Different Times?

The report Different times? Time use and time structuring in the Netherlands, 1975-1995 (Naar andere tijden? Tijdsbesteding en tijdsordening in Nederland, 1975-1995) paints a picture of the way in which the Dutch spend the 168 hours that are available each week. It answers questions such as 'How long do people work for?', 'What do people do in their free time?' and 'How does the family spend its time?'. Other areas that receive attention are the 24-hour society and the role division between men and women.

The report also discusses the way in which people structure their time. The spreading of work and household activities to the evenings and weekends is discussed, as is the way in which people spend Sundays and their daily and weekly routines.

The availability of data from the Time Use Survey (TBO) covering five-year intervals during the period 1975-1995 makes it possible to outline trends over a period of 20 years. A selection of the findings:

• People began taking on a greater variety of tasks between 1975 and 1995. More women went out to work, while men gradually started doing more work in the household. Since only a few men also cut their working hours, the time pressure imposed by the various tasks (work, study, household) increased, especially for double-earner families with children.
• Despite this pressure of time, parents set aside more time for contact with their children (reading to them, talking to them, playing games and going out with them). Families with one breadwinner do not (now) differ from double-earner families on this point.
• The Dutch spend less time at home in the evenings than in the past, though this applies mainly for single persons and couples without children. Paid work was not a major reason for this in 1995: clubs and societies, sport and mobility caused larger and faster-growing numbers of people to be out of the house in the evenings than paid work.
• People spent more of their leisure time outside the home; activities such as reading, talking to fellow household members and receiving visitors declined. Watching television gained slightly in popularity. People watched television whilst eating more often than in the past.
• Daily and weekly routines remained more or less intact, though the concentration of activities at particular times flattened out somewhat, with a greater spread in the timing of activities such as eating and commuting to and from work.
• The tradition of Sunday as a day of rest lost ground, though in 1995 this was due more to household activities than to paid work. In 1995, 60% of the Dutch population spent at least one hour doing housework on a Sunday, whereas only 7.5% spent one hour or more on paid work. The idea of Sunday as a day of rest is largely based on the popularity of having a lie-in and watching TV.