Going on holiday only to come home: making happy families in Singapore

Abstract

Family holidays have become a ubiquitous cultural norm – imagined as the epitome of family togetherness and encapsulated through the production of ‘happy family’ photographs. The pressure to conform to ‘naturalized’ idealizations of the family is underpinned by pervasive family ideology that remain hegemonic, despite the changing structures of modern family life. But how exactly does the ‘happy family’ materialise through tourism practices? What is it about the tourism time-space that differentiates it from home, transforming the ordinary family holiday into an extraordinary obligation that desires to be performed? These questions warrant an investigation into the exceptionalism of the family holiday, and we answer them by deconstructing the dilemma between the expectations and lived realities of modern family life, using the typical Singaporean nuclear family as an empirical lens. By amalgamating an ‘everyday geographies’ conceptual approach with Gilligan’s (1982) ‘feminist ethics of care’ perspective, the paper re-examines the seemingly banal practices of carework on the family holiday. It draws its findings from qualitative data based on focus group discussions conducted with five Singaporean families and an autoethnography of the first author’s family holidays. The paper reveals that carework practices on holiday are perceived as a means for families to authenticate nostalgic identities about what a family is – perceived to be lost in modern life. These acts transform the holiday into a home-away-from-home, underpinned by a prioritisation of familial relationship. Hence, this paper conceptually formulates a reinterpretation of ‘feminist ethics of care’ as a morality whose salience through holiday practices renews family relationships of care with each recurring episode of the family holiday. This theorisation elucidates that the family tourism time-space is exceptional, simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, existing in-between home and away. Through its (re)production of the ‘happy family’ identity, going on holiday has become one of the few ways of coming back home to the family.

摘要

家庭度假已经成为一种普遍存在的文化规范——想象成家庭团聚的缩影, 并浓缩为拍摄出‘幸福家庭’的照片。尽管现代家庭生活结构不断变化, 但普遍存在的家庭观念仍然处于霸权地位的, 这助长了遵守‘自然的’家庭理想的压力。但‘幸福家庭’究竟是如何通过旅游实践具体表现出来的呢？旅游的时空与家庭中有什么不同, 究竟是如何把普通的家庭度假变成了一种想要履行的特殊义务？这些问题需要对家庭假日的例外主义进行调查, 我们通过解构现代家庭生活的期望和现实生活之间的困境来回答这些问题, 并以典型的新加坡核心家庭为实证对象。本文将‘日常地理’的概念方法与吉利根(1982)的‘女权主义关怀伦理’视角相结合, 重新审视了家庭假期关怀的看似平庸的做法。该研究基于与5个新加坡家庭进行的焦点小组讨论和第一作者家庭假期的自民族志的定性数据。这篇论文揭示了假期的关怀被认为是一种方法, 让家庭对何为家庭进行怀旧的身份检验——认为家庭在现代生活中迷失了。这些行为以家庭关系优先为基础, 将这个节日变成了一个家外之家的节日。因此, 本文从概念上重新诠释了‘女权关怀伦理’, 即通过节日实践, 以家庭节日每一个情节反复出现, 延续了家庭关系关怀的品行。这一理论阐释了家庭旅游时空的特殊性, 即既平凡又不平凡, 存在于家与外之间。通过对‘幸福家庭’身份的重新塑造, 度假成为少数几种回家的方式之一。

Keywords:

• Family tourism
• family ideology
• everyday geographies
• feminist ethics of care
• familial relationships
• Singapore

关键词:

• 家庭旅游
• 家庭观念
• 日常地理学
• 女权关怀伦理
• 家庭关系
• 新加坡

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yinn Shan Cheong is a Masters student in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. Her research is interested in unpacking the place of social relationships in tourism experiences, particularly that of family, friendship and class relations within the context of Singapore.

Harng Luh Sin is an Associate Professor at the School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-Sen University in China. Her current research focuses on social media and its influence on tourism practices and representations, as well as outbound Chinese tourism. She has written extensively within the fields of voluntourism and geographies of care and responsibility, and is one of the founding members of the Critical Tourism Studies Asia-Pacific network.

Notes

1 It is important to note that throughout this paper, there is a seeming emphasis on parenting routines conducted during family holidays, rather than touristic activities by families and destination details. While the later remains important travel motivations, the emphasis on the former are a reflection of what our respondents shared when asked questions like why they travelled as a family. Our focus on parenting routines is thereby an endeavour to accurately represent their views in this paper.

2 Referring to the first author in the rest of this section.

3 Co-Curricular Activities. It is also common for Singaporean children to be enrolled in several enrichment classes in the weekends – these typically include music classes, sports, and dance.

4 Referring to the FDW.