Teaching and Learning Guide for: Family Leisure and Changing Ideologies of Parenthood
Authors: Shaw Susan M. 
Published: May 2008

Author's introduction

Although there has been a considerable body of research on families and family life in general, relatively little attention has been paid to family leisure, family time, and the role that leisure activities play within the family context. Evidence of increased time stress within families suggests that family time may be highly constrained. However, this situation may also have led to family time becoming increasingly desired and valued. Family leisure is deemed to be beneficial for families in a number of ways, because it provides a context for enhancing family relationships and strengthening family ties. Family leisure can also be seen to reflect and contribute to new and emerging ideologies about motherhood and fatherhood, with both positive and negative implications for parents and for families.

Author recommends

Daly, Kerry J. Families and Time: Keeping Pace in a Hurried Culture (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996).

This classic work shows the importance of understanding the concept of time and how families use time and allocate time to a wide range of activities. The author discusses how the experience of time within families has changed throughout history and how perspectives of time are profoundly influenced by socio‐cultural factors. Parents today, it is argued, are caught between an increasingly ‘hurried culture’ and their own desire to protect family time. Control over time allocation is seen as a crucial, but challenging, aspect of family life.

Samuel, Nicole (ed.). Women, Leisure and the Family: A Multinational Perspective (Wallingford, UK: CAB International, 1996).

This book was one of the first to address the complex issue of family leisure. Moreover, its international perspective brings together research on this topic from different parts of the world, providing comparisons between countries in a variety of socio‐economic situations. The focus of the text is on women, highlighting the significant role that mothers play in facilitating family activities and the importance of family leisure to women. The constraints on women's personal leisure due to traditional ideologies and gender relations are also discussed, as well as the potential for leisure as a source of empowerment and autonomy.

Kay, Tess (ed.). Special Issue of the Leisure Studies Journal: Fathering through Leisure (Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2006).

This volume is a collection of academic papers on leisure and fatherhood. Because much of the early research on family leisure focussed on women and mothers, this special journal issue represents a more inclusive gender analysis of this form of leisure. The collection of papers addresses a range of issues associated with fatherhood and leisure, including leisure as a context for fathering, changing ideologies of fatherhood, and how family leisure is practiced and experienced in different family situations.

Hays, Sharon. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).

This is a widely acclaimed book that addresses the tensions and strains of contemporary motherhood. The author draws on a variety of sources, including historical data about mothering, analysis of the advice provided in recent childrearing manuals and in‐depth interviews with mothers of young children. She argues that the contemporary model of appropriate mothering reflects an ideology of ‘intensive motherhood’ in which mothers are expected to be both tireless and unselfish in their constant dedication to caring for their children. This situation creates considerable difficulties and ambivalences for women – particularly employed mothers – as they seek to live up to the unrealistic expectations of modern‐day motherhood.

Marsiglio, William, Greer Fox, and Kevin Roy (eds). Situated Fathering: A Focus on Physical and Social Spaces (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005).

This edited book reflects recent scholarship on fathering and fatherhood. Bringing together theory and data from different disciplinary perspectives, the volume provides insight into the diversity of meanings and experiences of fatherhood in contemporary society, as well as discussion of the father–child relationship and men's behaviour as fathers. Different fathering contexts are explored, including step‐fatherhood, non‐residential fathers, incarcerated fathers, and farm fathers. The volume extends earlier scholarship about men's involvement with their children, men's identities as fathers, and how fathering practices relate to cultural prescriptions of masculinity.

Gatrell, Caroline. Hard Labour: The Sociology of Parenthood (Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press, 2005).

This Open University Press book provides an excellent overview of the literature on motherhood, fatherhood, and family practices. It also reports on a study of the lives of mothers and fathers, all of whom were combining parenthood with careers. Particular attention is paid to mothers’ and fathers’ commitments to child care and child rearing as well as their commitments to the workplace. The book focuses on the willingness of parents to share the tasks associated with care‐giving and household labour. Although willingness to share is evident, the author argues that a change in societal attitudes towards equitable parenting is needed, as well as a collective sense of responsibility and support for parents and families.

Bianchi, Suzanne, Lynne M. Casper, and Rosalind Berkowitz King (eds). Work, Family, Health, and Well‐Being (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005).

This edited book includes a range of disciplinary perspectives on the study of work and family. It includes information on how families allocate time, the difficulties of managing family life and family time in the 24/7 economy, and ‘workforce–workplace mismatch’. The particular challenges that face low‐income families and those who have to negotiate non‐standard work hours are addressed. The focus of the book is on health, including the well‐being of children, parents, and the family as a whole. The need for improved work and family‐related policies that would enhance family life and family well‐being is discussed.

