A recent study that was just released in Leisure Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Journal was examining the relationship between
fathers’ involvement in family leisure and aspects of family functioning from
both a father and young adolescent perspective. The sample consisted of fathers
and their adolescent child from 647 families throughout the US. Results showed
that there were significantly different relationships between father
involvement in both core and balance family leisure with family cohesion,
family adaptability, and overall family functioning. “Satisfaction with core
family leisure that included the father's involvement was the single strongest
predictor of all aspects of family functioning from both perspectives highlighting
the importance of regularly occurring home-based family activities such as
eating dinner together, participating in hobbies and informal sports or yard
activities together, watching television together, or playing board games and
video games together.”
This is not surprising to me at all, because when I think
back at all of the leisure activities my father had us do as a family, they
always brought us together as a family. Every single one of the activities
listed in the study, are leisure activities that are still important to me
today, and also ones that I will carry onto my family when I get older. Also,
according to a number of previous studies, couples that participate in joint
leisure are more satisfied with their relationship, then couples that
participate in their own leisure. This does not surprise me either, because in
a relationship there is so much time people are away from each other, most of
it being work. If couples have the opportunity for leisure activities, they
should absolutely participate in joint leisure to increase their bond between
each other. This study goes in depth into many different facets of family leisure,
functioning leisure, family functioning, and father involvement, and can be
found at the link below:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01490400.2012.652510
I too agree that many of the activites that my father and me participated in, I try to pass done to my son. My son and I enjoy playing video games, going fishing, playing games together just as I did with my father. My wife and myself enjoy doing leisure together too. We both enjoy going to sporting events, movies, and travel. Now as a family we all enjoy going to the shooting range together and bonding as a family unit. We even take my father at times to increase the family function.
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