RESEARCH NOTE
Does It Hold Outside the United States?
Yes, in the seven countries where it has been checked. The link points the same way in each. Most of those countries are English-speaking, and one part of the link is weaker outside the US.
Where it has been tested
Most research on family leisure comes from the United States. The same questionnaire has also been used in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Turkey and Russia.
In nearly every sample, families who reported more shared leisure, or more satisfaction with it, also reported a better family life. The studies below are surveys taken once. None can show that the shared time caused the result.
Five English-speaking countries at once
The largest test recruited 3,979 families through an online survey company in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Each family gave answers from a parent and a child aged 11 to 16. The analysis used 3,857 of them (Leisure Sciences, 2018). We read the full paper.
The authors reported that "findings indicated positive relationships between family leisure and family outcomes were consistent across all five countries". Satisfaction with family leisure was the steadiest predictor. The countries differed in how strong the link was. They did not differ in which way it pointed.
The authors name the limit themselves: "the five countries included in this study were all English-speaking, Westernized societies". It covers families with adolescents only.
Australia
A separate study surveyed 1,014 Australian families, with answers from 902 parents and 810 adolescents (Annals of Leisure Research, 2010). We read the full paper.
It took a statistical model built on US families and tried it on the Australian answers. The model fit reasonably.
The paper reports that these paths explained "62% of the parent and 73% of the youth variance in family functioning". Those are large numbers and they need care. They come from a model of answers given by the same people in one sitting, and family communication does much of the work in it. They are not the size of an effect of play.
The authors add: "Structural equation modelling of data from a non-experimental design cannot confirm or test causality".
The United Kingdom
Two UK studies add detail.
- Among 884 parents and children, closeness was linked with everyday time at r = .34 and with special time such as trips at r = .33 (Leisure Sciences, 2016). The letter r is a correlation. It runs from 0, no link, to 1, a perfect link.
- Among 1,502 people in 751 families, the outcome was each person's happiness (World Leisure Journal, 2016). The authors wrote: "The best predictors of happiness in the context of family leisure were quality family leisure time spent in familiar activities inside the home."
We read both papers in full.
Turkey
Turkey has two studies, and they do not say quite the same thing.
The first surveyed 70 urban Turkish families (Journal of Leisure Research, 2009). Family leisure helped explain family satisfaction for parents and for daughters. It did not for sons.
It also produced a result that cuts against the saying: "findings indicated that the level of family leisure involvement and enjoyment in general was low, and their satisfaction with family life was comparatively high". These families did little together by the survey's measure and were satisfied anyway.
The second surveyed 509 families in Izmir, with parents and young people aged 11 to 16 (Journal of Leisure Research, 2018). It found positive links between family leisure and every measure of how the family worked and how satisfied its members were, from both the parents' and the young people's answers.
Its authors state the limit: "data are cross-sectional and analysis techniques were correlational, hence no assumptions of causality can be made". Cross-sectional means everyone was asked once.
We read both papers in full.
Russia
A study of 597 people in Russian cities found that "core family leisure satisfaction was the strongest predictor of all aspects of family functioning and satisfaction with family life" (Annals of Leisure Research, 2019). Core family leisure is the researchers' name for everyday time at home. We retrieved the full paper, and the quote is from its summary.
Is the link weaker outside the US?
For one part of it, the pooled numbers say yes.
A 2017 analysis combined 23 articles into one estimate (Journal of Family Theory and Review). It looked at satisfaction with family leisure and how it relates to family quality of life. In US samples the link was r = .5575. In samples from outside the US it was r = .3151.
The authors attach a warning to this comparison: "Because only nine studies assessed family leisure satisfaction, the results of our moderator tests have limited power and stability". A moderator test is a check of whether a result differs between groups, here US and non-US samples. With nine studies, the gap could shift as more are added.
What has not been tested
- Most of the world. Seven countries have been surveyed, and five of them are English-speaking. Whether the link holds outside Western, mostly White, middle-class families with adolescents has not been shown.
- A different method. Nearly all of these studies use the same questionnaire and share authors. They repeat one approach in new places. An independent group with a different method has rarely tested it.
- Staying together. None of these studies follows families forward to see who stays together, in any country.
So the finding reaches beyond the United States. It comes from a narrow set of countries and was collected one way. The Turkish sample of 70 families is a reminder that a family can be satisfied without much shared leisure.
The full picture
This page covers one question. The whole verdict on the saying, with its history and every source, is in our research paper: A family that plays together stays together: is it true?