Work, Leisure and Well-Being

John T Haworth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780415017039
• eBook ISBN: 9781134752188
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Although it is now well established that unemployment is detrimental to health and well being, most of us assume that a well structured, rewarding leisure activity would be preferable to paid work. John Haworth challenges these assumptions and shows that the very constriction of work, like having to perform a task we wouldn't otherwise choose, are often the most rewarding in the end.
Work, Leisure and Well Being reviews the current literature and complements it with the findings of the most recent research to provide a serious and fascinating study of the most important areas of adult life. It raises as many questions as it answers; for instance, if paid work is better than a leisure activity, what's the use of looking forward to retirement?
Work, Leisure and Well Being will be of interest not only to psychologists, but also to a wide range of professionals involved in social policy and the leisure industry.

Chapter 1
Introduction

WORK AND LEISURE

In modern times there has been a considerable interest in work and leisure and the changing relationship between them. This stems in part from a concern with how society is structured and functions, and with the implications of change for policy. It also stems from a concern with quality of life and well-being, and for the type of society we may wish to become. We all have an interest in work and leisure, but our experience in these areas is complex. If, for example, we were asked to say what constitutes work and leisure we would find it difficult to come up with satisfactory definitions. One person’s work is another person’s leisure.

The perceptions and meanings which individuals ascribe to a situation influence understanding and interpretation, and in turn help to shape the situations themselves. Social interactions are affected by background expectancies and shared meanings as well as by the nature of the situation. Yet, as noted in Haworth and Smith (1975, p. 2), and applicable today, ‘perhaps it is because of the complexity, the difference of opinion, the difficulties of investigation, as well as the important ramifications for theory and policy and for the type of society we wish to aim for, that the subject is so fascinating, challenging and important’.

Classical theories

‘Classical’ sociological theories of the relationship between work and leisure include the hypothesis of Wilensky (1960) that work attitudes and practices can ‘spill over’ or generalize into leisure time and that alternatively an individual can ‘compensate’ in leisure for work practices. A further ‘classical’ theory proposed by Dubin (1956) considers that the two areas of life are ‘segmentalized’ and lived out independently, with a particular area of significant social experience constituting a ‘central life interest’. A related debate addresses the extent of ‘fusion’ and ‘polarity’ in work and leisure (Reisman and Blomberg, 1957), examining the extent to which they are becoming similar to each other, and the degree to which individuals divide their lives into work and leisure (polarity) or see them as an integrated whole (fusion). To the extent that work and leisurehave been seen as segmentalized, with leisure enhancing quality of life, and even compensating in part for unsatisfactory jobs, society has been viewed as becoming leisure centred.

Reviewing studies on work and leisure and the implications for policy, Parker (1972, 1976, 1983) concludes that we are not a leisure-centred society. He argues cogently for improving the quality of both work and leisure. In an analysis of empirical and theoretical studies of the relationship between work and leisure, Parker (1976) notes that advocates of the view that work and leisure are becoming fused or integrated, and those who see work and leisure as becoming polarized and lived out separately, should realize that their evidence concerns subcultural and occupational-cum-cultural levels rather than whole societal trends and that there is some truth in both positions. He also notes that the ideologies associated with work and leisure, such that we are becoming a leisure-centred society, have not always been consistent with the facts about how much ‘free’ time people have and how they spend it.

