Leisure Reflections [No. 67] by Robert A. Stebbins

Leisure Reflections No. 67, November 2024

Mutual Leisure: Experiencing Satisfaction and Fulfillment in Relationships

by Robert A. Stebbins, University of Calgary

My sense of the leisure studies literature is that scant attention is paid to the interpersonal relationship (dyad/triad) and other small groups that are part of this field. Nevertheless, a great deal of leisure time is spent in just such collectivities, and it is goal of this issue of Leisure Reflections to show, by way of the SLP, the nature of leisure activity there.

In sociological parlance dyads and triads are special variants of the small group, the latter being defined as a collectivity “small enough for all members to interact simultaneously, to talk to each other or at least to be known to each other. Another requirement is a minimum conviction of belonging to the group, a distinction between ‘us,’ the members of the group, and ‘them,’ the non-members” (Back, 1981, p. 320).

Moreover, dyads and other small groups endure, though only rarely for the lifetime of their members. At the same time, they are anything but evanescent. A gathering of passersby on a street corner animatedly discussing an automobile accident or two airplane passengers gabbing the whole flight through but going their separate ways upon disembarking does not make a small group.

Small groups, whatever their size, generate their own “idiocultures”: distinctive sets of shared ideas that emerge with reference to them (Fine, 1979). Idioculture is local culture, developed within and as an expression of an actual small goup. It consists of a system of knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, and customs peculiar to that collectivity. Members use this system when interacting with one another, expecting that they will be understood by other members.

Informal small groups have rules, roles, and goals, which however, are often not clearly defined. Such groups are further held together, in part, by members’ recognition of the group’s distinction of being a group of accepted individuals to the exclusion of other people. In formal small groups, the rules, roles, and goals are often not explicit. Most groups, formal or informal, are established to attain an agreed-upon goal. For some formal groups this may require a legal charter or, at the very least, some level of public recognition as a group. Specialists in group research classify as a small group any organized unit of two to twenty individuals. But this classification is arbitrary. More precisely, whatever its numerical size, a group becomes “large” when cross-member interaction is appreciably reduced and intimacy no longer experienced; the group becomes large when amount and quality of intermember communication are diluted.

Next, I classify these interpersonal relationships as follows: according to activities pursued indoors at home or outdoors near to it, pursued in the larger community, and pursued outdoors in the countryside beyond the community. Home-based activities, chiefly because of their significant convenience, better facilitate bonding than those away from home in the community or, even farther, in the countryside. We start with the serious pursuits.

Serious Pursuits

Routine serious leisure is sometimes found in nuclear families and possibly among close relatives and in somewhat larger groups. For example, there are families that make music together, often of the classical variety but jazz as well when there are teenagers old enough to learn how to improvise in that art. In the dramatic arts note that cosplay enacted in skits or individual presentations of self can be a family activity (https://geekmom.com/2016/02/a-cosplay-primer-for-parents). A Wikipedia article on the subject sets out its rich history. In amateur entertainment, budding magicians and stand-up comics can practice their art before members of family willing to serve as an audience. Turning to hobbyist collecting, mushroom gathering is another possible family pursuit (https://www.mushroom-appreciation.com/mushroom-hunting-with-kids) or one undertaken with a small group of friends. Also, the hobby of metal detection using special equipment can also be a family interest (https://detectingschool.com/metal-detecting-for-kids). Finally, amateur astronomy can be a mutual interest of husband and wife, though for some participants it can be an impediment in their relationship (Stebbins, 1992, pp. 110-111).

Serious sports and games offer numerous possibilities for involving family or friends. Chess, checkers, poker, euchre, and bridge are main examples. The card game of bridge can be a routine family activity involving even teenage youth (the game is complex and demanding). The same can be said for Canasta. Tennis singles and doubles can be a family sport or one played among friends, as is also true of other racket/paddle sports, namely, racquetball, table tennis, pickleball, badminton, and squash. Handball is, in essence, part of this group even while no paddle or racket is used.

The cue sports (aka billiards) lend themselves to competitions among family or friends. These include pool, snooker, carom billiards – as played at home, often in the basement – and shuffleboard (including the table version). In addition, various target sports also draw family and friends. These include darts, target shooting with gun or bow, bowling, golf, disc golf (can be played as doubles), paintball and airsoft (see Wikipedia for their differences), netted goal or netted-basket team sports, and cornhole (a backyard or picnic sport for family and friends played with small bags filled with plastic pellets or corn feed).

