Structured Leisure Activities in Middle Childhood: Links to Well-Being

Associations between children’s (N = 147) participation in structured leisure activities and their adjustment were examined. Caregivers provided lists of extracurricular activities (clubs, sports, and church activities) in which children participated. Children and caregivers participated in interviews and completed questionnaires designed to measure children’s adjustment in four domains (academic competence, psychosocial development, externalizing behavior, and internalizing behavior). Classroom teachers completed additional measures of children’s academic and social competence. Greater participation in club activities was linked with higher academic grades and more positive teacher ratings of academic competence. Greater participation in sports was associated with higher levels of psychosocial maturity and more positive teacher ratings of social competence. There were no associations between involvement in church activities and any indicators of adjustment. Activity involvement was unassociated with externalizing or internalizing behavior. Findings are discussed in terms of both selection into different types of extracurricular activities and the skills emphasized in the pursuit of such activities. Article: The writings of Bronfenbrenner (1977, 1986), have emphasized the importance of conducting research that acknowledges children’s positions nested within the multiple contexts (microsystems) of children’s lives. In response to Bronfenbrenner’s work, developmental researchers in recent years have increasingly recognized the importance of identifying the multiple social ecologies in which children and adolescents spend time, and of documenting ways in which experiences within such contexts have implications for adjustment. A substantial literature documents that children are influenced by the characteristics of their home environments including the physical resources available within homes (Armor, 1972; Bryant, Burchinal, Lau, Sparling, 1994), the parenting children receive (Pettit, Bates, & Dodge, 1997), and the types of relationships children have with their siblings (Dunn & Munn, 1986). In addition, children are impacted by experiences within their school environments. For example, children typically benefit from attending schools that encourage meaningful learning activities (Finn, 1989) and development of higher order thinking skills (Eccles & Midgley, 1989) and from having teachers who are structured, organized, and engaged in children’s learning experiences (Fraser & Fisher, 1982). In contrast, we know relatively little about how children might be influenced by their experiences within a third context: that of their leisure activities. It is children’s experiences within the leisure context, and the implications of these experiences for their well-being, that are the focus of this article. Within the leisure context, a distinction can be made between involvement in structured versus unstructured leisure activities (Eccles & Barber, 1999; Larson, 2000; Mahoney & Stattin, 2000; Meeks & Mauldin, 1990). Structured activities are those that are organized by adults around specific social or behavioral goals. Examples include children’s involvement in sports leagues, music lessons, or scouting activities. Unstructured activities arise more spontaneously in children’s lives, and may include time spent engaged in social interactions with friends or siblings, reading or listening to music alone, or engaging in spontaneous play activities. Interestingly, these two types of leisure have been differentially emphasized within different research traditions and within research conducted with children versus adolescents. Much of what is currently known concerning the nature of children’s involvement in both structured and unstructured leisure has emerged out of a literature focused on how children divide their time among various activities. Time-use researchers have typically collected data by having children complete time use diaries or using the Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM). ESM requires that children carry pagers and record their activities when pagers signal them at random intervals (see Larson, 1989). Typically, time-use researchers have attempted to describe in a detailed manner the time children spend engaged in a variety of activities or identify demographic differences in time spent engaged in such activities. Results from time-use studies typically indicate that children spend a substantial number of hours each day engaged in leisure activities (e.g., socializing, watching TV, listening to music, engaging in art and hobbies, sports involvement, church related activities, and the catchall category of ―other leisure‖) (Meeks & Mauldin 1990). Time spent engaged in various types of leisure activities varies somewhat based upon demographic characteristics such as gender, social class, and maternal employment status. For example, children spend more time reading and studying, and less time watching TV, when parents are more highly educated and mothers are employed part-time (Bianchi & Robinson, 1997). Boys are more likely than girls to participate in sports and games and to spend time watching television, while girls are more likely than boys to spend time socializing (Meeks & Mauldin, 1990). Research that focuses primarily on documentation of how children spend their time has typically failed to differentiate between structured versus unstructured leisure activities, or to identify the specific types of structured leisure activities engaged in by children. For example, the category of ―sports involvement‖ (Larson, 1989) might involve either participation in an organized soccer league, or playing a spontaneous game of street hockey with friends. ―Church related activities‖ (Larson, 1989) might encompass either attendance of religious services or participation in a religiously sponsored youth group. In addition, this literature tends to either focus solely on time use among elementary-aged children, or to combine time-use data from respondents who range in age from middle childhood through adolescence, ignoring potential developmental differences in time use patterns. In an exception to these two tendencies, Meeks and Mauldin (1990) used the Time-Use Longitudinal Panel Study data to examine children’s versus adolescents’ participation in structured versus unstructured leisure activities. Findings indicated that structured leisure