The conclusion reached by Parker emphasizing the diversity of experience, and supporting different relationships in work and leisure, is also stressed by the psychologist Kabonof (1980). In reviewing evidence of the theories of Wilensky on spillover and compensation and Dubin on segmentalism, he concludes that while each has received some empirical support none has received unequivocal support, and that much of the research is constrained by conceptual and methodological problems. He recommends that future research should study different work and leisure patterns and the processes underlying these patterns, rather than trying to identify universal trends or typologies. However, the specific insights afforded by the ‘classical’ sociological formulations into certain situations are recognized. In a study of professional, administrative, clerical and blue-collar workers, Kabonof (1982) found no differences in leisure satisfaction between the four groups, which he took to be in line with a segmentation hypothesis of work-leisure relations. His results also showed some evidence for spillover in that skill utilization in leisure was important for the groups where this was deemed to be important in work, and some evidence for compensation in that autonomy was important in leisure where it was deemed to be low in work, this being the case for blue-collar workers. Kabonof and O’Brien (1986), studying the relationship between stress at work and leisure attributes and activities, distinguish between different forms of compensation. Supplementary compensation is considered to be where stress and frustration produced by undemanding, routine jobs help to energize people’s non-work behaviour and direct it towards leisure activities that supplement restricted opportunities for self-expression at work. Reactive compensation suggests that where stress is an outcome of overload or over-utilization, as is more likely in high-level jobs, there will be a tendency to prefer passive recuperative activities in reaction to excessive work demands. Their research found that for managers stress was associated with passive recuperative leisure (reactive compensation), but for professionals stress was associated with both recuperative and active-compensatory leisure. Among clerical and blue-collar workers there was no simple association between stress and leisure, possibly because different forms of relationships were occurring. Kabonof and O’Brien concluded that occupational differences in the sources and effects of stress, and differences in coping patterns, still need to be explained.

In contrast to the study of the effects of stress at work, Lane (1995) argues for the potential importance of quality of work for both quality of leisure and quality of life on the dimensions of subjective well-being and human development. He considers that the culture of work, in contrast to leisure, is purposive, constrained by cognitive standards, characterized by cooperative and goal-orientated relations, and that work is inclusive and achievement oriented. He cites research by Kohn and Schooler (1983) indicating that where work has substantive complexity there is an improvement in mental flexibility and self-esteem. Lane argues that challenging work spills over to promote challenging and rewarding leisure. However, he says that where leisure challenges are similar to work challenges, the choice between work and leisure is a matter of indifference.

The continuing search for trends

Tyrrell (1995) notes that research in the UK indicates that the available free time of full-time male workers declined by 4 per cent between 1985 and 1993, and that for females working full time the decline has been just over 10 per cent. In America Juliet Schor (1995) reports that the average American works the equivalent of an extra month each year compared to 1969. In turn, however, it is argued that the increase in work time for those in employment is at the expense of an increase in unemployment. Rifkin (1995) considers that we are in the early stages of a long-term shift from ‘mass labour’ to highly skilled ‘elite labour’ accompanied by increasing automation in the production and delivery of services. He claims that ‘for the United States alone, this means that in the years ahead more than 90 million jobs in the labour force of 124 million are potentially vulnerable for replacement by machines’. He notes that ‘Many economists and elected officials continue to hope that the service sector and white collar work will be able to absorb the millions of unemployed factory workers in search of a job’, but adds ‘Their hopes are likely to be dashed’ (p. 17). Rifkin advocates a shift towards a 30-hour work week, and a ‘social income’ financed from a value-added tax on high-tech goods and services to pay unemployed people to train and work in the voluntary sector. This non-profit-making ‘third sector’ as he terms it, is, he believes, ‘playing an increasingly important social role in nations around the world. People are creating new institutions at both the local and national levels to provide for needs that are not being met by either the market place or public sector’ (p. 19).

The search for trends and influences in work and leisure has recognized that these are not necessarily global or definitive. Parker (1987) noted that there ismuch evidence to suggest that people in advanced industrial societies live under the tyranny of the clock and that in Linder’s phrase, the ‘harried leisure class’ is growing. With little or no decrease in time needed for work and self-maintenance, and with an increase in the time needed to maintain goods, there is less time for leisure. The attitudes which seek to save time in work and non-work obligations are then seen to spill over into an attempt to save time in leisure, thus affecting the quality of leisure. Parker cites the claim made by Godbey (1975) that in the USA ‘what has increased is “anti-leisure”: activity which is undertaken compulsively, as a means to an end, from a perception of necessity, with a high degree of externally imposed constraints, with considerable anxiety, with a high degree of time consciousness and a minimum of personal autonomy’. Parker (1976, p. 36) commented, ‘This is not, of course, a picture of life characteristic of the majority of the population in the United States today, far less in Britain. But it applies to a significant and growing minority, and the dynamic of industrial capitalism is such that it is likely to spread in the future’.

