ABSTRACT
Leisure activity is a central focus of old age; the concept of elderly leisure, however, is a fairly recent development. Attention has been focused on the relationship between leisure and aging, at least from the time that Robert Kleemeier edited his volume on “Leisure and Aging” in 1961. The reader’s attention was drawn to the significance of free time activities in the lives of the elderly. Although the discourse was in the realm of nonwork activities, it became clear that one’s work and job do play a role in the consideration of leisure and free time. A recent tendency has been to look at retirement and old age as a “fun” period of life, filled with leisure activities and all kinds of new experiences. Is this approach more appropriate than the approach of the 1960s and 1970s when leisure was discussed as something related to work or, more importantly, as a residual category not integrally related to other components of the life course at all? It seems more appropriate, according to Powell Lawton (1985), to recognize that time use and the attitudes and feelings associated with leisure are determined differently by individual need, social and cultural learning specific to an age cohort, contemporary societal context, and legislation and rules. The topics of leisure and aging are characterized by a number of similarities. Both leisure and aging are processual, have multiple realities and are socially constructed, not onto-genetically determined (Cutler & Hendricks, 1990).
