Spring break for students, less leisure for working adults

Spring break for students, less leisure for working adults
Spring break for students, less leisure for working adults

Spring break for students, less leisure for working adults

WBEZ brings you fact-based news and information. Sign up for our newsletters to stay up to date on the stories that matter.
This week is Spring Break for many kids from first grade through college. But if you think about it, it’s adults who work ever-longer hours for ever-more-demanding bosses that really need the break. U of Iowa Professor Ben Hunnicutt has been studying the drop in leisure time in the US for years. His latest book, “Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream” documents how thinkers from Whitman to Henry Luce were convinced that not only was leisure time considered an essential component of the American Dream, but that we would progress as a nation to the point where we’d be working two hour days. (Yeah. That and jetpacks) Photo: Flickr/ kenteegardin