Exploring the emotional geography of the leisure time physical activity space with mothers of young children

Many women experience the transition to motherhood as a disconnection from the embodied and emotional self due to the demands articulated through contemporary discourses of motherhood. Using a qualitative approach, this paper explores the everyday emotional geographies of leisure time physical activity (LTPA), the emotions experienced, the physical and metaphorical spaces created, and the connections to embodied selves of mothers with young children. The findings indicate that despite discourses of intensive mothering, immobilising emotions and overwhelming tiredness, some women not only created a space for LTPA in their busy lives but were able to create connections between body, space and emotions. These connections and the emotions evoked were largely associated with spaces outside of the home. Understanding how women define and use these spaces, and negotiate and transform the self, can allow us to explore the diversity of women’s experiences of physical activity and their concepts of LTPA as ‘personal space’.