature. Nature was thus consumed as the symbol of ideal parenthood.Compared with the descriptions about parental outsourcing and symbolic consumption,relatively little of the content in the blog posts described how the parents fulfilled theirchildren’s needs during the camping by directly taking on their parental tasks.

We will elaborate further about these three types of parenting narratives in the follow-ing sections. How nature consumption is related to indirect parenting will be emphasized.

4.1. Consuming Nature as a Multi-Functional Space for a Solution of Parenting Outsourcing

An extensive grassland (wide-open space) where many children can run and play together andaccess toys not normally available in the city due to space constraints. In general, a wide-openspace for family leisure is what urban parents in densely populated cities crave [71]. Thisholds true for urban parents in Taiwan [72]. Blog posts about family camping apparentlyreflected this phenomenon, with repeated words or phrases about the wide-open space,especially the expression “large grassland”. Most parents believed that this extensivegrassland in the campground contributed to keeping their children occupied and busilyplaying, because the children had enough space to run and play together and enjoy eachother’s company. One parent stressed: “[This campground] provides much space for allchildren to play together . . . These kids have a lot of fun; their playmates are the bestbig toys for them... (Blogger P)”. Besides this, on the grassland, children can play withtoys that require a huge space, which is seldom available near home in the cities. This iswhy close-up photos of children playing with water guns, balls, and kites also punctuatethe blog posts. The following statement by a delighted mother emphasizes how excited,happy, and lucky she and her family felt to have a sizable grassland in their campground:“Let’s take a look at this rare and endless grassland first! I am not kidding! Isn’t it reallyso big that you cannot see the end of it? It’s a real blessing for these urban kids to wakeup on Saturday morning and be able to play baseball together on such a big, big, big, biggrassland (Blogger F)”. All of these findings demonstrate these parents’ strong preferencefor wide-open spaces. Most of them take the availability of large grassland areas as theirmain criterion in evaluating a campground.

A resort-like campground space with many child-friendly facilities where children can happilyenjoy their “tailored hospitality”. In family camping blog posts, even though parents claimedthat they intended to be closer to nature, they tended to express more praise for thechild-friendly facilities, the resort-like hospitality, and being able to keep the children

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entertained without bothering the parents. In these blog posts, parents often listed thefacilities for children, and emphasized the importance of the facilities that kept theirchildren occupied, whether with or without the company of other children. In one blogpost, a parent enumerated, “There are archery fields, bicycles, swings, slides, a sandpit,and a wading pool in the outdoor recreational area. The children will definitely not whineout of boredom (Blogger P)”. Many campground owners in Taiwan invest in facilities tomake the outdoor play areas not just fun, but also comfortable for the children. A canopyover the wading pool to create shade or an artificial sandpit with a mosquito net is oftenmentioned. To capture children’s attention, some campground owners raise pets or farmanimals, such as rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks, or goats, so that children can watch,touch or feed these animals.

An exclusive private space where parents can protect their children without always beingphysically present. Through examining the blog posts, we found that family camping tripsin Taiwan typically involved several families who know each other well. Going campingtogether not only allowed the families’ children to play together, but also allowed thesefamilies to reserve an entire campground or specific area for their exclusive, private use.Most parents wanted to have a private space when camping partly because they would notneed to worry about strangers suddenly appearing near their children. One parent stressed,“It feels good to have a private area in the campground where the children have enoughspace to run and play, and they are also safe within it (Blogger Z)”. In a private spacewhere the safety of the children was guaranteed, the parents felt safe outsourcing theirparenthood to the large grassland or the play facilities. The parents stressed that they didnot have to be around their children all the time. One parent admitted jokingly “I finallysaw my son showing up at the front of our tent on the third day. I took the chance to take apicture of him. He’s been spending most of the daytime hanging out with his buddies atanother area of the campground (Blogger F)”. The exclusiveness of the camping space ishighly praised by the camping parents in Taiwan, which might encourage campgroundowners to adapt to this trend by separating the campground into areas of different sizes tohost different groups of camping families [28].

