The Best Laid Plans: Why New Parents Fail to Habituate Practices

Abstract

Consumers regularly fail to habituate newly adopted practices. In contrast to established practices, this often occurs because understanding a practice is different from actually doing it. Our work explores this “messiness of doing” and explains why consumers successfully habituate some newly adopted practices after experiencing obstacles (i.e., misaligned practice elements) but not others. Utilizing a longitudinal approach that follows first-time parents from pregnancy through the first eight months postpartum, we track how parents plan for practices and how those plans unfold. We document a process whereby parents first engage in extensive planning and preparation prior to the birth of their child, during which parents build two realignment capabilities (anticipation and integration). After the baby’s arrival, some practices invariably do not work. Parents respond to these misalignments by following one of five paths—differentiated by the capabilities parents build while planning—that result in practice abandonment, vulnerable habituation, or habituation. Our work highlights the challenges associated with translating a social practice into an enacted practice and the corresponding importance of accumulating realignment capabilities during planning. To facilitate habituation of newly adopted practices, how consumers make plans for these practices may ultimately matter more than what they actually plan to do.

In Times of Trouble: A Framework for Understanding Consumers’ Responses to Threats

“…2015) . Only a handful of articles have examined family interactions in the last two decades ( Epp and Price 2008 , 2010 ; Thomas and Epp 2019 ). The COVID-19 pandemic raises interesting questions about consumer decision-making that can have negative consequences for others within—and outside—the family unit.…”

“…There may be differences in roles, expectations, and decision-making. Thomas and Epp (2019) describe how difficult it is to implement a new set of family routines even with considerable forethought and planning because of the “messiness of doing.” This is likely to be exponentially more difficult when faced with big, unforeseen disruptions to everyday family life. On the one hand, some consumers may increase consumption of joint leisure activities (e.g., playing board games, watching Netflix together); however, others might become more isolated, avoiding social contact by escaping into online media and games.…”

“How Do I Carry All This Now?” Understanding Consumer Resistance to Sustainability Interventions

“…Therefore, effective sustainability interventions may require a shift away from responsibilizing individual consumers and toward shaping the social elements and systems of daily life, as implied by a practice-theoretical perspective (Spurling et al 2013). Although there are several different theoretical approaches within the practice perspective (e.g., Nicolini 2012;Sandberg and Tsoukas 2015;Schatzki, Cetina, and von Savigny 2001;Thomas and Epp 2019), they all recognize that people, animals, materials, equipment, activities, norms, rules, values, and understandings are not independent but interacting units that constitute social practices and their performance (Reckwitz 2002;Sandberg and Dall'Alba 2009;Schatzki 1996). Social practices comprise "temporally evolving, open-ended sets of doings and sayings linked by practical understandings, rules, teleoaffective structure, and general understanding" (Schatzki 2002, p. 87).…”

“…Although several different theoretical approaches exist within the practice perspective (e.g., Sandberg and Tsoukas 2015;Schatzki, Cetina, and Von Savigny 2001;Thomas and Epp 2019), they all recognize that people, animals, materials, equipment, activities, norms, rules, values, and understandings are not independent but interacting units that constitute social practices and their performance (Reckwitz 2002). Social practices comprise "temporally evolving, open-ended sets of doings and sayings linked by practical understandings, rules, teleoaffective structure, and general understanding" (Schatzki 2002, p. 87).…”

Experiencing Nature through Nordic Restrictions and Freedom

“…Additionally, the theory allows looking at practice configurations as a whole, without demanding a separation between macro and micro perspectives. Practice theory hence puts more emphasis on doings, materiality, and embodied practical competences over the traditional research foci of consumer decision-making, symbolism, and intentional or expressive presentation of the self (Schatzki 2002;Warde 2005;Thomas and Epp 2019).…”