Introduction to critical perspectives on physical activity, sport, play and leisure in later life

It is with great pleasure that we introduce this special issue on Critical Perspectives on Physical Activity, Sport, Play and Leisure in Later Life. We hoped that this special issue would give the opportunity to scholars to explore, elucidate, and critique age and ageing in leisure activities, particularly leisure practices that have heretofore been youth-dominated and youth-focused. It is not that we believe youth should forego access and opportunities for leisure, such as access to team sports and quality facilities, but that we believe older adults should have an equitable stake in the proverbial field, both literally and figuratively. At the same time, in the current context of physical activity and sport promotion to people of all ages, it is important to remember that positioning physically active leisure primarily as a health measure in later life is problematic. The reality is that there are multiple (passive, active, social, emotional, etc.) ways to age healthily and leisure plays a key role in this process. Therefore, we also hoped this special issue would provide space for scholars to critique the dominant ways leisure is promoted to, experienced by, and written about in relation to older people.

Contextualizing physical activity, sport, play, and leisure in later life

Most countries around the world have an ageing population (United Nations 2013) with the global number of older adults expected to double from roughly 617 million to 1.6 billion by 2050 (He, Goodkind, and Kowal 2016). Japan has the oldest population on the planet, followed by Germany and France. Other countries in the top 10 oldest countries include the United Kingdom, United States, and South Korea. This global population ageing has implications for economic, social, and cultural life. Although discourses of decline and dependency have dominated our understanding of ageing and older people, the latter half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of ‘modern gerontological’ understandings of ageing (Katz and Calasanti 2015, 26). These socially constructed ideas of productive ageing, active ageing and successful ageing were born in response to negative discourses of ageing and from a desire to find ‘solutions’ to address the economic and social ‘problems’ of rising numbers of people aged 60 and older (Moody 2001; Neilson 2006; Pike 2010; Tulle 2008). These concepts have been legitimized and problematized in the West (Dillaway and Byrnes 2009; Katz 2000; Katz and Calasanti 2015; Pike 2011; Tulle 2008) and have started to spread worldwide, arguably aligning with neoliberalism (Rubinstein and de Medeiros 2015) and re-shaping ideas about ‘appropriate’ or ‘normal’ ways to age (Mendes 2013). This ongoing concern for ‘population ageing’ has implications for leisure practices, experiences, and services.

In this climate of productive and successful ageing, with its attendant emphasis on Calvinistic-like individualism, older people are now expected to take responsibility for their health by making certain leisure and lifestyle choices and a moral viewpoint has emerged about good/successful/productive and bad/unsuccessful/unproductive ways to age (Katz and Calasanti 2015; Pike 2011; Rubinstein and de Medeiros 2015). One consequence is that this simplistic view of ageing is reinforced by physical activity, leisure and ageing experts and/or businesses, as well as in policy documents and media reports, that promote certain activities to older people and provide recommendations on how to age well (Mendes 2013; Pike 2011). As argued by Gilleard and Higgs:

Ageing has changed from a process once described as that of ‘structured dependency’ to a third age arena, where agency and effort are always expected, not so much through paid employment as by working tirelessly on lifestyle, leisure and consumption. (2013, xii)

Ultimately, the overemphasis on individual action and lifestyle ‘choice’ in successful ageing-based discourses and associated practices tends to ignore the influence of social forces, social inequalities, and cultural constraints on health outcomes (Katz and Calasanti 2015; Rubinstein and de Medeiros 2015).

There is a paradox to the pressures and expectations of older adults to be active, successful, and productive members of society. Older adults are also expected to fit into neat and narrow boxes of leisure activities, such as socializing at senior centres and going for walks to maintain health. On the flipside to these pressures and expectations of stereotypical ‘healthy ageing’ practices are older adults themselves, engaging in meaningful, non-traditional and new-normative leisure activities, despite societal pressures to ‘just act your age’. Younger cohorts of the baby boom generation are more physically active than any previous generation of older adults (Gilleard and Higgs 2013). Although it is recognized that these older adults have the means, ability, and desire to take individual action, many will nevertheless test the boundaries of what it means to be ‘old’ and create new definitions of ageing at the individual, interpersonal, and community levels. Older adults are opening doors and breaking glass ceilings to ‘increase the “acceptable” ways to grow old’ (Pike 2011, 221). Therefore, to value diversity and difference in the ageing experience, there is a need to understand what ageing well means to older people and to respect the individual variability (or heterogeneity) of older adults, especially as this relates to ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender. Leisure, as a discipline and as a practice, and in all its diverse forms (passive, active, cognitive, etc.), can play an important role in addressing this need.