Such multi-functional, natural-looking spaces provide a perfect solution for parentsto outsource parenthood. On the private and extensive grassland, the children can runand play freely while parents enjoy their social time with the other adults, freed from theirconfined living space in the city without worrying about disturbing the neighbors. As longas the children are tired out after a busy day, they would go to bed early, leaving the adultsfree for parties. One parent expressed his appreciation: “After dinner, the adults sat aroundrelaxing, drinking, gossiping, and chilling out. Only when we sleep out (go camping) canwe gather like this in such a huge space. If we get drunk, we crawl back to our tent (BloggerX)”. Even though the topic of many blogposts concerns family camping as a family leisureactivity, we found that a large part of the narration was about how parents and childrenenjoyed their leisure time separately. For example, “The boys played ball games whilethe girls played in the sandpit. What about the adults? They were drinking tea or coffeeand chatting under the shade of a big tree in front of our tents. When going camping,kids burn off their energy while adults recharged. No kids would show up and interruptour conversation. Instead, after two hours, we would wonder where the kids had gone(Blogger P)”. That is why one mother highlighted this kind of family camping as “a perfectvacation because adults could party with friends . . . and the kids could play by themselvesor with their peers (Blogger G)”.

Many bloggers stressed that the campgrounds provided child-friendly facilities andconvenient or even luxurious amenities, such as modern toilets and showers. Some camp-grounds are resort-like with bars, lavish meals, and entertainment. Some offer glampingoptions: air conditioning and heating, lighting systems, private toilets, showers, and evenTVs in the tents. Therefore, many parents described their camping experience as “as com-fortable as staying at a hotel (Blogger D)”. Some even called the campground “a five-starcamping resort (Blogger O)”. Most camping families in Taiwan tend to spend their entire

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vacation in that one space after checking into the campground, perhaps because they enjoythis “hospitality”. They seldom leave the campground to explore the surrounding naturalenvironment or the nearby towns. One parent confessed that “camping is just movingthe place where we eat, drink, play, and sleep from the city to the countryside (BloggerT)”. For many parents, family camping is like staying in an all-inclusive resort and expe-riencing a multi-functional space that can fulfill various parenting tasks simultaneously,as well as offering artificial facilities that make their outdoor life relatively comfortableand convenient.

4.2. Consuming Nature for Its Meaning of “Purity” and “Pristine” as a Symbol of Ideal Parenthood

Preserving children’s innocent and “pure” childhood. Children generally are consideredto be fragile and vulnerable subjects. Protecting children from risks and contaminationand preserving their purity are considered important responsibilities of modern parent-hood [4,43]. Modern parents often define “naturalness” as pure and unconfined; that’swhy consuming products (food, clothes, and commodities) that are advertised as “natu-ral/organic” has become an ideal symbol for them to raise their children in this polluted,risk-filled, and restless world [73]. Organic food consumption is defined as a maternal(parental) responsibility necessary to preserve the children’s purity by keeping them re-moved from dangerous, contaminating chemicals [4,43]. Similarly, in the blog posts, weoften found narratives that connected the purity of a child with nature. Parents consideredplacing their children in the “pure” natural environment, as a form of protection from anyphysical or mental contamination and harm. One parent wrote, “When children are in themountains, they always show the purest and happiest smiles (Blogger V)”. Some parentsbelieve that if they let their children stay close to nature, they will surely enjoy a carefreeand innocent childhood. Another parent described the scene of children playing on thelarge grassland at the campground: “This is what children should be like: playing as theycan, laughing as they can, and enjoying their innocent and precious childhood as they can(Blogger A)”. In this era of information explosion and this modern civilization with all sortsof pressures, protecting the purity of children and granting them an innocent childhoodobviously would make parents appear to be responsible and ideal.

