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Leisure and Life-Style Author(s): Robert J. Havighurst and Kenneth Feigenbaum Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Jan., 1959), pp. 396-404Published by: University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2773953Accessed: 02-10-2015 03:01 UTC

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LEISURE AND LIFE-STYLE

ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST and KENNETH FEIGENBAUM

ABSTRACT

The Kansas City Study of Adult Life, studying the social role performance of people aged forty to seventy, gave ratings of performance on various social roles. When leisure activity was related to the pattern of social role performance (called "life-style"), four general life-styles were found: community-centered, home-centered high, home-centered medium, and low level, the adjectives for altitude referring to level of social role performance. The most successful life-styles, judged by the level of role performance, involved patterns of leisure which were active and similar rather than contrasting with the other social roles. Middle-class people may be community-centered or home-centered in life-style and in leisure, but working-class people are either home-centered or generally low in social role and leisure performance.

Leisure has generally but vaguely been seen as a source of satisfaction and even of delight. In a society in which most people had to work, and to work hard and long, leisure was scarce and was regarded either as a reward to be earned by work and to be enjoyed because one had worked so hard for it or as a good thing conferred by in- herited wealth or by marriage to wealth.

With the coming of more leisure in the lives of the common people, not all the rosy promises have been realized. Some people have found themselves with more leisure than they really wanted. The values of in- creased leisure to welfare and the quality of living of society as a whole have been seriously questioned. It is clear that modern leisure is not an unmixed blessing. This suggests the desirability of studying the uses that people make of their leisure, what sat- isfactions they get out of it, and how it fits into the rest of their lives.

Using the concept of "life-style" to de- scribe a person's characteristic way of filling and combining the various social roles he is called on to play, we may see how leisure fits into it. To do so, the Kansas City Study of Adult Life interviewed a sample of men and women aged f-;om forty to seventy to get an account of the way the person spent his time and the significance to him of his major social roles-those of parent, spouse, homemaker, worker, citizen, friend, club or association member, and user of leisure time. About a quarter of the interview was de- voted to leisure. The individual was asked

about his favorite leisure activities, what they meant to him, why he liked them, whom he did them with, as well as a number of questions about vacations, reading, television, radio, and movies, and what he did around the house.

On the basis of this interview, ratings were made of the competence of the individual in his social roles. Rating scales were devised to represent the general American expectations or definitions of these roles.' The rating scale for user of leisure time follows:

a) High (8-9).-Spends enough time at some leisure activity to be rather well known among his associates in this respect. But it is not so much the amount of leisure activity as its quality which gives him a high rating. He has one or more pursuits for which he gets public recog- nition and appreciation and which give him a real sense of accomplishment.

Chooses his leisure activities autonomously, not merely to be in style. Gets from leisure the feeling of being creative, of novel and interesting experience, sheer pleasure, prestige, friendship, and of being of service.

b) Above average (6-7).-Has four to five leisure activities. Leisure time is somewhat pat- terned, indicating that he has planned his life to provide for the satisfaction of the needs met through these activities.

Leisure interests show some variety. Displays real enthusiasm for one or two-talks about

1 For the other role-performance scales and for the pattern analysis mentioned later see Robert J. Havighurst, "The Social Competence of Middle- aged People," Genetic Psychology Monographs, LVI (1957), 297-395.

396



LEISURE AND LIFE-STYLE 397

them in such a way as to indicate that he has put considerable energy into acquiring profi- ciency or the requisite understanding and skills and prides himself on it.

c) Medium (4-5).-Has two or three leisure activities which he does habitually and enjoys mildly-reading, television, radio, watching sports, handwork, etc. May do one of these things well or quite enthusiastically, but not more than one. Gets definite sense of well-being and is seldom bored with leisure.

Leisure activities are somewhat stereotyped; they do not have a great deal of variety.

d) Below average (2-3).- (1) Tends to take the line of least resistance

in leisure time. Needs to be stimulated. Looks for time-fillers.

May have one fairly strong interest but is content with this one which brings him some sense of enjoyment. Leisure time is usually spent in passive spectatorship. Or:

(2) May have very little spare time. What time he has is taken up with activities related to his job or profession or with work around the house viewed as obligatory and not as a pastime.

e) Low (0-1).- (1) Apathetic. Does nothing and makes no

attempt to find outside interests. Or: (2) Tries anxiously to find interesting things

to do and fails to find them. Is bored by leisure and hurries back to work. Dislikes vacations and cannot relax.

