The (re)-configuration of production and consumption in empty nest households

In this paper we examine how the complex relationship between consumption and production evolves in empty nest households as individuals reconstruct their sense of self during periods of major household change and role status transitions. Specifically, we seek to understand the “lived experience” of mothers as they negotiate the role status transition on entering the empty nest stage of family life, and thus to provide glimpses of how women manage production and consumption in order to create family life across a variety of diffused sites as their children move away from home. The main themes to emerge from the data are: the distress associated with this role status transition as women re‐evaluate their definition of the self and their mothering role; and the evolving role of enacting love and mothering as the emphasis changes, in many cases, from production‐led tasks to consumption‐based activities