Commentary: The mysterious recent decline of our leisure time
LONDON: One puzzle of modern life is that so many of us feel brusk of time, even though we work less than our forebears.
In the 19th century, unions campaigned for "viii hours for work, eight hours for rest and 8 hours for what we will."
In the 20th century, they succeeded in their push for shorter working hours. But what happened to all that spare fourth dimension we gained for doing "what we will"?
WHY WE Experience STRETCHED FOR Time
It's non a perception problem: We really are stretched for fourth dimension.
Information from the Arrangement for Economical Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that the boilerplate time people spend on leisure has decreased since the 1980s.
In the 2010s, the boilerplate time spent on leisure shrank in eight out of 13 countries for which data is available. It dropped by 14 per cent in Korea, 11 per cent in Espana, 6 per cent in holland, five per cent in Republic of hungary and 1 per cent in the United States.
The number of people in "time poverty" (which the OECD defines equally those for whom the share of fourth dimension devoted to leisure and regenerative activities is less than lx per cent of the median) has risen since 2000 in the 10 countries for which data is bachelor.
One gene is that the decline in weekly working hours has levelled off. Average usual weekly hours take been stuck at around 40 for full-time employees in the OECD since the 1990s.
But this lonely can't explain the decline in leisure.
A written report by the Resolution Foundation, a remember-tank, compares detailed time-use surveys completed by people in the United kingdom in the 1970s and 2010s.
The data shows the same squeeze on leisure time as in other countries, with women more pinched than men. In the 1970s, working-age men and women each had about 6 hours of leisure per twenty-four hour period, while today men take 5 hours and 23 minutes, and women 4 hours and 47 minutes.
Women are doing more paid work than in the 1970s and men are doing more than housework, but the biggest divergence lies in how much time both groups devote to childcare (which is not classed as leisure in these surveys).
Women spend more twice as much time on childcare than in the 1970s, fifty-fifty though they are likewise spending much more than time in paid work. Men spend vastly more fourth dimension on childcare at present too.
Which raises the question: Who was looking afterward the children in the 1970s?
Changing ATTITUDES ABOUT PARENTING
When I posed this question on Twitter, I was deluged with responses from people who said they by and large played exterior without adult supervision, returning for meals and bedtime.
I reminisced well-nigh playing on a building site; some other nigh wandering around a party sipping the adults' Bucks Fizz.
Changing attitudes among parents towards risk might well be a factor. It's also possible that we think of childcare differently now.
The surveys ask people to record their "primary activity" throughout the day in 10-infinitesimal blocks. Perchance in the 1970s, childcare was more oft something that happened while you likewise did the housework or socialised, whereas now it feels more similar an activity in itself.
Much ink has been spilled on the pros and cons of "helicopter parenting". As a working female parent, I recall it's too possible that parents who work only miss their kids and desire to focus on them when they get the chance.
She felt a sense of "despair" each time she had to breastfeed. Only there'due south one thing that made all the difference in this difficult journey, this new mother says on this week's Heart of the Matter podcast:
WORK-LEISURE BOUNDARIES ARE DISSOLVING
There is a more central shift too. Although we accept always multitasked to some extent, technology at present makes it harder to split up our time between work and play.
As Derek Thompson has written in the Atlantic, "leisure is getting leaky." If I am watching TV while checking my work email on my phone, am I at leisure or at work? What almost if I lookout man a funny video while sitting at my desk? And as the boundaries dissolve, does it brand piece of work feel better, or leisure feel worse?
For office workers, the pandemic blurred the boundaries more than than always earlier. Merely working from home too allowed people to reclaim the time they spent commuting: Precious new slivers of fourth dimension which many staff are reluctant to relinquish.
Trade unions in some countries are now resuming their push for shorter working hours.
In the Great britain, the Trades Marriage Congress has chosen for a four-mean solar day week, while in Frg and Austria some innovative collective agreements accept let workers choose reduced hours over higher pay. Just the story of recent decades is that, even when we piece of work less, we detect it hard to rest.
People often reflect ruefully that John Maynard Keynes was wrong in 1930 when he predicted a transition to a fifteen-hour work week. But the economist knew it wouldn't be that like shooting fish in a barrel.
"There is no country and no people, I remember, who can wait forrard to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread," he wrote. "For we have been trained too long to strive and non to savour."
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/leisure-time-decline-less-why-do-i-feel-busy-work-home-283156
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