Turning to hobbies, consider first the home-based hobbies of making something. They lend themselves to dyadic and sometimes triadic involvements in baking/cooking, home brewing, and wine making. A variety of games are often played at home: cribbage, card games for 2 to 4 players, and Mahjong for 3 or 4 players, among others.¹ Included here are the outdoor lawn sports: croquet, horseshoes and, as just mentioned, shuffleboard played on a portable court or indoor table. Where the latter is played on a permanent court, that surface is commonly found in seniors’ residences, cruise ships, and shuffleboard clubs. Keeping records as in hobbyist genealogy and scrap booking are basically home-based activities. Finally, cosplay enacted in skits or individual presentations of self can be a family activity (https://geekmom.com/2016/02/a-cosplay-primer-for-parents). A Wikipedia article on the subject sets out its rich history.

The hobby of gardening (indoors and outside) is, for most enthusiasts, pursued at home. Still, in the larger urban centers, there is also community gardening (e.g., decorative gardens, community gardens for growing fruit and vegetables) organized and run by small groups of friends and relatives. Yoga (https://www.activekids.com/yoga/articles/the-benefits-of-family-yoga) and Zumba (https://theeverymom.com/at-home-workouts-for-kids) can also be home-based and involve the family. More often, it appears, that these two are offered in commercial studios as classes and workout sessions.

Other shareable outdoor activities include: hiking, cycling (mountain, urban trails, road), sailing, scuba diving, mountaineering, flying (not solo) back packing, camping, jogging, walking, fishing, hunting, canoeing, paddleboarding, kayaking, mushrooming (hobby), mycology (amateur science), model rocketry (https://brshobbies.com/rocketry-101/) , metal detecting (https://detectingschool.com/metal-detecting-for-kids), bee keeping (https://thebfarm.com/blogs/news/5-ways-to-involve-your-kids-with-backyard-beekeeping), orienteering (https://kidventurous.com/orienteering-kids/#Top%20Tips:%20Orienteering%20For%20Kids) – adults can do it with a friend, treasure hunt, horseback riding (https://www.equitours.com/trip-style/families), rowing, and cornhole (described above). And families may enjoy collecting sea glass together: “Encourage children to participate by turning the search into a treasure hunt, making it both educational and enjoyable” (https://hobbyfaqs.com/sea-glass-collecting-hobby).

Solo mountaineering is defined in Wikipedia as “solo climbing, or soloing,” It “is a style of climbing in which the participant climbs a route alone, without the assistance of a belayer” (or “second”) (Wikipedia, Solo Climbing). With the presence of a belayer, however, the activity becomes a dyadic serious pursuit. Other shareable outdoor sports include: airsoft (paintball), archery, auto and motorcycle sports, auto racing, badminton, baseball, basketball, billiards, board sports (e.g., surf boarding, wind surfing, snowboarding, for a list see Wikipedia, Board Sport), bowling, cricket, curling, cycling, darts, disc golf, flying disk, footbag (aka hacky sack) football, golf, handball, ice hockey, field hockey, horseback riding, jukskei (South African game played in teams of four or doubles), kabaddi (originated in India and played in teams of seven), kart racing, motorsports, netball, orienteering, paintball, parkour, polo, road biking, rowing, rugby, shooting, ice skating, snow skiing, soccer (football), water surfing, swimming, tennis, running (Dunne, et al, 2024) Ultimate frisbee, volleyball, and water polo and the other water sports. Ice boating for recreation (non-racing) usually accommodates two riders, but racing boats mostly have room for only one person (Wikipedia, Ice Boating).

Looking next at the many non-home indoor hobbyist sports and game like curling and its teams, which are often composed of friends or family (www. http://familycurling.com/). Curling is played on ice, where two teams take turns sliding stones made of granite towards a target – known as a House. It is an Olympic and Paralympic winter sport with medal competitions for Women’s, Men’s, Mixed Doubles and mixed Wheelchair teams. Other sports and games in this category include: netball, volleyball, water polo, sport stacking (aka cup stacking) played as a team relay, padel (aka padel tennis) (see Wikipedia, “padel”), foosball, racquetball, fencing, and boxing and the other martial arts.

