RESEARCH NOTE
Does It Matter How Much We Play, or How Much We Enjoy It?
In the surveys, how satisfied a family is with its time together shows a larger link with family life than how much time it spends. Part of that gap comes from how the question is asked.
Two different questions
Family leisure studies usually ask two things. The first is how much: how often a family does an activity together and for how long. The second is how satisfied each person is with that time.
Researchers then check which answer lines up better with how people rate their family life overall. In the studies we read that compared the two, satisfaction lined up better than amount.
The largest US sample
The clearest numbers come from 898 US families, each with one parent and one child aged 11 to 15, drawn from an online survey panel (Journal of Leisure Research, 2009).
The study asked how much of the difference between families in satisfaction with family life each set of answers could account for. It added the answers in steps.
For parents:
- Background facts about the family accounted for 5.8%.
- The amount of family leisure added 6.3 points.
- Satisfaction with that leisure added 28.0 points.
For the children:
- Background facts accounted for 4.1%.
- The amount of family leisure added 9.6 points.
- Satisfaction with that leisure added 19.3 points.
So for parents, satisfaction added more than four times what amount added. For the children it added about twice as much.
The authors wrote that "At the parent, youth, and family levels, core family leisure satisfaction was most correlated with satisfaction with family life". Core leisure is their term for ordinary, frequent time at home.
Across many studies
A 2017 analysis pooled 23 articles on family leisure (Hodge and colleagues, 2017). It reports each link as r, a number that shows how closely two things move together. Zero means no link and 1 means they move in step.
- Amount of family leisure and family quality of life: r = .27. That is about 7% of the differences between families.
- Satisfaction with family leisure and family quality of life: r = .41. That is about 17%.
The authors add a warning about the second figure: "Because only nine studies assessed family leisure satisfaction, the results of our moderator tests have limited power and stability". In plain words, the satisfaction figure rests on fewer studies and is less settled.
There is more on reading the first number on our page about how big the link is.
Couples show the same pattern
A study of 1,187 couples across the United States found that "satisfaction with couple leisure involvement was far more important when predicting marital satisfaction than the amount of leisure involvement." We read the summary of this study, not the full paper (Journal of Leisure Research, 2014).
The catch: one person, two ratings
This is the part that keeps the finding from being as strong as it looks.
Being satisfied with your family's leisure and being satisfied with your family life are two similar judgments. In these studies the same person answers both, in the same sitting. Someone with a warm view of their family will rate both high. Someone having a hard year will rate both low.
So part of the larger number is a shared outlook showing up twice. It is not all an effect of enjoying play. The strongest result in the whole field, the r = .41 above, is two satisfaction ratings from one respondent.
The amount question has its own problem. It asks people to recall how often and how long over the past year. In a study of 884 parents and children in the United Kingdom, researchers switched to a scoring method that estimates actual time. The links shrank to between r = .07 and r = .23 (Leisure Sciences, 2016).
What nobody has shown
- That enjoying family time causes a better family life. Every study above is a survey taken once. The 2009 authors say so: "interpretations regarding the directionality of relationships cannot clearly be made without further study".
- Which comes first. A family that already gets along will enjoy its time together more. The surveys cannot separate that from enjoyment making a family closer.
- That more hours is better. One time-diary study of mothers found that "the amount of maternal time did not matter for offspring behaviors, emotions, or academics". That study measured children's behavior and schoolwork, not family closeness, and we read the summary only (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2015).
What this does and does not say
- It does say that in these surveys the feeling about the time tracks family satisfaction more closely than the count of hours does.
- It does not say hours are irrelevant. Amount showed a link of its own in the 898-family study and in the pooled analysis.
- It does not tell you how to make family time more satisfying. The studies measured satisfaction. They did not test ways to raise it.
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?