ABSTRACT
The relationship of leisure and the family begins with a paradox. Leisure is not separated from the central identities and investments of life. Rather, from childhood on, leisure is related to primary role identities – in the self-development of play, the acquiring of social skills and self-concepts of competence, and in the beginning and building of primary relationships. Events, leisure or other, occur in social contexts with time parameters of beginnings and endings, space boundaries and role expectations that are relatively precise or open. Only in the decade of the 1970s has the leisure-family issue emerged in research and theory. Studies of the leisure of industrial workers in the United States have followed a trend that may reflect social change as well as the altered focus of the research community. Enjoyment of companions and strengthening relationships are primary orientations of adult leisure, each at least six times more than family expectation.