Pristine nature provides children with authentic experiences. When it comes to “purity,”naturalness is usually considered in its primitive or original state [73]. This concept ofpureness can relate to the tourist’s cognition and imagery regarding nature. In most naturalattractions, visitors expect nature to be pristine, untouched, pure, and authentic [74].Similarly, in some family camping blogs, we saw the consumption of nature describedas “pure” and “pristine”, to emphasize how the parents had provided their childrenwith authentic and primitive experiences during the camping trip. For example: “A birdsuddenly walked into the tent . . . The children began to follow it. I think this kind ofbeyond-the-textbook experience could be called as authentic experience (Blogger F)”. Howparents identify with ideal parenthood is bound up with the parents’ own childhood regretsand the anxieties they feel about their children’s future [75]. Therefore, in recent decades,the focus of parenting discourse in Taiwan has shifted from intellectual-oriented educationto multi-dimensional learning. Most parents in Taiwan refuse to see their children repeattheir childhood, which was filled with cramming [52,53]. For this reason, the writers ofthe family camping blogs often focused on the authentic experiences their children hadduring camping in contrast to learning from dusty textbooks: “This is another fun part ofcamping. The kids learn about insects in nature, not from textbooks (Blogger T)”. Parentsoften associated nature with being primitive and described how their children were wildand free, unlike those who sit in classrooms or cram at school all day long, using suchnarratives to highlight their nontraditional and liberal way of parenting.

We argue that “nature”, as understood in the context of family camping, is consumedas a symbol of being “pure” and “pristine” by parents to demonstrate themselves as goodparents who protect the innocence and authentic experiences of their children. Natureis generally considered pure and primitive because natural products or the natural envi-

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ronment are in their original states without artificial interference or additives [4,73]. Onthe contrary, the multi-functional spaces, such as the wide-open space and facilities thatprovide privacy and allow parents to outsource parenthood, are artificial and contradictthe assumed qualities of “pure and “pristine”. The large grassland areas in particular arenot definitely natural or indigenous in terms of the climate and geography of Taiwan’smountain area. Praised for its “carpet-like thickness and softness”, the alien grass is notan ideal habitat for animals and is the least effective for carbon fixation compared to thenative flora of Taiwan [76,77]. Some campground owners grow plants that are obviouslynon-native out of aesthetic and tourist preferences, such as the deciduous cypress, whichhas grown in popularity in recent years. Even though the definition of “nature” or “wilder-ness” differs and can be controversial in different academic contexts, we will not addressthis issue in this article. Surely, however, it is ironic and contradictory that the parentsviewed the grassland that requires artificial interference and the introduction of alien plantspecies that are harmful to the local ecology as “pure” and “primitive” nature, and evencalled them “the grace of nature (Blogger X)”. In conclusion, according to the analysisof family camping texts, we found that most parents perceived nature as a symbol, andconsumed it for its underlying connotations of purity and being pristine. As long as thechildren are on this symbolic stage called “nature”, whether the environment is artificiallyintroduced or not, whatever they play or do, they are given an authentic, pure and innocentchildhood. By bringing their children into “the great outdoors”, the parents live up to theirown expectations of being good parents, even without playing or spending time with them.

4.3. Others: Direct Parenting in Family Camping

In family camping blog posts, relatively limited narratives explicitly addressed directparenting. In such content, we saw parents describe how they took care of their children,kept them company, and played with them. Few parents complained about not being ableto rest; instead, they were thankful for having such precious time together with the family.According to Cheong and Sin [13], in Singapore, family vacations are their real home-away-from-home for busy dual-income families that need to rely on childcare services. Duringfamily vacations, they can truly spend time with the whole family, and live like an idealand traditional family. Similarly, in their blog posts, the parents in Taiwan also describedhow their families finally enjoyed undisturbed time together during camping, because athome, the family members would normally all be busy with work and school assignments,addicted to home entertainment, or stay in their own private space during weekdays.During family vacations, the parents could spend time with their children and performparental tasks that they usually would not have time to do, such as cooking meals, diningtogether, and having conversations. Some parents emphasized how they taught theirchildren independence by doing chores: “I love cooking with the kids. I want them to learnhow to cook so that they can develop more life skills (Blogger C)”. Unlike the assumption ofprevious researchers that performing parental tasks during family leisure time takes awaythe mothers’ opportunity to relax, few camping parents complained about not having theirown leisure time when carrying out direct parenting. They instead expressed gratitudeand cherished the precious time together. One parent wrote: “I play chess with my kid.Sometimes we go camping by ourselves, not joining other groups. Enjoying the companyof the family. This is another form of happiness (Blogger H)”.

