Walking with Babies and Infants

An introduction to the work

As a way of an introduction I thought I would share the background to this work briefly. 

In May 2020 I found myself at home (Manchester, UK) with a new baby…that’s right I am one of the many women who experienced maternity leave during the Covid-19 lockdowns. In Manchester, UK the lockdowns were pretty restrictive. I couldn’t go inside with my baby to meet other mums (or even family) so I decided to start a walking group. 

I have written quite a bit about walking from dog walking to processional walking (refs at end) so it was a natural thing for me to pick this up when I returned to work. After interviewing women who had walked with me or walked with other walking groups I started working with Caroline Boyd from Boy Oh Boy designs thanks to some funding from my own institution and the Leisure Studies Association. This work can be found on the publications page.

There is much to say about different aspects of this work and I will do individual posts about the various themes in due course. In short, the work is about the timespacemattering of walking with an infant. Yes, it is also about mental and physical health but I feel that if we do not attend to geographies of walking with infants first the physical and mental health benefits cannot be accessed! 

More to come on that…

Other writing on walking:

Platt, L., Abushena, R. & Snape, R. (2021). Leisure, Religion and the (infra)secular city: The Manchester and Salford Whit Walks. Leisure Studies. DOI: 10.1080/02614367.2021.1933573

Platt, L., Medway, D., & Steadman, C. (2020). Processional walking: Theorising the ‘place’ of movement in notions of dwelling. Geographical Research. DOI: 10.1111/1745-5871.12417

Platt, L. C., & Medway, D. (2019). Sometimes... Sometimes... Sometimes... Witnessing Urban Placemaking from the Immanence of “the Middle”. Space and Culture. DOI: 10.1177/1206331219896261

Fletcher, T. & Platt, L. (2018). (Just) A Walk in the Park: Animal Geographies and Negotiating Walking Space. Social and Cultural Geography. Vol 19 (2)