Grand parenting by the pool

Purpose
Holidays are often conceptualized as an opportunity for individuals to escape everyday life responsibilities, roles and relations. However, families bring with them domestic, everyday life responsibilities, bonds and relationships while holidaying. So far, research on family holidays has emphasized the nuclear family, largely assuming that holidays include a husband-wife-child(ren) constellation. However, family holidays come in many different forms, and this paper aims to focus on the under-researched issue of grandparents and grandchildren vacationing together.

Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on 81 qualitative in situ interviews with grandparents, who vacation together with their grandchildren at Danish caravan sites, this paper explores how grandparents and grandchildren “do” family during joint holidays. Although attempts were made to give voice to children, the paper predominantly uses data from interviews with grandparents.

Findings
Although grandparent–grandchildren holidays resemble nuclear family holidays in a number of ways, significant differences are also identified. Key differences are that these holidays enable grandparents and grandchildren to interact both more intensively and in ways they cannot do (as easily) at home; are a means for grandparents to help and support their children; allow for grandparents and grandchildren to be both together and apart; and are critical to how contemporary families enact and “do” family across generations.

Originality/value
The paper deepens knowledge on the under-explored topic of extended family consumption in tourism and points to grandparent–grandchild holidays as an important element of how grandparents “do” family.