To clarify, even when a family went camping without the company of other families,the blog posts that emphasized direct parenting still included contents that applaudedthe playground facilities in the campground, where their children could have a good timeby themselves. On the other hand, blog posts with more indirect parenting contents alsodescribed parenting tasks, such as feeding or taking care of their children, at the beginningor the end of the articles. Overall, in all the blog posts that we have analyzed, there weresignificantly more descriptions about indirect parenting.

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5. Discussion

According to our analysis of the family camping blog posts, we found that parent-hood displays in the context of nature-based family leisure do closely relate to natureconsumption. The campground and its natural surroundings are consumed as a par-enthood outsourcing service provider and a symbolic stage to preserve the purity andinnocence of childhood. This “nature” is highly appreciated and promoted by parents asthe perfect solution for family leisure, whereby the parents can relax and enjoy their ownleisure time while fulfilling the parental tasks to protect and accompany their children,and display themselves as nontraditional and ideal parents. However, this seemingly win–win narrative of nature consumption is clearly contradictory. This multi-functional spacewith many play facilities and a sizeable private grassland area obviously needs humanintervention and modification to appear in the mountains and rural areas of Taiwan. Yet,the parents constantly emphasize the purity and pristine meaning of this nature, and howit allows their children to have an innocent and authentic childhood. Berglez and Olaus-son [78] suggest that the prevalence of high-carbon visibility discourses (unsustainablediscourses) is guided by three types of ideology production: legitimization, uniformization,and reification, which are reinforced and expanded more rapidly because of the features ofsocial media. In the following paragraphs, we also employ these three ideological conceptsto examine and discuss why parent tourists are so willing to promote this apparentlycontradictory and conflicting narrative of nature consumption in their blog posts.

Legitimizing certain consumption patterns or preferences through self-rewardingpractices, such as emphasizing “because I am worth it”, is popular on social media [78,79].After a week of busy days at work and doing housework, parents want to enjoy theirleisure time on the weekend to refresh themselves and prepare for the challenges comingup next week. Influenced by the hedonistic habits of traditional mass tourism [80,81],parent tourists usually expect their vacation to be comfortable, convenient, surroundedby beautiful scenery, and without being disturbed by the children—even during “a familytrip”. The multi-functional space that they call “nature” meets all their needs. Interactionson self-media further reinforce the legitimization because the parents are “approved”by other users [78,82]. The positive feedback in the comment section of the blog posts,such as admiration for such weekend getaways, and compliments on the campgroundor the natural environment, all justify the self-rewarding practices and legitimize theconsumption of nature, making parents more than happy to promote such family leisure asthe perfect solution.

Unsustainable discourse, such as high-carbon visibility discourse, is articulated through,and because of, collective identification processes, also called unification. Posts and photoson self-media reinforce the reflection of “who I am”, a self-categorization and represen-tation of one’s identity [78]. Many studies have proven the benefits of connecting withnature for children [83–86]. Such results have gradually formed a normative parentingdiscourse or cultural repertoire. Many middle-class parents have come to believe that itis the responsibility of modern parents to expose their children to nature [52]. Therefore,urban parents in Taiwan identify themselves as good parents by camping with their chil-dren. Shannon [87] (p. 468) further extends the concept of unification by pointing out thatthe content on self-media enables people to display their family leisure identity, and alsocauses others to feel the anxiety of being “left out”. Worries about not “fitting in” can berelieved after the parents go on their first camping trip. Almost every blog post about afamily’s first camping experience expresses such feelings as “Finally, I went camping withmy kids (Blogger B)”. In other words, unification not only standardizes the public image ofgood parents, but also homogenizes the expectation of nature and family leisure, which incertain ways obscures social differences and inequalities [88].

