When Gen Xer Amy Rottier went shopping for her young children two decades ago, she drove to a mall and browsed for what she needed. Her millennial daughter, Helen, who is studying for a doctorate and doesn’t have children, buys anything she needs with a click on her iPad.
The women, ages 50 and 25, respectively, illustrate the pace of change from one generation to the next in what people do in an average day. The changes were revealed in a study released last week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Generation X women were more likely to do housework, care for children, read for pleasure and do lawn work, the study found. Millennial women were more inclined to exercise, spend leisure time on computers, take care of their pets and sleep.
The report uses American Time Use Survey data to capture how people lived at a point in time between the ages of 23 and 38. For Amy Rottier’s generation, that was in 2003. For her daughter Helen, it was in 2019 — a year before the global coronavirus pandemic dramatically altered patterns of living. The report reflects changes for men as well as women.