Enactment of Ideal Parenthood through Consuming a Multi-Functional Space Named “Nature”—Blogging Family Camping in Taiwan

Abstract

Given the evident paucity of parenthood–consumption research on family leisure/tourism, the present study set family camping into the framework of consumption culture research, to explore how nature (space) consumption is related to parenthood displays. Family camping blog posts were chosen as the data source for this study because of the commonality of tourists using self-media (blogs) to record their travels and display their identity these days, and a thematic method with an inductive nature was adopted to do the data analysis in order to dig deeper into the interwoven relationship between parenthood and consumption. The study results indicate that the campground and its natural surroundings are homogeneously consumed as a multi-functional space named “nature”, as well as a symbol of ideal parenthood for the connotations of purity and pristineness associated with nature, which allow camping parents to satisfy their children’s needs and enjoy their own leisure at the same time. However, the highly standardized nature (space) equipped with artificial facilities is obviously contradictory to the sentiment of pristine nature. We argue that manipulating ideology on social media normalizes and reproduces a dominant but controversial discourse of parenthood and nature consumption, which not only stereotypes the means of family leisure in nature but also fosters perceptions about the commoditization and othering of nature. This study makes an empirical contribution to consumption culture and offers an insight into the importance of identity issue in sustainability research.

1. Introduction

Modern family life is inseparable from the commercial market [1,2]. Consumption practices provide a medium through which parents perform parenting and display their parenthood [3,4,5]. Purchasing food and daily necessities for children is itself a form of parenting practice [4,6]; and outsourcing parenting tasks is also a common solution for busy parents to balance work and childrearing [7,8,9]. Moreover, symbolic consumption for displaying ideal parenthood is gaining prevalence among consumer society [3,10,11,12]. While it is difficult to imagine enacting parenthood without engagement with the marketplace, the relationship between parenting and consumption is still an under-told story in consumer culture research [1,2,5]. In particular, there is an evident paucity of parenthood–consumption research on family vacations, despite the fact that family travel is one of the most ubiquitous and essential expenditures of contemporary families [13,14]. In the following, we therefore explore how space consumption is related to parenting practice and parenthood displays since the biggest difference between family vacations and daily life is in the transition of space.

Many parents who are occupied with endless work and household chores are used to relying on outsourcing services or other family members to help take care of their children during the week [7,8,13]. For them, weekend family leisure time or family vacations are precious time for attending to their children on their own [13,14,15,16]. On the other hand, parents typically also desire a relaxing holiday with their own time, so they often face conflicts and struggles between parenting and personal leisure while on the road [17,18,19,20]. Several studies have indicated the consumption/usage of parent- and child-friendly spaces in hospitality venues (restaurants, cafes, and holiday resorts…) allows parents to meet their children’s needs and enjoy their own leisure at the same time [21,22,23]. Given the popularity of nature-based tourism among families these days [24], the present research focuses on the role of this relatively less artificial “natural space” on the aforementioned dichotomy between the parents’ need for quality time with their children and their desire for leisure time by themselves.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the demand for nature-based tourism is driven by the rise of an affluent and educated middle class, and is growing [24]. In Taiwan, an increasing number of urban residents are choosing to engage in nature-based tourism and related leisure activities on weekends and holidays. Among the various nature-based tourism/leisure activities, we chose to target family camping to analyze parenthood narratives for two main reasons. Firstly, Taiwan has notably witnessed a camping boom (some media even called the phenomenon a “camping craze”) in the last decade [25,26]. The population of campers who go camping regularly has reached at least 2 million, and the nation has nearly 2000 campgrounds currently, both of which have grown dramatically during the past decade [26,27]. Family camping has also become many families’ first choice for recreation in nature [28]. The high popularity of family camping also means that Taiwanese parents often have wonderful camping experiences, and that they rarely confront the struggle between parenting and their own leisure. This shows that family camping is a perfect venue for this study to explore the relationship between parenthood and consumption.

Secondly, since 2017, the media have begun to reveal that the vast majority of campgrounds in Taiwan are illegal, which is partly caused by the outdated regulation and unclear responsibilities of authorities [27]. Numerous media reports have exposed the environmental damage caused by some of these illegal campgrounds, mainly from deforestation, the release of raw sewage into streams, and the production of non-biodegradable trash [25,29]. Despite this, the population of campers in Taiwan has grown apace in recent years [30]. We rarely see any discussion of illegal campgrounds or environmental impacts in these rapidly accumulating and numerous online camping blogs. Given the increased importance of identity issues in sustainability research recently [31,32], and the fact that environmental communication studies have indicated that the analysis of tourists’ travel experiences or comments is useful to the exploration of the contextual reasons behind environmental inattention or inaction [33,34], we believe that investigating the parenthood narratives of family camping may help to shed the light on why many campers (un)intentionally ignored those negative environmental issues.

This study aimed to examine how nature (space) is consumed by camping parents to display their parenthood while enjoying their own leisure time at the same time. Based on the results, we further discuss how this “nature (space)” is ideologically constructed and operated, normalizing and reproducing a dominant discourse about perfect family leisure and ideal parenthood. To nuance these questions, we refer to the theoretical discussion of the parenthood–consumption relationship in the scholarly literature, and adopt an inductive approach through thematic analysis of parenthood narratives in family camping blogs. Family camping blog posts were chosen as the data source for this study because of the commonality and convenience of tourists using these blogs to record their travels in detail these days [35,36].