Reification is a characteristic of posts on social media. Social media users are usedto treating the particular object, service, or space, or the particular act of consumptionthey post about, as an isolated and separate phenomenon, rather than a process. Suchdecontextualization reinforces the overflowing ideology of high-carbon visibility and

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unsustainable consumption on social media [78]. On family camping blogs, we notedsuch reification or decontextualization, which resulted in contradictory and conflictingnarratives that the bloggers are unaware of: emphasizing the advantages of the multi-functional space that requires artificial interference, while praising pure and pristine nature.Furthermore, even though the bloggers emphasize being closer to nature, they seldomexplore the surrounding areas, but stay at the comfortable campground, which contradictsthe original intention of camping by setting up a temporary shelter in the wilderness toexplore nature. Under the influence of decontextualization or reification, parents use self-media to post updates or write about their wonderful camping experience made possibleby the natural space, rather than viewing such spaces in context, or reflecting on the impacton the ecology or the local community.

We argue that manipulating ideology on social media normalizes and reproduces adominant but controversial discourse of parenthood and nature consumption, which conse-quently affects how parents value and perceive this nature (space) they visit. Milstein [89](p. 26) stressed that such “discourses not only serve to structure, oppress, and transformhuman lives, but so, too, do the discourses serve to symbolically and materially construct,constrain, and change the more than human world”. We therefore argue that this discourseof consuming nature has fostered the commodification and othering of nature. When thenatural leisure experience is homogenously practiced and presented, it likely becomesa process of transforming tamed parcels of nature into commodities, even if there is nomonetary transaction involved in the purchase of services or tangible commodities [90]. Onfamily camping blogs, the repeated highlighting and complimenting of the campgroundthat offers privacy, play facilities, and extensive grassland is actually promoting the con-sumption of it as a multi-functional and standardized commodity. Besides this, when anobject is consumed as simply a symbol, people value the symbol it represents instead ofwhat it is or what it is for. Likewise, when nature is consumed for its symbolic purityand pristineness, its real meaning is left out of consideration, and ignored. As long asthe environment is different from urban settings, it can be called “the great outdoors”,where parents can guarantee their children an authentic and innocent childhood. Parents inTaiwan post similar content about their camping experiences despite the fact that they oftenchoose a new campground to experience each time. Most camping families in Taiwan stayin one campground for two or three days, then move on to another campground on theirnext camping trip. Some parents even made a wish in their blog posts to “camp through allTaiwan’s campgrounds... (Blogger A)”. In effect, the campgrounds and their surroundingnatural environments are increasingly becoming “non-places”—instantaneous, temporaryspaces and disconnected others—that can be replaced after consumption [33,34,89,91,92].This may explain why the deforestation caused by illegal campgrounds is rarely discussedon family camping blogs, even though it is an issue that has attracted significant attentionin the media.

6. Conclusions

Given that the family vacation is one of the main occasions of parenting for busy urbanparents, leading to the popularity of nature-based family leisure, this research placed nature-based family leisure into the framework of consumer culture research, to explore hownature (space) consumption is related to parenting practices and parenthood display, whichthen influences the parents’ own leisure experiences. Through an inductive and thematicanalysis of 90 family camping blog post texts, the study found that most parents preferredto outsource their parenting to a multi-functional space referred to as “nature”. Suchprivate large grassland spaces with many recreational facilities were highly praised by theparents because they could enjoy relaxing adult time while their children were accompaniedand their safety guaranteed. At the same time, they consumed the symbolic meaning of“purity” and “pristine” associated with nature, making them good parents who enabledtheir children to be close to nature and enjoy an innocent childhood. Obviously, the multi-functional and standardized nature space is contradictory to nature’s pure and pristine

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meaning, even though it seems like a perfect solution for family leisure. We argue thatthis ambivalent narrative is still being constructed and reproduced through the ideologicaloperation of social media, forming a hegemonic discourse of nature consumption, whichstereotypes family leisure and affects the commodification and othering of nature.

