The Etic and Emic volunteer

This past Saturday, I helped out at the CAPC Conference – an annual conference for parents about health and wellbeing, which was hosted at Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House (FHNH) this year.  As part of my placement, I created two displays: one about healthy breakfast and reading nutrition labels, and the other about farmers’ markets in Vancouver.  During a portion of the conference, parents would visit different displays and talk to volunteers such as myself about the topics our displays covered.

One of my displays for the CAPC Conference

In Chapter 4 of my Fieldworking textbook, the authors discuss the different perspectives a fieldworker my hold: as an insider or an outsider (referred to as the emic and etic perspectives, respectively).  When I arrived at FHNH, I was experiencing the environment with an etic perspective:  I was following directives about where to move different objects to prepare for the conference, and about who to process registration.  Without the directives, I would have had no idea what to do.  When parents visited the displays, I initially felt like an outsider, speaking to them as an objective, detached person with a scripted idea of what to say about breakfast, nutrition, and farmers’ markets.

As the day went on, and I started to recognize similar themes in parents’ questions and comments (for example “is ____ safe to feed my child?” or “I prefer to serve my child ____ because it is healthier”), I started to experience the conference from a more emic perspective.  As parents visited my displays, I felt more comfortable about and aware of the types of concerns that they had, which I think enabled me to be a more effective volunteer.

For example, at my display, I had samples of healthy, dry cereal that could be served to children for breakfast.  Many of the parents commented about how they liked the taste and thought it was appropriate to serve to their children, but those with younger children often expressed concern about the cereal being too crunchy and hard to eat. I don’t have children and spend very little time around them, so these comments were really useful in giving me an insider’s perspective about nutrition.

This experience helped inform my final research project which on the topic of breakfast.  What I have been learning from most parents is that the biggest influence over what will be eaten for breakfast is efficiency. In addition to cooking, [arents with young children also have to do things like dress their children, pack their children’s bags, make their lunches, drive them to school or wait with them for the school bus.

By contrast, when I get up in the morning to go to school, I just need to get dressed, have breakfast, and then run out the door!  If I sleep in and don’t have time for breakfast, I can still always grab an overpriced muffin at UBC on my way to class.

After helping out at the CAPC Conference this weekend, I better appreciate the hard work that goes into parenting, and I hope my contributions were helpful to those who attended!

References: FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research, by Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater (2007)

I recently attended a “Families in Transition” (FIT) workshop run by Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House (FHNH). This past week, a non-profit organization was invited to run a “financial literacy” workshop for the women in attendance.

FIT is a 36-week long pilot program for immigrant mothers that helps them integrate into “mainstream” Canadian society.  Among other things, participants develop language skills, learn about parenting in Canada, receive Foodsafe training, and develop job-searching skills. The FIT program illustrates Lauer’s argument that voluntary organizations (such as neighbourhood houses) help immigrants extend their social networks, which can help them incorporate into the community at large.

“L”, the program director for FHNH explained to us that one of the barriers of bringing mothers from certain cultural backgrounds to FIT is that many are used to staying inside the home and tending to their children all day.  L. said that separating the women from their children (who were being minded nearby) was challenging at first, but over the course of FIT, most had grown comfortable with being temporarily apart from their children.

At the beginning of the workshop, everyone went around in a circle introduced themselves. The mothers in the group had been living in Canada between four and ten years – an average about 6 – and all had young children under about five years of age.  Two of the mothers were also pregnant. The workshop covered topics such as saving money (or “keeping money” as the facilitator framed it), financial norms in Canada, and the predatory nature of both credit and “discounts” at stores.

One woman commented on how surprised she was at the ease of obtaining credit in Canada.  Another woman echoed this by sharing how she had 5 credit cards despite not being employed.  Most shared their concerns about their ability to save for their children’s education, and about finding a healthy balance between not spoiling their children and not being “bad” mothers for not buying them toys or treats.

Although these are concerns of all parents – not just immigrant parents – this concern had an extra layer to it, as finding this balance was influenced by their experiences in negotiating their identities as new mothers learning cultural norms of urban Canadian society.

An aspect of the workshop that surprised me was the gendered nature of the content.  The facilitator made several comments about women wanting to buy products such as purses, dresses, lotion, makeup, and about gender roles between men and women.  The facilitator also frequently used the term “husband” to describe the partners of all of the women.  I found this surprising, but I considered that my background in sociology has primed me to be more aware of how gender stereotypes present themselves.

Although the topic covered at last week’s FIT was not related to my final project (food and nutrition), I had fun listening and even sharing my own experiences and fears about money with the women in the group.

Sources:

1.         Lauer and Yan 2007, “Neighbourhood Houses and Social Ties,” pp. 5-34. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ubc/docDetail.action?docID=10216306

2.         Image from http://www.creditcards.ca/credit-card-news/how-to-find-the-best-savings_accounts-1267.