Revisiting Family Leisure Research and Critical Reflections on the Future of Family-Centered Scholarship

ABSTRACT

In this special issue of Leisure Sciences, we examine the progress made and challenges ahead in research on leisure and families—20 years revisited. We consider what advancements have been made in family leisure research and potential new directions that family-centered scholars can look towards. We also consider the dominance of particular theoretical perspectives and methodological designs, and the limitations and consequences of such perspectives, to understand the complexities, diversity, and richness of the lived family experience. Emphasis is placed on the need for scholarship that explores diverse constructions of family and to provide a call to action for family-centered scholars to engage with broader global social issues.

KEYWORDS:

• couple leisure
• core and balance model
• family leisure
• family practices
• feminist
• methodology
• paradigm
• purposive leisure
• recreation

Notes

1 Fathers' shared leisure activities with their children may provide a context in which they can fulfill new involved fatherhood cultural expectations without challenging dominant masculine discourses (see Coakley, 2009; Gavanas, 2003). This idea, however, has come under criticism as privileging men who claim to share parenting responsibilities “being with” their children, while mothers continue to “be there” for their children in more domestic work related contexts that have extended into the public sphere (see Such, 2009; Trussell & Shaw, 2012).

2 See, for example, Ambert (2015) for a typology of families and unions.