Do you Make Time for Fun?
How to balance family and work is the topic of many discussions. And because this is already a juggle, leisure or fun is often left out of the equation.
How do working mums make time for fun? Unfortunately, many don’t. But this has a cost, because leisure is a life domain that weighs heavily on our wellbeing. So let’s have a look at how we can re-incorporate fun into our busy lives.
The importance of leisure
Leisure is a core ingredient for our overall wellbeing. The term “leisure” regroups the activities we pursue in our free time, when we’re not working, not taking care of the house/family nor occupied with basic hygiene tasks. In other words, leisure is what we do for fun.
Researchers have found that the quality of our recreational time was reflected in our life satisfaction and overall experience of positive emotions. They even defined an acronym, DRAMMA, to outline the multiple ways leisure supports our wellbeing (Newman et al., 2014). Here is what this acronym stands for:
Detachment-Recovery: leisure allows us to switch off from work and to recover. This type of leisure might look like lying down on the beach or watching Netflix. But we can also achieve detachment through high-intensity activities such as skydiving when the adrenaline rush stops the rumination and gives us a much needed break from exhausting thoughts.
Autonomy: by definition, leisure is what we choose to do. Therefore, we affirm our autonomy by deciding how to occupy our free time. Having a sense of autonomy is important for our mental health.
Mastery: leisure is particularly beneficial when it provides us with a sense of mastery. That is when we are developing skills in response to a challenge. There are many activities that can provide this feeling such as playing chess, engaging in sports or in arts. The sense of mastery boosts our self-esteem.
Meaning: another way of achieving positive feelings through leisure is to engage in a meaningful cause. We can do this through volunteering or participating in cultural events or spiritual practices that are important to us. We can find our purpose through leisure.
Affiliation: when we engage in leisure with others, this provides us with a sense of connection, of community. Feeling of belongingness is an universal human need that could be fulfilled through our recreational activities.
The type of leisure we need depends on our individual circumstances. For instance, if we have a highly demanding job, we might need more detachment-recovery leisure, but if our job is boring we might seek mastery in our free time. And of course, one activity can fulfil multiple roles, such as playing team sports that taps into mastery and affiliation, and possibly also detachment and meaning.
When leisure gets neglected
Becoming a parent inevitably forces us to cut down on our leisure time. The toll that bypassing the fun takes on our overall wellbeing is more flagrant for those who were highly active before having kids, or for women who work long hours (Roeters et al., 2016). This makes sense because a child’s arrival increases the difficulty of finding time for adult fun activities. The more involved in those activities we were before having kids, the more radical and destabilising the change might be.
However, mums and dads are not equal when it comes to finding time for leisure. Both men’s and women’s satisfaction with leisure decreases in the year following the birth of their first child, but this decrease is much more pronounced and lasts longer (at least 3 years) for women (Bernardi et al., 2017). Women experience difficulties juggling work, family and leisure. When two of these three domains conflict with each other (e.g. putting extra hours at work vs spending time with the kids after school), we feel overwhelmed, stressed and rushed. This ultimately affects our physical health (Freund et al., 2014).
An interesting study regrouping data from Australia and other Western countries reports gender inequities that lie in the quality of leisure (Bittman & Wajcman, 2000). Although men and women enjoy equivalent amounts of recreational time, leisure time for women is much more fragmented and often paired with other tasks (generally child caring). As a consequence, it is much more difficult for women to switch off and enjoy the benefits of uninterrupted down time. This lack of extended periods of relaxation where one could fully disconnect leaves mums feeling rushed and overwhelmed.
How to make time for fun?
Hopefully, by now you’re convinced that having fun is essential if you want to maintain good mental and physical health. Yet, fun often gets neglected amidst a busy lifestyle. Here are a few tips to intentionally bring some fun into your daily life:
Pair fun with other tasks. As outlined below, fun for the sake of fun contributes to our wellbeing, but let’s be realistic, this doesn’t always fit into our busy mummy lives. To circumvent the time issue, we can find ways to have fun doing the things we have to do: music/dancing/singing when cleaning the house (even better as a family, and we can gamify it - the first one who finishes tidying their corner wins!), a physical activity that you enjoy (so it’s not just for the sake of exercising), having your mum friends over for kids playdate and adult conversation time…
Pick the right activities. As a working mum, your free time is limited so you want to make sure that you do enjoy it. Have a look at the DRAMMA list above (detachment-recovery, autonomy, meaning, mastery, affiliation) and ask yourself: “what do I need?”. It’s also good to reflect on how your leisure activities make you feel. If you feel calmer and rested after watching Netflix, that was probably the right choice. But if when turning off the TV you feel bored and lethargic, maybe consider something more stimulating that would challenge you a bit and provide you with a sense of mastery.
Schedule it! Don’t leave it to chance. If you allow yourself to have some fun only if you finish work early or only when the house has been cleaned, chances are that this will never happen and fun will be brushed over by “more important tasks”! Fun is essential because it allows you to stay healthy, so make sure fun does have a dedicated space in your busy mum agenda.
References
Bernardi, L., Bollmann, G., Potarca, G., & Rossier, J. (2017). Multidimensionality of well-being and spillover effects across life domains: How do parenthood and personality affect changes in domain-specific satisfaction? Research in Human Development, 14(1), 26–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427609.2016.1268893
Bittman, M., & Wajcman, J. (2000). The rush hour: The character of leisure time and gender equity. Social Forces, 79(1), 165–189. https://doi.org/10.2307/2675568
Freund, A. M., Knecht, M., & Wiese, B. S. (2014). Multidomain engagement and self-reported psychosomatic symptoms in middle-aged women and men. Gerontology, 60(3), 255–262. https://doi.org/10.1159/000358756
Newman, D. B., Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2014). Leisure and subjective well-being: A model of psychological mechanisms as mediating factors. Journal of Happiness Studies: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Subjective Well-Being, 15(3), 555–578. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-013-9435-x
Roeters A, Mandemakers JJ, Voorpostel M. Parenthood and Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Leisure and Paid Work. Eur J Popul. 2016;32(3):381-401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-016-9391-3