The Fun Gap: How Women's Leisure Changes With Age
Free time is not evenly distributed across a woman's life. Measured hour by hour, leisure follows a clear arc. It is relatively plentiful in the early twenties, contracts through the thirties, reaches its lowest point between the ages of 35 and 44, and then expands steadily from the mid-fifties onward.
By their late sixties and seventies, women report more daily leisure than at any earlier stage of adulthood. The shape is close to a U, and it complicates a common assumption. Leisure does not quietly fade as women get older. On several measures, women in later adulthood have considerably more discretionary time than those in the middle of it.
The figures below draw on the American Time Use Survey, Pew Research Center's 2025 work on social connection, and AARP's travel research. Together they describe how much free time women have at different ages, and how they spend it.
Key Highlights
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Women average 4.76 hours of leisure and sports per day, compared with 5.58 hours for men (BLS American Time Use Survey, 2025).
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Women aged 35–44 have the least leisure of any female age group, at 3.70 hours per day.
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Leisure then climbs with age: 4.86 hours at 55–64, 6.43 hours at 65–74, and 6.85 hours at 75 and older.
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Women aged 35–44 also spend the most time caring for household members, at 1.63 hours per day, against 0.57 hours among women aged 45–54.
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Women spend slightly more time socializing and communicating than men, 0.65 hours per day versus 0.52 hours.
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Among women with close friends, frequent texting falls from 73% of those aged 18–29 to 53% of those 65 and older, and frequent social-media contact from 62% to 27%.
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67% of U.S. adults say women-only social groups have a positive effect on women's wellbeing (Pew, 2025).
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Among adults aged 50 and older, 64% expect to travel in 2026, and 40% expressed interest in organized group travel in AARP's 2025 study.
Women's Leisure Time by Age
The American Time Use Survey is the strongest source here because it breaks women's daily activity down by age group. Its estimates for daily leisure and sports trace the full arc across adulthood:
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Ages 20–24: 4.56 hours
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Ages 25–34: 3.99 hours
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Ages 35–44: 3.70 hours
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Ages 45–54: 3.93 hours
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Ages 55–64: 4.86 hours
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Ages 65–74: 6.43 hours
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Ages 75 and older: 6.85 hours
Source: BLS American Time Use Survey, 2025.
Leisure declines through the twenties and thirties, bottoms out at 35–44, and recovers slowly at first before rising sharply after 55.
The gap between the low point and later life is large. Compared with women aged 35–44, women aged 55–64 have about 1.16 more leisure hours per day, women aged 65–74 about 2.73 more, and women aged 75 and older about 3.15 more. A woman in her early seventies reports nearly twice the daily leisure of a woman in her late thirties.
What Competes for Time in Mid-Adulthood
The same survey records other activities that occupy the day, and one of them lines up closely with the leisure low point.
Time spent caring for household members peaks in exactly the age band where leisure is lowest. Women aged 35–44 average 1.63 hours per day on that care, up from 1.11 hours at 25–34, before it drops steeply to 0.57 hours at 45–54 and continues falling through later life.
The two curves mirror each other: care of household members is highest where leisure is lowest, and both ease as women move past their mid-forties. That overlap is worth noting, though it is not the same as proof. The survey shows the patterns sitting alongside each other, not that one produces the other.
General household work follows a different course. It rises rather than falls with age, from 1.91 hours per day at 25–34 to 2.71 hours at 45–54 and 3.09 hours at 65–74. Because it climbs even as leisure climbs, the balance of a day is clearly more layered than any single explanation allows. Care of household members is the one activity that tracks the leisure trough closely.
Women, Men, and Time Spent Together
Two distinct comparisons run through the data, and they are worth keeping separate. One compares women with men across all ages; the other compares women at different ages. Both point in the same broad direction on social time.
Across everyone aged 15 and older in 2025, women had less total leisure than men, 4.76 hours per day against 5.58, a difference of roughly 49 minutes. Yet within that smaller leisure budget, women spent slightly more of it in company: 0.65 hours per day socializing and communicating, compared with 0.52 hours for men. That social time expands at the weekend, when women average a full hour per day socializing and communicating against 50 minutes on weekdays.
How Social Connection Changes With Age
Pew Research Center's 2025 work adds detail on how women, specifically, keep up with friends. Among women who have close friends, 54% say they would be very or extremely likely to turn to a friend for emotional support, compared with 38% of men. About 38% speak with a close friend by phone or video at least several times a week, and 28% see one in person that often.
Among women with close friends, frequent texting slips from 73% of those aged 18–29 to 72% at 30–49, 63% at 50–64, and 53% at 65 and older. Frequent interaction on social media falls more steeply over the same span, from 62% to 55% to 37% to 27%.
These figures describe how often women reach for particular tools, not the total time they spend with friends. Lower use of texting and social media in later life should not automatically be read as lower social connection.
The data on organized social settings points the same way. 67% of U.S. adults say women-only social groups have a very or somewhat positive effect on women's wellbeing, and 57% say such groups are positive for society more broadly.
Travel and Group Leisure After 50
Travel is a separate window on leisure interests in later adulthood, and here the source changes. These figures come from AARP, and an important distinction applies: its surveys cover adults aged 50 and older overall, not women specifically, unless a table breaks the figures down by sex. They describe stated travel plans, and do not show how the leisure hours recorded above are actually spent.
For 2026, 64% of surveyed adults aged 50 and older expect to travel. AARP's 2025 study found a similar appetite, with 70% planning to travel that year, higher among those aged 50–59 at 73% and slightly lower at 68% among those 60 and older. Respondents expected around 3.6 trips on average.
The reasons behind the trips matter as much as the totals. In the 2025 study, 56% named spending time with family or friends as a top motivation for travel, and 40% expressed interest in organized group travel. Shared and organized travel is not a fringe interest among older adults but a meaningful share of how they plan to spend their time.
Leisure Is Not the Same as Isolation
Less leisure in mid-adulthood, or lower use of texting and social media later on, should not be mistaken for loneliness. Pew's 2025 research points the other way: 22% of adults under 50 say they feel lonely or isolated all or most of the time, compared with 9% of adults aged 50 and older, and 66% of those 65 and older say they hardly ever or never feel that way.
Pew found little overall difference between women and men here, so this is a pattern across adults rather than a women-only finding. It is a reason to treat changing free time as a matter of quantity and kind, not a proxy for wellbeing.
What the Data Shows
Women's leisure follows a U-shaped path across adulthood. It is lowest at 35–44 and rises substantially after 55, reaching its highest levels past 65. Older women are not short of free time; on these measures they have more of it than women in mid-adulthood.
The mid-adulthood low point coincides with the peak in time spent caring for household members. The two patterns sit alongside each other in the same age band, while general household work follows its own, upward course, so the balance of a woman's day resists a single explanation.
Women spend more daily time socializing and communicating than men in the time-use data, and older women's lower use of texting and social media should not be read as less social connection.
Interest in leisure extends into later life as separate context. Most adults aged 50 and older plan to travel, and a meaningful share are drawn specifically to shared and organized trips. That interest is measured among adults 50 and older overall, and sits alongside the leisure findings rather than explaining them.