Why has it become increasingly popular to do your family tree, dig up family histories, and why is there suddenly such value placed on having connections to the past? Scrap booking is an interesting example of this phenomena in an alternate hobby form. Women (mostly) seem bent on “saving the memories” for others… their kids etc. Certainly there is the craft elements of the hobby… something fun and colorful to do in one’s spare time. But the message that scrap booking companies put on it is definitely pushing the “save it for future generations” mentality. WHY? Why are we suddenly wanting to save EVERYTHING? What once was dismissed as relatively “insignificant” (e.g. the yearly picture of Uncle Leo in a turkey induced coma, or 10,000 pictures of one’s cat) is now pushed as being savable and “scrapbookable.”
The irony is that while saving things for future generations, (how many of our mothers and grandmothers didn’t do some form of this?) is a valuable and many might say necessary part of being human, women I’ve spoken with feel GUILT that they are “behind” in their scrap booking. Rather than a relaxing hobby or a systematic means of remembering the past, scrap booking has become a source of guilt or obligation.
To bring this back to genealogical study, as I delve into public records, I again wonder why some things have been saved, recorded, and “valued” for the duration of, say, 100 years, and other items have been forgotten. What counts in genealogy research? What’s valuable as artifact? What will be valuable 100 years from now? Certifiable things like marriage licenses or censuses? Scrap books of Uncle Leo and the cat?
It’s interesting to me as I think of what is “valuable” that things like scrap books of Uncle Leo and the cat march right along side census records. That’s one of the things about genealogical or family history writing that pleases me most. Pretenses aren’t so strong. Simply *anything* that sheds light on one’s personal search is considered valuable. Instead of the academic grind of “is this a legitimate research article” one gets to intermingle the high and the low.
Oh, and in some of my online world, I've seen screen names for scrap booking lovers like "lovescrapping" which makes me laugh every.single.time. You do the math...
haha, lovescrapping. I'd love to meet these people. I want to congratulate them on making me laugh :)
ReplyDeleteThe Facebook albums of people's cats, albums without a single person in any of the 60+ pictures, astound me every time I see them.
ReplyDeleteYeah, so I found this and I'm gonna delurk...
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I think that the question of what is of value depends on who's looking 100 years from now. Census numbers and trees and whatnot give us a concrete look at the past--the bones. But it's Leo on the couch and the crazy cat people that flesh out history for those who weren't there.
I think, hundreds of years from now, when people see those Facebook albums...or homemade kitty scrapbooks, they're going to understand the place that our pets have in our lives...which is becoming more and more revered as time goes on. Three hundred years ago it was unheard of for someone to leave their fortune to a pet...now, not so much.
Regarding women and their scrapboook guilt...I distinctly recall the joy of looking at my baby book as a young girl. Because of this, I'm pretty diligent about doing Ainsley's baby book. If their guilt goes beyond that...they're just looking for reasons to flog themselves. ;)
Rachel Hile says:
ReplyDeleteUgh, don't get me started on the cultural meanings of scrapbooking---or rather, *do* get me started, but only if we have a pitcher of margaritas to share while we're doing it!
In a nutshell, my take on it is that it's part of the ever-rising bar for what constitutes adequate mothering (see http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Contradictions-Motherhood-Sharon-Hays/dp/0300076525/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232986577&sr=8-1 for Sharon Hays's take on "the ideology of intensive mothering"). Industrialization, labor-saving devices, etc., mean that rearing children is nowhere near as laborious as it used to be (like in the days when you had to sew all their clothes, for example), and so we have adjusted the expectations of what parenting involves to make up for the savings in labor: you must drive them to two lessons/practices every night, you must make scrapbooks that are, let's face it, works of art, etc.
All this is very different in terms of cultural meanings, I think, than genealogy.
I believe you said you've commented on everyone's blog...but I don't see you doing to on mine... :(
ReplyDeletei agree with alex. :(
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