Project-Based Leisure

Leisure projects can also include family, friends, or even small groups. One-off projects such as climb Fuji and Kilimanjaro, tour Paris or Rome, attend the Newport Jazz Festival, or visit relatives in the “old country” (the origin of one’s ancestors) are common. Husband and wife might together plan and develop a garden in the backyard or repaint the walls in their apartment. Two or three family members or good friends might make a special trip to London to see a rare performance in theater or dance. Special vacations of, say, a week or two qualify as project-based leisure experienced in a unique visit to Hawaii or a Caribbean resort. A religious pilgrimage to the Holy Land or to Mecca, when not felt as a non-work obligation, is for most people a leisure project of deep spiritual significance.

Project-based leisure is a short-term, moderately complicated, either one-shot or occasional, though infrequent, creative undertaking carried out in free time (Stebbins, 2005) out in free time (Stebbins, 2005). Such leisure involves considerable planning, effort, and sometimes skill or knowledge, but for all that is not of the serious variety nor intended to develop into such. Nor is it casual leisure.

Casual Leisure

Casual leisure is immediately, intrinsically rewarding; It is, moreover, a relatively short-lived, pleasurable activity requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. That is, it is fundamentally hedonic engaged in for the significant level of pure enjoyment, or pleasure, found there (Stebbins, 1997). It is also the classificatory home of much of the deviant leisure discussed by Rojek (1997, pp. 392-393). Among its types are play (including dabbling), relaxation (e.g., sitting, napping, strolling), passive entertainment (e.g., TV, books, recorded music), active entertainment (e.g., games of chance, party games), sociable conversation (including that in the social media), and sensory stimulation (e.g., sex, eating, drinking, sightseeing).

Much casual leisure can be enjoyed within the family or other small groups. Many of the board games, being games of chance, are casual interests, for example, Game of Life, Monopoly, Clue, Chutes and Ladders, and Backgammon. Still, some board games are serious leisure since, as noted above, they demand knowledge and experience to play them successfully. Meanwhile, there are the various family gatherings including picnics, holiday celebrations, birthday parties, and the like. Here there is much casual talk, some of it gossipy, some of it political, some of it about achievements. ­­­­Furthermore, friends and members of families go together to concerts, movie showings, fairs, amusement parks, sports events, and so on. Here the enjoyment experienced is felt and discussed thereby contributing positively to the idioculture of the dyad, triad, or small group. Going out to bars and restaurants offers yet another opportunity for casual leisure of the sociable conversation and sensory stimulation kind.

Conclusions

The goal of this article has been to highlight the importance of close relationships in the facilitation of leisure activities, a contribution in positive sociology/psychology. The article also serves as a down-to-earth inventory of the many leisure activities that can deliver satisfaction or fulfilment within the context of a small group. Wikipedia offers more detailed descriptions of most of these. And a sequel might focus on the constraints of such ties and thus complete the leisure studies portrait of them.

Nonetheless, the next edition of Leisure Reflections takes a different tack, since it will examine these small-scale relationships as they develop and expand relative to the goals of communitarianism.

References

Back, K.W. (1981). Small groups. In M. Rosenberg & R.H. Turner (Eds.), Social psychology (pp. 320-343). New York: Basic Books.

Dunne, A., Quirk, K., Bullas, A., & Haake, S. (2024).‘My parkrun friends.’ A qualitative study of social experiences of men at parkrun in Ireland. Health Promotion International, 39(3), daae045, https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daae045.

Fine, G.A. (1979). Small groups and culture creation: The idioculture of Little League baseball teams. American Sociological Review, 44, 733-745.

Rojek, C. (1997). Leisure theory: Retrospect and prospect. Loisir et Société/Society and Leisure, 20, 383-400.

Stebbins, R. A. (1992). Amateurs, professionals and serious leisure. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Stebbins, R. A. (1997). Casual leisure: A conceptual statement. Leisure Studies, 16(1), 17-25.

Stebbins, R. A. (2005). Project-based leisure: Theoretical neglect of a common use of free time. Leisure Studies, 24(1), 1-11.

Endnote

¹Also see James Austin (2024). The best two-player board games. The New York Times, 23 June (online edition). Some of Austin’s selection are serious leisure, whereas others are casual.

Forthcoming:

Leisure Reflections No. 68, March 2025: A Clarification: The Role of Commitment in the SLP