Not only was the person's use of leisure time rated according to the foregoing scale but the objective significance of his favorite activities was evaluated according to a set of nineteen variables,2 of which the most useful appear to be: autonomy or other- direction; creativity; enjoyment; develop-

ment of talent; instrumentation or expres- siveness; relation of leisure to work; gre- gariousness or solitude; service or pleasure; status and prestige; relaxation; ego integra- tion or role diffusion; new experience or repetition; vitality or apathy; and expansion or constriction of interests.

The results of the several methods of studying leisure were related to one another and to a set of social and personal variables,

including age, sex, social class, personal adjustment, and manifest complexity of life. The interrelations are summarized in Table 1.

The procedure in studying life-style was based upon the use of the scores for performance in the eight social roles previously mentioned. A life-style was defined as a pattern of role-performance scores shared by a group of people.

Life-styles in this sense were discovered among the 234 persons in the Social Role Sample of the Kansas City Study of Adult Life. There were actually twenty-seven

TABLE 1

LEISURE, PERSONALITY, AND SOCIAL VARIABLES*

Personal Manifest Social Social Adjust- Complex- Mo- Con- Signifi- Mean-

Sex Age Class ment ity bility tent cance ing Content ........+++ +++ +++ + ++ + ...... +++ +++ Objective signifi-

cance ......... + + ++ +++ +++ ++ +++ . + + Subjective mean-

ing ........... + - + + + + + +++ +++ + ...... * + = a smaU degree of relationship (not more than two or three of the content or significance or meaning variables are

reliably related to a social or personal variable) + + = a fair degree of relationship

+ + + = a high degree of relationship (more than half of the leisure variables are reliably related to a social or personal variable)

2 In addition, two other aspects of the person's favorite leisure activities were studied: (1) the content of the favorite leisure activities (eleven categories of content) and (2) the subjective meanings of the favorite leisure aetivities (a set of twelve statements of the kinds of satisfaction a person might get from a leisure activity, from which the respondent picked the meanings most applicable to his favorite activities). For details concerning the significance, content, and meaning studies see Robert J. Havighurst, "The Leisure Activities of the Middle-aged," American Journal of Sociology, LXIII (September, 1957), 152-62; Marjorie N. Donald and Robert J. Havighurst, "The Meanings of Leisure" (MS).



398 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

specific patterns, or life-styles, each char- acterizing from 8 to 34 members, with some people belonging to two or more. The specific patterns were grouped into four major groups, using broader criteria for membership in a group than in a pattern, and these four groups may be regarded provisionally as life-style groups. Their characteristic role- performance scores are shown in Figure 1. The names given to the life-style groups, and a brief description of each, follow:

A. Community-centered.-This is a pattern of uniformly high performance scores in all eight social roles. It is called "community-centered" for the sake of contrast with the following group, though the performance scores in the community roles of citizen, club or association member, and friend are not higher than those in the family areas but about the same. The social class distribution of these people in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area is shown in Table 2.

B. Home-centered high.-These people have

9

A

0

C-)

1 _..,,,, __. __ _ ____,.

Work Parent Spouse Hone- Le sure Friend Ci izen Clubs and naker Associations

R O L E A R E A

FIG. 1.-Life-styles of middle-aged people: A, community-centered; B, home-centered high; C, home- centered medium; D, low level.




performance scores in the roles of parent, spouse, homemaker, worker, and user of leisure time which are about the same as those of the community-centered, but they fall far below the latter in the roles of friend, citizen, and club or association member. These people and the community-centered group have the highest personal adjustment scores and the highest scores on a rating of manifest complexity of life-style.

C. Home-centered medium.-These people have a family-centered pattern, though below that of the home-centered high group in role- performance scores.

D. Low level.-This is a pattern of generally low role-performance scores, with the family

and work roles somewhat above the external roles. This group has very low scores on personal adjustment and on complexity.

We shall first answer the question, "What are the 'leisure styles' of the four life- styles?" By "leisure style" we mean the Gestalt formed when one observes an individual's kinds and number of activities.

The community-centered style of leisure emphasizes activities engaged in away from home. The individual uses entertainment institutions, such as the theater or the concert, or social institutions, such as the country club, Rotary, chamber of commerce, Red Cross, etc., as the context for a major part of it, either jointly by the members of a family or individually. On the basis of the significance ratings people employing the

community-centered style of leisure tend to be more autonomous, that is, to "choose activity with purpose and regard for its func- tion in one's personal life" and to engage in activities in which there was some ele- ment of novelty. They are more instrumental and more inclined to "play a game or participate in an activity for some goal beyond the game or activity (philanthropic activity, etc.)." "Benefit for society" was given quite often as the motive.

