Childhood Studies and Leisure Studies

Much like childhood studies, leisure studies is an interdisciplinary field of research drawing primarily on concepts and approaches from sociology, psychology, sport sciences, social policy, and to a lesser extent anthropology and history. Leisure, the very subject matter of leisure studies, is notoriously difficult to define. Some scholars refer to it simply as “free-time” or the antithesis of work, while others describe it in terms of specific activities, social institutions, a set of experiences, and even a state of mind. Leisure is also known to play a big role in our identities. It is an arena of being and becoming, of adopting and challenging social norms and roles, and of creating and dissolving social bonds. Notwithstanding the debates over its definition, leisure activities are central to the everyday lives of many children and therefore leisure studies has much to offer to the social studies of childhood in terms of thinking about the role of leisure in children’s lives, the way leisure informs the construction of normative ideas of childhood, and how children relate to themselves and the world around them through leisure. Given the importance of leisure to children’s lives, it is surprising that leisure studies as a field has largely been occupied with the study of adult’s leisure with very little attention paid to the leisure lives of children. Indeed, the very field started with studies that looked at the leisure lives of working men and youth in the global north which then became the basis for theorizing leisure and creating a blueprint for the growth of the field. Women’s leisure, especially that of housewives who do not engage in paid work, and the leisure of the unemployed, for whom the work-leisure binary does not apply, created an impetus for the field of leisure studies to broaden its horizons, and de-couple definitions of leisure from the particularities of men’s workdays. Despite these initiatives, leisure studies still remains a largely adult-centric field where children’s lived experiences have remained at the margins. Therefore, thinking about the overlap between childhood studies and leisure studies requires us to examine the scholarship on leisure produced by childhood researchers and as well as empirical work by leisure studies scholars who have engaged with children. Doing so creates a fertile ground for understanding and unpacking children’s leisure from the dual vantage points of childhood studies and leisure studies.