Online materials

http://www.ifamily.ca/about/about.html

The Vanier Institute of the Family is a national Canadian charitable organization dedicated to promoting the well‐being of all types and forms of families. Through access to a range of publications, reports, and links to statistical data, the website provides information and discussion on important issues and trends critical to the health and well‐being of families. The Institute is also involved in research, advocacy and educational work related to social and institutional policies that affect family life in a variety of ways.

http://www.yorku.ca/arm/

The Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) promotes feminist scholarship on mothering and motherhood. It is also the home of Dementer Press and the Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering. The website provides information about journal articles and book publications, as well as upcoming conferences and other events. In addition to research promotion, ARM is also an outreach organization. It supports a mothers’ group (Mother Outlaws) based in Toronto, a newsletter and various knowledge mobilization projects. Links to all these activities can be found on the website.

http://www.fira.ca/

The Fatherhood Involvement Research Alliance comprises individuals, organizations and institutions dedicated to the development of and sharing of knowledge about fatherhood and fathering. It aims to build community–university alliances through providing linkages of communication between practitioners, academics, policy makers and the general public related to concerns and issues associated with father involvement. The website provides information on new research, as well as upcoming conferences, workshops, colloquiums, and other activities.

http://www.childstats.gov/

This is the website of the US Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. The Forum collects data on a range of issues related to children and families and regularly provides updated statistics and reports on topics such as health care, safety, education and the social environment. The Forum's annual report, America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well‐Being can be found at the website.

http://www.academyofleisuresciences.org/index.html

This is the website of the Academy of Leisure Sciences, an honorary organization made up of academics who have been elected to the Academy in recognition of their contributions to knowledge about leisure and recreation. The website lists the areas of expertise and research interests of the members of the Academy as well as information about books and journal article publications.

http://www.leisure‐studies‐association.info/

The UK‐based Leisure Studies Association (LSA) was formed in 1975 to promote interest and foster research in leisure studies and to advance education in this field. The Association facilitates the exchange of ideas on contemporary leisure issues and provides a communication forum for practitioners and students and researchers from a variety of disciplines. The website provides information about LSA conferences and publications, including the Leisure Studies journal.

Sample syllabus

Families and family life

Section 1: A brief introduction to the study of families

Families in historical perspective

Socio‐cultural perspectives on families

Diversity in family forms, settings, and meanings

Section 2: Using theory to understand family life

The Parsonian family

The family as a social system

Class and gender dimensions of families

Constructed families

Section 3: Motherhood and fatherhood

The cultural underpinnings of parenthood

Changing ideologies and discourses of motherhood and fatherhood

The expectations and contexts of contemporary parenthood

Section 4: The intersection of work and family

Work–family conflict

The impact of parenthood on paid and unpaid work

Gender equity and the division of household labour

Work structures, labour policies and family policies

Section 5: Family time

Assessing family time use

Time‐crunched families

The purposive nature of family time and family leisure

Divergent experiences and outcomes of family time

Motherhood, fatherhood, and leisure

Readings

Bianchi, Suzanne M., and Sara B. Raley 2005. ‘Time allocation in families.’ Pp. 21–42 in Work, Family, Health, and Well‐Being, edited by Suzanne M. Bianchi, Lynne M. Casper and Rosalind Berkowitz King. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Craig, Lynn 2006. ‘Children and the Revolution: A Time–Diary Analysis of the Impact of Motherhood on Daily Workload.’Journal of Sociology 42: 125–143.

Kay, Tess 1998. ‘Having it All or Doing it All? The Construction of Women's Lifestyles in Time‐Crunched Households.’Loisir et Société21: 435–454.

Daly, Kerry J. 1996. ‘Time Together: The Social Construction of Family Time.’ Pp. 66–84 in Families and Time: Keeping Pace in a Hurried Culture, by Kerry J. Daly. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Harrington, Maureen 2006. ‘Family Leisure.’ Pp. 417–432 in A Handbook of Leisure Studies, edited by Chris Rojek, Susan M. Shaw and A. J. (Tony) Veal. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Zabriskie, Ramon B. and Brian P. McCormick 2001. ‘The Influences of Family Leisure Patterns on Perceptions of Family Functioning.’Family Relations 50: 281–289.

Shaw, Susan M. 2008. ‘Family Leisure and Changing Ideologies of Parenthood.’Sociology Compass: http://www.blackwell‐synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751‐9020.2007.00076.x

Coakley, Jay 2006. ‘The Good Father: Parental Expectations and Youth Sports.’Leisure Studies 25: 153–163.

Section 6: Families, health, and well‐being

Time use, time stress, and health

Taking control of family time

Toward the development of health‐focussed family policies

Focus questions

What is meant by the terms ‘family time’ and ‘family leisure’? How are these terms used in popular discourse (i.e., in the media or in everyday conversations)? How are these terms used in the research literature?

What are the challenges that researchers face in assessing and/or measuring time use, family time and family leisure? What factors need to be taken into account? (e.g., the nature or meaning of an activity? the location? the social context?)

What is the evidence for increasing time stress in contemporary families? What are the causes and consequences of time‐stressed families?

What do researchers mean by the term ‘ideology’? In what ways does this concept help us to understand the experiences and practices of parenthood? What are the contemporary ideologies of motherhood and fatherhood?

How significant is family leisure for families today? What are the potential benefits of family leisure? What are the potential negative aspects? What are the relationships between family leisure, family time and ideologies of motherhood and fatherhood? In what ways do family leisure practices reinforce and/or resist these ideologies?