Il tempo dei bambini a Torino: 1979-2003

• Main Author: Renzo Carriero
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Rosenberg & Sellier 2006-12-01
• Series: Quaderni di Sociologia
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/qds/968
• ISSN: 0033-4952; 2421-5848

The research draws on a unique chance of comparison across time: the case of Turin (Italy) 1979-2003. In both years time use surveys have been carried out, each including children aged 7-13. The conditions of the urban young population can be seen as a mirror of the social change in a city moving from a still mainly industrial economy to a post-industrial one. As a consequence, today children live in different family context with more educated parents, more female employment and more divorce rate. Some results about trends in children’s patterns of time use are quite striking: TV watching for example – one of the most debated forms of leisure – despite popular fears, did not increased at all; social life instead, measured as time spent with friends (a more reliable measure than «time spent in social activities» which are not always unambiguously defined) dramatically decreased by 50%. This is likely to be linked with the growing institutionalisation of children in 2003. Today young people spend more time than in the past in institutionalised context such as school and extracurricular activities (sport training, music lessons etc.): time spent at school rose by 31% and time spent doing sports (including training courses above all) increased by 77% on average.