The air is mild, the sun is warm, the dog trots on the lawn of Jarry Park, and Chantal Lessard has time to respond to a busy journalist. She repeats it, her hand covered with a visor to protect herself from the sun. “But yes, I have plenty of time. I am retired ! »
So much the better, so much the better. Because there have been years when Chantal Lessard would not have been so relaxed at the park on a Thursday morning.
PHOTO JUDITH LACHAPELLE, THE PRESS
Chantal Lessard
I raised my daughter alone. For a good 10 or 12 years, I remember that I had no time.
Chantal Lessard
“I worked a lot – I was a radio-oncology technologist at the CHUM. In my specialty, brachytherapy, there were only two of us able to provide care. We took no breaks, no lunch hours, we worked from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m..”
She also agreed to be on call for one week a month, being reachable day and night thanks to her pager (ah! the famous pagers!). She had her daughter looked after in the morning and after school. When she found her, she had to take care of meals, extracurricular activities, cleaning, shopping…
What about free time, Chantal? “Ha! There was none for me! »
This hellish pace ended up undermining his health. “I suffered from professional burnout, I had to stop working for two years. I had burned myself. If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t work as much. ” She thinks. “But I was the only one bringing money home… I wanted my daughter to not lack anything. »
More work, less leisure
Chantal Lessard tasted the “crazy life” at the start of the millennium. At the same time, Professor Gilles Pronovost taught in the department of leisure, culture and tourism studies at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières (UQTR). Since the 1980s, he was also interested in the evolution of time use trends measured by Statistics Canada. And this is still the case today, the professor emeritus confirms.
The latest data published by Statistics Canada dates from 2015, and the professor is very curious to see what the 2022 data, which should be released within a few weeks, will reveal – the pandemic delayed the collection for the edition which was to be hold in 2020.
But the long-time observer can already make some predictions.
First, on working time. “I would be surprised to see an increase in working hours [depuis 2015], says Gilles Pronovost. With what we experienced during the pandemic, I think things have calmed down. » He estimates that working time should be around 40 hours per week, including travel.
This would be part of a stability observed since the beginning of the 2010s, after a sharp increase in working hours at the turn of the 2000s. The more active participation of young mothers in the world of work would be one of the causes. Data from 2015 showed a stabilization of working time, around 39 hours of paid work per week, or one hour more than in 1986. And we are not talking about the travel time to get to work that the professor estimated to be about four hours per week.
But while working hours increased with the new millennium, “there was a huge drop in time spent on leisure,” says Gilles Pronovost, specifying that this trend was not unique to Quebec.
The equation is quite simple. To work more in a 24-hour day, we reduce sleep a little, but we especially reduce leisure. So that at the start of the 2000s, all the gains we had made since the 1970s in leisure time were erased.
Gilles Pronovost, professor emeritus in the department of leisure, culture and tourism studies at UQTR
And they were never fully recovered.
Physical activity and leisure sports, as well as volunteering, have all been in decline for more than 20 years. Leisure time devoted to cultural activities ended up slowing its decline… thanks to one leisure activity in particular: “participation in cultural activities through intermediary media”.
In other words: the free time we spend, with a device in hand, listening to music, using social networks, watching video clips. This time gained two hours in the weekly schedule of the working population, between 2010 and 2015.
“It’s the only growing cultural field,” says Gilles Pronovost, concluding his summary. “And I would be very surprised if the trend does not continue in 2022.”
And women ?
Another trend that should not have changed since 2015: the greater proportion of women who experience “lack of time” compared to men. And it is not Julia Posca, researcher at the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information (IRIS), who will jump when consulting them.
Why are women proportionally more likely to feel “lack of time”? First, because of the type of job they hold, says Mme Posca. “The majority of women occupy jobs in the care sector, caring for others – the “care”as we say in English,” she says.
Teaching children, supporting the elderly, helping vulnerable people, caring for the sick… “It is completely incompatible with an acceleration of time, with the performance demands that organizations have with regard to their employees. It’s a hypothesis, but it could explain that acceleration is experienced perhaps more acutely among women. »
“Not being able to put in the time necessary to pay quality attention to others can certainly contribute to having a different perception of lack of time among men and women,” says Julia Posca.
And then there is the inevitable question of domestic chores. Despite men’s significant catch-up in this area, “women will still tend to take on a greater share of domestic tasks,” says Julia Posca.
All these tasks to accomplish “certainly contribute to the impression of having little space, little time for oneself,” says Julia Posca.
“When we look at the time spent socializing, there are no big differences between men and women,” she says. But we must ask ourselves how this time can be contaminated by the rest of the schedule. »
Even if we have time to be with our friends, but we are preoccupied with the work or the health of our parents or the academic performance of our children, this can result in “free” time being contaminated, which which is not relaxing.
Julia Posca, researcher at IRIS
Should we be concerned about the perception of running out of time? Yes, says Julia Posca. Work takes up several hours in most people’s lives, she points out.
“In particular, we must ensure that employees have more power over the organization of work,” she says. It’s a way to restore a sense of control and accomplishment that can have beneficial effects not only at work, but also in personal life. »
This feeling of control can be accompanied by a feeling of freedom, adds Concordia philosophy professor Jonathan Martineau. Slowing down allows people to bring “more meaning into their daily activities.” It can be fulfillment, a return to creativity or better social connection, especially with family members.”
Waiting for retirement
Chantal Lessard feels like she now has control of her time. Work no longer takes up most of her time, her daughter is an adult, and valuable hours have been regained. This time, she keeps them for herself. “I volunteer, I swim often, I participate in a choir,” says the new retiree. “I’m doing everything I dreamed of doing when I was working. »
“I look at young families today. It runs, it runs…” More than in his time? “It seems to me, yes. They look more stressed. At the hospital, I worked with a lot of young people. They stay away from their workplace, both parents have jobs, there is a shortage of daycare spaces… They said they were looking forward to retirement! If they think about it at 30 years old, they will find it a long time…”
With the collaboration of Alice Girard-Bossé, The Press
Read “The Ups and Downs of Time”
Read “Return to our “crazy life””