The study begins with a literature review. By reviewing the parenting-related studies in the field of consumer culture research, we address the complex parenting tasks and clarify the interaction and relationship between parenthood and the consumption of goods, services, and symbols, which will serve as theoretical building blocks for this research. Then, the data sources of blog texts and analytic methods are introduced. Next, in the findings section, we illustrate how nature (space) is consumed in different ways and how this affects the parents’ parenting and leisure experiences. We also discuss the ideological operation of this idealized but controversial discourse of nature consumption. Finally, we conclude this study with its empirical and theoretical contribution, the study’s limitations, and suggestions for future research are also presented.

2. Theoretical Background: Practicing and Enacting Parenthood through Consumption

For most parents nowadays, their child-rearing life and parenthood displays are closely intertwined with various consumer practices [3,4,5]. In modern society, being parents means more than satisfying fertility or blood relationships; it also requires a practice procession to construct and confirm their parental identity [37]. Ruddick [38] (p. 25) was the first to define “motherhood” in terms of practices, identifying three basic motherhood tasks: nurturance, protection, and training. Subsequent research on parenthood/parenting mostly accepted Ruddick’s categories of maternal tasks [39,40]. Driven by cultural contexts and commercial interests, the above three parental tasks have been complexified in recent years. For example, the scope of nurturing tasks has been extended to include the children’s mental health, stressing intensive care and companionship for children [40,41]. With the expanding content of tasks involved in parenting practices in this modern society where self-sufficiency is a challenge, parenting has long been interlinked with various consumption practices. Cook [42] (p. 318) argues that “we cannot ‘know’ parenthood (motherhood) without ‘knowing’ the consumer/commercial contexts of the parents’ (mothers’) lives”. While it is difficult to imagine enacting parenthood without engagement with the marketplace, the relationship between parenting and consumption is still an under-told story in consumer culture research [1,2,5]. We here explore how space consumption features in accounts of parenting since the most significant difference between family vacations and daily life lies in the transition of space.

A parenting (care) deficit—resulting from dual-earner households and distance from extended family—coupled with rising consumerism leads to parenting outsourcing [7,13]. Challenges in self-sufficiency have led parents who are already used to spending on different products and services to obtain functional assistance to fulfill various parenting tasks, such as purchasing nutritious or organic ingredients to ensure their children’s intake of healthy foods and protect them from the harm of chemical additives [4,43]. However, with the increasing time constraints on parenting practices by the demands of career and work-life, many parents are consuming goods and services not only to obtain “assistance” for their direct parenting practice but also to obtain solutions that serve as “replacements” or “substitutes” for them in meeting their children’s potential needs [7,8,9,44]. Parenting outsourcing is commonly defined as “the transfer of intimate tasks historically or normatively seen as being performed within the family and by family members to formal commercial establishments located outside of the family” [7] (p. 911). Such parenting outsourcing services are so widespread that they are no longer limited to traditional accompany or educational services, such as nannies and home tutors. Hochschild [8] (p. 146) indicated that most (middle-class) American parents are seemingly exposed to large-scale outsourcing service outlets where they are able to outsource every kind of parenting task or intimate relationship, which includes toilet training for babies, their children’s birthday party celebrations and gift selections, and even helping fathers to plan how to create memories with their families.

One main reason for the high prevalence of these outsourcing services is that the market constantly stimulates more demands for outsourcing through the construction of various parenting discourses [7,8,44]. The cultural deal offered by advertisements and other media content usually redefines various parenting tasks as acts—of accompanying, feeding, or putting the child to bed—but not the relationship. For example, a toy commercial emphasizes that as long as a child gets exposure to words read by an audio toy, their needs to be read to (nurtured) will be met even though the parent is not actually there with them [9]. Therefore, the acts of parental tasks can be carried out by specific objects or even spaces, not necessarily by a person. Considering that almost all current parenting outsourcing studies are focused on the discussion of goods and services, little attention has been paid to the possibility of spaces [22,23]; this study was focused on nature (space) consumption and parenting relationships in the context of nature-based family leisure.

Modern parents are getting used to displaying their parenthood through symbolic consumption. Veblen’s [45] concept of conspicuous consumption implies two features of consumption: a functional element that reflects a desire for the useful, inherent qualities of an object, and a symbolic aspect used to demonstrate status or display identity to others [46,47]. At present, such symbolic consumption habits are no longer limited to reflecting one’s class status but also include the demonstration of specific cultural or gender identity, as well as the idea of parenthood (parental identity), as focused on in the present study. Parents sometimes consume specific goods or services that are meant to connect with the symbolic meaning behind the object, to demonstrate what kind of parent they are [48]. In this case, the main consideration of their consumption decisions is not the actual function of this product or object [8,49]. This entails a highly codified consumption, where the symbolic value of the products is rooted in the position of children as vicarious consumers [3]. For example, some safety-certified products or edutainment toys carried by the children directly represent a visible symbol of competent parenthood [50]. Furthermore, many parents these days also make use of organizing huge and unique birthday parties for their children to demonstrate their ideal of good parenting [11]. This trend is not confined to Western countries; the intensified consumption of educational toys is framed as a way to help the achievement of the ideal Vietnamese woman who can raise her children well, and manage her professional career and household work properly [51].

Shouldering the burden of the hyper-symbolization of parenting and consumption, modern parents rely on finding a framework of parental practices to guide their decision-making and navigate the marketplace [11]. The expert-guided “dominant cultural repertoire of parenting” not only influences parents’ perceptions about “what they should do as good parents”, but it also shapes their idea of “what good parents should be like” [52,53]. Advertisements and other media contents, through various ideological manipulations of words and images, construct the symbolic meaning of a particular good or service and connect it to the ideal of parenthood, forming parents’ beliefs that consuming those products will signal they are good parents [9,54,55,56]. In recent years, “sharenting” has become a trend, allowing modern parents to portray the image of themselves as good parents through the textual and visual content of blogs and social media posts [57]. As a result, the production of parenting discourse is no longer limited to traditional media advertisements or a few experts. In addition, the rise of the influencer mom has made motherhood more commercial-oriented by limiting motherhood to a set of certain “mummy-must-have” products and other artifacts of consumption. These self-mediated discourses show motherhood and parenthood from a limited perspective, considering them from the point of view of forms of “having” rather than of “being” or “doing” [58]. In light of the importance of self-media on the parental discourse, this study attempts to clarify how the narrative of travel experience gradually forms a dominant parenting discourse through the deconstruction of family camping blog post texts.

