Family Recreation Study Of Irish Middle-income Families

Although recreation provides a wide range of potential values, such as rehabilitation of physical strength, development of personality, enhancement of aesthetic ability, and character cultivation etc., the potential values can only be transformed into real values when it is consistent with the right choice and active action of person. Based on literature study and interviews etc., the paper has come to conclusions as follows by studying recreation of pupils, middle-school students, teenagers over the age of 18, mothers, fathers and the whole families from core Irish middle-income families, which have been analyzed respectively from the field of economic, ideological, gender, occupation, family, social status and so on.Irish pupils have rich recreational activities since they have plenty of spare time. Their recreational activities are sports, arts, funs with other kids and TV/games, where sports occupy most spare time of pupils. Every pupil involved in the interview does sports. Boys do 4 times of sport every week (above average), while girls do 3.62 times of sport every week (above average).Art is another favorite recreation for pupils. The data show that 30% boys will attend art activity but 96% of girls love to. Pupils will play with their friends.Spare time for middle-school students is less than that of pupil, but they also focus more on sports. The data show that 100% of students involved in the interview do sports. They do sports 6 times every week (above average). Students have taken sports as habit in middle school. Sports have become indispensable to their daily life.Findings for recreation of teenagers over the age of 18 from Irish middle-income families are as follows:They mainly focus on sports and pubs.60% of mothers are part-time workers or full-time housewives. Only 30% mothers get full-time job. Housewives spend more time on sports than part-time or full-time workers. Housewives have formed the unique recreation mode, i.e. spend time with friends on chatting or drinking coffee 2-3 times a week after taking children to school. It is found in the study that mothers are more concerned about their recreation, because they will spend time on things they like after taking good care of kids and the family. They mainly spend spare time on sports and friends’ gathering.80% mothers do sports regularly. Some mothers even have done sports for decades of years.Fathers have less spare time than mothers However, there are still 68.2% fathers do sports regularly. Fathers love to watch various ball games most.It is found in the study that Irish middle-income families spend weekend and vacation together for leisure. For example, the whole family will spend weekend together for worship, visiting parents, relatives or friends. The whole family will hang out for sports, dinner, movie or driving to the outskirt or seashore. Or they will watch TV at home. As for long vacation, the whole family will go traveling. They travel together and do all kinds of leisurable activities together to relax themselves and bring family relation closer.