(No) Time for shopping! Using family practices to add depth and breadth to the everyday life of parents with young children

Abstract

The family practices approach, as insightfully conceptualized by David Morgan, emphasizes activities, routine, and daily life, while recognizing the fluid, complex and open to change nature of the concept of family and its multiple connections with different arenas and dimensions of social life. Inspired by such a theoretical perspective, this paper presents an innovative perspective on an apparently unimportant yet regular activity in the daily lives of many families and individuals. Building on the concept of the everyday and family practices, it advances on what the scientific literature points to as the “grey zone of grocery shopping”, pre-ordered and mutually exclusive spheres and (old) boundaries between family, work, and consumption. Empirically, the paper turns to data collected through 30 episodic interviews carried out in Portugal with individuals, parents of children 3-14 years old. Data were explored through a qualitative content analysis making use of software NVivo. The paper attests to the richness, plasticity, and timeliness of Morgan's work to understand established debates in family studies, while opening space for future research on the multiple and overlapping connections between family and time, space, gender, and consumption.