Community-centeredness is the favorite leisure style of upper-middle-class people. Being successful in business or a profession induces them to join business and social or-

ganizations where they interact with each other to form wider circles of social and business contacts. Membership in the country club is part of their proper and accepted style of living. The community-centered individuals also tend not to have young children at home, which allows freedom for outside activity.

In contrast, the people who enjoy the home-centered style of leisure engage in most of it around their residence. This style is strongest in lower-middle- and upper-lower-class individuals and falls off in the lower- lower class, where family values lose some importance and the few pastimes become sex-differentiated, the men going fishing alone or to the bar or poolroom with the "boys."

TABLE 2

SOCIAL CLASS DISTRIBUTION OF LIFE-STYLES (Per Cent)

Commu- Home- Home- nity-cen- centered centered Low Un- Total

Social Class Sex tered High Medium Level grouped Group U&UM . M. M 7 3 1 0 2 13

F 6 3 3 0 1 13 LM ........... M 8 11 10 3 1 33

F 5 4 17 3 4 33 UL ........... M 4 8 18 8 2 40

F 2 5 23 7 3 40 LL ............ M 0 0 6 7 1 14

F 1 0 5 7 1 14 Total group. .. M 19 22 35 18 6 100

F 14 12 48 17 9 100 NOTE.-The actual distribution of indivuals in the Study Sample was the basis for this table, but the figures have

been adjusted to fit the true social class distribution of adults in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, as determined by Richard Coleman (unpublished working paper in the files of the Committee on Human Development). Since some people fell into two groups, they were assigned to the particular groups which they fitted most closely.




Leisure activities are engaged in jointly by the members of the family for the major- ity of the home-centered, whether it be a church outing, a fishing trip, or watching television. Sex-differentiated activities, such as sewing and embroidering for the women and carpentry and "fixing around the house" for the men, still allow for conversation and interaction between spouses. Friendship and sociability are cultivated by visits from neighbors rather than through any membership other than in the church or perhaps a fraternial organization. For some people the family-centered style was not one of choice but of necessity, owing to the presence of young children.

A number of activities such as fishing and traveling during vacations were common to both leisure styles, with some differentiation as to the manner of them. In the community- centered style travel consists of going to resorts and sightseeing, while for the people engaged in home-centered leisure travel consists of a car trip to relatives in other cities. For the upper-lower-class members of the home-centered style travel may be quite circumscribed; one spoke of "taking a trolley trip to see the city."

In spite of the relationship between life- style and social class position, there were people whose life-styles did not correspond with their class positions, as would be expected in a society with a considerable degree of social mobility. From Table 2 it appears that some 10 per cent of the popu- lation may have patterns above their class level and 5 per cent below it.

This scheme of leisure activities can be further comprehended by consulting Figure 2. Each of the concentric circles contains examples of the type of activities engaged in by the subjects making up the sample. The center of the concentric circles is common living in the home, the other radiating circles representing the physical and psy- chological distances of activities from it. The "activity radius" of the community- centered group is much greater than that of the home-centered group, whose leisure activities never transcend circle 8, and are

usually no broader than the kind of activities listed in circle 6. In graphic form this illustrates the socially and spatially re- stricted nature of the leisure of the home- centered.

Two examples, one of a community-centered man with a high rating as a user of leisure and the other of a high leisure home- centered man, may further the reader's image of the difference between the two styles of leisure.

Mr. X is a fifty-year-old executive vice- president of a bank, with a pattern of leisure activities which is the prototype of the community-centered style of leisure. He is president of one country club, a member of another, a Shriner, and a member of the executive council of a national Boy's Club movement and of a number of charity or- ganizations. Mr. X's favorite leisure activity is to go on trips during his vacation, to New York City to see the Broadway theater, and to see exhibitions of modern art. He is active in encouraging the local art museum to acquire examples of modern art. He enjoys playing golf once or twice a week at the country club, playing cards, painting his garage, and entertaining business people both at home and at the club. He does not own a television set, preferring the good music on the radio. He goes with his wife to the movies and to all the musical comedies that come to Kansas City. As for friends, Mr. X calls ten to twelve couples "close." He met them through various activities: "My business connections here at the bank, civic clubs, church, etc." With his wife he goes out to eat once a week and entertains other couples.