The present research makes an empirical contribution to the study of consumptionculture and sustainability. Our analysis reveals that the target of parenthood consumptionis not limited to products or services that can be directly traded in the market. The naturalenvironment itself can also be the consumed object, providing functional assistance andeven substitution to carry out parenting tasks. This finding also supports the conclusionof Reis [90], that the commodification of nature does not necessarily involve monetarytransactions. Moreover, the study results further re-confirm the significant role of iden-tity (narratives) in sustainability-related research [31–34]. Lastly, rather than focusingon the content within traditional media and advertisements in parenthood discourse re-search [9,54–56], we examined how the parents’ own narratives of sharenting and familyleisure experiences have constructed a dominant parenthood discourse through their blogposts as a form of self-media. In addition to the theoretical and methodological contribu-tions, there are some managerial implications in this study. Public sectors should promoteappropriate campsite practices in accordance with the climatic and environmental condi-tions in the area, and encourage educational programs to raise visitors’ awareness aboutthe potential environmental impact that their tourism-related choices and consumptiondecisions may cause.

As to the research limitations and suggestions for future studies, firstly, the researchwas based on the content collected from blog posts; therefore, the data set represents onlythe experiences of the parent tourists who had time to write on blogs. Future research can beconducted through in-depth interviews, on-site participant observation, and netnography(both textual and visual data collected on social media), to collect different forms of data.Secondly, since each natural leisure activity attracts different segments of nature tourists,the results of this research do not stand for the experiences of those parent tourists who areinterested in other forms of nature-based family leisure activity, such as family hikes andrural tourism. Nonetheless, the analytic framework of the relationship between parenthoodand nature consumption can contribute to future studies on other kinds of natural familyleisure activities. Finally, identities can be multiple and complicated. During family leisuretime, the parent tourists may as well demonstrate their other identities (adventure, or othercultural identities, such as lifestyle or taste) through their blog post narratives. Futureresearch can be carried out on the relationships between the various identities the parentsadopt through nature consumption.

The purpose of this study is not to raise doubts about family camping or depreciatenature-based family leisure. Even though the descriptions focusing on the advantages ofthe private and wide-open spaces did reflect the dilemmas that urban parents who raisechildren in highly populated cities face and their desire for more spaces, we hope to bringthe homogeneity of the desired nature (space) for children into question. Additionally, wetry to awaken more reflections on the hedonistic habits of traditional mass tourism and thenegative impacts these actions may cause. These are the questions we would like to putunder the spotlight through this research.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, P.-H.C. and H.-c.C.; data curation, P.-H.C.; formal analysis,P.-H.C. and H.-c.C.; methodology, P.-H.C. and H.-c.C.; project administration, P.-H.C.; supervision,H.-c.C.; writing—original draft, P.-H.C.; writing—review and editing, H.-c.C. All authors have readand agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding: This work was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C., grantnumber: MOST-109-2511-H-002-017.

Institutional Review Board Statement: The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committeeof National Taiwan University (NTU-REC No. 201907HS007).

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Data Availability Statement: The data of this research are publicly accessible blog posts. All of theblog posts are retrieved from Pixnet blog platform (https://www.pixnet.net), by using the hashtag“#parent-child camping” as the keyword in November 2019. The data (90 blog posts) are availableupon request from the first author.

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Appendix A

Table A1. Definition, Extension, and Textual Examples of Parenting Tasks.

ParentingTasks Definition and Extension References Example Textual in Family

Camping Blogs

Nurturing/Companionship

Definition: nurturing children so theydevelop physically and mentally.

Extension: more focus on children’smental health, stressing intensive care

and companionship for children.

[38–42,53,54]

“[This campground] provides muchspace for all of the children to play

together . . . These kids have a lot offun, their playmates are the best big

toys for them... (Blogger F)”.

Preservation/Protection

Definition: preserving children sothey are safe and survive.

Extension: protecting children fromharm and pollution in such a

high-risk society, and making suretheir kids have a happy and innocent

childhood.

“It feels good to have a private area inthe campground where the childrenhave enough space to run and play,

and they are also safe within it(Blogger X)”.

“This is what children should be like:play as they can, laugh as they can

and enjoy the innocent and preciouschildhood as they can (Blogger A)”.

Training/Stimulating

Definition: training children so theywill be accepted by society in the

future. Extended to stimulating thechildren’s creativity, imagination, and

ability to learn.

“I love cooking with the kids. I wantthem to learn how to cook so thatthey can develop more life skills.

(Blogger C)”.

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