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Leisure and HumanDevelopment

Douglas A. Kleiber and Francis A. McGuire

Editors


©2016 Sagamore Publishing LLCAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher.

Publishers: Joseph J. Bannon/Peter BannonSales and Marketing Manager: Misti Gilles Director of Development and Production: Susan M. DavisTechnology Manager: Mark AtkinsonGraphic Designer: Marissa Willison

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2016941200ISBN print edition: 978-157167-8058 ISBN ebook: 978-1-57167-8065 Printed in the United States.


Dedication

In loving memory of Pamela Kleiber and other family members and friends who have recently passed.


ContentsAbout the Authors ..................................................................viiForeword by Geoffrey Godbey ...........................................xv

1 Introduction ..................................................1 Francis A. McGuire and Douglas A. Kleiber

2 Developmental Theory and Leisure .................9 Douglas A. Kleiber and Toni Liechty

3 Play in Childhood ........................................ 39 Lynn A. Barnett and Kerri R. Schiller

4 The Power of Leisure as a Developmental Context for Adolescents ............................... 81 Denise M. Anderson, Linda L. Caldwell, and Kellie A. Walters

5 Where the Sidwalk Ends: Pathways to Nature-Dependent Leisure Activities ........... 107 Robert D. Bixler and J. Joy James

6 Emerging Adulthood and Leisure ................ 133 Mallory A. Anderson, Katherine Ann Jordan, and Cindy L. Hartman

7 Technology, Leisure, and Human Development: Seeking Virtue in the Virtual ....................... 161 Brian E. Kumm, Nicholas A. Holt, and Douglas A. Kleiber

8 Time to Eat: Implications of Leisure-Based Eating for Health and Development ............ 187 Dorothy L. Schmalz and Kerstin K. Blomquist

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9 Human Development in the Context of Family Leisure ........................................... 215 Camilla J. Hodge, Jasmine A. Townsend, and Ramon B. Zabriskie

10 Leisure in Middle Adulthood ....................... 243 Valeria Freysinger

11 Leisure in the Third Age: Finding New Value in a Changing World ......................... 271 Douglas A. Kleiber and Begum Aybar-Damali

12 Using Leisure to Find a Way Forward after Loss ................................................. 293 Megan C. Janke and Jesse J. Jones 13 Possibillities in the Study of Ageing and Leisure in Late Late Life ............................. 319 Sherry L. Dupuis, Janet McKeown, and Darla Fortune

Index ............................................................ 347

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Editors

Douglas A. Kleiber is a professor of Counseling and Human De-velopment Services and adjunct faculty in Psychology and Gerontolo-gy at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Leisure Experience and Human Development and A Social Psychology of Leisure. His past positions have included director of the Leisure Behavior Research Lab-oratory at the University of Illinois, head of the Department of Recre-ation and Leisure Studies at the University of Georgia, and director of the School of Health and Human Performance at UGA. He is a charter member of the Association of Psychological Science, a past president of the Academy of Leisure Sciences, a member of the board of directors of the World Leisure Organization, and a recent inductee into the World Leisure Academy.

Francis A. McGuire is the interim chair of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University. Prior to becoming interim chair, he was an Alumni Distinguished Professor at Clemson. His research and scholarship is focused on leisure in later life from multiple perspectives. He is co-author of Leisure and Aging: Ul-yssean Living in Later Life and has received numerous awards for his work, including being named the South Carolina Governor’s Professor of the Year. He is an honorary member of the Clemson University Class of 1939 and a fellow of the Academy of Leisure Sciences.

Contributors

Denise M. Anderson is a faculty member in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management at Clemson University. Her research interests include access to leisure for girls and women as well as the impact of leisure an college student development. Her ongo-ing passion project is “Finding Your Voice,” a camp for middle school girls focused on improving physical self-efficacy through “nontradition-al” outdoor leisure activities with the assistance of undergraduate parks and recreation students.

