Mundane Mommies and Doting Daddies: Gendered Parenting and Family Museum Visits

In this paper I use ethnographic fieldwork conducted at four museum sites to explore gendered parenting in one type of middle- and upper-middle-class public setting. I introduce public parenting as an understudied topic, review literature on family-oriented leisure and consumption, and then frame the study's methods and goals as they relate to these same themes. Comparing mothers to fathers, I show how fathers typically emphasized playfulness with their children while mothers tended to focus on managing their children's activities; how fathers were more likely to symbolically indulge their children while mothers were more likely to symbolically deprive them; and how fathers generally romanticized family museum visits by regarding them as special and sentimental while mothers were more apt to rationalize those same visits as ordinary and routine. I discuss three factors which help to explain these patterns: contemporary cultures of motherhood and fatherhood, the structuring of paid and unpaid work, and the distinctive social context represented by family-oriented museums. I conclude by addressing the study's contributions and implications and suggesting opportunities for future research.