There are some indications that this is happening. The Demos Quarterly (Issue 5, 1995), devoted to ‘The Time Squeeze’, notes that right across society there is a sense of time being squeezed and points to the growing imbalance between overwork for some and zero work for others, increased time taken to get to work, to care for and transport children and even to shop. In an article on ‘Well-being and time’, in this issue of Demos, Mulgan and Wilkinson (1995) cite survey research in Britain which indicates that over 70 per cent of people working over 40 hours per week wanted to work less. They also claim that studies of time use show that most work and leisure is not used well, whether the goal is happiness or personal development. They argue for the importance of considering both the distribution and quality of time, and believe that the twenty-first century will be all about time and how to use it to achieve well-being.

In the same issue of Demos, Juliet Schor reports results of a nationwide Gallup poll in America in which one-third of respondents said they would choose the option of fewer hours for themselves and their spouse, even at the price of a 20 per cent reduction in household income. Schor notes, however, that expectations creep up with income and that much of our spending is habitual, making it difficult to break the work–spend–work cycle. Cross (1995) also points to the new arena of consumer spending–holidays–which serves expanding psychological aspirations.

In this volume, Seppo Iso-Ahola (Chapter 9) indicates that in societies where the puritan work ethic is glorified, as in the USA, this can result in leisure becoming a slave for work, to be used for recuperation from work, and that individuals glorifying work tend to devalue leisure and can find difficulties in reconciling work, family and leisure life. He argues that long hours of work and a work–spend–work mentality can result in the trivialization and opposition of leisure to work, which can promote escapism in leisure, leading to a passive lifestyle, boredom and poor physical and mental health.

Another important trend receiving increasing attention is the flexibilization ofwork. Pahl (1996, pp. 330–2), in discussing the challenges of unemployment in the mid-1990s, indicates that many people in employment are working in fear of becoming unemployed, and that the relationships between unemployment, flexibilization of employment and social cohesion have not been adequately explored. He points out that unemployment is no longer restricted to those at the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy, and that ‘the problems of unemployment, underemployment and downward mobility are affecting the managerial and professional middle-class, whose members are experiencing substantial anxiety and insecurity’. He argues that those with credentials and appropriate employment experiences may accumulate, through their succession of jobs, an appropriate mix of experiences that considerably enhances their employability. Thus

the CV-rich can face redundancy with greater confidence because they have built up skills and competencies and have acquired a variety of economically relevant social contacts and access networks providing information and have established networks for effective performance. This accumulation of cultural and social capital can be added to accumulated financial capital held in domestic property, insurance and pension rights. Not everyone sees the loss of a job, as traditionally considered, as a great disadvantage.

However, Pahl considers that ‘workers at the other end of the spectrum with no secure job history, no established skills and reputation, with limited contacts and no stores of accumulated social, cultural or financial capital are extremely unlikely to be able to turn their redundancy to positive account’ (p. 333). He cites Harrison and Bluestone (1988), who show that in the United States a succession of low-end jobs of varying duration interspersed with periods of unemployment generates considerable insecurity and anxiety, and Warr (1987), who indicates a causal link between job insecurity and various physical and psychosomatic complaints. Pahl considers that the differential ability among employees to acquire financial and human capital may produce a new kind of social differentiation based on the ability to cope with flexibilization. However, Pahl also believes that there are indications that flexibilization of working time may reduce over-strong commitment to employment with its attendant damaging effects, and that the potential exists for a reorganization of employment in order to make people’s main experience of the market place more enjoyable.

