ABSTRACT
The ways in which Britons spend their free time have remained relatively stable since the 1950s. Since the 1960s leisure time has grown at around a minute per year per working age male, and hardly at all for women. The leisure society that was foreseen in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s is still awaited. It is leisure spending, not time, that has grown dramatically, rising fivefold since the 1960s. The relative stability in post-war leisure time and use contrasts in another sense with the changes in uses of leisure that preceded the 1950s. The urban–rural contrast was one way in which sociology’s founding fathers distinguished modern from traditional societies. Girls now outperform boys at all levels in education. More women now hold full-time employment more or less continuously from leaving education until retirement, taking maternity leave instead of terminating employment. The shape of the life course is now different from in the mid-twentieth century.