About the Authors

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Mallory A. Anderson received her PhD from the University of Georgia (UGA) in Recreation and Leisure Studies. She has an MEd in College Student Affairs Administration from UGA and a BS/BA in Busi-ness Management from Appalachian State University. Mallory’s career has included hospitality management, camps, orientation programming, curricular and co-curricular leadership development, outdoor program-ming, and study abroad education. She has held instructional and ad-ministrative positions in study abroad programs in Australia, Greece, and South Africa. Her research interests focus on the development of college students, and her dissertation work focused on the intersec-tion of student development through adventure experiences and study abroad. Her current endeavors involve both instruction and facilitation of student development through outdoor education at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.

Begum Aybar-Damali is an associate professor of Recreation, Tour-ism and Therapeutic Recreation at Winona State University. Her research has focused on perception of constraints as a contributing factor in an individual’s life and leisure and whether losses catalyze selective optimi-zation of resources. She is currently focusing on reasons for self-binding and strategies in restricting realms, and/or actions within a realm, to achieve this end.

Lynn A. Barnett is an associate professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois at Urba-na-Champaign. Her long-held research interests in the play of children have taken her on the journey from investigating the cognitive and emo-tional outcomes accruing to playing children, to the ascendency of adult structured out-of-school organized play activities, and the consequent decline in free play. A shift in focus from external play environments to an internal predisposition termed “playfulness” has guided much of her recent research seeking to explore how this inner quality is socialized in our society in children into their young adulthood years.

Robert D. Bixler is an associate professor of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University. He has done much com-parative research on why otherwise demographically identical people differ in their involvement in wildland recreation. His current research explores the potential of nonformal programming around insects and

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other invertebrates during middle childhood in establishing greater comfort and long term interest in natural history and the nature among today’s youth.

Kerstin K. Blomquist is an assistant professor of Psychology at Fur-man University. Her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Vanderbilt Uni-versity, along with her clinical internship at UC-San Diego/VA, where she worked with patients with eating, mood, and anxiety disorders, paved the path for her to conduct randomized controlled trials for in-dividuals with binge eating disorder and obesity, first as a postdoctoral fellow, then as an associate research scientist at Yale School of Medicine. With this foundation, her current line of research focuses on developing effective, sustainable interventions to prevent disordered eating behav-iors and promote positive body image, healthy lifestyles, and psycholog-ical well-being. Her research has been published in top-tier journals in the field of eating disorders.

Linda L. Caldwell is a distinguished professor of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management and Human Development and Family Stud-ies at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research primarily focus-es on interventions that develop youth competencies, promote healthy lifestyles, and reduce risky behavior in and through leisure. She is the co-developer of two interventions that focus on preventing adolescent risk behavior through positive use of free time—TimeWise: Taking Charge of Leisure Time and HealthWise South Africa: Life Skills for Young Adults. Linda is coeditor (with Peter Witt) of Recreation and Youth De-velopment.

Sherry L. Dupuis is a professor in Recreation and Leisure Studies and co-lead of the Partnerships in Dementia Care Alliance at the Uni-versity of Waterloo. She uses critical participatory action research and arts-based approaches as a means of promoting personal transformation and social change in dementia and long-term care.

Darla Fortune is an assistant professor at Concordia University, Montreal, QC in the Department of Applied Human Sciences. Her re-search is embedded in a concern for social justice and aims to create positive change in the lives of individuals who are most at risk of experi-encing exclusion from community.

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Valeria (Val) Freysinger is an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health at Miami University of Ohio. Her research focuses on leisure in the context of adult development and aging, gender relations and leisure, and the intersections of age and gender in con-structing leisure opportunity and constraint.

Cindy L. Hartman is an assistant professor in the Department of Recreation Management and Policy at the University of New Hamp-shire. Her research focuses on the interplay of leisure and lifespan devel-opment, with a special focus on leisure during emerging adulthood. Her dissertation work investigated the intersection of identity development, health, and perceptions of free time among college-attending emerging adults.