As a key force in a person’s life, leisure deserves particular attention for its contribution to experiences and meanings of age and ageing. The role of leisure in all its myriad forms – sport, physical activity, play, music, art, and relaxation (to mention a few) – on the experience of ageing is often overlooked. Likewise, understanding the role of age and ageing on leisure spaces, places, and experiences has limited attention in the literature. In particular, critical perspectives on leisure and ageing are needed to inform leisure practice, policy, and services for older adults.

We hope this special issue and the articles contained herein begin a conversation about the need for more critical theoretical, political, and practice-based leisure research that starts from the perspectives of a diverse range of older adults, rather than the typical analysis of how older people’s leisure maintains current neoliberal policy definitions of active and productive ageing (Aberdeen and Bye 2013; Asquith 2009) or how to get more older people physically active to improve population health. More attention is needed on all forms of leisure in later life (passive or otherwise), not just those leisure activities (primarily physical activity) that are deemed productive or cost-effective to health service policy-makers and other public officials. At the same time, older adults should not be limited to traditional forms of leisure or exercise, but should be included in a wide range of physical activities such as team and adventure sports.

Articles in this issue

This special issue provides an array of perspectives on leisure, physical activity, and sport in later life. Our idea for this special issue originated from conversations at the 14th Canadian Congress on Leisure Research (CCLR) at Dalhousie University, Halifax, 21–24 May 2014. This conference encouraged the critical examination of leisure in a changing society. At this conference we attended a Leisure and Aging Research Group (LARG) meeting led by Jerome F. Singleton. It was this networking opportunity that resulted in this call for papers. Initially, 25 abstracts were submitted and 18 were invited to submit a full paper, of which 13 were submitted and 8 have been accepted (to date). Of note, this call resulted in research papers that are qualitative in nature and tend to focus on older people’s experiences and meanings in a variety of leisure practices and contexts. In particular, there are five articles on sport in later life, one on Masters athletes (Gard, Dionigi et al.), two on individual sports (Minello and Nixon; Wheaton) and two on women’s team sports (Lenneis and Pfister; Liechty, West, Naar, and Son), two of which (i.e. Gard et al.; Liechty, West et al.) will appear in Part 2 of this special issue of Annals. However, sport was not the only emphasis for this issue. There are also articles on the discourse of leisure time (Breheny and Stevens), physically active leisure and the retirement transition (Liechty, Genoe, and Marsten) and meaning-making in a long-term care (LTC) setting (Whyte and Fortune). Each of these papers provides a lens into the world of older adults and the importance of leisure in their lives.

The articles accepted as a result of this call extend across several countries, including Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Additionally, the age of participants in the studies described herein ranged from 45 to 93 years, representing the gamut from the middle-aged to the oldest-old. These articles also contribute to our understanding of several key leisure and ageing topics identified in the call for papers, including: leisure meanings and meaning-making; the application of theories and concepts of ageing to diverse leisure settings; the role of leisure in reproduction of and resistance to ageing stereotypes; the contribution of leisure to identity development and maintenance in later life; leisure in the transition to retirement; new opportunities and resources through leisure worlds; and implications for leisure and ageing-related practice and policy. Let us now turn to a brief description of each of the articles contained in this issue.

In exploring the perspectives of residents, family members, and staff within an LTC home in Ontario, Canada, Whyte and Fortune provide a counterpoint to assumptions regarding decline and dependence in later life. Their study describes the stigma associated with LTC homes including negative stereotypes about abnormal, pathological ageing rather than ‘meaningful living’. Whyte and Fortune describe the natural leisure spaces in the LTC home that promote expressions of individuality, support the building of relationships, and sustain family social roles. Their article should be commended for providing a critical lens into these issues that allows for a range of viewpoints on the under-researched topic of meanings of living in an LTC home. Their study also highlights the importance of leisure in shaping social and community spaces.

Liechty, Genoe, and Marston’s article on physical activity during the transition to retirement shines a light on the everyday lived experiences in which physical activity is embedded. Their middle-aged (primarily middle-class) sample described retirement and near-retirement as providing a double-edged sword of spontaneity and lack of structure that warranted a balance between the two. Retirement also constrained social networks and work-related opportunities for physical activity, particularly in the winter months of North America. The transition to retirement was also marked with physical limitations that some participants felt constrained their physical activity. Even so, physical activity in retirement was associated with meaningful outcomes. Of note, participants tended to participate in pleasurable physical activities that required minimal skill building, which reinforces the idea that enjoyment may be front and centre for older adults’ physical activity practices.

