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TRENDS
Changing Families by Ray Morrill, CLP I've been in the field for 22 years, and I have seen a lot of changes not only in our profession but also in the people we serve. I've seen changes in people's philosophies, values, attitudes and family relationships. Changing families—are we changing with them? I'm convinced that "life" is ten percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. Times have changed, and both you and I need to change with it. In the 40s, 50s and 60s, perhaps even up through the 1970s, women for the most part stayed at home and raised the children while the husbands went out to earn a living. That's the way my parents were, and their parents were, as I'm sure it was with many of you. Family was stressed, and divorce was a dirty word. When my wife and I had our children, she quit work and raised our son and daughter. At an appropriate time, she went back to work. Today that's not the case. Women take 30-90 day maternity leaves and go right back to work. In the 1960s there was every reason to believe that the 40-hour work week would drop to 32 hours, and some even predicted an eventual decrease to 24 hours. This condition meant that the average working person would have between 72 and 80 hours per week available as discretionary time. At an NRPA Congress in Baltimore, Maryland, a speaker named Stephen Mulvaney stated that in 1964, a group testified before Congress that the leisure industry would become a booming business because people would have an enormous amount of free time in the 90s. He went on to say that just the opposite has occurred—in the 90s the average worker works a little more than 48 hours per week. In 1964 the average worker worked 41 hours per week. What does all of this mean to us? Robert Tucker, in his book Managing the Future, states that the competitive edge for the 90s is "speed." People do not have a lot of time. But let's take this one step further. Not only is speed of service important, but also convenience. We have less time because we are working more hours, and what else has happened? Women have entered the work force! The Urban Institute, a Washington D.C. research firm, predicted that by 1993 two out of three mothers would hold jobs outside the home. Another trend for the 90s is that less than 11 percent of women will be stereotyped housewives. At the 1992 School of Sports Management, they provided a list of trends for the 90s which included some of the following: • Young housewives today, unlike their mothers, feel they have the right to pursue activities outside the home. If speed and convenience are going to give us the competi-
tive edge for the 90s, where are people going to go for their recreation programs and leisure services if our hours of operation and the times we offer our programs are not convenient? Ask yourself, "How has the retailer responded to the changing times?" One great example is your local grocery store. Go into a Jewel after midnight, and you might be surprised to see how crowded it is. An old cliche states, "Business goes where it's wanted and stays where it is appreciated." A June 6, 1991, editorial in a local newspaper stated, "Parks Must Serve Working Parents." I disagree—parks must serve everyone, including working parents. The editorial goes on to say that some park employees do not want to work in the evening and that Sundays are overlooked. I was at an Illinois Parks and Recreation State Conference session several years ago when a speaker said that very thing, and he meant it—"Staff do not want to work evenings or weekends." Fortunately that person does not work for me, and fortunately I believe that that's the exception rather than the rule. As for Sunday programming, I also believe it has merit. Each of us must look at our own community and its needs. Ask yourself, however, at what point do the children of working parents spend time with their parents or the family, if, when the parents do have available time, they are looking for someone else to be with their kids via a recreation program. This is an issue which the newspaper editorial overlooked, and perhaps is an appropriate subject for a future article. Private businesses know that they must serve their clients during the hours the clients have available, and I agree that park districts must do the same. With less time and more choices available, we need to be in the forefront in providing services at convenient times, or we'll find YMCAs, YWCAs, private industry and schools, who all compete with us now, competing with us even more in the future. I'm not only talking about programs, day care, and before/after school care, but also program registration and hours of operation for our facilities, including our administrative offices. That newspaper editorial goes on to state, "It's not easy being a parent. When you hold down a job outside the home, it's even more challenging. And when taxpayer-paid services are only available during hours when you're at work, things can get frustrating. Far too many suburban residents come head to head with such inflexibility at park districts." Inflexibility at Park Districts There's a banner in our Retired Citizens Center which reads, "Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape." Are we inflexible? Isn't the world we live in shades of grey and not black and white, as some people would like to believe? The quality that's going to be needed for you and for me in the 90s will be flexibility. We are going to have to adapt to a lot of changes in our lifetime. I think we can all agree that there is a growing need to offer programs for children, especially those in kindergarten through fifth grade, to help meet the needs of working parents and to provide a "safe-supervised setting" for children. The Urban Institute states that at least two million school-aged children between the ages of seven and thirteen are left alone during the week without adult supervision on a regular basis. Sixty percent of the mothers of school aged children will need some form of child care and again, two out of three mothers will hold jobs outside the home. It is not a secret that families are faced with the need for two incomes, thus creating a child care problem and a need on our part to evaluate when we offer many of our programs. The need is there because there are more single family households and double working parent households, and they don't want their children home alone, and their jobs aren 't ending at three or four-o'clock when our programs have traditionally begun. We can help families to spend more quality time together and provide better quality services by evaluating what we do, when we do it and how we do it. I agree with the newspaper editorial, and I understand that adults, teens and children are all competing for park facilities in the evening, and it may be hard to find space for children's activities. However, have you ever heard the breakfast story—the one about eggs and bacon? "The chicken contributed to the breakfast while the pig was committed." Are we committed to our jobs and to the people we serve? Times are changing and recreation agencies need to change with it. That's our challenge for the 90s, and whether you think you can meet this challenge or you think you can't—you're right! About the Author Ray Morrill, CLP, is the Superintendent of Recreation for the Wheaton Park District. This article is excerpts from a speech he presented at a session entitled "The Changing Family—Are We Changing With Them?" during the 1992 Illinois Park and Recreation State Conference.
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