In contrast to Mr. X, Mr. Y, a fifty-eight- year-old social worker, is an example of an individual who employs the home-centered style of leisure. His favorite activity is gar- dening, in which he spends one-half hour to an hour a day during the growing season. Mr. Y's hobby is model railroading, which he engages in with his wife in the basement of his home. He also does some woodworking and woodcarving and manual work around the home. Once in a while he reads historical




fiction. The television set plays for two hours an evening, showing sports events, quiz shows, and plays. With his wife he reads, plays cards, does model railroading, and takes walks. Living in a neighborhood of younger adults, he claims that he has few friends and that a large part of his time is spent taking care of the two children of his son. Mr. Y's "going out" consists only of movies (with wife) and American Legion meetings once a month.

From this one can see that both in number and in kind of activities engaged in outside the home the "leisure complexity" of Mr. X is far greater than that of Mr. Y.

The differences between the home-centered high, home-centered medium, and low- level life-styles as far as leisure is concerned are mainly those between high, medium, and low ratings on the scale of competence as a user of leisure. A higher role performance is associated with the following significance variables: autonomy, creativity, get- ting strong pleasure from the activity, instrumental, high energy input, ego integra- tion, vitality, and expansion of interests and activities.

Have those whose leisure is home-centered different personalities from the com-

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munity-centered? Or is the difference caused by some external factor, such as residence in a suburb versus residence in an apartment area in the center of the city, or having several young children versus having one or none? It has been suggested by David Reis- man3 and by Margaret Mead,4 among others, that the trend toward suburban living and the trend toward larger numbers of children are making for values and leisure activities that are more home- and family- centered.

Riesman speaks of "suburban styles of life and thought" and stresses the suburban constriction of leisure to the family and the living-room-garden-television set, at the ex- pense of theater, concert hall, downtown meetings, country clubs, and heterogeneous social groups. Margaret Mead says that the generation which has married since the war is much more concerned with home and family life than earlier generations and is busy trying to turn home life into "a self- rewarding delight."

To explore the differences between home- centered and community-centered people, we compared a community-centered group with a similar number of home-centered people, equating the groups for age and socioeconomic status. There was no difference between the two groups in the propor- tions of suburban dwellers and the propor- tions who lived in single-family houses with gardens and recreation rooms. However, the home-centered had more children living at home. This suggests that the presence of children in the home, together with the de- sire to have children and to have a home- centered life, are more influential than the actual physical location of one's house in determining leisure style. It should be borne in mind, however, that Kansas City does not have many apartment dwellings for

upper-middle-class people near the city's center.

The foregoing facts point to the conclu- sion that the personality, more than the situ- ation, determines the leisure style.

For each of these life-style groups there are some people with relatively high leisure performance scores and some with relatively low scores. By comparing these two sub- groups, it is possible to compare the leisure characteristics of people with high and with low leisure scores within a life-style. How- ever, the range of leisure performance scores within a life-style is relatively small.

Within the community-centered life-style group there is one pattern with seventeen members which consists of people with relatively high leisure scores, and another group of nine people with somewhat lower scores. The individuals of the higher leisure pattern show more creativity and more autonomy in their leisure and a sense of vitality in it. The individuals of the lower leisure pattern are less enthusiastic and speak of pastimes as something of a burden; they join the country club because it is expected that they do so, but they do not enjoy it intrinsically. Business activity dominates the lives of some; they claim that they have relatively little leisure time and that they had more in the past when they were not so busy. The low leisure individuals with the community-centered life-style engage in the same kinds of activities as the high but are not so active in them and do not engage in as many.

In the home-centered high group the individuals with the higher leisure pattern are more creative than those in the lower leisure group (woodworking versus watching television), and they are more instrumental in their activities, being members of PTA and church service groups, being leaders in Boy Scout work, etc. In the home-centered medium group the same differences appear between those of the higher and those of lower leisure.

In general, within a life-style group which is large enough to permit some variation in

3 David Riesman, "The Suburban Dislocation," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CCCXIV (November, 1957), 123- 46.

'Margaret Mead, "The Patterns of Leisure in Contemporary American Culture," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CCCXIII (September, 1957), 11-15.




leisure-role performance scores, those with higher leisure scores are more autonomous, more creative, more instrumental, and more vital in their use of leisure.

