Within family sociology during the past 30 years, while a general consensus has developed that most parents and children in the Western world have come to share relationships characterised by a greater degree of intimate disclosure, the extent to which parent–child relationships have become ‘purer’ and more egalitarian remains a contested issue. Although there has been a developing interest in involved fathering through sport and physical activity over the past decade, research has yet to concentrate on the consequences of this transformation for daughters. This article applies Mannheim’s tenet of generation entelechy to life history interviews with 14 women born between 1950 and 1994 to argue that involved fathering through physical activity offers conditions for daughters to realise a long-held desire to establish more emotionally reciprocated intimate bonds with fathers. Daughters described a shift from viewing fathers as emotionally uninvolved workers to becoming interdependent intimates.

For men living with obesity who want to lose weight, the femininity associated with practicing weight loss strategies often acts as a constraint when trying to integrate themselves within the social environment of conventional weight management programmes (WMPs). Although, increasingly popular sport focused men-only WMPs seem to have a favourable impact on sustaining men's engagement. Drawing on interviews with 14 men currently involved in football-based WMPs, we argue that a spirit of collective action spontaneously developed within this innovative weight management space of doing physical activity together, sparked by shared grievances of feeling emasculated when previously attending female-dominated commercial WMPs. This collective spirit surpassed weight loss as men's priority for attending the programme. To do justice to the bespoke social support constructed and relished by the men, we utilise the collective action concepts of tactics, frames and working utopias. This study may inspire more sociologically driven investigations of social support within health service contexts and the experiences of those subject to health-related stigma.

Despite an increased drive over the past two decades in Western societies to promote children's physically active play to improve their health, there are concerns that childhood has become less physically active. There are also fears that a previously naturally occurring aspect of childhood has become less authentically playful. Both trends highlight changes over time in the amount and type of play practiced by children and are often cited as consequences of generational shifts. Yet, research which analytically employs the concept of generation to connect changes to childhood with relevant social transformations is lacking. Inspired by Mannheim's conceptualisation of generations, this paper draws on life history interviews with 28 United Kingdom residents born between 1950 and 1994 to propose a fracturing of naturally occurring physical activity from childhood play. As shifts in childhood and parenting have become inextricably linked, this argument illustrates the impact of an intensification to parenting upon greater parental surveillance of increasingly organised forms of childhood physical activity at the expense of spontaneous play. Future physical activity policy should be sensitive to the social climate in which recommendations for children are made, as this places expectations upon parents due to how childhood is currently understood within neoliberal contexts.

In comparison to the natural sciences, there is a lack of empirically grounded social scientific research which addresses how people arrive at forming pleasurable interpretations of physical activity participation. Both social and natural conceptualisations of the bodily sensations evoked via physical activity involvement have also been restricted to pain and pleasure and pleasure-displeasure dualisms. Nevertheless, there is general agreement across these disciplines that pleasurable interpretations of physical activity participation encourage regular and sustained future involvement. We draw on carnal sociology to explain life history interview data from 30 varied physical activity careers to argue that corporeal experiences of being physically active are more ambiguous than existing pleasure-pain dualisms suggest. Furthermore, interpreting these ambiguous corporeal senses as pleasurable was of central importance to sustaining a prolonged physical activity career, which we argue is a carnal skill that can be learned. This skill, possessed by those interviewees with the most prolonged physical activity careers, had been acquired through becoming accustomed to the unique situated sensual ambiguities of particular physical activities, as a type of existential connoisseurship. Future research might pay more attention to the ambiguity of physical activity involvement, the carnal interpretation of which carries important consequences for the likelihood of long-term participation.

Over the life course, family relationships are likely to have a profound bearing upon physical activity habits. This chapter argues that lifelong implications of an active childhood are unclear and parental influence wanes over time, studies of the impact of 'family structure' are impaired by confusion between household and family distinctions and parenting research is dominated by mothers who perceive their own physical activity involvement to be either detrimental to the current, or beneficial to the future, wellbeing of their children. Of interest to policy, is that parents place greater value on the wellbeing than health benefits of being active.

Rhodesia: a human geography by George Kay London, University of London Press Ltd., 1970. Pp. 192. £2.50. - Chief, Council and Commissioner: some problems of government in Rhodesia by J. F. Holleman Assen, The Netherlands, Royal van Gorcum, 1969. Pp. xx + 391. f29.00. - The Governmental System in Southern Rhodesia by D. J. Murray London, Oxford University Press, 1970. Pp. xxii + 393. £4.00. - Flame or Lily? by Graham C. Kinloch Durban, Alpha Graphic, 1970. Pp. xvi +134. - Volume 9 Issue 4