activities among girls are most prevalent during middle childhood. Among boys, weekend time involved in structured leisure activities peaks during middle childhood, while weekday participation in structured leisure peaks during early adolescence. Few studies of children’s time use have considered possible links between activity involvement and psychological and behavioral well-being. A notable exception to this tendency is the work of McHale and Crouter (2000). These investigators departed from more traditional methodologies for collecting information concerning how children spent their leisure hours (time-use diaries and ESM), and instead, conducted a series of telephone interviews with children to determine how children spent their free time. Time spent involved in different types of leisure activities was then considered as a correlate and predictor of children’s academic grades, behavior, and depressive symptomatology. Findings differed with respect to both the type of leisure activity and the type of adjustment considered. Higher academic grades were observed among children who spent more time engaged in hobbies and reading and less time engaged in outdoor play. More conduct problems were observed among children who engaged in greater amounts of outdoor play. Higher levels of depressive symptomatology were observed for children who were less involved in hobbies and sports and who spent more time reading. The only structured leisure activity considered in this study was sports involvement, which was linked with lower levels of depressive symptomatology. The lack of attention to potential links between children’s involvement in structured leisure activities and their adjustment stands in contrast to a substantial literature documenting associations between adolescents’ involvement in structured leisure (extracurricular) activities and their well-being. This literature has typically relied on adolescent self-reports (Eccles & Barber, 1999; Fletcher, Elder, & Mekos, 2000; for an exception, see Mahoney & Cairns, 1997) to determine levels and types of activity participation. Findings in this area of inquiry have indicated academic and psycho-logical benefits to adolescents who participate in volunteer service or church-sponsored activities, organized sports, and special interest groups (Eccles & Barber, 1999; Lamborn, Brown, Mounts, & Steinberg, 1992; Mahoney & Cairns, 1997; Yates & Youniss, 1996). However, adolescent males who participate in organized sports have an increased likelihood of using alcohol (Eccles & Barber, 1999). There is little reason to suspect that the benefits of structured activity involvement are age-dependent. The 1992 Carnegie Corporation report, A Matter of Time, called national attention to the substantial amount of time children and adolescents alike spend engaged in unstructured leisure activities (usually watching television, listing to music, or socializing with friends) rather than engaged in structured leisure activities. Involvement with structured activities was proposed to benefit both children and adolescents in three ways: by preventing potential involvement in risky or antisocial activities, by teaching children and adolescents positive skills and competencies, and by placing young people in contact with networks of supportive adults and peers met through participation in organized activities. In addition, childhood activity involvement sets the stage for involvement in organized leisure activities in adolescence, at which time they have been clearly linked with developmental benefits. Although not demonstrated empirically (factors predicting adolescent activity involvement remain understudied, as has been noted by Meeks and Maudlin (1990; for an exception, see Fletcher et al., 2000), there is every reason to suppose that the child who plays Little League baseball will be more likely to become the adolescent who engages in high school baseball, or that the child who takes clarinet lessons will be more likely to become the adolescent who plays in the marching band. This developmental continuity in activity involvement notwithstanding, it should be noted that access to structured leisure activities is more likely to be limited to a certain segment of the population in childhood, compared to adolescence. Parents with adequate financial resources, as well as a commitment to transporting children to lessons, meetings, and games, are more likely to have children who participate in structured leisure activities. In adolescence, school-sponsored extracurricular activities are available to a wider segment of the student body (although this proposition has been challenged, see Quiroz, Gonzalez, & Frank, 1996) and transportation to and from activities is typically provided by schools. Accordingly, it is especially important to take into account confounds between social class and activity participation when studying links between activity participation and adjustment in childhood. A potential advantage to studying extracurricular involvement in childhood lies in the community-based nature of such involvement. When links between extracurricular involvement and academic competence have been observed within adolescent samples, researchers have been challenged in their attempts to determine whether such benefits are due to the skills and competencies inculcated in children through their extracurricular participation (which then spill over into their academic experiences), or whether children who participate in school-based extracurricular activities benefit academically due to their increased investment in and attachment to the schools that sponsor such activities. Because structured leisure activities in childhood are virtually all community-based, any observed associations between activity involvement and academic competence could not be due to children’s feelings of investment in sponsoring schools. The purpose of the current study is to extend knowledge concerning the role of structured leisure in the lives of elementary-aged children by documenting associations between child participation in structured leisure activities (sports teams, church activities, and other clubs and organizations) and four domains of adjustment (academic competence, psychosocial development, externalizing behavior, and internalizing behavior). It is hypothesized that children who are more heavily involved in a variety of types of extracurricular activities will exhibit more positive adjustment than will their less involved peers.