Camilla J. Hodge is an assistant professor at The Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Man-agement. Her research centers on understanding and documenting the benefits of leisure experiences to families. Dr. Hodge’s current research includes examinations of the role of recreation and leisure in adolescent and emerging adult sibling relationships, and in military and veteran families’ well-being.

Nicholas A. Holt is the Director of Innovation for the College of Education and adjunct faculty in the Department of Counseling and Human Development Services at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on online community development at the intersections between play, games, art and learning. He has consulted with The Walt Disney Company on educational game development and produced and directed an international film festival with the Independent Film Channel and a music video showcase with MTV. His current research involves design-ing “augmented reality” games that promote community service, volun-teerism, and civic engagement.

J. Joy James is an associate professor of Recreation Management at Appalachian State University, has been involved in teaching, parks, and outdoor education for over 20 years. As a life-long learner, Joy has a passion for getting everyone outside enjoying natural areas and parks!

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Megan C. Janke is an associate professor in the Department of Rec-reation and Leisure Studies at East Carolina University. She is a certified and licensed recreational therapist with a background in gerontology. Her research focuses on how leisure activities can promote the health and wellbeing of older adults in later life. She is a coauthor of the text-book Leisure and Aging: Ulyssean Living in Later Life, and has published over 20 articles in refereed journals.

Jesse J. Jones is an assistant professor of Health, Physical Educa-tion and Sport Science at Baldwin Wallace University, Berea, OH. His research interest focuses on further understanding how a sense of com-munity developed through participation in recreation and leisure ex-periences influence the health and quality of life of individuals through the life course. When not in the office Jesse loves to spend time with his wife and children playing soccer, mountain biking, and geocaching. His youngest has the most finds.

Katherine Ann Jordan is a PhD student in the Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management Department at Clemson University. Kather-ine Ann’s research interests include exploring the use of leisure educa-tion to positively assist in the developmental process of college students. She is also interested in time use and life balance issues that are particu-larly relevant to the college student population.

Brian E. Kumm is an assistant professor of recreation management at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. His research focuses on the intersections of the creative arts and everyday life to interrogate ques-tions related to ethics, joy, and quality of life. As a qualitative researcher, he is also involved in developments with conceptual qualitative method-ologies as well as postqualitative methodologies.

Toni Liechty is an assistant professor in the department of Recre-ation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham-paign. Her research explores the relationships between physically active leisure and body image, health and well-being; as well as leisure across the lifespan.

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Janet McKeown holds a PhD in Recreation and Leisure Studies from the University of Waterloo. Her research is focused on examining the ways intersectional power relations impact leisure practices and spaces for marginalized individuals and communities.

Kerri R. Schiller is currently a PhD student in the Department of Recreation, Sport, and Tourism at the University of Illinois at Urba-na-Champaign. Her research interests center on play in adulthood, with a focus on physically active play. In her previous role at the Bellevue (WA) YMCA, she developed “Recess for Adults,” a class that brought adults together to play.

Dorothy L. Schmalz is an associate professor in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management at Clemson University. Her PhD training in the psychology of recreation and leisure, combined with a post-doc in the Children’s Obesity Lab at Penn State shaped her research agenda fo-cusing on issues of social justice and the ways in which prejudice and stigma affect participation in health related behaviors. Her research has been published in top-tier journals in the leisure and public health fields. Her current research direction is tending toward developing a better un-derstanding of nutrition and food as recreation for lifelong health and wellness in western cultures.

Jasmine A. Townsend is an assistant professor in recreational ther-apy within the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Manage-ment at Clemson University. Her primary research interest includes in-vestigating the outcomes of participation in recreation for families of all types, including those with members with disabilities. She was recently selected to be a Faculty Scholar for the Clemson University School of Health Research. Dr. Townsend is a past co-leader of the American Ther-apeutic Recreation Association’s Military/Veterans Affairs Treatment Network and has a history of publications and presentations regarding the relationship between participation in family recreation and elements of healthy functioning families. She also serves as a co-leader for the Veterans Affairs section of the American Journal of Recreation Thera-py. Dr. Townsend’s practical experience includes working in community adaptive and therapeutic recreation programs as a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist.

