Dereifying family leisure: An examination of women's and men's everyday experiences and perceptions of family time

Abstract

The dominant ideologically based view of family leisure as fun for all may obscure the work associated with family activities and the unequal distribution of such work. In this time‐budget and interview study, the time that 46 families spent in family activities was analyzed by examining how much of this time was work and how much was leisure from the parents’ viewpoint. The data show that family activities were often experienced as work or involved a work component. Moreover, the mothers were significantly more likely than the fathers to experience family time (with spouse present) and time with children (with spouse absent) as work and less likely to report these situations to be leisure, x²(3, N = 728) 65.07, p < .01, and x²(3, N = 510) 34.93, p < .01, respectively. Thus, although family activities have some positive benefits and are valued by parents, they do involve work and this work is unequally divided between women and men. The contradictory aspects of family leisure, especially for women, are discussed in terms of the ethic of care as well as the ideology of familism.