Applying Leisure Viewpoints to Playing Sports with Children

This paper aims to explore four varying viewpoints or concepts of leisure and how each of those four differing perspectives applies to playing sports with children. Playing with children is perhaps one of the few activities that would certainly be considered leisure in all but the most obscure of cultures. I will attempt to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the following four perspectives of leisure concepts as they relate to playing sports with children: Puritan Christian; Leisure as Activity; Neulinger's Perceived Freedom; and, Leisure as a Function of Social Class. Each of the different conceptualizations of leisure approaches leisure from a different perspective, thus each will have a different level of applicability when analyzing playing sports with children.

For my activity, I chose to play around with a soccer ball at a local park for several hours with my eight-year old half brother, David. This activity is something that is extremely out of the ordinary for a variety of reasons.

Full Siblings

Half Siblings

John Neulinger circa 1989

Firstly, I rarely interact with young children. At university I study with my peers who are my age while my coworkers are quite a lot older than me. I live on my own and do not regularly spend time with children. Secondly, since my brother's parents divorced when he was quite young, I rarely get time to see him which has limited the things we are able to do together. On most occasions our activities are limited to family dinners. Finally, the majority of my free time activities are indoor based, such as watching television, movies, etc. This is not because I don't like the outdoors but I live downtown in quite an urban neighbourhood with limited park access and chronic homelessness/drug issues. In short, the environment is less than conducive for outdoor activities. For these reasons, I...