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Kellie A. Walters is a PhD candidate in the Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management Department at Clemson University. Kellie is a co-founder of Smart Fit Girls (a nonprofit program aimed at improving ad-olescent girls’ self-esteem, body image, and physical activity enjoyment) and Smart Fit Chicks (an online wellness coaching company for adult women). Her research interests focus primarily on the impact of active leisure on the physical and emotional health of adolescent girls and adult women.

Ramon B. Zabriskie is a professor at Brigham Young University in the Department of Recreation Management, in the Marriot School of Management. Although he has published in several areas including therapeutic recreation, accreditation, etc. his research focuses primarily on family leisure and family wellness. He has been honored with nu-merous teaching and scholarly awards, has served in many capacities in professional organizations, is currently on the board of directors for The Academy of Leisure Sciences, and is a fellow in the National Academy of Recreation Therapists. But if you ask him, he is simply a husband, father, and fly fisherman.

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ForewordIn the journey through life, many components that determine our

fate and our happiness are apparent. Variables contributing to successful development include a caring family, having friends, good health, edu-cational opportunity, occupational success, a healthy natural environ-ment, a positive outlook on life and just plain good luck. One important variable, however, is often ignored and under studied—leisure and its use. In leisure, people expand or diminish the possibilities of life. Use of leisure is the arena in which we have greater choice about what to pur-sue. Leisure activity helps determine physical and mental fitness, who our friends are (or lack of friends), the development of diverse skills to accept freely chosen challenges, and a context in which one begins the lifelong process of defining who one is. Constraints may hinder our lei-sure choices; the involvement within an individual leisure activity may be a journey from the search to relieve boredom to the search for plea-sure to the search for competence and meaning. Conversely, it may sim-ply be periods of rest and relaxation or even behaviors which are highly harmful. Much addiction, for example, starts in leisure settings, whether it is drugs, gambling or alcohol. Leisure and its use, then, are critical to human development.

Leisure and Human Development examines human development as it affects and is affected by leisure—what people do when they are relatively free to choose their behaviors. The meaning of both “human development” and “leisure” has always evolved and continues to evolve. So have identified periods of life. For example, childhood, as a separate period of life, is mostly a modern invention, which, during the last few decades, has again been partially taken away. Childhood emerged partly in an effort to keep children from being factory workers who worked for low pay with no rights. Today, childhood is threatened by the sexual-ization of young people, the race for superior education and permissive parenting in which the child becomes, in effect, a customer to be satis-fied by parents. “Adulthood” for my generation, came in the late teens or early 20s; I was married at 20 and “supported” a family in some way from then on, as did my wife. Prolonged adolescence is now the norm in North America, meaning those between the ages of 20 and even 30 continue to be financially dependent, less likely to be married, and more likely to continue to live at home or to return there. Today, less than half

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of the adult population of the US is married. The emergence of adult-hood is more complex, and the process of “growing up” may never end for those who are fortunate.

