Gated Trajectories in Children’s Leisure Time and Space in Turkey: A Relational Reading of the Parents’ Accounts of Supervision

Children’s leisure in minority worlds is becoming increasingly time- and space-structured. Parents take a great share in getting their children’s quotidian ‘free’ time scheduled and defined. This research aims to explore how the parental organisation of children’s post-school time may interlink to children’s everyday dependencies. The research sample consisted of the parents of children who were aged 10-14 and attended the two state middle schools in Üsküdar in Istanbul/Turkey, within academic year 2016-2017. The empirical material was drawn from semi-structured interviews (n=30) and surveys (n=365). The data analysis was informed by a relationality perspective built on a post-humanism literature. Findings suggest that most of the participating parents limited their children’s socialisation time and space to a specific duration and geography. In that, some parents opted for extracurricular courses for their children; others confined the children to the yards of the gated building complex or the households. Organisation of children’s leisure time and space was found to be minimally open to negotiation, and parental accompaniment was prevalent throughout children’s peer socialisation and techno-socialisation regardless of the socioeconomic background of the parents. We suggest that such parental confiscation and monitoring may filter children’s encounters with different layers of society and reproduce their dependence on family.