Based on the discussion of this parenthood–consumption literature, we have explicated the main objective of this study in the form of three research questions, as follows: (1) How do these camping parents display their parenthood during family camping? (2) Did parents fulfill these parenting tasks by themselves (direct parenting), or did they acquire substitute solutions through consumption (indirect parenting/outsourcing parenting)? (3) What kind of functional or symbolic role did the nature (space) play in these (in)direct parenting practices or parenthood display narratives?

3. Methods: Analyzing Family Camping Blogs

This research adopted family camping blog posts as the data source due to the commonality and convenience of tourists using these blogs to record their travels and display their identity [35,36]. Moreover, compared to questionnaires or interview studies, the online user-generated data, such as blog posts and social media status updates, usually reflect the tourists’ current travel experiences more immediately [59,60,61]. Additionally, these blogs provide an attractive virtual arena for parenthood displays because of the “sharenting” boom [57], as parenthood narratives on these self-media platforms have been proven to have a significant impact on parent peers in terms of consuming and parenting decisions [58,62]. Given that family camping blog posts are rapidly increasing and becoming a kind of camping guidebook for potential campsite visitors in Taiwan, we argue that the analyzed results not only contribute to understanding the possible relationship between parenting and nature consumption, but also facilitate the examination of the possible discursive practices of self-media.

As Pixnet is currently the most popular and well-developed blog platform in Taiwan [63], the posts on family camping used in this study were mainly extracted from Pixnet. This study is part of a wider research project, which was initiated at the end of 2019, aiming to examine what constitutes family camping experiences by using a corpus analysis method. In November 2019, we filtered out all the articles with the hashtag “#parent-child camping” dated between March 2017 and October 2019 with the assistance of a web crawler software, and obtained 450 blog articles. The data range started from 2017, because the illegal campground and environmental destruction news began in 2017, and also because the earliest blog posts retrieved were dated in March 2017 using “#parent-child camping” as the keyword (maybe that was when Pixnet initiated the hashtag function). As part of the wider research project, this study aims to explore the relationship between parental identity and consumption, which requires a detailed back-and-forth reading of the text, making the analysis of a large number of blog articles extremely challenging. Therefore, we arranged the blog posts according to date, and then selected three articles from each month (the first three articles from March 2017, then the first three articles from April 2017, and so forth until and including the first three articles from October 2019). In total, 90 articles were collated for the purpose of analysis in this study after six articles were excluded for evident commercial content. Selecting blog posts from each month ensures that analyzed data include the camping experiences in different holidays, seasons and years. The reason for choosing three articles is that there were only three blog posts from July 2017 and August 2018 in the database of the wider research project. Due to the extremely hot weather, summer is the least favorable camping season in Taiwan. We assume that is why there are fewer blog articles in summer months than in other seasons.

Considering the complexity of identity and consumption, this study adopted an inductive approach through thematic analyses of parenthood narratives in family camping blogs [4,31,37,62,64]. Thematic analysis with an inductive nature is a qualitative method of organizing data and deriving concepts by identifying underlying themes [65,66]. With the aid of Nvivo-MAC software, the analysis was conducted in three steps, addressing three research questions, which are articulated in the final paragraph of Section 2. The details of the analysis process in each step will be illustrated in the next three paragraphs. In almost all of the camping blog posts, there are texts along with images, but the web crawler software captured the texts only. In order to reduce misunderstanding, we have categorized and coded the data in NVIVO with reference to images/photos in the original webpage. The process of reading and analyzing was based on the original language of the blog content, which was written Chinese. Some quoted texts have been translated into English during the manuscript-writing process.

In step 1, we referred to the definition and extended categories of parenting tasks [38,39,40,41,42,53,54] to identify which descriptions and related pictures in these camping blog articles were related to parenting practices and parenthood (see Appendix A for details). As each parent addressed different topics of interest in his or her blog posts, some posts included contents in addition to parenting content. Besides this, rather than directly emphasizing what they did for their children and how much they thought of them, the parents generally tried to project what kind of parent they were (their parenthood) by depicting the positive feelings, experiences, and other benefits their children received during this journey [3,67].

In step 2, we examined and categorized all parenting-related narratives identified in the previous step, by referring to Pugh’s in-depth interpretive analysis method as applied to toy advertisements [9] (p. 735). Through the deconstruction of ads, Pugh revealed how toy catalogs offer a cultural deal (solution) for busy modern mothers: by consuming the toys, these mothers can satisfy their children’s need for companionship and training even when they are not physically with their children. These advertisements redefine parenting as the fulfillment of an action, rather than the original focus of the relationship [9] (pp. 738–743). Therefore, in this step, we focused on whether the meeting of these children’s needs was directly related to the actions of their parents, and divided these parenting narratives into two categories: direct parenting and indirect parenting. For example, we examined the context and related photos of the descriptions of a child having fun, smiling, or not being bored at all, focusing on whether it was the parents themselves, or someone/something else, who fulfilled the needs of the child and preserved his/her happy childhood.