Human development, then, is volatile. In spite of this, age continues to be highly predictive of many aspects of daily life, including leisure. Douglas Kleiber and Francis McGuire, two highly respected academ-ics, have chosen to develop this book around age-based periods of life. Leisure relates to human development, they state, in three fundamental ways: 1) human development influences leisure behavior, 2) leisure be-haviors influence development, and 3) leisure plays a role in moderating the effects of life events. In developing these themes, the authors have invited highly qualified academics to draw on their expertise in fleshing them out, not only by age and life stage but also by activity themes that carry across the life cycle. This approach puts leisure studies comfortably within the sphere of interest of a variety of academic disciplines, from family studies to human development to gerontology, social psychology and many others. The collective message of these chapters is one of the relevance of leisure to the development and well-being of humans. It is not that leisure is necessarily “good,” rather that it is of fundamen-tal importance. As pointed out by the authors of this book, leisure and play are critical variables in the development of children, a key vari-able in adolescence and a continuing source of pleasure and meaning throughout the rest of life. It is critical to coping with loss and lessening abilities. In regard to “successful” use of leisure, the authors of this vol-ume raise questions as well as supply answers. Collectively, they seem to understand that “leisure” requires a response to the question, “Given a minimum of constraints, what is worth doing?” How people answer this question, and the constraints they face in obtaining and using lei-sure, provide answers to this fundamental question—a question that is uniquely asked by human beings.

A question concerning the ideas in Leisure and Human Development is the extent to which the ideas are universal or mostly Western and “modern.” That is, the process of aging has a huge cultural component and it is now believed that culture literally is evident in genetic endow-ment and predisposition. In some cultures, individuals in their 60s are taught to “act old” by their culture while this is less true in North Amer-ica, particularly among highly educated people. This leads to the central question of whether leisure and human development can be general-ized about for the whole of humanity? It may be that the universality

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of “play” in early life is greater than the universality of leisure’s role in human development in later life. I have no answer for that question and the authors of this book, clearly, deal mostly with the Western world.

Since the end of World War II, our society has moved from one with a large middle class, marriage as the norm, an economy based largely on manufacturing work done during standardized hours, raising children, and participating in mass leisure, to a society in which these conditions and “life stages” often don’t apply. Today people may marry late or not at all, marry a member of the opposite sex or the same sex, have children at 16 or 40 or have none by choice, finish college at 30, or begin working at 16. Some work during flexible hours, irregular hours, part-time, at home, in other countries or in the gray economy. Retirement may be at 55 or never happen. As these changes have taken place, the trajectories of life are much more complex. In spite of that, humans tend to learn most of the leisure behaviors they will pursue throughout their life in the first two or two and one-half decades of life. Therefore, “development” of a leisure activity may continue throughout life by adapting to changing circumstances and abilities. A young girl, for example, may take tennis lessons in a public park, begin playing casually with friends, enter a local tennis tournament, play on a college team, join a tennis club, quit for a period of time during the birth of a child, switch from singles to doubles, serve as a linesperson for local tournaments, and then watch the Tennis Channel in late life.

A central idea of this book is that both theories for developmental psychology and research findings can lead to practical application—the “so what” question is addressed throughout the book. Thus, even though it is a book bounded by developmental theory, it is immediately useful for the student (or anyone else) seeking to understand leisure in every-day life across the lifespan. The authors of these chapters imply, both di-rectly and indirectly, that leisure can be and is identity producing. What one does when constraints are minimum becomes a window through which to see who that person is. Leisure is an existential variable that defines a person whether or not one wants it to. Even the purposeful avoidance of leisure defines and illustrates identity.

Leisure and Human Development is an important book, edited and written by leading authors in the field. It will find a lasting readership among all those interested in understanding and improving human de-velopment.

eoffrey odbeyxvii


IntroductionFrancis A. McGuire and Douglas A. Kleiber

The ideas for this book developed for us over many years of researching about, teaching about, and participating in leisure. One of the early seeds came from a reading of a book chapter by Edward De-vereux (1972), entitled Backyard Versus Little League Baseball: The Im-poverishment of Children’s Games. In it Devereux decried the diminution of opportunity for development when backyard baseball, self-directed by participants with no adult intervention, is subordinated to formal little league baseball, complete with rule books, umpires, and adult de-cision making. While the formal game may promote skills needed for baseball, a multitude of opportunities for learning occur in the backyard setting when, according to Devereux, we “let kids handle it themselves.” The most memorable statement of the chapter was Devereux’s conclud-ing comment: “It’s not what the boy [sic] is doing to the ball, but what the ball is doing to the boy!” That intriguing line suggested more gen-erally that engagement in leisure activities, including baseball, matters more because of its role in personal growth than in activity proficiency. Such is the case throughout life, not just in youth, and across activities. Devereux’s statement also led to questions such as “Are some changes more likely to occur through leisure engagement than in other realms of behavior?,” “What might be useful frameworks for examining such changes?,” “Is the change context/activity specific?,” “Is it only positive?,”

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and “How are others implicated in the process?” Ultimately, this line of thinking led to the question that guided this book: “What is the link between leisure and development across the lifespan?”

