ABSTRACT
Tourism studies informed by a feminist research perspective have found that the gendered roles of mothers are mostly maintained on family holidays (Mottiar & Quinn, 2012). This means that the responsibility to feed, organize and emotionally look after the family does not leave on holiday. For many women, the continuation of domestic and caring responsibilities is merely transposed from home to another location (see Deem, 1996; Small, 2005), and is bound up with what is means to be a mother. Increasingly, women resist the social expectations created by the “ideology of motherhood” by redefining what it means to be a good mother through creating spaces to achieve their own happiness (Spowart et al., 2008). This includes seeking freedom from the care of children on family holidays (Small, 2005) and pursuing their own interests.