In the third step, the categorized content was interpreted using a thematic analysis approach composed of a search for emergent themes, with reference to the analysis method of studies regarding parenting blogs [62] and parenthood–consumption [4,37]. During the analysis, we placed special emphasis on the role of the campground space and its surrounding nature in these indirect parenting narratives. In other words, when we identified the features or attributes of nature (space) that directly substitute for the parents in meeting their child’s needs or facilitate the outsourcing of parenting tasks, we classified them with open codes. For example, children play together and keep each other company on the large grassland; there are plenty of play facilities so the children will not be bored; or children can enjoy a happy and unrestrained childhood in nature (examples of open codes are in italics.) Then, the associations among the open codes were examined and refined through iteratively reading the texts, and thus the sub-themes appeared. Finally, based on the theoretical discussion of functional and symbolic consumption in the literature [46,47], all sub-themes were consolidated into two main themes: (1) the consumption of multi-functional space named nature, and (2) consuming nature as a symbol.

We referred to the erasure strategy of Ecolinguistics to evaluate if the nature is consumed as a symbol. Ecolinguistics, as an ecological discourse analysis, aims to reveal the perspective of an unequal human–nature relationship implicit in the stories we live by [68,69]. The erasure strategy, one of the many analytic concepts of Ecolinguistics, includes three main forms: (1) void (“something important” is entirely absent or eliminated in a discourse), (2) mask (“something important” is mentioned in a discourse but in a distorted way that erases its true nature), and (3) trace (manage to erase “something important” by describing it in a vague or abstract way) [69] (p. 4). Based on the erasure concept, we found that some parenting narratives in blogs tend to represent “nature” in a distorted or obscured way. For example, playing with artificial facilities in the campground was described as an authentic experience in nature. We argued that this is a kind of erasure, reducing the richness of the natural environment to a symbol that represents the innocence of childhood, or an act of parents distinguishing themselves from other parents who keep their children in the city.

Although the family camping blog posts selected in this research are all publicly accessible, we still decided to maintain the anonymity of the bloggers with reference to the data of two parenting/family related blog studies [62,70]. We have listed the bloggers who are the authors of 90 family camping blog posts in

Table 1. Profile of bloggers and their blog articles.

Blogger		Father/Mother	Camping Experiences 1		Number of Blog Articles 2
			Trips	Years
1	A	Mother	31~40	5 Y	4
2	B	Mother	1~10	2 Y	1
3	C	Mother	121~130	8 Y	5
4	D	Mother	81~90	7 Y	6
5	E	Mother	61~70	5 Y	4
6	F	Mother	31~40	5 Y	6
7	G	Mother	1~10	2 Y	1
8	H	Father	51-60	4 Y	2
9	I	Mother	11~20	3 Y	2
10	J	Mother	11~20	2 Y	2
11	K	Mother	241~250	8 Y	5
12	L	Mother	1~10	2 Y	1
13	M	Mother	1~10	4 Y	1
14	N	Father	41~50	6 Y	4
15	O	Father	51~60	5 Y	4
16	P	Mother	241~250	7 Y	10
17	Q	Mother	1~10	4 Y	2
18	R	Mother	151~160	10 Y	5
19	S	Mother	81~90	5 Y	3
20	T	Mother	11~20	7 Y	2
21	U	Mother	51~60	5 Y	6
22	V	Mother	1~10	2 Y	1
23	W	Mother	61~70	6 Y	6
24	X	Mother	11~20	2 Y	2
25	Y	Mother	1~10	3 Y	2
26	Z	Mother	61~70	5 Y	3

Note ¹. Camping experience is indicated by “the number of years of participating in camping activities” and “the number of camping trips” reported by the blogger on his or her webpage. Note ². Number of articles among a total of 90 family camping blog posts.

, and kept them non-identifiable through changing their names using alphabetical codes. When quoting a selected data point, we used the blogger’s code in Table 1, instead of the link to his/her blog post. All quotes used within this paper paraphrase the original one and are translated from Chinese into English. Therefore, the bloggers (authors) are not easily traceable through internet search engines.

The overall trustworthiness of the results was enhanced through the following two steps. First, the first author read through and decoded all of the blog post contents, constantly discussing with the second author about the analytic results in each analysis phase. If any difference in opinions arose in the process, another researcher, also a professional in leisure and tourism studies, was invited to join the discussion so a consensus could be reached. Second, as the data were relatively dated (90 blog posts were retrieved at the end of 2019), we selected another 18 blog articles (dated between January 2020 and June 2021) that were more recent using the same hashtag, in order to check if there was any emerging new theme. These 18 articles were used only for data saturation verification, and were not included in the analysis sample of this study.

4. Findings

The analysis of family camping blog posts indicates that nature-based family leisure is indeed the primary occasion of parenting practices and parenthood display for busy urban parents. Drawing from Veblen’s vicarious consumption concept, Brusdal and Frones emphasized that the possessions of children signal not only their parents’ economic and cultural capital, but also their moral capital and concerned parenting [3] (p. 162). Similarly, camping parents (un)intentionally displayed their parenthood through depicting what their children had experienced during the journey in blog posts. Most of the narratives were about the children, and relatively fewer were about the adults themselves, despite these articles being about family trips. The parents mostly described what their children did, how they felt, and the benefits of being in such a place. Many benefits they mentioned were consistent with the definition of parenting, which includes meeting the needs of the children. Among the descriptions, one commonly stressed theme was how the children were accompanied in a safe environment and granted an innocent and happy childhood. Moreover, a few parents directly emphasized in the articles how much effort they had put into preparing for this camping trip; some of them even stressed how making their kids happy has been the only reason why they started camping, because they themselves do not like outdoor activities.