In this volume we approach the topic of leisure across the lifes-pan from a developmental perspective: the orderly, patterned, endur-ing trajectory of life. It occurs in three realms: the physical, including

body systems, organism and functions; the cognitive, including intellect, perception, memory, language, and problem solving; and the psychosocial, composed of many factors, including identity, relationships, roles, and culture (Sigelman & Rider, 2015).

As we consider leisure over the lifespan and its relationship to human development, we start with three essential propositions: 1) that human development influences leisure behavior, 2) that leisure behaviors influence development, and 3) that leisure plays a role in moderating the effects of life events.

First, leisure activities of individuals and groups change in predict-able ways from childhood to old age. Older people may play in childlike ways at times, and adolescents may use their free time in ways such as volunteer work that will lead them to a brighter tomorrow, but the in-trinsic interests and expressive activities of each age are characteristically different. In childhood, changes in leisure activities reflect the influence of biological changes to cognitive, social, and emotional capacity as is notable in stages of children’s play (See Erikson, 1963; Piaget, 1962; and Chapter 3, this volume), whereas in adulthood, leisure is more socially constructed around the tasks that confront people of a given life stage and time in history (See also Kleiber, 1999). For example, retirees at this point in time may look forward to many more years to live in better health than in the past, and thus a principle task for them is to find lei-sure activities that substitute for work activities in ways that bring new meaning and sense of purpose (see Antonovsky & Sagy, 1990; Liechty & Genoe, 2013; Chapter 11, this volume). Thus, it stands to reason that human development influences leisure behavior across the lifespan.

The second way that leisure relates to development is when expres-sive activities actually influence development.1 It would be hard to think of leisure activities actually causing biological changes, but claims such

1Of course, those activities that are chosen in free time for instrumental purposes, such as exercising for better health and gardening for produce, are also leisure and may be developmen-tally formative as well; but we choose to focus in this analysis on activities that are primarily intrinsically motivated.

What is the link between leisure and development across the lifespan?


Introduction 3

as “sport builds character” are based on the notion that intrinsically mo-tivated, expressive activities may be influential in taking a person into and through the processes of growing up. For example, certain “transi-tional activities” in which adolescents get serious about their participa-tion and organize themselves for the purpose (Caldwell, 2013; Csiksz-entmihalyi & Larson, 1984) are thought to facilitate their entry into the adult world. Chapter 6, which associates the impact of adventure expe-rience with moving an emerging adult along “vectors” of growth, also takes this perspective.

Finally, leisure is associated with development in that it moderates the impact of life events, particularly negative events such as accidents or the loss of a loved one, which may derail the normal course of growth and development. Leisure may moderate negative life events as it fa-cilitates the development of social networks, the building of personal strength and resiliency, and opportunities for self-care and spiritual re-newal (Coleman, 1993; Coleman & Iso-Ahola, 1993; Glover & Parry, 2008; Iwasaki & Bartlett, 2006; Iwasaki, Mactavish & MacKay, 2005, in Chapters 11 and 12, this volume). There is now considerable evidence that leisure activities are not only palliative in helping people cope with the stress of such events but may also serve as mechanisms for personal transformation (Chun, Lee, Kim, & Heo, 2012; Kleiber, Hutchinson, & Williams, 2002; Shannon & Bourque, 2006).

