The Role of Recreation in American Society - A Changing Role

The expectations of free time have shifted and expanded over time. Eric Miller, in At Our Leisure (New York: EPM Communications, Inc., 1997), depicted recreation and leisure in the United States in the 1950s as an expression of comfort; it rounded out lives and reaffirmed the importance of home and family. During the 1960s it acquired an identity of its own apart from "traditional values." In the 1970s free time became an expression of an individual's identity; it pushed work into secondary importance. During the 1980s many Americans began to work at having fun—they were intent on working hard and "playing hard."

Americans of the 1980s spent wildly on material necessities, pleasures, and extravagances. Shopping was elevated to a form of recreation; American leisure included unabashed consumerism. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Americans started to demand even more of their free time—recreation had to provide personal satisfaction. Aging baby boomers, poised to become the largest group of older Americans in the country's history, exerted tremendous influence over societal views and values about work, life, and leisure. As the members of this generation began to recognize a limit to the length of life, they turned their attention to improving the quality of life.

American culture's structuring of leisure changed significantly in the mid twentieth century. The five-day workweek was institutionalized as a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal (1938), and Americans settled into "nine-to-five" workdays (or slight variations) after World War II. When free time became a national institution, no corresponding leisure industry existed. Since then, leisure has developed into a huge industry. According to the U.S. Department of Labor in its survey Consumer Expenditures in 2002, about 5.1% of Americans' annual expenditures were on entertainment, just slightly less than the 5.8% they spent on health care.