Sport and Leisure as Contexts for Fathering in Australian Families

Abstract The relationships that fathers have with their family in leisure contexts are reflected in their leisure and sport repertoires and identities. Family‐based leisure relationships are one significant mode through which they express connectedness with their children. This article builds on feminist studies of gendered leisure relations in families, and rejects approaches that conflate mothers’ and fathers’ experiences and meanings of family leisure into that of ‘parents’. In contrast it focuses on fathers’ gendered experience of family leisure to further our understanding of what ‘playing’ with children means in relation to the identity construction of fatherhood. It considers the nexus between fathers’ own leisure and sport repertoires, their understanding of their children’s identities and leisure needs, and their involvement in shared family leisure and their children’s leisure and sport activities. This article is based on a larger qualitative study of mothers, fathers and children in 28 Australian families. Both parents in each family were interviewed about their leisure involvements, children’s leisure activities and what they felt was the meaning and importance of family leisure. At least one child 10 years and older in each family was also interviewed. In addition a seven‐day diary was also used by parents (most usually mothers) to record the leisure activities of all family members prior to the interviews. Four themes emerged in the analysis of the interviews with fathers in the study. These themes were: the importance for fathers of being with children and doing leisure as a family; the family paradigm and fathering through the generations; sport as a dominant but not the only cultural context for fathering; and other leisure contexts in which non‐sporting fathers construct their fatherhood identity. The study suggests the possibility that for some Australian fathers, sport and leisure contexts as both physical and social spaces enable men to do the identity work of being an involved or ‘generative’ (i.e. guiding the next generation) father.