Negotiating liminality following life transitions: Reflexive bricolage and liminal hotspots

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how consumption linked with life transitions can differ in its potential to bring about ongoing liminality. By examining how consumers can draw on overlapping systems of resources, different ways in which consumers negotiate ongoing liminality following the transition to motherhood are identified. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an interpretive, exploratory study using in-depth phenomenological interviews with 23 South Asian mothers living in the UK. The sample consisted of mothers at different stages of motherhood. Findings Following life transitions, consumers may encounter liminal hotspots at the intersection of overlapping systems of resources. The findings examine two liminal hotspots with differing potential to produce ongoing liminality. The study shows how consumers navigate these liminal hotspots in different ways, by accepting, rejecting and amalgamating the resources at hand. Research limitations/implications The research sample could have been more diverse; future research could examine liminal hotspots relating to different minority groups and life transitions. Practical implications Marketers need to examine the different ways in which consumers draw on different systems of resources following life transitions. The paper includes implications for how marketers segment, target and market to ethnic minority consumers. Originality/value Due to increasingly fluid social conditions, there are likely to be growing numbers of consumers who experience ongoing liminality following life transitions. A preliminary framework is presented outlining different ways that consumers negotiate ongoing liminality by drawing on overlapping systems of resources, broadening the understanding of the role that marketplace resources play beyond life transitions. </jats:sec

(Invisible) Displays of Survivalist Intensive Motherhood among UK Brexit Preppers

This article explores mothers’ narratives of ‘prepping’ behaviours. Prepping involves the management of stockpiled household items in anticipation of marketplace disruption. In this article, we use anticipated food shortages following the UK’s exit from the EU (‘Brexit’) as our context. Drawing on interview data, we highlight how mothers embed prepping into their ongoing pursuit of intensive motherhood, bound in the highly gendered practice of feeding the family. While adhering to elements of intensive motherhood ideology (their actions are labour intensive/child centred), participants reveal a hidden element to their practice. We introduce the notion of ‘survivalist intensive motherhood’ to understand their actions. Survivalist intensive motherhood departs from earlier intensive motherhood studies due to the largely invisible nature of preparations and the trade-offs made to feed the family during resource scarcity

Comfort, pleasure and schadenfreude : extending affect into neutralisation theory among UK Brexit prepping consumers in crisis

This paper extends neutralisation theory in the light of contemporary discontinuous changes to household food consumption in the UK. This change follows heightened consumer-perceived resource scarcity wrought by the Brexit crisis and it’s segue into the Covid-19 pandemic. Our respondent cohort of self-identified “Brexit prepping” middle-class mothers, more accustomed to provisioning for fresh, healthy, and wholesome food for their families within traditional structures of good motherhood, have increased provisioning, storage and consumption of less-healthy alternatives (such as packaged, tinned and preservative-enhanced convenience foods) and augmented this with luxury items, including alcohol and sweet treats. Our respondents utilise a series of neutralisation strategies for this consumption activity including short-term affect-laden justifications, these include short-term comfort relating to self-care (particularly regarding mental-health and wellbeing assessments), pleasure in developing new competencies and skills, and even Schadenfreude towards non-prepping (m)others. We develop the neutralisation theory array to account for this current trend in consumption behaviour, and particularly in terms of introducing affect-laden neutralisations to augment the predominantly cognitive and rationalisation-based underpinning of classic neutralisation theory

Exploring the role UK grandfathers play in parenting culture:intermittent intensive grandfathering

Grandparents play an increasingly active caregiving role in contemporary family life. However, specific exploration of grandfatherhood and its practice is rare. This article explores how intensive parenting norms inform men’s performance of grandfathering in the United Kingdom, with ageing offering men a ‘second chance’ to (grand)parent in ways qualitatively different to fathering. In-depth interviews with UK grandfathers revealed that while they displayed ‘involved’ grandfatherhood and practiced elements of intensive grandfathering, this was often in typically masculine ways. Men embraced the competitive nature of intensive parenting, particularly around educational development, and advancement. Other elements of intensive parenting (e.g., expert-dependence, over-protectiveness, and self-sacrifice) were, however, overlooked. Accordingly, we introduce ‘intermittent intensive grandfathering’, recognising discontinuities in the childcare tasks that participants would/would not involve themselves

Exploring the role UK grandfathers play in parenting culture: intermittent intensive grandfathering

Grandparents play an increasingly active caregiving role in contemporary family life. However, specific exploration of grandfatherhood and its practice is rare. This article explores how intensive parenting norms inform men’s performance of grandfathering in the United Kingdom, with ageing offering men a ‘second chance’ to (grand)parent in ways qualitatively different to fathering. In-depth interviews with UK grandfathers revealed that while they displayed ‘involved’ grandfatherhood and practiced elements of intensive grandfathering, this was often in typically masculine ways. Men embraced the competitive nature of intensive parenting, particularly around educational development, and advancement. Other elements of intensive parenting (e.g., expert-dependence, over-protectiveness, and self-sacrifice) were, however, overlooked. Accordingly, we introduce ‘intermittent intensive grandfathering’, recognising discontinuities in the childcare tasks that participants would/would not involve themselves

‘Othering’ the unprepared: exploring the foodwork of Brexit-prepping mothers

We explore the foodwork performed by white middle-class mothers in the United Kingdom who were preparing to feed their families in anticipation of post-Brexit resource scarcity. We illustrate their laborious preparations (‘prep-work’) as they stockpiled items (mostly food) in anticipation of shortages. We reveal tensions in how they envisaged how (and who) to feed. Analysis reveals how our (privileged, white middle-class) participants enrolled ‘good’ motherhood into prep-work and engaged in a new form of ‘othering’. Non-prepping ‘(m)others’ were positioned as deficient, ‘bad’ parents through failure to remove children from post-Brexit risk/hunger, and participants downplayed their own (classed, material) advantage in being able to prepare. By exploring their prep-work accounts, we illustrate how they assumed a morally superior motherhood position to the non-prepared underclass and make several contributions. First, we extend foodwork categories, recognising additional foodwork of managing and hiding stockpiles (given stigma/ridicule surrounding prep-work). Second, we illustrate the darker side of motherhood that prep-work revealed, which clashes with elements of intensive motherhood ideology. Third, we illuminate the ‘othering’ of a new parental underclass: the unprepared