However, on closer inspection of the blog posts and photos, we found that what actually happened in much family camping was that, even though the adults and children were in the same campground space during the vacation, they spent most of the time at a distance from each other doing separate things. That is, despite the descriptions about meeting the children’s needs in the blog posts, it was not the parents who performed the action. As in some restaurants with kid-friendly facilities and spaces where parents do not have to accompany their children all the time [21], the campground and its surrounding natural environment served as a multi-functional space that had a great impact on how parents could fulfill their parental tasks and enjoy their leisure experiences during camping. Nature (in the blog posts, parents tend to refer to the campground as “nature”; therefore, we do the same when referring to the campground and its surrounding natural environment) in family camping has been consumed and become a solution to outsourced parenthood, relieving parents of such basic parental tasks as accompanying their children or attending to their other needs. Typically, parents usually feel guilty when they outsource parental tasks [7,8]; on the contrary, this sort of family leisure outsourcing was highly praised in the blog texts because the parents believed themselves to be good parents by bringing their children closer to nature. Nature was thus consumed as the symbol of ideal parenthood. Compared with the descriptions about parental outsourcing and symbolic consumption, relatively little of the content in the blog posts described how the parents fulfilled their children’s needs during the camping by directly taking on their parental tasks.

We will elaborate further about these three types of parenting narratives in the following sections. How nature consumption is related to indirect parenting will be emphasized.

4.1. Consuming Nature as a Multi-Functional Space for a Solution of Parenting Outsourcing

An extensive grassland (wide-open space) where many children can run and play together and access toys not normally available in the city due to space constraints. In general, a wide-open space for family leisure is what urban parents in densely populated cities crave [71]. This holds true for urban parents in Taiwan [72]. Blog posts about family camping apparently reflected this phenomenon, with repeated words or phrases about the wide-open space, especially the expression “large grassland”. Most parents believed that this extensive grassland in the campground contributed to keeping their children occupied and busily playing, because the children had enough space to run and play together and enjoy each other’s company. One parent stressed: “[This campground] provides much space for all children to play together… These kids have a lot of fun; their playmates are the best big toys for them... (Blogger P)”. Besides this, on the grassland, children can play with toys that require a huge space, which is seldom available near home in the cities. This is why close-up photos of children playing with water guns, balls, and kites also punctuate the blog posts. The following statement by a delighted mother emphasizes how excited, happy, and lucky she and her family felt to have a sizable grassland in their campground: “Let’s take a look at this rare and endless grassland first! I am not kidding! Isn’t it really so big that you cannot see the end of it? It’s a real blessing for these urban kids to wake up on Saturday morning and be able to play baseball together on such a big, big, big, big grassland (Blogger F)”. All of these findings demonstrate these parents’ strong preference for wide-open spaces. Most of them take the availability of large grassland areas as their main criterion in evaluating a campground.

A resort-like campground space with many child-friendly facilities where children can happily enjoy their “tailored hospitality”. In family camping blog posts, even though parents claimed that they intended to be closer to nature, they tended to express more praise for the child-friendly facilities, the resort-like hospitality, and being able to keep the children entertained without bothering the parents. In these blog posts, parents often listed the facilities for children, and emphasized the importance of the facilities that kept their children occupied, whether with or without the company of other children. In one blog post, a parent enumerated, “There are archery fields, bicycles, swings, slides, a sandpit, and a wading pool in the outdoor recreational area. The children will definitely not whine out of boredom (Blogger P)”. Many campground owners in Taiwan invest in facilities to make the outdoor play areas not just fun, but also comfortable for the children. A canopy over the wading pool to create shade or an artificial sandpit with a mosquito net is often mentioned. To capture children’s attention, some campground owners raise pets or farm animals, such as rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks, or goats, so that children can watch, touch or feed these animals.

An exclusive private space where parents can protect their children without always being physically present. Through examining the blog posts, we found that family camping trips in Taiwan typically involved several families who know each other well. Going camping together not only allowed the families’ children to play together, but also allowed these families to reserve an entire campground or specific area for their exclusive, private use. Most parents wanted to have a private space when camping partly because they would not need to worry about strangers suddenly appearing near their children. One parent stressed, “It feels good to have a private area in the campground where the children have enough space to run and play, and they are also safe within it (Blogger Z)”. In a private space where the safety of the children was guaranteed, the parents felt safe outsourcing their parenthood to the large grassland or the play facilities. The parents stressed that they did not have to be around their children all the time. One parent admitted jokingly “I finally saw my son showing up at the front of our tent on the third day. I took the chance to take a picture of him. He’s been spending most of the daytime hanging out with his buddies at another area of the campground (Blogger F)”. The exclusiveness of the camping space is highly praised by the camping parents in Taiwan, which might encourage campground owners to adapt to this trend by separating the campground into areas of different sizes to host different groups of camping families [28].

Such multi-functional, natural-looking spaces provide a perfect solution for parents to outsource parenthood. On the private and extensive grassland, the children can run and play freely while parents enjoy their social time with the other adults, freed from their confined living space in the city without worrying about disturbing the neighbors. As long as the children are tired out after a busy day, they would go to bed early, leaving the adults free for parties. One parent expressed his appreciation: “After dinner, the adults sat around relaxing, drinking, gossiping, and chilling out. Only when we sleep out (go camping) can we gather like this in such a huge space. If we get drunk, we crawl back to our tent (Blogger X)”. Even though the topic of many blogposts concerns family camping as a family leisure activity, we found that a large part of the narration was about how parents and children enjoyed their leisure time separately. For example, “The boys played ball games while the girls played in the sandpit. What about the adults? They were drinking tea or coffee and chatting under the shade of a big tree in front of our tents. When going camping, kids burn off their energy while adults recharged. No kids would show up and interrupt our conversation. Instead, after two hours, we would wonder where the kids had gone (Blogger P)”. That is why one mother highlighted this kind of family camping as “a perfect vacation because adults could party with friends… and the kids could play by themselves or with their peers (Blogger G)”.

