Family Influence on Leisure Time of Schoolchildren

Education for leisure time makes a great challenge for educators in contemporary society because wrong choices and passive attitude in leisure time can have negative impact on the development of a child. Family is an important factor in education for leisure time, but educators have to account for how much family should and can influence children’s choices. Educators pay special attention to unstructured leisure time activities because those activities mostly depend on children’s choices, and are not dependent place or on regular schedule. The main aim of this paper is to find out whether families influence children choices, and if they do, whether the influence is stronger in structured or unstructured leisure time activities. The research encompassed a sample of 189 elementary school students (4th and 7th grade) from rural and urban surrounding. The third variable was parents’ employment, since we assumed that unemployed parents had better control and more influence over their children’s free time. The data was gathered through a specially constructed Likert-type questioner. Results showed that students recognised family’s influence, especially regarding unstructured leisure time activities and, as expected, families have stronger influence on younger children’s choices. There were slight, but statistically not significant differences within researched population regarding social surrounding and parents’ employment. These results can help further development of leisure time education within family, and are very encouraging for two reasons. First, it is unstructured activities that are more prone to negative influences, and they need more educational attention, so families in our research proved to make greater influence where it is more needed. And the second comes from the conclusion that families generally fulfil their role in leisure time education regardless of social circumstances.