It has been assumed up to this point that there was a close correlation between personal adjustment and performance in the leisure role. The correlation coefficient is .32 for men and .33 for women, with socioeconomic status partialed out. Clearly, there are some exceptions to this rule. Study of these exceptions may teach us something more about the value of leisure.

Accordingly, we selected the cases which showed most markedly a high adjustment- low leisure performance combination and those who combined low adjustment with high leisure performance. There were nine of the former and twelve of the latter in the sample of 234 people. The criterion for the high adjustment-low leisure combination was an adjustment score of 6 or above on the ten-point adjustment scale and a score of 5 or below on the ten-point leisure performance scale. The criterion for the low adjustment-high leisure group was an adjustment score of 4.5 or below and a leisure score of 6 or above.

The content of the leisure and the significance ratings of the leisure activities of the low leisure-high adjustment people were similar to the general pattern of people with low leisure and low adjustment scores. There are low significance ratings as to the autonomy of the leisure activity, the creativity expressed in it, some apathy with respect to the activity, and either a decline in leisure interests or no expansion of interests.

These are people who get along very well with little or no leisure. They show a great deal of vitality in the instrumental activities of life. The men are busy with their jobs and the women with their children, allowing little time for leisure and restricting them to leisure activities near home. Six out of the nine in the group are females and follow this pattern. Their leisure activities are centered either at home, where they sew, watch

television, and take care of the children, or in the church. The relationship between the spouses is good, and there is a general feeling of contentment and emotional security. It is this basically which accounts for the high adjustment scores of the group.

The group of individuals with high leisure scores and low adjustment tend as a whole to be maladjusted socially or occupationally and attempt to get through leisure what they cannot get in the other roles. They use their leisure as a compensation to make up for their deficiencies and to give their life some meaning.

The men in the group, often alienated from work, from spouse, or from the "community," attempt to adjust to this alienation by engaging in leisure activities where they invest a lot of energy and through which they can enjoy themselves and see themselves as socially acceptable. One is a factory manager. He finds no satisfaction in this position but rather pictures himself as an intellectual and therefore spends a great deal of time reading. A second, an amateur pilot, directs his leisure away from a home where some emotional difficulties exist. An- other man was trained as an engineer and has shifted over the years from one job to another, finally going into a business with his wife, which he does not enjoy. Like the factory manager, he pictures himself as a scholar and spends his leisure time reading oriental history. One of the men is a light- skinned Negro, cut off socially from both the white and the Negro community, who engages in leisure activities that he can perform alone or with his family, such as hunt- ing and fishing-activities which do not put him in social contact with others.

The women in the group have difficulty in relating to their husbands and are emo- tionally insecure; there are degrees of feel- ings of unwantedness and not being loved. They concentrate their energies into a single activity which they engage in alone and where they can achieve a great deal of pro- ficiency, such as sewing, embroidery, or petitpoint, or in church activities where they can spend time with the "women" and




achieve the feeling of "doing something worthwhile."

CONCLUSIONS

1. The most successful life-styles, as judged by the level of role-performance scores, have concomitant patterns of leisure activity. The community-centered life-style includes a leisure pattern which spreads from the home out through a variety of community circles. On the other hand, a successful home-centered life-style contains a home-centered leisure pattern. These successful leisure patterns tend to be autonomous, creative, instrumental, vital, and ego integrative, whether they be community- centered or home-centered.

The lower-level life-styles are lower in performance in roles external to the home than in the home roles. They also have lower-level leisure styles, with lower scores on the values listed in the preceding para- graph.

2. The two major types of leisure style, the community-centered and the home-centered, appear to be equally accessible to mid-

dle-class people, but rarely are working-class people community-centered. An individual with a large family of children is more likely to be home-centered. However, his place of residence-whether in a suburb, single-family home, or city apartment-does not seem to affect his leisure style to any great degree. The personality of the individual appears to find its own leisure style.

3. There are a few exceptional cases where the life-style and the leisure style are not in close relation. One group of such cases consists of about 5 per cent of adults. They are people with little or no leisure activity who have a successful life-style and good personal adjustment. These men and women generally invest most of their energy in work or in home and children, with little time and inclination for leisure.

Another group consists of about 6 per cent of adults. They have a high level of leisure activity but are dissatisfied or inade- quate workers or parents or spouses who attempt to compensate with a high leisure performance.

UNIVERSITY OF CEICAGO



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