Future scenarios

In Chapter 12 Stanley Parker outlines four possible scenarios for the future of work and leisure: conservatism, reactionism, reformism and revolutionism. Conservatism views the future as more or less the same as today with a continuation or perhaps slowing down of recent technological and consumer trends. Reactionism is based on the perception of a past ‘golden age’ to which it is thought desirable to return. Reactionist approaches seek to restore in the futurea past attitude to, and experience of, work which is threatened by modern and impersonal mass production methods, and a return to full employment. This view of leisure looks back to ancient Greece, seeing leisure as a state of being in which activity is performed for its own sake or as its own end. The reactionist view of the work–leisure relationship considers that we have lost the earlier integration of the two spheres and should seek to restore the seemingly harmonious condition of the past. Reformism presumes the continuation of some form of capitalist free-market or mixed-economy system and aims to improve work and leisure life. This is the area in which most proposals for change fall, and Parker discusses several of these. Revolutionism is considered as any change in work, leisure or the relationship between the two that is post-capitalist. Parker notes that the meaning and experience of work have undergone revolutionary change in the past, and that they will no doubt do so again in the future. In the short to medium term, he considers that we need to insist that leisure is not the means to any work end, but that work and leisure interpenetrate one another; and that work, and the work–leisure relationship, should be at the centre of our concerns.

UNEMPLOYMENT, LEISURE AND LIFE TRANSITIONS

Unemployment and well-being

There are now comprehensive reviews of the effects of unemployment on well-being (e.g. Fryer and Payne, 1986; Warr, 1987; Dooley and Catalano, 1988; Warr et al., 1988; Fryer, 1992). Warr (1987, p. 207) concludes that ‘Extensive research into the effects of unemployment indicates that it impairs mental health, even though the effect is not universal, and a small minority of people show gains in mental health after job loss’. This impairment can involve increased psychological distress, including anxiety and depression, lowered self-esteem, resigned apathy, helplessness and powerlessness, social isolation and disintegration. These disorders have been confirmed in many countries (Fryer, 1992).

A few people tolerate unemployment, preferring to have an in-and-out-of-work lifestyle rather than accept unsuitable jobs (Roberts et al., 1982); while a minority see it as a challenge and opportunity to develop their interests (Fryer and Payne, 1984). The wide variations among individuals in the mental health costs of unemployment are highlighted by Fryer (1995) while emphasizing that research has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that unemployment causes, rather than merely results from, poor psychological health. Fryer also perceptively indicates the wider ramifications of unemployment for increased mental health risks for the families of the unemployed, those on training schemes, those re-employed, those anticipating unemployment, or left in insecure employment, those trapped in psychologically stressful jobs and others who are subject to the ramifications of recession and labour-market disadvantage and economic insecurity.

Unemployment and leisure

In the 1970s in the UK the central government had come to regard leisure as a vital contributor to quality of life. With unemployment and urban dissent increasing in the early 1980s, improved leisure provision was advocated as part of a solution. The Sports Council of Great Britain launched a number of experimental schemes with the appointment of sports leaders who developed a varied activity programme at existing or new facilities, free of charge or at very low cost, and with equipment and transport provided. An important evaluat...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Categories of psychological experience and well–being
• Chapter 3: Research into categories of psychological experience and well–being
• Chapter 4: Principal environmental influences and mental health
• Chapter 5: Research into principal environmental influences and mental health
• Chapter 6: Enjoyment and well–being
• Chapter 7: Embodiment and quality of life
• Chapter 8: Serious leisure and well–being
• Chapter 9: A psychological analysis of leisure and health
• Chapter 10: Work and leisure in young people’s lives
• Chapter 11: Activity and ageing: challenge in retirement
• Chapter 12: Work and leisure futures: trends and scenarios
• Appendices