Giving young people a well-rounded education : a study of the educational goals parents attach to the leisure activities of their children

Policymakers strongly stimulate young people's participation in organised leisure activities because it is believed to provide young people with important work' skills and attitudes. Special attention is paid to the underrepresented working-class youth. To stimulate (especially working-class) parents to play an active guiding' role, policymakers often assume that they have to be made aware of the educational benefits of engagement in leisure activities. The empirical basis of this assumption is, however, thin. Therefore, this study examined the educational goals middle- and working-class parents attach to their adolescents' leisure activities on the basis of 32 interviews conducted in a small city in Belgium. Although there were subtle socio-economic differences in some goals parents pursued through their children's leisure activities (i.e. teaching skills and societal values and norms, belonging to a peer group, independent thinking and relaxation), these were not of a magnitude that they could contribute to our understanding of socio-economic differences in parents' role and in turn, in young people's leisure use. We argue that further research needs to focus on socio-economic differences in available resources from which parents construct particular strategies to shape their young people's leisure spending