Many bloggers stressed that the campgrounds provided child-friendly facilities and convenient or even luxurious amenities, such as modern toilets and showers. Some campgrounds are resort-like with bars, lavish meals, and entertainment. Some offer glamping options: air conditioning and heating, lighting systems, private toilets, showers, and even TVs in the tents. Therefore, many parents described their camping experience as “as comfortable as staying at a hotel (Blogger D)”. Some even called the campground “a five-star camping resort (Blogger O)”. Most camping families in Taiwan tend to spend their entire vacation in that one space after checking into the campground, perhaps because they enjoy this “hospitality”. They seldom leave the campground to explore the surrounding natural environment or the nearby towns. One parent confessed that “camping is just moving the place where we eat, drink, play, and sleep from the city to the countryside (Blogger T)”. For many parents, family camping is like staying in an all-inclusive resort and experiencing a multi-functional space that can fulfill various parenting tasks simultaneously, as well as offering artificial facilities that make their outdoor life relatively comfortable and convenient.

4.2. Consuming Nature for Its Meaning of “Purity” and “Pristine” as a Symbol of Ideal Parenthood

Preserving children’s innocent and “pure” childhood. Children generally are considered to be fragile and vulnerable subjects. Protecting children from risks and contamination and preserving their purity are considered important responsibilities of modern parenthood [4,43]. Modern parents often define “naturalness” as pure and unconfined; that’s why consuming products (food, clothes, and commodities) that are advertised as “natural/organic” has become an ideal symbol for them to raise their children in this polluted, risk-filled, and restless world [73]. Organic food consumption is defined as a maternal (parental) responsibility necessary to preserve the children’s purity by keeping them removed from dangerous, contaminating chemicals [4,43]. Similarly, in the blog posts, we often found narratives that connected the purity of a child with nature. Parents considered placing their children in the “pure” natural environment, as a form of protection from any physical or mental contamination and harm. One parent wrote, “When children are in the mountains, they always show the purest and happiest smiles (Blogger V)”. Some parents believe that if they let their children stay close to nature, they will surely enjoy a carefree and innocent childhood. Another parent described the scene of children playing on the large grassland at the campground: “This is what children should be like: playing as they can, laughing as they can, and enjoying their innocent and precious childhood as they can (Blogger A)”. In this era of information explosion and this modern civilization with all sorts of pressures, protecting the purity of children and granting them an innocent childhood obviously would make parents appear to be responsible and ideal.

Pristine nature provides children with authentic experiences. When it comes to “purity,” naturalness is usually considered in its primitive or original state [73]. This concept of pureness can relate to the tourist’s cognition and imagery regarding nature. In most natural attractions, visitors expect nature to be pristine, untouched, pure, and authentic [74]. Similarly, in some family camping blogs, we saw the consumption of nature described as “pure” and “pristine”, to emphasize how the parents had provided their children with authentic and primitive experiences during the camping trip. For example: “A bird suddenly walked into the tent… The children began to follow it. I think this kind of beyond-the-textbook experience could be called as authentic experience (Blogger F)”. How parents identify with ideal parenthood is bound up with the parents’ own childhood regrets and the anxieties they feel about their children’s future [75]. Therefore, in recent decades, the focus of parenting discourse in Taiwan has shifted from intellectual-oriented education to multi-dimensional learning. Most parents in Taiwan refuse to see their children repeat their childhood, which was filled with cramming [52,53]. For this reason, the writers of the family camping blogs often focused on the authentic experiences their children had during camping in contrast to learning from dusty textbooks: “This is another fun part of camping. The kids learn about insects in nature, not from textbooks (Blogger T)”. Parents often associated nature with being primitive and described how their children were wild and free, unlike those who sit in classrooms or cram at school all day long, using such narratives to highlight their nontraditional and liberal way of parenting.

We argue that “nature”, as understood in the context of family camping, is consumed as a symbol of being “pure” and “pristine” by parents to demonstrate themselves as good parents who protect the innocence and authentic experiences of their children. Nature is generally considered pure and primitive because natural products or the natural environment are in their original states without artificial interference or additives [4,73]. On the contrary, the multi-functional spaces, such as the wide-open space and facilities that provide privacy and allow parents to outsource parenthood, are artificial and contradict the assumed qualities of “pure and “pristine”. The large grassland areas in particular are not definitely natural or indigenous in terms of the climate and geography of Taiwan’s mountain area. Praised for its “carpet-like thickness and softness”, the alien grass is not an ideal habitat for animals and is the least effective for carbon fixation compared to the native flora of Taiwan [76,77]. Some campground owners grow plants that are obviously non-native out of aesthetic and tourist preferences, such as the deciduous cypress, which has grown in popularity in recent years. Even though the definition of “nature” or “wilderness” differs and can be controversial in different academic contexts, we will not address this issue in this article. Surely, however, it is ironic and contradictory that the parents viewed the grassland that requires artificial interference and the introduction of alien plant species that are harmful to the local ecology as “pure” and “primitive” nature, and even called them “the grace of nature (Blogger X)”. In conclusion, according to the analysis of family camping texts, we found that most parents perceived nature as a symbol, and consumed it for its underlying connotations of purity and being pristine. As long as the children are on this symbolic stage called “nature”, whether the environment is artificially introduced or not, whatever they play or do, they are given an authentic, pure and innocent childhood. By bringing their children into “the great outdoors”, the parents live up to their own expectations of being good parents, even without playing or spending time with them.

