Pram mobilities: affordances and atmospheres that assemble childhood and motherhood on-the-move

ABSTRACT

The child-friendly city advocates for children's ‘right to the city’. Much of this advocacy focuses on the independent child, with little attention paid to the accompanied experiences of younger children, such as those travelling in prams. This paper draws on a material feminist perspective to help address this gap. We offer the concept of mother–child–pram assemblage to bring to the fore the corporeal dimensions of everyday pram journeys. By analysing sensory ethnographic materials collected with mothers and young children living in Wollongong, Australia, this paper highlights how the ‘affective affordances’ and ‘affective atmospheres’ of pram mobilities shape urban experience by reference to how motherhood and childhood are achieved on-the-move. We conclude with policy-relevant insights for the child-friendly city.

KEYWORDS:

• Walking
• sensory ethnography
• child-friendly cities
• ‘right to the city’
• affect
• corporeal

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all the participants. Thank you to those who have commented on earlier drafts, including two anonymous reviewers, Ian Buchanan, Lance Barry, Rebecca Campbell, Carrie Wilkinson and session organisers, discussants and audience members at various conferences (Institute of Australian Geographers Annual Conference 2016, University of Wollongong's Social Sciences HDR Conference 2016 and the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 2017).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We use the term ‘pram’, short for perambulator, to refer broadly to a range of mobility technologies for young children including strollers, buggies and pushchairs. Many participants used these terms interchangeably. Hence, while we are alert to the technical differences between names (pram denotes a device for an infant while stroller more commonly describes a device used by toddlers and preschool-aged children), we argue that what the device can do and how it is used, rather than what it is called, are more important questions to consider.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been conducted with the support of the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.