ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes some of the salient concepts within family leisure that provides a foundation to advance the investigation of families within community research. It discusses the potential of families as agents of social change and justice in community-based activism and organizing through leisure and sport experiences. Families, for many people, provide the primary context for their leisure experiences and meanings, and yet, until the end of the twentieth century, family leisure was a relatively neglected area of research within leisure scholarship. This lack of attention was due, in part, to the belief that leisure was best explained from its relation to work and the prominence of social psychological models that focused on individual patterns of behaviour and experiences. Through purposive leisure, family activities may build and strengthen family relationships through encouraged togetherness and memory-making, and may also provide important moments of child socialization, including the inculcation of life lessons and moral values.