4.3. Others: Direct Parenting in Family Camping

In family camping blog posts, relatively limited narratives explicitly addressed direct parenting. In such content, we saw parents describe how they took care of their children, kept them company, and played with them. Few parents complained about not being able to rest; instead, they were thankful for having such precious time together with the family. According to Cheong and Sin [13], in Singapore, family vacations are their real home-away-from-home for busy dual-income families that need to rely on childcare services. During family vacations, they can truly spend time with the whole family, and live like an ideal and traditional family. Similarly, in their blog posts, the parents in Taiwan also described how their families finally enjoyed undisturbed time together during camping, because at home, the family members would normally all be busy with work and school assignments, addicted to home entertainment, or stay in their own private space during weekdays. During family vacations, the parents could spend time with their children and perform parental tasks that they usually would not have time to do, such as cooking meals, dining together, and having conversations. Some parents emphasized how they taught their children independence by doing chores: “I love cooking with the kids. I want them to learn how to cook so that they can develop more life skills (Blogger C)”. Unlike the assumption of previous researchers that performing parental tasks during family leisure time takes away the mothers’ opportunity to relax, few camping parents complained about not having their own leisure time when carrying out direct parenting. They instead expressed gratitude and cherished the precious time together. One parent wrote: “I play chess with my kid. Sometimes we go camping by ourselves, not joining other groups. Enjoying the company of the family. This is another form of happiness (Blogger H)”.

To clarify, even when a family went camping without the company of other families, the blog posts that emphasized direct parenting still included contents that applauded the playground facilities in the campground, where their children could have a good time by themselves. On the other hand, blog posts with more indirect parenting contents also described parenting tasks, such as feeding or taking care of their children, at the beginning or the end of the articles. Overall, in all the blog posts that we have analyzed, there were significantly more descriptions about indirect parenting.

5. Discussion

According to our analysis of the family camping blog posts, we found that parenthood displays in the context of nature-based family leisure do closely relate to nature consumption. The campground and its natural surroundings are consumed as a parenthood outsourcing service provider and a symbolic stage to preserve the purity and innocence of childhood. This “nature” is highly appreciated and promoted by parents as the perfect solution for family leisure, whereby the parents can relax and enjoy their own leisure time while fulfilling the parental tasks to protect and accompany their children, and display themselves as nontraditional and ideal parents. However, this seemingly win–win narrative of nature consumption is clearly contradictory. This multi-functional space with many play facilities and a sizeable private grassland area obviously needs human intervention and modification to appear in the mountains and rural areas of Taiwan. Yet, the parents constantly emphasize the purity and pristine meaning of this nature, and how it allows their children to have an innocent and authentic childhood. Berglez and Olausson [78] suggest that the prevalence of high-carbon visibility discourses (unsustainable discourses) is guided by three types of ideology production: legitimization, uniformization, and reification, which are reinforced and expanded more rapidly because of the features of social media. In the following paragraphs, we also employ these three ideological concepts to examine and discuss why parent tourists are so willing to promote this apparently contradictory and conflicting narrative of nature consumption in their blog posts.

Legitimizing certain consumption patterns or preferences through self-rewarding practices, such as emphasizing “because I am worth it”, is popular on social media [78,79]. After a week of busy days at work and doing housework, parents want to enjoy their leisure time on the weekend to refresh themselves and prepare for the challenges coming up next week. Influenced by the hedonistic habits of traditional mass tourism [80,81], parent tourists usually expect their vacation to be comfortable, convenient, surrounded by beautiful scenery, and without being disturbed by the children—even during “a family trip”. The multi-functional space that they call “nature” meets all their needs. Interactions on self-media further reinforce the legitimization because the parents are “approved” by other users [78,82]. The positive feedback in the comment section of the blog posts, such as admiration for such weekend getaways, and compliments on the campground or the natural environment, all justify the self-rewarding practices and legitimize the consumption of nature, making parents more than happy to promote such family leisure as the perfect solution.

Unsustainable discourse, such as high-carbon visibility discourse, is articulated through, and because of, collective identification processes, also called unification. Posts and photos on self-media reinforce the reflection of “who I am”, a self-categorization and representation of one’s identity [78]. Many studies have proven the benefits of connecting with nature for children [83,84,85,86]. Such results have gradually formed a normative parenting discourse or cultural repertoire. Many middle-class parents have come to believe that it is the responsibility of modern parents to expose their children to nature [52]. Therefore, urban parents in Taiwan identify themselves as good parents by camping with their children. Shannon [87] (p. 468) further extends the concept of unification by pointing out that the content on self-media enables people to display their family leisure identity, and also causes others to feel the anxiety of being “left out”. Worries about not “fitting in” can be relieved after the parents go on their first camping trip. Almost every blog post about a family’s first camping experience expresses such feelings as “Finally, I went camping with my kids (Blogger B)”. In other words, unification not only standardizes the public image of good parents, but also homogenizes the expectation of nature and family leisure, which in certain ways obscures social differences and inequalities [88].

Reification is a characteristic of posts on social media. Social media users are used to treating the particular object, service, or space, or the particular act of consumption they post about, as an isolated and separate phenomenon, rather than a process. Such decontextualization reinforces the overflowing ideology of high-carbon visibility and unsustainable consumption on social media [78]. On family camping blogs, we noted such reification or decontextualization, which resulted in contradictory and conflicting narratives that the bloggers are unaware of: emphasizing the advantages of the multi-functional space that requires artificial interference, while praising pure and pristine nature. Furthermore, even though the bloggers emphasize being closer to nature, they seldom explore the surrounding areas, but stay at the comfortable campground, which contradicts the original intention of camping by setting up a temporary shelter in the wilderness to explore nature. Under the influence of decontextualization or reification, parents use self-media to post updates or write about their wonderful camping experience made possible by the natural space, rather than viewing such spaces in context, or reflecting on the impact on the ecology or the local community.