The chapters in this volume reflect two components affecting the human development process: life span stage (Chapters 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, and 13) and activity themes that vary in character, occurrence, meaning, and value across part or all of the lifespan (Chapters 5, 7, 8, 9, and 12). We chose the life span perspective for several reasons. One was practi-cal. Many park, recreation, and leisure service and tourism management (PRTM) type programs are age-based. Look at the program offerings at a local park district. There will be programs for toddlers, preschoolers, youth, emerging adults, midlife, and old age. Why is this so? At least in part it is because there are consistent and predictable activity preference differences between age groups that are useful guidelines for program-ming. There is certainly variability among individuals within the same age group, but the structure of many programs in the recreation field is built around the shared characteristics of similarly aged individuals. However, other components in addition to age matter in human devel-opment. One that we use throughout this volume is context, including factors such as where, when, how, with whom, and under what circum-stances activities are done. Outdoors in an open field is different from



inside a gymnasium, being with family differs from being with strangers, engagement during retirement is different than involvement while in college, “foodies” and “techies” are different in their patterns of self-ex-pression and enjoyment during different life periods. Times of stress and loss require the initiation of coping mechanisms that are perhaps unnec-essary at other times.

This book is an examination of the link between human develop-ment and behavior in a context, leisure, that has been described as en-compassing one third of people’s time (Chubb & Chubb, 1981). The im-portance of that time should not be trivialized by mistaken notions of leisure as merely a way to pass time or use time to regenerate for things that matter, such as work. Leisure is a primary arena for human develop-ment and evidence of that is presented throughout this book.

Outline of This BookIn Chapter 2, Doug Kleiber and Toni Liechty consider the prevailing

literature on developmental theory and research, from both psycholog-ical (lifespan) and sociological (life course) perspectives, with implica-tions for explaining how leisure changes over time and how it may help with development and adjustment. They end the chapter with Bronfen-

brenner’s Ecological Model (2005), which seems to take the best of both general perspectives as a model for further research on leisure and human development.

Lynn Barnett and Kerri Schiller provide ev-idence in Chapter 3 for why children desire to play and how they benefit from it. The authors provide a cogent description of types of play in

earliest childhood, the changes in play that take place over the first few years of life, and the developmental functions that play serves in the pro-cess. They then transition to examining play during pre-school and elementary school years where practice and symbolic play done alone or in parallel with a “playmate” give way to a great extent to sophisticated social play and games that form a basis for self-socialization.

In Chapter 4, Denise Anderson and Linda Caldwell discussing lei-sure in adolescence, a time when in many ways the link between leisure behavior and development is the clearest. Their focus in the chapter is primarily on identity development but also continues and expands on themes from the earlier chapters. The authors document not only the positive developmental outcomes from leisure, such as identity forma-

Leisure is a primary arena for human development and evidence of that is presented throughout this book.


Introduction 5

tion, autonomy, self-determination, self-esteem, and the capacity to gen-erate social capital but also potential negative impacts. Anderson and Caldwell discuss the need to be intentional in programming for devel-opment, and use the theory of developmental intentionality as a frame-work for program planning in order to foster growth in the participants.

In Chapter 6, Mallory Anderson, Katherine Ann Jordan, and Cindy Hartman write about leisure and development during emerging adult-hood, the period of approximately 10 years from 18 to 28 years of age. This period between adolescence and young adulthood is marked by uncertainty and instability coincident with a perception of often rather endless possibilities. The chapter considers the link between leisure and development in the biosocial, cognitive, and psychosocial realms during this period.

Valeria Freysinger’s Chapter 10 moves further along the lifespan to the period of middle adulthood while reprising and expanding some of the themes from previous chapters. The link between development and leisure in this age is not altogether clear, but it is a period of many role changes and complex intergenerational relations that warrant further investigation.