Speaking of enjoyment, Breheny and Stevens point out that a focus on the health benefits of physical activity may devalue its role in promoting enjoyment. In their interviews with an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of 145 New Zealander older adults, they found a discourse between leisure as productive time and leisure as personal time. Productive leisure – particularly as it relates to health promotion and an active ageing identity – may ‘crowd out’ leisure for its own sake, intrinsic satisfaction, and freedom to engage in enjoyable activities. As these authors state in their discussion, ‘The first discourse is oriented to maximising time through strategies of active leisure, the second to maximising pleasure in the context of limited time.’ An individual may use both discourses, but clearly time will be all the more limited if they do. With societal pressures to age ‘successfully’, it is possible that the neoliberal problem of ageing overshadows the opportunity for life meaning and life value. However, the findings from this study indicate that older adults are negotiating and resisting these age expectations in various ways to have a ‘life’. These authors provide a convincing argument for the need to shift social policy to value older adults’ search for enjoyment and meaning over their production value.

Lenneis and Pfister describe middle-aged (45–55) women’s expectations and experiences of playing the team sport, floorball, which was provided as a health intervention through the Centre for Team Sport and Health at the University of Copenhagen. Women indicated a wide array of reasons for participating, including the health benefits, maintaining an attractive physical appearance, because of previous experience with sport and exercise, because it was a research project, and because they had time due to their life stage. Fascinating aspects of this study include the application of Foucault to explore these women’s experiences of sport in mid-life, the description of the intersectionality of age, gender, work, and family status across the life course, and the ways in which playing a team sport provides pleasure and social opportunities to these women.

Minello and Nixon’s article entitled, ‘“Hope I Never Stop”: Older Men and Their Two-Wheeled Love Affairs’, describes men’s experiences and meaning-making in the context of road cycling in mid- to late life. As with the other articles in this issue, enjoyment and pleasurable experiences of the sport were of central import to these men. As a complex phenomenon, road cycling is a sport that presents participants with few physical barriers, but presents other barriers, such as financial, time, and geographical constraints. Minello and Nixon highlight the subculture and meaningfulness of the activity for the men in their study, and provide evidence that the men were resisting, reframing, and redefining what ageing means. This resistance took many forms. In one case, in seeking feedback from participants on the authors’ results write-up, one participant said the authors focused too much on ageing, which made the men seem old. This description provides insight into one of the commendable aspects of the study described in this article, which was the authors’ collaboration with the participants to tell their story.

Wheaton’s study of older surfers provides insight into both life-time surfers and newcomers to the sport and includes both men and women surfers (who were white, able bodied, heterosexual, and relatively affluent). This study provides evidence that, while identity formation may be at its height in late adolescence and early adulthood, identity continues to be important in later life. Moreover, having a surfer identity serves as a way to challenge the ageing decline discourse. These authors also rightly point out that participants simultaneously reproduce beliefs about ageing, particularly the active, productive, and successful ageing perspectives. Wheaton’s explications of surfing as embodiment and the negotiation of a sporting, ageing life are worthy of a close read. She also highlights the ways in which the surfing identity is similar and different to other Masters sports and explores surfing as a serious leisure career. Some of the many themes that emerged from this study were surfers ‘staying stoked’, the development of intergenerational communities and social ties, the culture of commitment and identity, and age as a state of mind.

To borrow a term from Wheaton’s article, we are stoked by the excellent array of articles in this special issue. Of course, this issue is but one of many on leisure and ageing we hope to come in the future. There are numerous topics related to older adults that are currently under-researched, especially research with a critical lens and studies which aim to critique current policy and provide policy implications. We are proud to say that several of the articles contained herein (and in Part 2) take up this charge. There is a need for more research in leisure studies such as the research described here. We hope the articles contained in this issue generate further ideas and critiques for research as well as engagement and collaborations with older adults and their communities to ‘tell their story’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Rylee A. Dionigi is an Associate Professor in the School of Exercise Science, Sport and Health at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She has published and taught in the fields of sport sociology, ageing and physical activity, exercise psychology, and leisure studies. Dr Dionigi has expertise in qualitative methodologies and extensive knowledge on the personal and cultural meanings of sport and exercise participation in later life. In her book (research monograph), Competing for Life: Older People, Sport and Ageing (2008), she argues that the phenomenon of older people competing in sport is a reflection of an ageist society which continues to value youthfulness over old age and reject multiple ways of ageing. Dr Dionigi (with Michael Gard) has a scholarly book commissioned with Palgrave Macmillan, UK, which problematises Sport for All policy and health promotion trajectories across the lifespan. This edited collection is distinctive because it provides a critical social science perspective on Sport for All or Sport for Life that is aged focussed.

Julie S. Son is an Associate Professor and Program Director of B.S. and M.S. degree programs in Recreation, Sport, and Tourism Management, and Program Faculty in the Ph.D. in Healthy Active Lifestyles at the University of Idaho. She has published and presented original research on the lifespan and ageing in both leisure and ageing outlets with particular attention to issues of diversity and inclusion including age, gender, and ethnicity. Recent research includes older women's sport participation, how young and old conceptualize 'healthy' leisure, and intergenerational, indigenous approaches to physically active STEM education.