Word: often
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...According to a Harris survey, the amount of leisure time enjoyed by the average American has shrunk 37% since 1973. Over the same period, the average workweek, including commuting, has jumped from under 41 hours to nearly 47 hours. In some professions, predictably law, finance and medicine, the demands often stretch to 80-plus hours a week. Vacations have shortened to the point where they are frequently no more than long weekends. And the Sabbath is for -- what else? -- shopping...
Adults may care a lot, but in ways that are often distorted by their own zealous professional lives. Eager parents arrive home late and pour a day's stored attention onto a child who is more ready to be tucked in than talked at. "It may be that the same loss of leisure among parents produces this pressure for rapid achievement and overprogramming of children," argues Allan Carlson, president of the conservative Rockford Institute, an Illinois think tank. If parents see parenting largely as an investment of their precious time, they may end up viewing children as objects...
...glib answer most often boils down to women withdrawing from the work force and returning home, thereby easing the time crunch for the whole family. But it is almost never that easy. After 20 years of studying women and stress, Wellesley College researcher Rosalind Barnett has found that alcoholism and depression in women are less frequent among those who work. Nor could most families afford to have one spouse give up working. And the American economy could not stand the hemorrhage of so much talent from its work force...
...destiny," says M.I.T. research director David Birch, who has studied entrepreneurship. While starting a company rarely means more free time, it can promise greater satisfaction, autonomy and flexible working conditions. Freedom-minded men and women alike have recognized that technology and the restructuring of the economy, which so often work against individual peace of mind, can actually work for the small entrepreneur. The same computers and fax machines that torment corporate drudges allow small businesses access to world markets...
CITIZENS, A CHRONICLE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by Simon Schama (Knopf; $29.95). Exactly 200 years after the bloody facts, a Harvard historian offers a fascinating, often surprising account of what went right -- and wrong -- during one of the world's most celebrated social convulsions...