ABSTRACT
This chapter suggessts that research is needed, but not ‘straight’ leisure research, building a body of field-specific leisure theory, to be applied among young people and other groups. It argues that the effects depend upon who receives any extra leisure time and money. The chapter also argues that youth is not a period of maximum freedom. It explains that the main class divisions among young people at leisure no longer correspond to the ‘traditional’ blue/white-collar schism, but occur beneath a highly educated and qualified elite, and sub-employed and other marginalised minorities. It also explains that students are recreationally privileged. Their grants and subsidised leisure facilities bestow economic power. There are experts on young people and education, the family, work and delinquency, but writers on all these topics recognise that the behaviour on which they focus — criminal, educational, vocational or sexual — is influenced by the youth cultures in which adolescents become involved.
