UBC Faculty Research and Publications

Rural Mothers’ Child Outdoor Play-Related Safety Strategies in British Columbia and Québec, Canada : ‘Sometimes, They Have to Scrape Themselves Up a Bit to Learn Not to Do Something’ Bauer, Michelle; Brussoni, Mariana; Giles, Audrey R.

Abstract

Rural mothers play important roles in shaping their children’s play-related injury experiences, and their outdoor play-related safety strategies are important to consider in adventure education and outdoor learning research. Currently, there is a dearth of attention to rural mothers’ perspectives on child outdoor play-related safety strategies. To address this, we examined the outdoor play-related safety strategies of rural mothers who had children aged 2 to 7 from British Columbia (n = 10) 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.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International