“Doing Time” and “Creating Space"

A Case Study of Outdoor Play and Institutionalized Leisure in an Urban Family

Abstract

The New Urbanism trend has led to more Swedish middle-class families living in apartments in cities, with proximity to attractive schools and services but poor opportunities for outdoor play. Viewing families’ and children’s agency and living conditions as intimately connected with time-space variations, we investigate how children and parents in one urban family “do time” and “create space” in the domains of outdoor play and institutionalized leisure. Using a mixed-method approach, we find that within one family there are several ways of handling this. Initially a way of promoting physical health, the daughter’s soccer activity has become the hub of the family’s time-space organization and an important part of social life and identity for both the daughter and the parents. The son, refusing institutionalized activities, is considered a physically active outdoor child even though he spends more time indoors. When outside,he recreates child-unfriendly places in the neighborhood into spaces for play. We argue that using a mixed-method approach gives insight into variations within families. The results of this case study show that parents and children have to adjust to certain conditions and constraints in the domains of outdoor play, institutionalized leisure and family life, but that they also possess and can exercise agency regarding time and space within these domains.