Exploring Military Parents' Perspectives on Their Children's Outdoor Risky Play

Abstract

Parents’ perspectives on their children’s outdoor risky play (ORP) can influence their engagement in it and the risk-navigation strategies they adopt. Until now, the perspectives of parents who regularly navigate threats to their safety, such as military members in combat arms occupations (CAOs) in the Canadian Armed Forces, and who have second-hand information on war and combat, such as female partners of members in CAOs, have been excluded from research. Conducting research with members in CAOs and their female partners can provide important understanding for experiences with risk, danger, injury, traditional gender roles, and ORP perspectives. I thus recruited and conducted semi-structured interviews with military members in CAOs (female = 1, male = 6) in the Canadian Armed Forces and 16 female partners of members actively serving in CAOs. Individuals could participate if they had a child in the 4-12 age range. I selected this age range for the study due to it being important for children’s adoption of safety strategies. I addressed three questions in stand-alone papers in my thesis: 1) “Do experiences in the military influence members’ in CAOs perspectives on their children’s ORP?”; 2) “What are military mothers’ perspectives on their children’s outdoor risky play and how may these perspectives be shaped by their military experiences?”; and 3) “How do gender expectations for female partners of members in CAOs influence their perspectives on children’s ORP?” I used risk and sociocultural theory to inform my approach to research questions 1 and 2 and conducted a reflexive thematic analysis. The results of my study addressing research question 1 were twofold: 1) Members in CAOs believe ORP provides children with opportunities that challenge excessive safety restrictions promoted in Canadian society; and (2) the work experiences of members in CAOs in the Canadian Armed Forces influenced their distinction between children’s ORP and dangerous play-related injuries. In response to research question 2, I found that female partners believed (1) ORP in close physical proximity to strangers and cars is dangerous for children; (2) ORP should not result in children experiencing serious injuries; and (3) outdoor risky play can teach children to assess and manage risks. I employed poststructural feminist theory, feminist methodologies, and critical discourse analysis to address question 3. My results were twofold: (1) Military mothers resist discursively produced pressures to subscribe to overprotective parenting during their children’s ORP; and (2) traditional gender discourses in Canadian society shape military mothers’ feelings of responsibility for their children’s ORP safety. The results from my research suggest that exposure to information on war and combat can influence parents’ perspectives on their children’s ORP. Further, they suggest that societal values, such as gender role expectations and pressure on mothers to engage in overprotective parenting, can influence parents’ fears for their children’s safety and the ORP they encourage and restrict.