Cropping Inside and Outside the Home

Each Wednesday, I usually write a post from my dissertation.

It has been awhile since I last posted on my doctoral research. The last portion I wrote about had to do with scrapbook shopping. Today, I am going to start writing about scrapbook cropping.

The decision as to where to actually crop draws a line or a boundary between work, home, and hobby though this boundary is quite blurry.

Cropping at home means still being “on call” to housework and childcare (Demos 2006), which is why many scrapbookers who are mothers of young children wait until their children are asleep or their husbands can tend to their children’s needs before they begin cropping.

Cropping outside the home draws a line whereby the scrapbooker is now focused on the hobby and not on day to day housework or childcare. Regardless, family members can interrupt crops outside the home when husbands call wives on the phone while she is attending a crop (Demos 2006).

Although family members may not be physically present, typically, they are present in the subject matter of the scrapbook. In this way, scrapbooking is not a chance to get away from the family but is still very much a part of doing family. Scrapbooking, then, is a site where the line between pure leisure and doing family work is quite unclear. DeVault (1991) raises this same issue when it comes to feeding the family—it is difficult to delineate feeding activity that is work from that which is leisure. Though scrapbooks, like quilts (Stalp 2006), may be used by the family, the hobbyist does not necessarily view this leisure time or activity as being for the family.

The point is that scrapbooking may be a pure leisure activity, an activity that incorporates family and leisure, or more a type of family work. What is it for you? How does where you crop draw lines around your leisure activity from other aspects of your life? 

References

Demos, Elizabeth J. 2006. “Scrapbooking: Women Making ‘Me Time’ and Doing Family Through Making Memories.” PhD dissertation, Department of Sociology, Loyola University, Chicago, IL.

DeVault, Marjorie L. 1991. Feeding the Family: The Social Organizatio of Caring as Gendered Work. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Stalp, Marybeth C. “Negotiating Time and Space for Serious Leisure: Quilting in the Modern U.S. Home.” The Journal of Leisure Research 38(1):104-32.

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Stephanie