Ageing and leisure among business people in Sao Paulo

Abstract

This paper draws from exploratory research conducted within in a larger project on leisure changes across family life cycles. It reports the results of interviews with 17 males who had graduated from an elite business school in Sao Paulo several decades previously. They were all aged between 55 and 70 and were in or close to entering the so-called empty nest stage of the life cycle. The interviews focused on leisure practices and their meanings. We chose the respondents for the study because they could be regarded, roughly, as representative of a particular stratum, the upper middle class citizens of Sao Pauto. The paper discloses the most popular leisure activities among that group and discusses their meanings as well. One of the main findings concerns the importance of habit: levels and types of leisure participation in later life depended greatly on the skills, interests and social relationships built up and sustained during youth and adulthood. A second major finding concerns the major changes in leisure practices that accompanied retirement. The scope of the findings of this study is limited to the sample of interviewees; nevertheless, the analysis of results provides many insights to build hypotheses that can be tested in further research. © 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.