In Chapter 11, Kleiber and Begum Aybar-Damali tackle leisure and development in the third age, approximately from age 60 to 79. As was done in earlier chapters, they give due respect to the issue of generativity, identified by Erik Erikson as the principle concern of adulthood prior to the task of ego integration in later life. They recognize a new set of tasks—primarily associated with a longer lifespan—that confront people around the time of retirement. Although the authors acknowledge that this is a period of potential upheaval typified by retirement and widow-hood, they invoke models of adaptation such as the selection, optimiza-tion, and compensation processes described by Baltes and Baltes (1990) that suggest mechanisms for continued growth and development as well as renewed community engagement (See also McGuire et al., 2013).

Finally, in the developmental sequence, Sherry Dupuis, Janet McKe-own, and Darla Fortune examine (Chapter 13) the fastest growing, albeit largely ignored, age group, those in what they call the “late late life” pe-riod, which incorporates individuals 80 years of age and older. The focus of the chapter is aging well. Three perspectives—gerotranscendence, sto-rying lives, and citizenship—place the potential for development in the richness of people’s lives, particularly in the very last stage of life.

With respect to thematic issues in the book, Rob Bixler and Joy James take the examination of human development and leisure to the



outdoors in Chapter 5, specifically addressing what they term “wild na-ture”—the places that are perceptually complex, disorderly, have irregu-lar surfaces and are typically unmanicured, with little perceived human maintenance or control. According to Bixler and James, play that occurs in such settings provides challenges leading to developmental benefits in the areas of perceptual, motor, spatial, and cognitive skill development, and often provides the early experience that leads to enduring involve-ment in nature-based leisure later in life.

Brian Kumm, Nic Holt, and Doug Kleiber (Chapter 7) examine whether technology-based leisure activity is detrimental or beneficial to development, allowing for the possibility of the former while celebrating evidence for the latter in finding “the virtue in the virtual.” They address what they describe as one of the challenges of the 21st century: how to access and engage technology to actualize positive individual and collec-tive development. They conclude that there are several potential devel-opmental virtues of technology: enhancing the cognitive development of children and adolescents, buffering the trauma of negative events, en-hancing sociability, and generating intergenerational connections. How-ever, they also acknowledge that technology might stunt development if “passionate engagement becomes obsessive or disharmonious with oth-er developmental needs.”

In Chapter 8, Dorothy Schmalz and Kerstin Blomquist focus on a specific activity, eating, and its link to development. After making the case for why and when eating can be considered a leisure activity, they identify two components of development related to eating: identity and socialization. They discuss “foodies” as participants in a kind of social world not unlike other forms of “serious” leisure. However, they also discuss eating disorders and the biological, social, and emotional com-ponents that negatively affect health and development, leading to such problems as bulimia and obesity, in part because of the failure to find properties of enjoyment in eating rather than simply the pleasures of immediate gratification.

The final thematic issue focuses on leisure in the family context. Ca-milla Hodge, Jasmine Townsend, and Ramon Zabriskie (Chapter 9) look at the link between leisure and development in the family context, a set-ting for much of development, not only in childhood but across the life span. The authors’ view leisure in the family setting as crucial to devel-opment and then introduce the “core and balance” model of leisure as a model for examining family leisure.

While Kumm and colleagues consider the prospects for technolo-gy in helping one adjust to disability and loss, Megan Janke and Jesse


Introduction 7

Jones broaden that view considerably in Chapter 12, exploring the role of leisure in rehabilitation and recovery from loss and as a factor pro-moting growth and impacting development throughout the life course. They also discuss selective optimization with compensation (referred to in other chapters) and self-regulation, two theories that link leisure with coping, adaptation and growth following loss.

Each chapter ends with an application of the chapter material. Some authors provide a sample grant proposal and others describe a potential research project. In either case, the goal is to help illustrate the chapter content through an applied example.

So coming back to questions such as “What does the ball do to the player?” we invite you to read on. Make your way along the life course and consider the many ways leisure activities change over time, how they influence development, and how we can use them at critical times and in critical ways to make our lives better.

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ways leisure activities change over time …



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