About 18 months ago,
my colleague,
Sally
Johnstone, and I met for
coffee. We
both had a burning
question. Why do young
women put rhinestones on their cell
phones?
While that doesn't
seem like an
earth-shattering question (and has
little to do
with the
changing demographics
in America), it put us on a path to
ask a lot of questions about young women
today. Because while we were
noticing little
things, like blinged-up cell phones,
we were also
noticing
some big
things.
Such as young women
being nearly
50% more
likely than young men to
graduate from
college.
Then, a few weeks
later, new data
was
released indicating that young
women in their
20s were starting to
out-earn young
men.
And if the gender gap
in
educational attainment, and pay,
continues, well,
we
believe that will have a
tremendous impact on
American
society.
For college-educated
women in
their 20s,
already some tensions are
rising due to
this gender
disparity. Women tend to settle
down with their educational peers, yet
there are
significantly fewer men with similar
attainment
levels. And
"dating down" (that is the
official phrase, we
could not make that up!) is
posing new tensions
and challenges to
relationships.
But we want to know
what this will
mean
for
museums.
First, long-term,
this is good
news for
museums. Since museum
tend to
attract well-educated visitors,
and since women
tend
to make leisure time choices for the families and
constitute the majority of adult
visitors to
museums, having a larger pool of
potential
visitors
should mean positive attendance growth (and
positive
membership growth) for those museums that
tune in
to this shift, and the needs
of these young
women.
Yet there may also be
some
challenges.
Although most young mothers
with
college degrees do work
outside the home, young
parents who do stay home with children, whether
part-time or full-time (or even
flex-time) are
significantly more likely to be
mothers. If
women are more likely to be the
primary
breadwinners, does
that mean a future of more
stay-at-home
dads? For museums that serve
moms with
preschoolers
in large numbers, such as children’s museums but
also
zoos and aquariums, this may be a challenge
as
young men are much less likely
to visit
museums. Will these stay-at-home
dads choose
the park over the
children’s museum?
How can we reach
these
young men and engage
them in museums as
well?
And then there is
where this trend
might
merge with the aging of
America. While young parents
are in the workforce, they may be relying on their
(recently retired) parents
to help with that child
care. Grandparents tend to take
grandchildren to
a
wider variety of museums than
parents, which is
good news for museums of all
types. But, on
the flip side, children’s museums may
need to
increase
their
efforts to engage seniors (and
consider
senior accessibility issues at
greater levels than
in
the past). Seating
helps.
Additionally, adults
in their
teens and
early twenties tend to be
tighter with
their Boomer parents than
prior generations were
with their parents. When these young adults
become parents, there is no reason to
think that
this
closeness will
diminish. Indeed, when
these young adults become parents, many will be
seeking activities that can involve
all three
generations.
Multi-generational activities
will take on a greater importance, and museums
are
in an excellent
position to build on this desire.
Looking forward 25
years, however,
moves
us past these humps.
In 25 years,
young adults of today will
largely be parents of
children ranging from elementary
school to college
age. And in 2034 we will
begin talking about
what the
great-grandchildren of Boomers will be
like as parents . . . and museum
visitors!