Rural mothers’ perspectives on keeping their children safe during outdoor play: ‘it’s hard to raise a child in a small community’

ABSTRACT

Rural mothers play important roles in shaping their children’s play-related injury experiences. It is thus problematic that their perspectives on their outdoor play-related safety strategies are often considered peripheral to the perspectives of urban and suburban mothers in play research. To center their perspectives on this topic, we examined the outdoor play-related safety strategies of rural mothers who had children aged 2 to 7 from British Columbia (n = 13) and Québec (n = 13), Canada, through semi-structured interviews. Using reflexive thematic analysis of the interview data, we identified three themes: (1) rural mothers keep their children aurally and physically close during outdoor play; (2) rural mothers enforce geographic boundaries to outdoor play; and (3) rural mothers teach their children outdoor risk-navigation strategies. Our research can contribute to informing scholarly discussions on gendered parenting identities and child safety.

KEYWORDS:

• Safety
• mothering
• child’s play
• rural
• Canada

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute of Gender and Health [IGO-103694,MOP-111027]. Michelle E. E. Bauer supported through a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral award [756-2021-0278] and through an Ontario Graduate Scholarship [010-027-650]. Dr. Mariana Brussoni supported through a salary award from the British Columbia Children's Hospital Research Institute.

Notes on contributors

Michelle E. E. Bauer

Michelle E. E. Bauer is a doctoral candidate in the Population Health program in the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa. Her current academic projects explore parents’ perspectives on children’s serious play-related injuries, and approaching child and family safety from interdisciplinary and social justice standpoints.

Mariana Brussoni

Dr. Mariana Brussoni is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, and an investigator with the British Columbia Children’s Hospital Research Institute and the British Columbia Injury Research & Prevention Unit. More details available: https://brussonilab.ca.

Audrey R. Giles

Dr. Audrey Giles is a Full Professor in the School of Human Kinetics, Faculty of Health Sciences, at the University of Ottawa. She conducts research primarily with Indigenous communities in northern Canada. An applied cultural anthropologist, her research focuses on the nexus of gender/culture/place in injury prevention and health promotion.