The Effects of Adolescents’ Leisure and Cultural Activities on Self-regulation, Academic Achievements, and Self-esteem: Focusing on Fathers’ Educational Levels

Abstract

Along with the enforcement of the five-day work week, adolescents’ leisure and cultural activities have been recognized so important that families, schools, local communities, and the government are trying to provide support for these activities. In this research, we regarded adolescents’ leisure and cultural activities as a kind of embodied cultural capital which have the intention to educate them as a person of culture with balanced human development. With this regard, we examined whether or not adolescents’ leisure and cultural activities had an effect on their balanced growth. We chose 1,673 middle school seniors from the third wave of Korea Children and Youth Panel Survey conducted in 2012 by National Youth Policy Institute. Then, we analyzed the effects of adolescents’ leisure and cultural activities as embodied cultural capital on their self-regulation, academic achievements, and self-esteem. The results showed that adolescents’ leisure and cultural activities had not merely significant positive direct effects on all the three latent variables but significant positive indirect effects on the academic achievements and the self-esteem mediated by the self-regulation. The fathers’ educational level did not moderate these influences of adolescents’ leisure and cultural activities. This means that these influences can be maintained equally, irrespective of parents’ cultural capital. It also suggests that families, schools, local communities, and the government all should highly encourage adolescents to participate leisure and cultural activities regardless of their social classes.