Speaker
Description
Childbirth is regarded as one of the key events which transform mobility in the life course (Lanzendorf, 2003; Müggenburg et al., 2015). Although it tends to increase households’ car use (McCarthy et al., 2017; Oakil et al., 2014; Prillwitz et al., 2006), it is not a universal pattern (Lanzendorf, 2010; McCarthy et al., 2021). People who don’t increase their car use, and especially those who reduce it after childbirth, remain understudied, despite being a very policy-relevant category, with transformative and pioneering potential. It is crucial to identify and understand the conditions that make it possible to continue mobility with children without or with little use of the car, and the barriers that make it difficult or impossible to maintain.
To fill this gap, we describe the dynamics, drivers and challenges of pathways of mobility transitions into parenthood with a particular focus on the car-free parents. In response to calls to address more general shortcomings of the mobility biographies approach we analyse these pathways:
(1) In a life-course perspective to account for socialisation effects (Rau & Scheiner, 2020) and the intersection of individual mobility biographies with changing social and infrastructural contexts (Greene & Rau, 2018);
(2) As a product of competing meanings, skills and materialities, as well as social practices that are or are not linked to automobility (Kent, 2022; Sattlegger & Rau, 2016).
The presentation is based on a mixed-methods study conducted in 2023-24 in two Polish metropolitan areas (Poznań and Tricity), including a geo-questionnaire and individual in-depth interviews with both parents of children aged 0-6 years. Including both parents allows us to account for gender differences in the experience and pursuit of different mobility trajectories after the childbirth, as well as reciprocal influences between partners.
The study is funded by the National Science Centre in Poland (2020/37/B/HS4/03931).
Biography
Filip Schmidt works at the Faculty of Sociology, Adam Mickiewicz University. His research interests lie between studies of family life and studies of sustainable mobility, in particular mobility biographies, accessibility, social justice and policy acceptance. Currently he’s involved in two research projects: (1) Travel behavior in Polish cities: causality, behavioral changes, and climate impacts, funded by National Science Centre in Poland; (2) Inclusive Transition to Electric Mobility (ITEM), a JPI-ERANET project run by TOI Oslo, Utrecht University, Oxford University Adam Mickiewicz University and Heksagon Research focused on analysing the process of electric vehicle uptake through the lens of social justice.