We argue that manipulating ideology on social media normalizes and reproduces a dominant but controversial discourse of parenthood and nature consumption, which consequently affects how parents value and perceive this nature (space) they visit. Milstein [89] (p. 26) stressed that such “discourses not only serve to structure, oppress, and transform human lives, but so, too, do the discourses serve to symbolically and materially construct, constrain, and change the more than human world”. We therefore argue that this discourse of consuming nature has fostered the commodification and othering of nature. When the natural leisure experience is homogenously practiced and presented, it likely becomes a process of transforming tamed parcels of nature into commodities, even if there is no monetary transaction involved in the purchase of services or tangible commodities [90]. On family camping blogs, the repeated highlighting and complimenting of the campground that offers privacy, play facilities, and extensive grassland is actually promoting the consumption of it as a multi-functional and standardized commodity. Besides this, when an object is consumed as simply a symbol, people value the symbol it represents instead of what it is or what it is for. Likewise, when nature is consumed for its symbolic purity and pristineness, its real meaning is left out of consideration, and ignored. As long as the environment is different from urban settings, it can be called “the great outdoors”, where parents can guarantee their children an authentic and innocent childhood. Parents in Taiwan post similar content about their camping experiences despite the fact that they often choose a new campground to experience each time. Most camping families in Taiwan stay in one campground for two or three days, then move on to another campground on their next camping trip. Some parents even made a wish in their blog posts to “camp through all Taiwan’s campgrounds... (Blogger A)”. In effect, the campgrounds and their surrounding natural environments are increasingly becoming “non-places”—instantaneous, temporary spaces and disconnected others—that can be replaced after consumption [33,34,89,91,92]. This may explain why the deforestation caused by illegal campgrounds is rarely discussed on family camping blogs, even though it is an issue that has attracted significant attention in the media.

6. Conclusions

Given that the family vacation is one of the main occasions of parenting for busy urban parents, leading to the popularity of nature-based family leisure, this research placed nature-based family leisure into the framework of consumer culture research, to explore how nature (space) consumption is related to parenting practices and parenthood display, which then influences the parents’ own leisure experiences. Through an inductive and thematic analysis of 90 family camping blog post texts, the study found that most parents preferred to outsource their parenting to a multi-functional space referred to as “nature”. Such private large grassland spaces with many recreational facilities were highly praised by the parents because they could enjoy relaxing adult time while their children were accompanied and their safety guaranteed. At the same time, they consumed the symbolic meaning of “purity” and “pristine” associated with nature, making them good parents who enabled their children to be close to nature and enjoy an innocent childhood. Obviously, the multi-functional and standardized nature space is contradictory to nature’s pure and pristine meaning, even though it seems like a perfect solution for family leisure. We argue that this ambivalent narrative is still being constructed and reproduced through the ideological operation of social media, forming a hegemonic discourse of nature consumption, which stereotypes family leisure and affects the commodification and othering of nature.

The present research makes an empirical contribution to the study of consumption culture and sustainability. Our analysis reveals that the target of parenthood consumption is not limited to products or services that can be directly traded in the market. The natural environment itself can also be the consumed object, providing functional assistance and even substitution to carry out parenting tasks. This finding also supports the conclusion of Reis [90], that the commodification of nature does not necessarily involve monetary transactions. Moreover, the study results further re-confirm the significant role of identity (narratives) in sustainability-related research [31,32,33,34]. Lastly, rather than focusing on the content within traditional media and advertisements in parenthood discourse research [9,54,55,56], we examined how the parents’ own narratives of sharenting and family leisure experiences have constructed a dominant parenthood discourse through their blog posts as a form of self-media. In addition to the theoretical and methodological contributions, there are some managerial implications in this study. Public sectors should promote appropriate campsite practices in accordance with the climatic and environmental conditions in the area, and encourage educational programs to raise visitors’ awareness about the potential environmental impact that their tourism-related choices and consumption decisions may cause.

As to the research limitations and suggestions for future studies, firstly, the research was based on the content collected from blog posts; therefore, the data set represents only the experiences of the parent tourists who had time to write on blogs. Future research can be conducted through in-depth interviews, on-site participant observation, and netnography (both textual and visual data collected on social media), to collect different forms of data. Secondly, since each natural leisure activity attracts different segments of nature tourists, the results of this research do not stand for the experiences of those parent tourists who are interested in other forms of nature-based family leisure activity, such as family hikes and rural tourism. Nonetheless, the analytic framework of the relationship between parenthood and nature consumption can contribute to future studies on other kinds of natural family leisure activities. Finally, identities can be multiple and complicated. During family leisure time, the parent tourists may as well demonstrate their other identities (adventure, or other cultural identities, such as lifestyle or taste) through their blog post narratives. Future research can be carried out on the relationships between the various identities the parents adopt through nature consumption.

The purpose of this study is not to raise doubts about family camping or depreciate nature-based family leisure. Even though the descriptions focusing on the advantages of the private and wide-open spaces did reflect the dilemmas that urban parents who raise children in highly populated cities face and their desire for more spaces, we hope to bring the homogeneity of the desired nature (space) for children into question. Additionally, we try to awaken more reflections on the hedonistic habits of traditional mass tourism and the negative impacts these actions may cause. These are the questions we would like to put under the spotlight through this research.